God and the particles of doom

Get Religion ^ | October 24, 2009

[delacoert]

As we all know, as as numerous stacks of research have shown, only really stupid, illogical, fact-challenged people believe that God played some meaningful role in the creation of heaven and earth. Right?

I mean, facts are facts and journalism is all about the facts.

Still, I am happy to report that the New York Times ran an essay the other day that opened the currents of science just a bit and showed us the kind of things that linear, logical scientists think about when things go bump in the dark, or when they go bump in the light. This is especially true when things go a bit screwy inside one of the biggest, strangest, most expensive pieces of scientific machinery on this planet (or any other, as far as we know).

I am talking about the Large Hadron Collider over there near Geneva, that $9 billion-plus racetrack for protons buried deep under the border between France and Switzerland.

Strangely enough, I had a chance to visit that scientific shrine a few months ago (work linked to that “Angels & Demons” movie) and I was struck by the many, many examples of vaguely religious language that were posted all over the place. As several of the top researchers said, the more information they gather, the more they realize how much they don’t know. The mysteries keep getting bigger and bigger as they keep hunting for that infamous “God particle” that journalists love to write about.

So what’s the news these days? Well, the collider is broken — again — and inquiring minds want to know what’s up. So here is the top of Dennis Overbye’s essay, “The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate.”

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested 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 traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

That would be Holger Bech Nielsen, of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, and Masao Ninomiya of Japan’s Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics.

And what’s the religion angle? Aliens? Angels? Time travelers?

No, think bigger.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, 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.” This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

Gosh, I thought fundamentalist Christians who hated science and big government, or something like that, shot that one down.

Anyway, the essay takes some interesting twists and turns, because scientists often have to meditate on the disturbing fact that strange theories turn out to be true.

But here is the quote that really haunted me. You think there’s a ghost in here?

“For those of us who believe in physics,” Einstein once wrote to a friend, “this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

Belief? Well, people gotta believe in something when asking questions about creation and eternity.

[delacoert]

Please notice this is a Religion Forum post.

Also, be advised, I have manifold ulterior motives for posting this. Just one of them is to notice the Eistien quote and to suggest a substitution:

“For those of us who believe in physics God this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

Go figure.

[delacoert]

My html is okay, but my spelling sucks.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Anyone wishing to have their blog taken seriously should never say “Gosh...”

[LeGrande]

Please notice this is a Religion Forum post.

How is this a Religious post? Why are you afraid to make it a regular post?

[Gordon Greene]

Golly-gee... I thought “gosh” was a fine word to use on a blog.

Guess I’ll have to think about it. Okey-dokey. I thought about it.

Still think “gosh” is A-OK.

[delacoert]

Why are you afraid to make it a regular post?

Fear of Mormons maybe? Nah.

[LeGrande]

Fear of Mormons maybe? Nah.

Atheists like me maybe?

[delacoert]

Anyone wishing to have their blog taken seriously should never say “Gosh...”

A corollary being, really physicists don't need to believe in "Gosh".

[delacoert]

Atheists like me maybe?

Yes, God knows that atheists don't believe in Religion Forums. Or is that Fora?

[Gordon Greene]

(fear of) “Atheists like me maybe?”

Atheists tend to consider themselves of the highest import... reckon when you believe there is no god, you must fill in the blank.

I ain’t skeered o’ no atheist.

[Gordon Greene]

“...physicists don’t need to believe in “Gosh”.”

That is funny...

[delacoert]

I had never heard that quote from Einstien before,

“For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

But more and more lately I have found myself trying to have the parallel dicussion with a couple of believers.

God is outside these four dimensions (outside the ten I can marginally understand).

[dr_lew]

“For those of us who believe in physics,” Einstein once wrote to a friend, “this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

Context alert. He was an old man, a few years from death himself, and was remarking on the death of a friend ( I forget who. ) As I recall the quote ... "This death is meaningless. To us true believing physicists the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a persistent one."

However this may be an expression of mourning, it is certainly made with humor. Please note that physics in fact does not provide for a unique present moment.

[delacoert]

However this may be an expression of mourning, it is certainly made with humor.

Neither mourning nor humor tend to make his statement less poignant (to me at least).

physics in fact does not provide for a unique present moment

I'm not sure that relevant.

[delacoert]

Context alert. He was an old man, a few years from death himself, and was remarking on the death of a friend

Rethinking your comment. Private correspondence between friends should be afforded a zone apart from close scrutiny, as apposed to the public nature of one's life work.

As some small defense, Earnestine is a historical figure whose writings, even private, come to the fore and get inspected.

I think that his musings are significant, and I only compare them to my own musings.

I am not developing theories based on the man's musings, nor am I criticizing him - far from it.

Respectfully,
  de la C

[delacoert]

Thank you so much for correcting the language of the quote,

"This death is meaningless. To us true believing physicists the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a persistent one."

It is MUCH more meaningful and beautiful in that form.

Please forgive my slowness to absorb it.

I hope you will write to me some more.

Thank you.

[Gordon Greene]

I have to assume that just from what we know of Him. Time is something man made up to mark our existence based solely upon the rotation of the earth around the sun. Dimensionally speaking, Christ Himself, even while He walked on earth as a man operated outside of our dimensional limitations.

It’s hard to see God as being contained within simple human confines.

[delacoert]

Christ Himself, even while He walked on earth as a man operated outside of our dimensional limitations.

It’s hard to see God as being contained within simple human confines.,

Or within the theorized multiverse. I say that as a Christian believer coming to terms within the edges of the best assessments of the realm of existence.

[dr_lew]

Thanks for your appreciation.

That was my memory, which seems to be pretty close. I found the original German version at the Max Planck Gymnasium site:

Nach Bessos Tod, wenige Monate, bevor er selber diese Erde verlassen sollte, schreibt Einstein an Bessos Angehörige: »Nun ist er mir auch mit dem Abschied von dieser sonderbaren Welt ein wenig vorangegangen. Dies bedeutet nichts. Für uns gläubige Physiker hat die Scheidung zwischen Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft nur die Bedeutung einer wenn auch hartnäckigen Illusion« (A. Einstein, M. Besso, 1972 S. 499 f u. S. 538).

My translation:

After Besso's death, a few months ( not years! ) before he himself would leave this earth, Einstein wrote to Besso's family: "Now he has taken his departure from this strange world a little ahead of me. This means nothing. For us believing physicists the difference between past, present, and future only has meaning as an illusion, even if a persistent one."

The literal word order is, "For us believing physicists has the difference between past, present, and future only the meaning of an if also persistent illusion." ... Tres Deutsch.

[Judith Anne]

Thanks so very much. This means more than I can say.