The World's Fair

Stately, plump Particle walked off the court that night, victorious, triumphant. There was a dragon slayer on the loose, yes, there was a dragon slayer. And it was him. Despite odds makers giving General Relativity healthy, spacious, easy 5-1 odds, Particle had come out on top. Somehow, crawling from the depths of this near mythical tournament, Particle had climbed to the top of the mountain. The crowd quickly gendered this subatomic feature, dubbing it Particle Man, and the name stuck.

But there were many unanswered questions this night, questions a 24 hours science news cycle is starving to address.

What exactly was that out there? Is he a dot?

Or is he a speck?

But wait, there's more:

When he's underwater does he get wet?

Or - or - we wonder, patiently, curiously, emphatically, does the water get him instead?

Intrepid reporters braved the showers of locker room champagne to shove microphones in Particles Man's face.

What's he like? We all wondered. What's he like? It's not important, the journalistically frustrated reporters could only say. Oh, here, we have the tape. Roll the clip:

Jim Nantz nuzzles up to particle man: "What are you like?" Particle man says only "It's not important."

True story.

Many of us wondered if his troubles with Triangle Man - they hate each other, you know - were a thing of the past. General Relativity probably assumed the Triangle Man animosity would weigh in its favor for this Elite Eight match-up. General Relativity was wrong.

They'd had fights. Triangle Man won those fights. But come Showdown time those fights were a thing of the past. Did they patch things up or did Particle Man retreat into a silent, monk-like training regimen that only a feature-length documentary released in, oh, five or seven years will reveal? Nobody knows Particle Man. Nobody knows, particle man.

And so on we march into the Final Four. Particle over General Relativity 87 to 81. And it wasn't even that close. A slew of Einstein books may have helped G.R. late in the game - raining down three after three after three fro well beyond the arc - but it was for naught. The legacy of the hundredth anniversary of Einstein's 1905 anno mirabilis , we're sure, helped concessions and t-shirts and foam hands and whoop-de-doo Walter Isaacson biographies. But they didn't help overcome one of the biggest upsets this late in the Showdown.

So know this for yourselves, and know it finally: when we talk about Particle Man doing the things a Particle can, we mean a Particle can defeat General Relativity in a Spring Science Showdown. Riddle solved.

Q.E.D.