Fate, time travel, billions of dollars, a ‘model for God,’ magnetic meltdowns, and al Qaeda—all related to a massive project by a bunch of physics nerds attempting to recreate one basic particle that may not even exist. I love this stuff.
I never bought Stephen Jay Gould’s whole thing about the world being quite big enough, thank you, for both science and religion as long as they were both good boys and girls and stayed on their own sides of the fence, played their own games, dealt with their own problems, and never kissed at the fence or took a roll in the grass. Where’s the fun in staying apart?
It’s at the borders and in the grass where all the good stuff happens; where all the dangers lurk. Remember the guys up on Galileo’s roof 400 years ago this August who wouldn’t look into his telescope for fear of seeing the evidence that would turn their geocentric view on its head? Come on, guys! Collisions, even of worldviews, can be productive; tensions can create new ideas!
Speaking of collisions, this week we have the ill-fated $9-billion Large Hadron Collider making headlines (well, at least an essay devoted to it in the New York Times Science section, which isn’t bad). This is that 18-mile underground loop in Switzerland designed to get protons moving so fast that when they collide they’ll produce a never before seen particle called the Higgs boson—perhaps. The collider’s been shut down for more than a year after its first attempt at making Higgs failed miserably, and last week one of the scientists working at the collider was arrested by French police for those possible terrorist connections mentioned above. But, this is just the beginning.
Two well-known physicists, Holger Boch Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya, have a wild idea they’ve posited in actual research publications. They hypothesize this particle, the Higgs boson, might be, well, hated by God. And hated by God to such an extent that if one occurred it would go back in time and stop itself from being made (perhaps through apparent mishaps, like the very meltdowns and terrorist infiltrations that have actually happened). To the physicists’ credit (or not), they didn’t postulate exactly what or how the Higgs production would be foiled, but they did make their back-in-time prediction before the meltdown or the arrest.
It’s hard to know what’s going on here. According to some physicists, time travel is theoretically possible, after all. The Times essay quotes Einstein as saying there’s really no separation or difference among the past, the present, and the future...
Perhaps it’s just a jealousy thing; physicists calling for attention. Over the last decades, biologists have been getting a lot more ink than physicists, pushing more intriguingly at the border of science and religion (see: cloning, stem cells, gene therapy, human genome project, evolution and creation, etc.).
And if time travel were really possible, and things in the future can really affect things in the past, how would we experimentally demonstrate this? Nielsen and Ninomiya actually propose a test they call ‘backward causation,’ using the collider itself as tester.
The experiment is to choose a random card that might put limitations on how the collider is run, and might lead to its total shutdown. If the chances are really low of actually picking a card that would shut it down or keep it working at levels that could never produce a Higgs particle, and that card was picked, well maybe that’s backward causation. Hmm... If this isn’t clear, note that in a recent follow-up paper, the same authors argue that this experiment can only result in success—or at least in apparent success.
Whatever else, you can’t say these guys aren’t having fun, pushing the limits, jumping the fences, getting some good ink. Go Higgs!
Tags: al qaeda, higgs boson, physics, stephen jay gould, subatomic particles, super collider
The Higgs particle is not really related to God in any special way other than the obscure field of particle physics taking another step forward. I have faith the real God is always rooting for us to take that step. From a religion perspective, it doesn't matter what advance physics makes because that is not their war. Even if someone figures out the theory of everything, religion won't care. Their big war is still against evolution, at least American religion. The rest of the world should pay attention because throughout our history (200+ years) we have been the world leader in creating religion.
More insight from our resident expert on "religion," Jim Reed. Glad you've got another topic--the relationship between "religion" and science--figured out for the rest of us.
I prefer to merge/coexist. I'm both religious and a lover of science. I'm happy that way.
The Higgs boson does not exist but the mechanism by which particles acquire mass has, naturally, always existed. This mechanism is like a gate or prism that reduces pure thought from its original above light speed nature to a below light speed condition. This condition we call mass. Conversely, this same mechanism accelerates below light speed mass to an above light speed condition. I call this mechanism Dynamic Information. There is a constant trade-off between mass and non-mass. If true science were to merge with true religion, one could rightfully call this mechanism prayer. A hint: There are two universes joined together by a unique device. There are also two definitions for time; one is atomic in nature; the other is dynamic. Dynamic time literally creates atomic time. Dynamic time does not exist in regular space; therefore, Higgsâ Boson will not reveal itself in regular space. One need not go out into space to find this unique mechanism for it dwells between that mystical point between future and past. Another hint: The future and past are transient by nature but the present is eternal. Particle accelerators will never push mass beyond the speed of light for obvious reasons. The machine that will do the job has always existed, literally, in billions of forms. I just hope that human will find answer without using any short term loans.
Kenneth, your comment is a bit Bohm-ian in nature, but not quite as well conceived. Consider reading Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
That said, I wouldn't recommend plugging your own personal brand of "science" in such a forum as this (or any forum, for that matter... but you're more than welcome to try over at ScienceBlogs). Plenty of electrical engineers with nothing more than a bachelor's degree have posited a brand new grand unified theory of everything, and, just like them, your view is a little off, scientifically speaking. I don't mean to sound offensive, but if the Higgs boson [NB for Arri Eisen: there are lots of bosons. The Higgs is just one of them. Your title, "Is the Boson Particle 'Hated by God'" is therefore a bit incorrect] can't exist (not just doesn't, but actually can't), then an international consortium would never have put billions of dollars and years of work into finding it.
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.