In today's online information age, the measure of a topic's popularity has become how many "hits," or views, an item can receive online and how many bloggers or niche online publications willingly pick up the story.
Well then, high-energy physics is very trendy.
The Canberra Times, an Australian newspaper, called particle physics "sexy," pointing out the plethora of media coverage in the four days before the Sept. 10 launch of the first beam to circulate the 17-mile Large Hadron Collider ring at CERN, the European high-energy particle physics laboratory.
"A rap video clip, showing dancing scientists in white lab coats and hard hats rappin' the LHC on location in those high-tech tunnels, had had more than 2.5 million hits on You Tube in the last four days."
Winning over the hearts, and arguably limited attention spans, of a public that supports numerous movie and music gossip magazines, reality television shows, and homemade YouTube video clips, is no small task, as the article highlighted.
"Yesterday's revelation that troubled British singer Amy Winehouse is buying a country farmhouse 'to escape her demons' generated 47 news stories. Britney Spears did slightly better with around 60 stories on her MTV music awards makeover and plans for a Christmas album. But on Google News yesterday, there were just under 4000 news reports on the Large Hadron Collider's warm-up experiments, and the mix of elation and doomsday hysteria the switch-on had generated."
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