Did God stop CERN from discovering the “God particle”?
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The great quantum physicist Niels Bohr once said a colleague’s new theory was crazy, but perhaps not crazy enough to be correct. Two scientists seem to have taken that approach to heart when they speculated that God may have shut down the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva to keep it from discovering the elusive “God particle.”
(Photo: Part of the Large Hadron Collider, 22 March 2007/Denis Balibouse)
According to an essay in the New York Times, the scientists are trying to explain why the collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator turned on with great fanfare in September 2008 by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), was closed down for major repairs just over a week later. The 3 billion-euro collider was supposed to track down the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle believed to have given mass to the universe milliseconds after the Big Bang created it some 15 billion years ago.
Physicists think this minuscule speck of matter, if 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 put it. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon Lederman dubbed the Higgs boson the “God particle” in a book of the same name 15 years ago.
Now, Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen has reached back to the God symbolism to explain what went wrong at CERN. He and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto have suggested, as Times science writer Dennis Overbye put it, that “the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather”.
This is heavy stuff, and it gets heavier.
“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail to Overbye. In an unpublished essay, Overbye relates, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”
(Photo: Part of the Large Hadron Collider, 29 Nov 2006/Denis Balibouse)
We usually report about scientists who say there is no God and ridicule those who believe in Him (like the biologist and “neo-atheist” Richard Dawkins). But at the cutting edge of physics, some kind of faith seems to reappear (as in the case of Templeton Prize winner Bernard d’Espagnat). Isn’t it strange that these scientists turn so often to a “God option” to explain what they’re investigating?
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Nonsense. Look at the picture. The LHC is a supremely complex piece of machinery. Like an F1 race car, the collider seeks to function at the forward edge of technology. It’s not just flipping on a light, mate. God speculation is off topic and misleading. Einstein began this unfortunate overlap of the sacred and the profane, but many other physicists were secular humanists: Feynman, Bohr himself and Oppenheimer. The real question is which contractor buggered the collider?
At the “cutting edge” is and always has been where supernaturalism lives. That’s by definition, because the purpose of gods is to provide comforting (albeit demonstrably bogus) explanations for that which can’t yet be explained. Once domething is explained, the gods disappear — only to be found again at whatever new “cutting edge” attracts humans’ interest.
If you want to win a Templeton Prize, the way to do it is to excel in some scientific endeavor and then give off hints that you might be willing to provide some credibility to those who cling to this sort of stuff because of the way it makes them feel good inside. There never has been a shortage of money to pay for “feel-good”, and that will probably never change.
There is nothing wrong with a scientist accepting the possibility that science doesn’t know enough to prove whether there is or is not a God.
There is something terribly wrong with any scientist who claims he can show that God doesn’t exist on the basis of human behavior.
If God exists he is completely natural. We just haven’t defined a branch of science that would allow us to study God. Lacking any science on the subject, all scientists can do is place their faith in their beliefs (that he does or does not exist).
They say that, but they probably built the thing totally wrong and it broke and they don’t want to take the blame for it. Look what god did to us man!!
The possibility of the whole thing being built wrong is eminent but I don’t think that it all should be blamed on a human’s stupidity. Perhaps a higher power doesn’t want our race to figure this out…yet.
It cannot be speculated that a god somehow interfered with the supercollider. Because this requires us to assume a god exists. And a god has not yet been proven to exist.
Whatever the reason for the failure of CERN, there is no evidence to suggest that this reason is supernatural.
Why these scientists said this, who can say? But they were certainly not speaking in their capacity as scientists.
Most likely the failure was either:
-Poor construction.
-Construction error.
-Unanticipated component failure.
-A principle of Physics.
-Sabotage.
-Moisture
-ect.
Further investigation will reveal the actual cause. It is most likely to be something regarding engineering, construction or physics.
In the list of possible reasons, “supernatural interference” is right at the bottom of possibilities worth considering.
And those two scientists were either talking in snide, or were being quite careless in what they say. They know very well that their words will be taken at face value by theists. Perhaps they simply didn’t care?
Reasons for the failure of CERN, in order of evidence and probability:
1. Human error.
2. Engineering factor.
3. Physics issue.
4. Sabotage.
5. Barrack Obama.
6. Voodoo.
7. Aliens.
8. Cosmic radiation.
9. String theory.
10. God.
You obviously don’t understand their sense of humor if you think they’re “turning to god”.. hilarious!
Awesome title though, I had to have a look after that!
I don’t know.. but just maybe the collider is malfunctioning because it is the single most complicated machine on the face of the earth…?
Just a thought =)
Is this God vs God?
Haha… you left one out:
11. Satan
I rather wish the collider experiments will help determine precisely when an unstable nuclide decays.
Read more here: http://brainmindinst.blogspot.com/2009/0 3/schrodingers-cat-probability-science.h tml
Many people of Faith, just as do His detractors, place Him in the box of their creation. The Faithful define Him and then seek to control Him through religion. Atheists define Him and seek to dismiss Him as irrelevant. There appears ample evidence of the existence of an Intelligent Designer all around us, from irreducible complexity in nature to the exponentially obscure odds of a planet like ours ideally suited to life.
Science, running up against the limits of its knowledge routinely evoke His name and He rewards it by revealing more of His will to it. Physics appears to be a favourite playground for Him in doing so. He reveals Himself to us subtly and discreetly to strengthen us, rather than all at once, as with Moses and the Red Sea because He does not wish us to fall into helpless despair by witnessing His power.
Perhaps He has decided that the time is not quite yet for the Higgs Boson. Perhaps a few more particle physicists on the fringes, acknowledging Him publicly, will bring that time to the present.
God be with us all. Remember. Even if Mr. Dawkins doesn’t believe in God, he believes in Mr. Dawkins.
Engineering feats dont always work the first time round. It may take many failures and trials before the enigneering is set right, and then we will have to deal with the Physics of it. After the technical matters have been resolved, we may still have to come to grips with the physics of the device, it may throw up some new theories altogether !!
There were those who worried that the Hadron Collider, in recreating the circumstances at the time of the “big bang,” would in fact cause another big bang…effectively ending the universe. Do you think maybe it did? And this is a dream?
Yes this is a very complex piece of machinery, and more than likely one of the reasons given above were the actual reasons behind the failure (although I will throw a spanner into the works and say how if any of these reasons is true does this not then denote that God wasn’t involved? – very similar to that fact that we now have the ability to cure ourselves of many different illnesses and diseases, but this still doesn’t denote nor disprove that a god exists to provide us with that knowledge in the first place.)
As the article points out that the Times science writer Dennis Overbye put it, that “the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather”.
Similar to the whole question of which came first the Chicken or the Egg. On a little side not while Science has yet to prove that God exists, it has also yet to prove that he does not exist either.
Personally I look forward to if and when this so called ‘god’ particle is discovered. I like science and what it proves (even though I do believe in God). Why? Becuase I like to know how thinks work, and I think it is general human nature to want to know how things work, but I don’t think that this disproves God existing as everything has to have a reason behind it happening in the first place – it’s just that some things are a lot more complex to explain than others.
Hmm, the quotes from the same scientists in the NY Times coverage of this theory managed to avoid God altogether – your take on it appears to be broadly equivalent to saying that it’s God that makes the apple fall. All they’re saying is that a naked Higgs particle, like a naked singularity, is unobservable.
It’s a fun theory though, and I’m definitely in favour of conducting the “luck” experiment they propose.
There is of course an equally entertaining alternative theory which is that in a parallel universe the experiment did work and did create a black hole – but nobody lives there anymore….
I’m pretty skeptical of their claim too, but if you take the time to read the scientists’ blog post linked at the top of the article, you will see that they have devised an experiment to determine over time whether “incidents” can be attributed to chance or not. They are emphatically *not* just saying that God must have done it and stopping there. As scientists, they have a hypothesis and are trying to find empirical ways to support or refute it with evidence.
“In the begining God created”
Enjoy your day
Oh please!!!!! Find the real problem, fix the CERN and continue with this 3 BILLION-EURO project!!!!!!
i wish people would stop referring to the higgs boson as ‘the god particle’. this particle, if it exists, would not be more or less special than a photon. in fact discovering the higgs and nothing else at cern would be a boring scenario indeed, leaving us with just as many questions as we had before. the idea of a god sabotaging cern is simply silly and i am shocked it made it to what i consider a decent news outlet, such as reuters.
If the prospect of creating a Higgs boson now is entailing the beginning of the Universe to be such as would cause as many glitches as necessary to keep it from happening, there’s no need for a god for this to be happening.
One glitch doesn’t exactly prove this!!!
I don’t think these guys are talking about your god. You don’t “have a model for” an infinite being.
On Topic:
That anyone supposes that an God is the cause for failures at CERN is the same as blaming “Murphy”. It’s anthropomorphizing a frustrating, currently unexplained event.
Tangential:
Science, if you consider Archeology a science, does support the Biblical, Christian God, by validating most of the New Testament and much of the Old Testament of the Bible. Additionally, consider that dozens of people in the first century died, because they claimed to have witnessed the risen Jesus Christ. It’s one thing to die for what you have been told and believe and quite another to die for what you believe because you are a direct witness.
God tells me that he’s cool with the Higgs boson, would have preferred that the collider work without much additional governmental expenditure. He’s much more concerned that we accidentally create a black hole that sucks the whole solar system into oblivion.
Does anyone think this looks an awful lot like the machine that Tony Stark built in the Iron Man movie?>LOL
Based on the article I don’t see any reason to believe these scientists are describing a personal, sentient God as described in Christian, and other, theology. Rather, they seem to be using God as a metaphor for nature itself — as in mother nature. The speculation seems to be that the Higgs boson particle may be so elusive within nature that mankind will never posses the correct machinery, no matter how powerful or complicated, to create the circumstances that allows the particle to be observed. Of course, it could also be the theory has hidden flaws or that these scientists are demonstrating lack of faith in human ingenuity to figure out ways of observing the Higgs boson particle. Basically, having the hubris to say “If I can’t figure it out, no one can figure it out.”
Everyone is missing the obvious: these aren’t genuine physicists, they’ve been paid off by CERN’s insurance company to claim that the damage to the collider is in fact a vis major!
Occam’s Corollary: when several equally simple explanations present themselves, the most cynical explanation is probably correct…
A “model for God?” I’d rather think of it as an attempt to understand what He was doing and how His creation works, although perhaps that’s just my odd thought process. Even then, I have to laugh at the idea of divine sabotage.
Let’s face it, the LHC is an unprecedented work of technology. We’ve certainly had success with smaller particle accelerators, but did we really think one of this size would work perfectly as soon as the button was pushed? Given a few more years or so to work out more kinks, I’m sure it will work splendidly. Whether or not the Higgs boson will be discovered is another matter entirely. =)
religious fruitcakes always grab the word God when it comes from the mouth of a scientist as some sort of proof that all men are actually believers, just some don’t want to believe it for some peculiar, perverted reason(s). Einstein often used the word God. Einstein did not “believe in God” in the religious sense nor do these scientists. Religion is anti-science: it seekes to annul investigation in favor of particular assertions. This thing will work – or not – because men figure it out – or don’t. Period. My bet is on success.
PPPPPFFFFFTTTtt!
I HATE THIS LAZY WAY OF THINKING ,TO SUPPOSE A GOD IN EVERYTHING SOMEBODY CAN’T UNDERSTAND RIGHT NOW ! ESPECIALLY IF THIS ‘SOMEBODY’ IS A SCIENTIST .
SCIENTISTS ,BETTER USE YOUR MIND ,SKILL AND LOGIC !! OR IF YOU ARE NOT CAPABLE OR TOO LAZY TO DO SO ,BETTER GO BACK TO THE CAVES ,WHERE IS ENOUGH SPACE FOR GOD[S] !
OTHERWISE NO NEED TO REPEAT ALL THE GOOD ARGUMENTS ALREADY IN THIS BLOG
If any of that talk of god and time travel, on the part of those two physicists is ought but figurative analogy, whatever degrees they have, whatever keys to labs they have, i.e., any right to call themselves scientists, should be removed.
It is true that a minority of scientists are believers in some sort of fantasy they call god, but it is clear when they get down to sub-atomic physics where \”particles\” are actually nothing more than a miniscule moment, an energy bump, in the ongoing process of material reality such thinking or expression contributes to the ongoing confusion of a large part of humanity who still believe the god nonsense; nonsense because there is absolutely (Non-sequitors like \”The wonder of it all\” aside) no concrete, material, evidence that such ever existed.
From the NY Times article it is not possible to understand if the two \”scientists\” actually believe that nonsense or if it is tongue in cheek. Likewise it is not possible to understand if the writer of the article believes or is just churning out garbage because that is what he gets paid for.
At any rate the thesis of a future act turning off today\’s Collider is itself flawed insofar as if the Collider was turned off the Higgs was never produced so the future could not possibly find out it did not like Higgs.
This last of course in the best traditions of science fiction writing not the material reality of high resistance electrical connections in the Collider where nonesuch ought to be.
Jack Jersawitz
It works just fine, it is the outcome that is not “just fine”
Brian,
complicated, yes, most complicated, no.
instructions on how to find the most complicated machine on earth:
A) Find a mirror
B) look in it
I thought George Bush was the reason for all failures in the world?
Brian’s got it right. I think some people may be unprepared for the dry humour of a physicist. Remember these are the people whose name for the utterly colossal explosion at the beginning of the universe is “The Big Bang”. Understatement, perhaps?
The existence of God and how this fits in with science is an excellent debate but it’s never had a worse launchpad than this.
since the scientist in charge cant figure out reason there theory is not manifested in success we do what most do about god “it must be gods will not to reveal these secrets at this time” pat says this “utter bull” roll up your sleaves again and get to work you wont find answers in science in the bible the “good book” has never been a technical manual for the hadron collider.why would the rules of science change for metal and material construction.as a child i was told we would never go to the moon this is gods teritory and he wont let us there. more bull
I think the malfunction is due to sabotage. Someone did not feel comfortable for one reason or another.
cryogenics was what whent wrong. They’ll repare it and successfuly run it. If they find Mr Higs on a blackhole is something that may worry me
I think the scientist was using God as an analogy. The scientists who posed the theory in the first place were referring to “nature” abhorring the particle and described an extremely hypothetical, but conceivable and NATURAL mechanism for it. Just like people used to say that nature abhors a vacuum. Scientists have used the word “God” to stand in for nature, the universe, etc. for a very long time. I really don’t think that they are picturing the personal Christian God sitting up there feeling cross about us building the collider. It is more about a deeper, underlying understanding of the laws that govern the universe than about a supernatural being who can break those laws.
“It cannot be speculated that a god somehow interfered with the supercollider. Because this requires us to assume a god exists. And a god has not yet been proven to exist.”
If you like that argument, maybe you’ll like this one too:
“It cannot be speculated that Higgs bosons will affect the supercollider, or show up in its experimental results. Because this requires us to assume that Higgs bosons exist. And they have not yet been proven to exist.”
I’m surprised… you put Voodoo before aliens? I didn’t think of the time travel bit, I guess this thing figured out more than we thought it could.
Anyway, you can read all about the first start up last September here:
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/News.htm
Now that things have been fixed, made better, and checked a bunch, they’re starting to cool it down again to shoot more beams around.
I understand the argument that science has not proved the xistence of God. However, it is improtant to look at the things science has proved the exitence of and aknowledge that they too existed prior to science proving it.
Top 10
10: they turned it on and what they saw scared them so much they shut it down, using the old “the system crashed” excuse.
9: they fired it up and realized what they could reveal will profoundly alter the history of mankind. They needed more time to line up a publisher and movie rights to make a ton of money before hollywood gets ahold of the story.
8: They fired it up only to realize the alarmists fearing it would create a black hole singularity were right all along. Oh darn.
7: They don’t have enough in the budget for the elecric bill at least until the EU can extort more money from US companies for “anti trust”
6: The bicycle for traversing the tunnels was stolen.
5: Microsoft Vista
4: A technician spilled soda on the magnet
3: A scientist was caught with his aid under one of the magnets
2: The scientist and the technician were caught under one of the magnets
1: An angel sent by God hiself showed up to remind them that if they actually found the Higgs Boson they would indeed reveal the answer to the Universe but then there would be nothing left to do and they’d all be out of a job so keep sandbagging…
Einstein also said that the evidence of God was the Laws of Thermodynamics the existence of which cannot be explained as random.
It would once again appear that this small collection of scientist’s have avoided reading any bible containing Genisis. The creation took six days and God rested on the seventh. God said it, I believe it and that’s that!God does not stand in man’s way as this is not His world but rather Satan’s. Maybe Satan has crashed CERN.
Maybe they can call Obama – he could always use a Nobel for Science…
Seriously? God doesn’t like the particle? It goes back in time to trash the future projects?
These guys must be smoking the hish hash….
Like Einstein said “God does not play dice”.
Humans are obviously NOT ready to have “high power in the palm of our hands” yet. We cannot even control our population or consumption rates and even care for our own DEAR DEAR BEAUTIFUL planet properly yet. Why should we know the “secrets of the universe” if we cannot even get along with ourselves or our own planet? I believe Angels are empowered by God to gate keep this knowledge until we are ready to handle it. Amen!
If you were God (or a parent) would you give a bunch of wacky, half trained teenagers a box of dynamite and blasting caps? hell no! Thank God it does not and probably will not work until our intent and actions are in the right place first. Forget Physics! This is a philosophical /faith issue first! give us more power now and we will destroy the planet even faster! we are NOT ready yet! That is just how God made the universe, it hides its secrets from those not ready! Thank God!
Is it not possible that they are afraid to reproduce this particle that created existance, and thus may play a part in the elimination of existance?
There were/are questions about the collider that some were concerned about its ability to create a black hole that swollow its surroundings. Perhaps a loving God was the one who stepped in to prevent such a thing from happening.
We can’t just dismiss God because He doesn’t fit into our plans or ideas of who he is or what he would/should act like. The best way to understand God is to get to know him through reading what the Bible say’s about him. He wants to know each of us on a personal basis.
Then as we study and know him we can more fully understand the deep complexities of the universe as He designed it.
It was an engineering factor, take a look at CERN T.V. you’ll see what caused it and that it is now fixed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA1E4USmg fo&feature=PlayList&p=AB4B2ABA98F92A7D&i ndex=4
Pretesting is now complete, the LHC will be fired up and tested in anger in a few weeks, so if you’re worried about the world ending becuase a load of scientific superbrains are hell bent on finding the the god particle, which may (or may not) inadvertently cause a black hole to open up, you better start praying now, you’ve got 12 days from today!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUMV1mAg8 oM