Is “God Particle” the right term for massive mystery in physics?
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One of the most brilliant simplifications I’ve ever come across is the term “the God Particle.” Physicists think this subatomic speck of matter, if it is ever found, could explain the mysterious code at the origin of the physical world. To know this would be to “know the mind of God,” as Einstein wanted to do. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon Lederman wrote a book with that name 15 years ago that was so interesting that even a physics klutz like myself (I almost failed it in high school…) read and enjoyed it.
It turns out, though, that the physicist who launched the hunt for this elusive particle doesn’t like its nickname. “It embarrasses me,” Peter Higgs said in Geneva this week at a news conference our correspondent Robert Evans attended. “Although I am not a believer myself, it’s a misuse of terminology that might offend some people.”
Higgs, now 78, first proposed a theory of the particle officially knows as the Higgs boson 40 years ago. CERN, the giant nuclear research centre at the French-Swiss border near Geneva, is building a vast underground particle collider to try to find it. “The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly … I’m more than 90 percent certain that it will,” Higgs said after visiting the collider due to start working early next year.
So the term “the God particle” may be coming to the religion blogosphere pretty soon. Instead of doing the homework and writing the essay, I’ll let others explain what it is — here are some good examples at National Geographic and Wired and a cartoon here.
Lederman, by the way, also seemed of two minds about calling the Higgs boson the “God particle.”
As he put it in his book:
“This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddam Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one…
Lederman then goes on to quote Genesis 11:1-9 , the Tower of Babel story about mankind dispersing. Finding the God Particle, he says, would be like undoing the confusion that followed.
Even if the physicists have qualms, I think the term “God Particle” is so expressive that I’m glad Higgs didn’t get his way. I know there are those out there who don’t agree, who do and who don’t say. There are also deep implications for science and religion. Still, some things are just so awesome that a reasonable comparison with the divine seems to me like a good way to put something so hard to understand into perspective.
Do you think it’s offensive?
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@Nate
There is more evidence in support of the big bang theory than there is of a creator. If you can point to positive evidence supporting the existence of a creator then let’s have it. The argument that ‘I don’t believe in the big bang, and everything is so complex that it must have been designed by a creator’ is laughably naive. If you believe in a designer/creator, then where did they come from? Did something create them too?
To ignore scientific evidence and prefer instead to believe in the supernatural is mired in the dark ages when people used to believe the earth was flat, and the Sun orbited the Earth.
How self-indulgent it is of believers to claim a patent on morality! Humanity knew good from evil well before The Commandments and The Book.
Albrecht !
Einstein an “atheist” ??!!! – read Issacson’s book ‘Einstein’ (chapter 17, ‘Einstein’s God’. Albert is quoted as refuting the atheist label and stated that he believed in a God of the universe as a spirit.
(Don’t you just hate it when the facts ruin your uninformed suppositions)
There is another book, ‘My Conversations with Albert Einstein’ (author’s name escapes me)where Albert also states his firm belief in a creator God but finds Jesus as something less than God. (I think that is a understandable position for a Jew)
By the way many prominent scientists believe that God did create the universe and life.
Harold Urey (Nobel prize winner) ” the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to evolve anywhere.”
The rants are sure to follow; ‘science & religion do not mix’ … ad nauseam.
don’t get mad at me – Einstein spoke his belief’s quite fluently.
Well mankind tried to understand “god” since big bang. Some said there is no god, some said there is.
After this novel-like entry i want make a point, nowdays science and religion are shown as to different things,even opposite things,just like black and white.
But why people should choose only one…?
personally i believe god and i trust science, but i dont think we are that improved in science to say that there is no god.
my belief is pretty different than others ..i believe the solution of these questions are fusion of science and religion.
what we should do is , we should look for religion in science and look for science in religion. i believe if we “can” find a way to accept both it will be more easy to understand things.
I always believed that the holy books, all of them, are the answer to all these but in a simple way. we do we keep looking for more complicated equations , what if its so simple that we cant see it.
To support this idea i want to give an example. we only have rules in physics for things we know or we have faced before. What if something changes, imagine that there is a machine ivented which basically teleports things.. now please tell me what happened to the rules we have which are based on force and distance,acceleration and stuff. its all gone.
i believe in science only in our world. maybe the holy books are the science books of all universe, written from the 1st person… “GOD”
i just tried to express my ideas a little bit. there is no need to offend people because of their beliefs but the most important thing is not to become a sheep. mankind is created to think!!!
No Creator
Einstein said that the big bang was proof of God’s existence.
He called God a superior reasononing intellect that operated outside the bounds of the 3 space and 1 time dimensions.
Hawking acknowledged a “supernatural” plan to the cosmos.
The anthropic principle points to a designed universe and life.
A lot of non religous rants – w/ little substance on this and most boards. When the anthropic principle is mentioned a lot of ranters immediately scurry to wiki or google – such is the basis of their expertise.
Slash said, “They are not “creating” Higgs bosons. Rather, they are exposing them in high-energy subatomic collisions, thereby breaking them free of their bonds and allowing them to be “seen”.”
That’s probably a common misconception about how particle colliders work. When high-energy particles collide, the energy is converted into mass, creating particles that were not there. When an electron and positron are smashed into each other, the collision does not release muons, neutrinos, and quarks that were inside the electron and positron. Rather, they are newly created particles made by the energy in the collision. That’s why higher energy colliders are needed to produce particles of more mass. The more energy there is in the collision, the more massive the particles the collision could create. That’s why it took until the 90s to create the top quark and we’re just now starting to be able to create Higgs bosons, as they are very massive. They’re not “inside” the particles smashed together, waiting to be released.
@Matt
Quoting your last paragraph – “But I will leave atheists with one last thought. If you are right, it doesn’t matter. If you are wrong you’ll go to hell. If a religion is right, they’ll go to heaven. IF they are wrong, nothing will happen”.
Do you have a shred of evidence to back up your assertion that atheists go to hell and believers go to heaven? Once again I believe we have statements being presented as fact with no evidence to back them up.
I also consider anybody hedging their bets with this logic is being hypocritical.
You know, I find it disingenuous when the religious say things like “God has always been there” or “things can’t have just showed up out of no where”. I think it would be fair of those people to also appreciate and acknowledge that if there is a God, he had to come from somewhere… right?
Things don’t just show up. How did God come to be? Does God have a God? If so, did that God have a God? You can’t truncate logic at the point where you are satisfied with the results – that’s absolutely absurd and foolish. If anyone else attempted to do that in any other subject matter aside from religion would be ridiculed and criticized into oblivion. Is that fair? People often use the word “race card” for the notion that race ends the argument and is the end all be all… for the same reason, we should also use the word “God card”. Well if there is no explanation then I play the God card, gosh darnit.
Back to the article – it was probably a bad decision, if not in bad taste, to call it the “God Particle”. From Higgs’ own commentary, it sounds like it was something the publisher came up with as a grand marketing tool. The same way organized religion has come up with the concept of “God” as a grand marketing tool.
Perhaps something like “absolute particle” or something along those lines would probably be better.
To disprove his impuisance with denial and tricks,
he’ll make a better man of self
with a fresh cast of tyrranies, whole dock-loads of quips
any distance traveled will un-arm the bliss,
but to it he must
for the good of the race, said;
as mouthfuls of poison pass many parched lips.
Naive? Those who believe in a Creator are just as naive as Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Da Vinci, Galileo, Decartes, Pascal, Newton, Faraday, Mendel, Mersenne, Kelvin, Planck, and yes, even Einstein (who did not believe in a personal God, but he did believe in a non-created Creator). Me, I’d prefer to be just as “naive” as these august scientists, all of whom believed in the existence of a supernatural Creator. So count me in as one of your “naive” ones.
The comment “So who created God?” is a meaningless strawman. No one is claiming that God was created by some yet more powerful Creator. The mere claim is that “All things which begin to exist require a cause.” That’s not an easy premise to dismiss. From nothing comes nothing. No one here is claiming that the Creator of the universe began to exist at some distant point of time.
Scientists used to think the universe was eternal, having always existed. If that were true, then it would be uncaused, and not need a first causer. We know now that it began a very short time ago – a mere 13.73 billion years ago. That’s just yesterday, when compared with an infinite age. Since it (time, space, matter, and energy) came into existence, then it requires a cause. Since that cause existed before time, space, matter, and energy, that cause must be something beyond the time, space, matter, and energy in the universe itself.
This train of thought is hardly naive, and deserves careful consideration by thoughtful men and women.
It is a very interesting experiment – what so ever. God is a ‘word’ that came out of a confused mid. Claritiy can be achieved through many spiritual practices like Meditation, Avatarepc.com etc. It is possible to experience God!!
I often find it sad that those who claim to love God so much refuse to marvel at His creation with the fullest ability granted to us by science and reasoning. If God created us all in His own image, then wouldn’t it be a waste of God’s creation not to use our intellect to understand this universe He is said to have created for us?
It would seem that the best, and therefore only way to truly know God would be through extensive study of the universe He created, since it is only that creation which we have to learn from.
The “God Particle” will turn out to be as elusive as God itself (or was it Himself?).
It seems, one thing that everyone may be overlooking is “scale” – macroscopic or microscopic. What is being discussed is at entirely different scales, and that will affect the “truth” of what is being discussed. How we observe things will always be affected by the scale at which it is observed, and will make a lot of difference in the “results”.
What nonsense. The problem is 15 billion years? Who calculated this figure? Why not 10 billion, 2 billion, 10,000 years, etc? None of the figures a comprehensible in any event. We found the atom, nuclei, quarck, ions, and always statting that the smallest. But there always will b smaller. Science is trying to exlain infinity!!! There is NO explanatio–like trying to find the ends of the universe–there is none. So it becomes easier to to believe either science and God for which there is no explanation nor touch nor feel, and, it follows that there is no such thing as an aethiest beause there has to be belief to jusity our existence because we will NEVER prove not learn why, how, when, from whence all this creation statred from–this fact is our limitation for wathever reason. Big bang/boson where did they come from–even the smallest particle will need a new explanation,. It is encumbent all talentse the brains to creat an utopian existence for all mankind instead of chasing whimsy and the unexplainable. ‘We are because we are.”
Should not be called God or Higgs particle. Maybe Grulnik, Hagen, Kibble particle.
The Vedics of ancient india were very scientific for 4000 years ago.There was a basic understanding of smaller units of life.Not all studies of the supreme being are belief oriented.I would say that ADMIRATION and LOVE are GOD particles.Are emotions particles? My whole point is that NOTHINGNESS is part of the equation!Blair has it right.Can science find the nothingness?
The ultimate unknown is why does anything exist instead of nothing at all? William of Occam,a 14th century Dominican who also taught at Oxford, originally defined Occam’s Razor as ‘Unknown entities cannot be introduced to explain other unknown entities.” Of course, the Pope excommunicated him, but over the centuries Occam’s Razor has come to mean “The simplest explanation is the likeliest explanation and has been the basis of Science since the Enlightenment. Introducing God,an Unknown Entity(and which one, we have many Gods, are they all the same God?)to explain the Ultimate Unknown Entity, why anything exists, has been a known no-no for seven hundred years. Erwin Shrodinger, who brought us Shrodinger’s Cat, said, “Consciousness is a singular for which there is no plural” and Sir James Jeans,”The Universe looks more like a great thought than a great machine”. Perhaps, then, Consciousness may itself be numinous and anthropomorphic enough to serve as a valid, tangible, necessaary and sufficient target for worship.
I responded to The Times yesterday on the Higgs particle at http://georgeshollenberger.blogspot.com/ . The term ‘God particle’ does not fit to Higgs or atheistic physicists.
Matt, your logic is inaccurate, if a religion is wrong most other religions also will go to hell. If atheist is wrong he/she may not go to hell. In fact god once told me that everyone except atheists will go to hell for insincerity.
Nate, I agree big-bang is just a theory supported by some evidence, but god concept is NOT EVEN A THEORY.
TO NO_CREATOR
how do you know God did not use a big bang to start everything?
think about the atom. such a small thing and yet so devistating. What could God do?
hmmm. I wonder.
Self righteous mofo’s, if you don’t believe in God don’t believe in HIM, but leave the believers alone. I get so tired of reading through your self righteous non-believing garbage to get to the points that are trying to be made by everybody else. If you want to make a point about how the only real religion is no religion, go to athiest.com or something. PHAGS all of you.
There is validity to the big bang theory.There is alot of science and mathmatics behind these things.Maybe there have been a quadrillion big bangs.The theory goes that particles exist through the indecision and non resposability of beings.The swirl of the proton may be indecision as to where it should be.But the left over manifestations of creation become subject to agreed apon realities of motion and gravity,etc.These are just conjectures.If mankind can make it through it’s madness…I would hope that all of this great science can lead us to a new world.Man keeps making great strides forward as everything is falling into chaos!I know for sure that chaos exists.
Exactly when was the last time god or the word “God” explained or clarified anything? Is it the future of the “God particle” to be just a meaningless simplification?
eddieferrell
Your comment is a nice advertisement for you religion, now what religion would that be?
To cash
How do you know Santa Claus (or Flying Sphagetti Monster) did not use a big bang to create everything?
think about the atom. such a small thing and yet so devistating. What could Santa (FSM) do?
hmmm. I wonder.
If your entire religious belief is shaken by a simple “book title”… what does that tell you about *YOUR* faith?
You can name your Book anything you want… and it won’t change me 1 bit.
There will be no Higgs boson found. Ever.
It’s very simple. It’s far too simple. That’s why it will never be found. You simply cannot explain so very much with so very little.
The term doesn’t make sense to me. Lederman’s first stated reason is a silly joke. The second reason is kind of a non-sequitur. Even if the Higgs boson is a key to unlocking all sorts of mysteries, the connection to the tower of Babel is pretty weak, as is the connection from ‘reversing the Babel curse’ to ‘God’. If the intended meaning is a fundamental key to unlocking mysteries, it would communicate a lot better to call it a “Rosetta particle” or something. The “God particle” comes off as just another example of scientists trying to reach beyond their domain of competence with blustery boasts.
Yes, the name of God adds an impressive air to any term. But that doesn’t justify using it as a brand of dishwasher detergent. Tossing the name of God around *is* offensive because according to Christianity and Judaism, the 3rd commandment is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” That’s why for centuries, the most observant Jews have avoided saying the Name at all, substituting euphemisms instead. For a non-believer (as I assume Lederman is) to co-opt God’s name for dramatic effect is unnecessarily irreverent, and possibly foolhardy. Higgs is wise to avoid it.
I don’t think it is inappropriate at all. I believe he made this comment just because it seemed like the ultimately elusive particle that no one could find- or discover. I don’t believe he meant it to have any religious connotations, but people took it that way because they failed to think about the deeper meaning behind the coined term.
if it were called the apples or orange particle, would there be such a frenzy?
A question to all ‘atehist’.
Who created this ‘Higgs boson’ or ‘God Particle’? Or in big bang, who created the first ‘Gold particle’ when there is nothing ‘zero’? Just give it a thought and you will reach the creationist.
There is someone needed to create something. A table and a chair can’t be made on its own and you are talking about a ‘perfect’, ‘systematic’ universe with 6.5 billion people living on your small planet, ‘Earth’?
Keep in mind, there are few things, that needs your geniune thought, before you can understand…. Its really easy to say, ‘No’ but to prove it rather difficult, my friends
And there is no creationist is a ‘hypothesis’ as well.
No offence, would like to apologize, if it had hurt anyone but please give it a thought once in your whole life..
Just discuss two theories as well,
Believe there is no doomsday and there is no God that will ask you about your deeds.
Okay, but what if you come to know after death that there is one… You are on the loosing side – 50% chances of success.
Believe there is a God and He will ask you about your deeds on doomsday and if there is none.
You are still on the winning side – 100% success in either of the results.
Why not play safe? Just give it a thought guyz!
Of course this is not offensive. The word “God” is no more offensive than the word “Cup”. Spirituality is a personal pursuit, and everyone is entitled to their own ideas about God and is free to express them… Even Physicists looking for a marketing gimmick to sell books. The facinating thing about the unknown is just that the unknown allows for all sorts of fantasy and hypothesis that can not be proved. The God Particle either is, or it is not, or perhaps somewhere in between, and it is called the God Particle becuase that is it’s label. It’s ultimate importance can only be speculated on at this point. The question is, will the physicists be able to accept the emptiness if the particle is not found?
1) THE BIBLE AND CPH (CREATIVE PARTICLES OF HIGGS)
“The Universe was formed at God’s (elohim/anunnaki)command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”(Hebrews 11:3).
2) Google (www.ufodigest.com):
- Modern Science and the Ancient Writings on the Genesis of the Solar System
- The Heart Kidneys Theory and the Psychology of the Future
- The Genesis of the Monkey People and the Genesis of the Anunnaki People
3) The book “Planet Eris and the Global warming” (can be found at Amazon).
4)Google:
- CPH Theory NASA AND PLANET X
(CPH = Creative Particles of Higgs)
5) http://www.australia.to/story/0,25197,23 040466-937,00,00.html
To better understand the machine is to better understand the maker. Keep up the great work!
Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem; Creatorem coeli et terrae.
To those who choose to be upset / angry / disturbed by this particle being called a god particle, well, it’s named for the god in a different religion. You must understand that we never want to speak ill of your imaginary friend, jesus christ, the last thing I want is to be hit by lightning,
O.K., clear on that? It’s not your god, it’s someone else’s so chill will ya!!!
http://boskolives.wordpress.com/
To know the mind of God in the way that God knows his own mind, is not within the realm of possible human experience. For that to occur, man would have to be God.
Why would one find something like this offensive? Attempting to understand God as he understand himself using science is like weighing a hen with a yardstick. It’s not offensive, it is simply laughable.
While there are too many mis-conceptions on both sides to even begin to approach (from how super colliders work to the idea the universe didn’t exist at some point to… well, like I said, just too many) I will leave the religious group with this idea. If I die and somehow end up in heaven answering to God, I can say I’ve done the ‘right’ thing my entire life without fear of punishment, without any pressure from eternity to push me in the ‘right’ direction, because it was the ‘right’ thing to do, not because I was worried I wouldn’t get to sip mochas with my ancestors in the clouds. Can you say the same? And you call yourself righteous?
People take things WAY too literally. Why do you think so many believe in th bible in the first place? It’s just a figure of speech to call it the “God Particle.” I am far from a believer, and I am far from offended. They could call it the ass particle and I wouldn’t care. It’s the fact that the research is going into it, and the scientists are spending there time to discover more of our world. Some people who are a little crazy when it comes to religion need to calm down and understand scientists don’t have an agenda to “disprove God,” they want to discover the facts. PERIOD!
The term GOD that we use doesn’t fit into any scientific discoveries. These are two separate worlds. Can’t mix them up. Is the GOD we know is the GOD of all living things (aliens) of the universe, multi-universe, etc… The GOD we know is just for our solar system, thats all!! I’m not a believer. I would prefer to use another term so that science and religion remains two different subjects. I know is really hard for us to understand all the mysteries of physics yet we are on the right track and all the technologies we’ve developed so far proves that.
I’d like to hear from you… Critics r welcome!!
God is not a particle. God is my shadow. Within the perimeter of my shadow it is dark. Outside the perimeter of my shadow it is light. In this way my shadow, who is God, separates the light from the darkness.
May be “God’s particle” is a more appropriate word? Coz otherwise it could spring a debate as to the very definition of God.
I think people are in denial as to what God is! face is people God is not an animal or a human..its a power..its energy that can only be felt. I hate it when people add literary mumbo-jumbo and make it all mushy. I understand ppl need gay stuff to keep themselves sane. But this is heights.
Two observations:
1. I am surprised to see how much time is wasted in semantic arguments about hypotheses and theories. When we talk about evolution, we’re talking science and we should all use the scientific definitions of the words so we can debate about the same things. All scientific theories are open to debate — that’s how we get the paradigm shifts Thomas Kuhn wrote about — but their critics miss the target if they simply argue about semantics.
2. These science and religion debates are always so polarised. Many comments want science to disprove religion or religion to disprove science. What do you think about someone like Francis Collins, who is both an eminent scientist and a believer? The Washington Post has a video interview with him today on its On Faith blog at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/video/2008/04/03/VI2008040303663.ht ml
Spending billions of dollars on finding a subatomic particle doesn’t make sense to me. How will this discovery benefit the majority of the people on this planet?
We live in a world where a huge portion of the population cannot afford 2 square meals a day.
Could the money spent on this experiment not been utilized in a better place — perhaps on projects to help the poorest of the poor?
A “pedantic group” argueing about how many angels can reside on the point of a pin….You folks need to find a life….really, don’t you have work to do somewhere??
Seems to me like most of the religeous people are offended that someone would have the audacity to call something a GOD particle. Meanwhile, the scientists are expressing their sense of wonder in the mystery they have encountered. If this thing had been named something like the PUZZLE PARTICLE the non science people would be perfectly content and the scientists would have had more quality time to tease more questions and answers out of the puzzle. For now, whether GOD exists or not is best left to the discretion of the reader. No one is going to prove that question conclusively unless GOD shows up tomorrow and starts dispatching people to heaven or hell as he sees fit.
There is some good news here. If the CERN scientists do manage to create the “God” particle and our universe folds into itself or goes up in a second “big bang”, at least the French will be the first to go!
Its in switzerland, not france. For you (who else) americans Switzerland is the capital of Australialand.
Calling anything scientific the “god” something is always going to attract the crazies and the idiots, as can be easily seen by the sometimes hilarious posts here. It was fashionable at the end of the twentieth century to suggest something of the miraculous or divine was implied in modern physics but sadly since “the war on terror” the forces of unreason and religiosity are rearing their witch burning heads again. Bottom line: unless you want to attract drooling morons (american ones more often than not), leave “god” out of physics.