FRom the Daily Galaxy
Posted on 03/13/2009 8:04:31 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHICAGO (AFP) – Physicists have come closer to finding the elusive "God Particle," which they hope could one day explain why particles have mass, the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced Friday.
Researchers at the Fermilab have managed to shrink the territory where the elusive Higgs Boson particle is expected to be found -- a discovery placing the American research institute ahead of its European rival in the race to discover one of the biggest prizes in physics.
Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass.
In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with this idea: there must exist a background field that would act rather like treacle.
Particles passing through it would acquire mass by being dragged through a mediator, which theoreticians dubbed the Higgs Boson.
The standard quip about the Higgs is that it is the "God Particle" -- it is everywhere but remains frustratingly elusive.
Confirming the Higgs would fill a huge gap in the so-called Standard Model, the theory that summarizes our present knowledge of particles. Over the years, scientists have whittled down the ranges of mass that the Higgs is likely to have.
Physicists were hopeful that the particle could be found with Europe's Big Bang atom-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Most great cosmologists and physicists in history come to the conclusion that we will not find anymore about God by searching the universe, or breaking down the elements, than we would by any other observational science. The Universe is such a grand design of paradoxes and never ending bends in the trail, they come to realize that they are basically fumbling around in God’s sandbox. I agree with them.
While studying science is nothing more than OBSERVING God’s work, I don’t dissuade scientists from doing their job, just don’t be so pompous as to think your going to find God in a telescope, or a microscope. Its pretty silly when you think about it. Understanding how something works is one thing, understanding how it all got started is a complete different subject. I laugh at the Creation vs Evolution debate. There is overwhelming evidence of adaptation and evolution in species. But it still doesn’t answer the question of where it all came from.
I agree with everything you said, I also think while it is honorable to engage in speculation and analysis, in reality there either is a God or not and he has whatever attributes he has regardless of our theorizing. Therefore, unless we accept particular beliefs on faith we can only spend our time seeking the ultimate truth, which is likely far more difficult than uncovering the Higgs particle.
For many scientists, their work consists of saying, “What a fantastically cool thing. However did God do that?” They’re trying to discover the mechanisms by which God made this universe. The study does indeed illuminate our comprehension of the Mind, to the extent that our crude human understanding can approach His. And we look forward to the day when we get to Heaven and more will be revealed. Meanwhile the investigation is fun as well as humbling.
When I said “they,” I meant the headline writer and the article writer. Scientists have their little jokes. They just don’t belong in the headline, as if they were the most important thing about this discovery.
For those interested in a non-creationist scientist’s view of the metaphysical underlying the physical, read books by Gerald Schroeder (PhD from MIT): The Science of God and The Hidden Face of God. You are in for an exciting perspective on physics and biology!
God is everywhere. You don't need a microscope to find Him!
Silly rabbits!
Well, I was stuck choosing a quantity name for "the number of events since the Creation". I thought of using "unimaginably huge number of", which sounded lame, and "aleph-null minus the future", which was both too esoteric and not mathematically correct, and decided that "near-infinity" was as good I could do. ;-)
Very well stated!!
Aren't they the same?
[ducks]
Q. What's the difference between a duck?
A. Because one feet is both the same.
I like the turn this thread took before I got a chance to register my observations. Most scientists in premier physics labs I have known are strong believers in God. Funerals are well attended and religious. When discussion allows, no one has ever objected to my inference that it is equivalent to say “God said let there be light” and “The Big Bang”, and it gives everyone breathing room when we’re talking about these momentous things, that are also “common and ordinary”.
It is not right to talk of God as either matter or energy, since they are equivalent, and God is outside of the effects of time to begin with - and therefore can not be contained in either description.
As far as the uncertainty principle stuff, though, dayglored, I have to disagree. I DO believe that there are events which are completely probabilistic and not simply because of the effect of the infinity of events which have happened. God, since he exists outside of time, has been able to see (and if he wished could affect) the outcome of those totally probabilistic events, but that does not make them any more determinate or dependent on the past or current state of the universe. I accept your disagreement on this as being a possibility also, though.
I’m annoyed as many have been about the Higgs somehow being known as a “god particle”. It has always bothered me, and I’m happy to see that it bothers others, too.
God is both and the dimension in which these manifest. Have you ever seen Sagan’s explanation of flatland and higher dimesnional beings? It is one of the more famous COSMOS episodes you can watch at Youtube.
Must be close to grant submittal time.
Oh man, wouldn’t it be nice.
500 million, I can turn gubamint chee$e into gold bricks.
You wanna bet that the higgs won’t be found as long as big government exists to fund its search?
equating the particle to God alone is more than a bit unfair and does not account for the spirit that also uniquely, so far as we “know” or at least acknowledge, exists only amidst the known universe here.. it is a mind trip regardless.
Energy is a wave that propogates through the unified field (if there is such a thing) like a wave on the surface of a pond. Energy can interact by adding or counteracting each others’ wave functions, but the interaction is meaningless unless there is an end result. Matter can somehow form out of energy, as if a wave can suddenly stand still in one place. The end result of energy is now how it affects these standing waves, and accouns for the wave/particle duality of matter/energy. A standing wave must be anchored by something, however, as in the ends of a guitar string. But what’s anchoring matter? Something like the Higgs field. Without the Higgs field, the universe would be a uniform sea of energy, without form and void. Sound familiar?
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