It's always exciting to read things like this, even if we know the media is playing up the 'God particles' name to grab our attention. Ok, it worked. Steven Hawking once said that if he could find the fundamental formula that explains the big bang, it would be called 'God'. The experiments that they're talking about here don't go back quite that far, but it is about the question of why things have mass.
The book Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (click on cover to purchase) begins with speculation about the problems encountered in September 2008 at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. It's the world's largest particle accelerator at 17 miles in circumference, more than 500 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. A hadron is a particle composed of quarks, and this accelerator was built to allow us to see what is happening at the very smallest levels of material reality. It's not known for sure if the Higgs Boson exists. The article refers to the Standard Model, and the Standard Model requires this Higgs Boson to be there. If it exists, it is the reason for the types of energy we experience as having mass.
It got its nickname from Leon Lederman's book The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? (click on cover to purchase)
Descartes, in the seventeenth-century, speculated that there are substances with extension that differ fundamentally from the substances that we call mind. These contemporary experiments and theories are an attempt to explain why Descartes' extended things are extended, rather than simply being a form of unextended energy. When I read of such things, I always wonder if it might be that mind is energy of a different type? Is there something to idealist theories that matter is a construction of some type by this mind-energy? If science was successful in identifying the Higgs boson, would that mean we've confirmed materialism, or have we simply taken another step into a kind of idealism? Is it all an accident or is there an intelligence that guides even these most basic operations?
Recommended Books: The God Particle by Leon Lederman; The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (click on titles to purchase)
Descartes, in the seventeenth-century, speculated that there are substances with extension that differ fundamentally from the substances that we call mind. These contemporary experiments and theories are an attempt to explain why Descartes' extended things are extended, rather than simply being a form of unextended energy. When I read of such things, I always wonder if it might be that mind is energy of a different type? Is there something to idealist theories that matter is a construction of some type by this mind-energy? If science was successful in identifying the Higgs boson, would that mean we've confirmed materialism, or have we simply taken another step into a kind of idealism? Is it all an accident or is there an intelligence that guides even these most basic operations?
Recommended Books: The God Particle by Leon Lederman; The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (click on titles to purchase)
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