Hitech Khadi
Assistant Prof. Dr. Pornchai Pacharin-tanakun http://DrPornchai.com
Freelance Academic
Guest Lecturer at Chulalongkorn Univ., Mahamakut Univ. and Mahachulalongkorn Univ..
The God Particle is Real
I guess the reader already knows what God means. God, if He exists, is defined as the creator of the universe and everything in it, from galaxies, stars, worlds, earth, water, wind, fire, light, heat, radio waves, x rays, etc., all the way through to lives in every level, say viruses, bacteria up to the levels of plants, animals and humans. (But who created God?) God is one keyword in the article heading, another is particle. A particle is a very very small piece of matter and energy. These pieces combine to make every kind of matter and energy in the universe. And so they comprise everything God creates as stated above. When these two keywords are combined as “God Particle”, what does the new word mean? Does it mean a particle that behaves or performs as God the creator?
Or is the particle God Himself?
Everything in the universe is composed of matter and energy. When we divide matter and energy into ever smaller and smaller parts, we eventually will reach a very small piece of a certain size. These small pieces of matter and energy are called particles. The particles then might be divided into even smaller pieces till we reach the smallest piece that cannot be divided any further. These so-called smallest pieces are elementary particles which are in fact temporary entities as long as scientists are unable to find ways to divide them any smaller. Once science is advanced to the point where it is possible to divide the so-called elementary particles, those particles will cease to be elementary any longer. Then the elementariness shifts to the new and smaller particles and the former elementary ones will just become “normal” particles. For examples, protons and neutrons used to be
elementary particles, now they are not since they can be divided further into quarks. Quarks become “elementary” and protons and neutron are just “normal” particles.
Currently scientists have discovered a total of 17 elementary particles assembled into three groups. Group one are 6 quarks. Group two are 6 leptons. And Group three are 5 bosons. All the matter and energy in the universe comprise of only these 17 elementary particles in different proportions. Nothing is composed of more than these 17 types. Solids, liquids, gases, gravity, electromagnetic energy, nuclear energy, etc., are all composed of these 17 or some of these 17 types of elementary particles. So if God created the universe, He had to create these 17 elementary particles first, each one with many billions and billions and billions … of copies. The problem is where God picked up the raw materials for these creations. No one knows except God Himself! So if we believe God created the universe then we have to accept that He had to have created the raw materials first. But then nobody knows what the raw materials are made of or what kinds of elementarily elementary particles they are made of. It is certain that those particles must be further made from some kind of rawly raw materials. So God had to create raw materials of raw materials of raw materials … indefinitely. And He also had to create elementary particles of elementary particles of elementary particles … forever. You can see that God would never finish the creation of the universe because it would take Him forever. Even today He must be still creating with no end in sight! So His final products are not here yet. Now if we regard the universe as we see it today as the final product then everything in the universe now including us human should not exist because God has not finished His creation yet! Who, then, are we and how do we come to be?
As for science, the interest is only on how these 17 kinds of particles came into being without God to create them. According to scientific theories, these particles are always moving in the universe which is already full of the 18th kind of particles which are all pervading. This 18th one is called the Higgs. All other particles move and collide with the Higgs haphazardly, tossed about innumerable times. As a result of the collision with the Higgs, the particles acquire masses differently. For example, quarks are more massive than leptons and photons have no mass. But the Higgs particles always have they own mass without any collision with anyone else. The fact that particles have different masses betrays their identities otherwise the 17 particles would be all the same, all massless and all moving
with the speed of light. Moreover, they would not be able to combine into matter and energy as we know now. So the universe would not be like our universe. It seems as if the Higgs particles give birth to the mass of all elementary particles or, put it another way, the Higgs gives birth to the elementary particles. Higgs particles act like God the creator of all other particles and, consequently, the creator of the universe and everything in it. (But what gives birth to the mass of the Higgs? Nobody knows.)
Massless particles are mentioned in the last paragraph. What do they mean? As a matter of fact, if anything is massless it should not exist. If you were a man without mass then, when you step on a scale, you would not show any weight and the scale would read zero. That means there is “no you!” A massless entity generally does not exist. If there is no Higgs particle then, according to the theory, all the elementary particles will be massless or they will not exist and the universe will not exist either. However, we know definitely that the universe exists because we are here and we are within the surrounding universe. So particles must be massive with or without the Higgs.
Now suppose there is a universe without the Higgs, what is this universe like?
According to this theory, the whole universe will be massless but can still exist! However, every particle in this universe must move as fast as light. This is not unusual. After all, light existing in our universe moves as fast as light, of course! And it is possible that there are also other particles moving as fast. Maybe neutrinos and gravitons are those particles. So a universe can still exist with all massless particles moving with the speed of light. The only disadvantage of this kind of universe is that all those massless particles will not be able to combine into matter and energy as exist in our universe and there will be no galaxies, no stars, no earths, no plants, no animals and no humans, etc. The Higgs particle or the so- called God particle is thus as important as God. Without it, elementary particles will not be able to make matter and energy and man. So the Higgs can be regarded as the creator of the universe including man.
In fact, “God particle” is only a nick name. The real name is “Higgs particle.” But people prefer to call the nick name rather than the real name because the nick name is more interesting and more meaningful. But nick names also cause misunderstanding. Lay people who are not keen in science might think that Higgs particles are created by God and they in turn create the elementary particles and thus the whole universe consequently. It
turns out that this nick name is not favored by a number of scientists, even Mr. Peter Higgs, the British scientist who predicted the existence of the particle and whose name the particle is called after, is known to dislike the name “God particle.”
Mentioned above so far is only the theory of Mr. Higgs predicting the Higgs’
existence and its consequence. But the Higgs had not been discovered until the 4th of July 2012 when scientists at the European Council for Nuclear Research, or CERN, laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, announced the (very likely) discovery of the particle with almost no chance of misinterpretation. Thus we can safely conclude that the God particle is real though God may be not!
Now let me return to the name of the particle once more. If Mr. Higgs does not like the name “God particle” and did not create this so-called nick name then who named it?
The one who called it God particle is an American scientist named Leon Lederman. Mr.
Lederman was intending to publish an article on this particle by referring to it as the Goddamn particle. It turned out that the editor did not agree with the name so he just cut it short as the God particle. The incidence was an indication that the name, God particle, was not intended at all to mean that the particle acts like God, which creates all other particles or creates the whole universe. Mr. Lederman wanted only to curse the confusing particle which no one yet knew if it existed or not. He might think this particle would disturb the whole scientific community and be problematic in some time to come. (But now that science has almost settled on its reality, the community is still intact without any foreseeable disturbance or problems or crisis.) And so that was how the cursing word “Goddamn”
became the honoring word “God.”
Since I have already got into the business of particle names so let me discuss more about other names cited in this article. They are quarks, leptons, bosons, protons and neutrons.
Quarks are elementary particles comprising other particles such as protons and neutrons which combine to be nuclei of atoms of all matter in the universe, i.e., hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, iron, etc. All ordinary matter is composed of quarks. The only exception is the dark matter.
Leptons are light elementary particles such as electrons and neutrinos. Electrons are charged particles moving in conductors. If electrons didn’t exist then there would be no
electricity, no electric appliances and no electronic appliances whatsoever that are taken for granted in the world nowadays. It is interesting then to ask how we can live without those gadgets. Maybe we might turn back to our good old caves in the Neolithic period. Or at best we might live as in the Sukhothai or Ayuthaya or early Ratanakosin periods before human was introduced to electricity.
The “on” at the back of most particle names is from Greek, meaning a small piece.
Bosons are named after a famous Indian scientist, Satyendra Nath Bose. Bosons are particle incarnations of forces in science. There are four forces, namely gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear forces.
Protons are nuclei of the atoms of hydrogen. The word comes from the Greek
“protos” which means first. Hence hydrogen is the first element in the periodic table with the lightest weight among all the members of the table.
Neutrons are chargeless particles. Neutrons and protons combine to be nuclei of every element except hydrogen.
The God particle is not God. If the particle is real so let it be. We Buddhists are not concerned in anyway because Buddhism and science are of the same kind philosophically. We never oppose and never disagree with each other. When science discovers new objects or new laws, they are welcomed by Buddhism. Buddhism has nothing to lose since those discoveries have never been in conflict with Buddha’s spiritual laws. On the other hand, Buddhist spiritual laws are to be accepted by science eventually. There has never been a case in which a scientific material law is in conflict with Buddhist spiritual science. And I don’t think there will ever be such a case because whatever science discovers, it is bound to be impermanent (anicca), unbalanced (dukkha) and unownable (anatta), in agreement with Buddha’s discovery a few thousand years ago.
Even the newly discovered God particle is sure to be impermanent, unbalanced and unownable. So you scientists don’t be over confident of your discovery. Your God particle may someday lose the status of God, meaning it may turn out not to provide masses to all other particles or not being real or not to posses all the properties you assign to it.
Anything can happen. Whatever will be will be. Science is a never ending discipline,
where Buddhism already ended when Buddha attained enlightenment. Such is the philosophy of Buddhism!
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The real God? Mr. Peter Higgs inspires the name of Higgs particles or God particles. If the God particle is the cause of the whole universe then who or what is Mr. Higgs?
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มงคลมิติไฮเทคคดี\The God Particle is Real
