The Cracked Acorn: Goodyear

My foraging for a set of reasonably priced tires found me in the early morning line at the Goodyear Center. Others had the same mission. The line was bogged down by a young lady that was being tutored on the proper tires for her auto. Someone muttered, “What are we building, a starship?” The salesman heard this. “You fellows, be patient!” In silence we waited to see Captain Janeway of the Enterprise.

Theoretical physicists are searching for the “God particle”. (DISCOVERY magazine). In 1964 British physicist Peter Higgs decided that this one subatomic animal was necessary to unite all those in the zoo of the Standard Model. His idea was to explain the “big bang” and how it was ignited. If all the particles are summed together; they have a zero mass (weight). What gave the matter (particles) mass to create all that we now see and enjoy. Higgs implies that there is a force field (Higgs Field) where all lives the particles. In this molasses type environment(universe) there is the Higgs Bison (God particle) that is weightless but is the creator of all the weighted particles that make up our cosmos. (Stay with me!)

We simplify this by going back to Goodyear. Our young lady lightly dances into the room. She draws more and more attention (weight) till eventually all those around her are also in a weighted state. She may fly around and around the room till she loses all her speed. Unnoticed are interested parties(clusters) near the door. When she has almost spun down, the clusters give life to her and more electric particles again gain weight. Our damsel is our Higgs Bison(God Particle), the long sought after culprit that is responsible for combining and giving mass life to electrons and neutrons. What has this to do with anything?

Leon Lederman tries to answer this question in his book- THE GOD PARTICLE: IF THE UNIVERSE IS THE ANSWER, WHAT IS THE QUESTION? With every opened door, more are opened but not leading to the final answer to “What is the Question!” A three billion dollar collider at Geneva, Switzerland could provide a clue if there is a Higgs Bison or if it exists at all. Eight hours of data gathering will equal to 3 million DVDs of binary data. Vague ideas abound on how this will be processed within our lifetime.

Conclusion: We are looking for something that we think exists but not entirely convinced since the physicist community is evenly divided. Some are saying this particle has appeared several times we just do not have the means to detect its presence. This heavy particle may have an atomic weight between lead and uranium. The collider may never be built that can harvest this baby and our best efforts could bear fruit in several years. The present machine uses 107 GeV (107 billion electric volts). To acquire visibility may require a possible (not sure) an almost 200 GeV–if this happens the whole planet may experience a permanent blackout. I add to all this intellectual speculation, my comment,”Isn’t God wonderful!” We have stumbled into His laboratory and we treat it as a playland where we have absolutely no clues as to how anything works or if it should work at all! This lump of spongy cerebral mass is trying to seek God. I paraphrase my grandmother who would say “I wish you well!” ( I wish the brain well.) Ooops!, see Genesis 1:1 .