August 1, 2008

(All Over) - They're almost ready to fire up the Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss/French border. This fact is appropriately both boring and savory in that they hope to find a "Higgs" boson. That's a type of particle that may have existed very early in the creation of the universe. They also might be creating a black hole, because the particle they create might become very, very heavy - almost infinitely so - and eat up everything around it. Or nothing might happen.

Those of you who are dog lovers will remember Schrodinger's Cat - a cat is placed in a box with radiation which will kill the cat, if a certain thing happens. But in particle physics, it is also possible that nothing may happen. Why? Because there may be more than one universe - in fact, there has to be another one - if particle physics that we worship today is correct.

Now, I've used the term "worship" for a reason. Bad science is the refuge of weak minds, and there are plenty of people who simply use science the way bad theologians use other thinkers' ideas. Some of those people are at CERN desperately seeking boson.

There is not one person, who is playing around with the super-collider, who actually knows what's going to happen. What's actually going to happen is anybody's guess. Before happening, there will be two pieces of sub-atomic matter that will be banged together, after developing a speed very close to that of light. Strange and wondrous particles are formed when this happens. They're hoping that a particle thought up by the Scots physicist, Higgs, will be created. Scientists have come to call this kind of particle a "boson." They won't actually see the particle, but rather see a traceable decay pattern, because it's supposed to do itself in faster than it can be observed. Nobody really knows.

The reason that nobody knows, and everybody guesses, can be seen in the equation which expresses the event - it's so long, that it actually contains guesses - guesses which contain assumptions about the speed of light, among others. But what if Einstein wasn't "relative" enough in his understanding of the speed of light? What if the speed of light slows down as you get closer to the boundary of the universe? You could still think you're seeing things normally, at your relative speed, but time and light would slow down to an outside observer - the reverse of speeding up in the center of the universe theorized by Einstein.

Sound crazy? Maybe. But if you saw that pages-long equation, with all the guesses, that most physicists love, you'd think that was crazy, too.

AND, it's not the first time in history we've had science bend to the popular religion. Ptolemy thought the earth was the center of the universe. His "physics" involved pertubations of planets in epicycles. It was a long and complicated computation, but it explained what was observed. That's all that the "standard model" (the long equation) is. It's not simple. E=MC² is simple. But not the SM. "Ptolmeic" is morelike it. The SM (Standard Model) has "epicycles." It may sound insulting to say that, but insult or not, "Ptolmeic" pictures, pretty well, the way physicists have been looking at the problem for the last almost 110 years in the name of their empty god.

One more symbolic take on the "Swiss/French Big Bang Boom Coming Up Soon" - It has all the excitement of a juvenile whizzing contest. Plus, they're really calling the Higgs Boson the "GOD" particle. Whimsy? or unintended systematics?

I'm getting a strong feeling that we'll have to prove the "big bang" theory in a different way. Hope we can all stay alive long enough, especially if something horrorific occurs at CERN. And of course there's that thorny problem of the stars appearing to speed up.. or slow down.

And in any case, how certain can any of us, including Heisenberg, be about Schrodinger's cat?

Two truths. Two particles. Two theories. Two universes. Two results. And more than one road in which to search for the live cat who must still be dead.

Happy Birthday Dad - we miss you.

- Dick Anderson