I’m on a Boson High

I’m on a Boson High
Ray Sammons, July 2012

During the first week of July, 2012 the scientists at CERN announced they had discovered what they think is a Higgs-Boson particle. Do I detect a yawn or a, “Ho hum”, or a, “What, and who cares?”

Let me explain.

Physicists want to explain the origins of the universe. Oddly enough, to do that, they look at the structure of subatomic matter (smaller than an atom). In their search they’ve found nearly a dozen particles of matter inside an atom. As they’ve watched the behavior of these particles they’re puzzled because they know there must be a smaller and denser particle in there – one so small they can’t see it. It’s like seeing a con trail in the sky and theorizing that an airplane caused that trail, or like seeing a gallon of milk in the supermarket and theorizing there must be a cow somewhere.

That little particle they’re looking for is called a Higgs-Boson (Higgs is one of the men that came up with theory, and boson is the name of the particle.) Because they can’t see the particle, only the effects of it, some call it the God particle.

The physicists theorized the only way to ‘see’ this Higgs-Boson was to smash some atoms together and watch the parts come flying out. It’s like breaking a piggy bank so you can see the coins.

There is more …

CERN is the name for the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It started in 1954; today 20 European states are members and one of their goals is to observe the elusive Higgs-Boson

To do this they spent $10 billion to build the world’s largest machine (the Super Collider); it’s constructed in a circle 17 miles in diameter (53 mile circumference), and in a tunnel 574 feet below ground on the French Swiss border new Geneva, Switzerland. In that tunnel is a vacuum tube. They sucked the air out of the tube so it as empty as outer space and they lowered the temperature to -271.3 degrees centigrade (colder than outer space.)

Two particle beams travel around this 53 mile tunnel 11,245 times per second, that’s only slightly slower than the speed of light. These two beams are in the tunnel traveling in opposite directions and the trick is to make then collide precisely in front of the observation ‘window’. It’s like shooting two needles, across the Atlantic, in opposite directions, and having them collide in mid air!

When the beams collide, and those atoms come apart, they generate temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun and it’s concentrated in a minuscule amount of space. When they hit head on it causes 600 million collisions per second, (a super-collider). The instruments needed to record these collisions are gargantuan. They measure the location of each particle within millionths of a meter and within a few billionths of a second. After one of these collisions scientist around the world analyze the data for years. The World Wide Web started (in the 1990s) to handle this exchange of information.

The Higgs-Boson is particle produced by this collision falls apart within a millionth of a second.

Now for some perspective:

Physicists theorize the Higgs-Boson is a key to why there is life in the universe. The CERN group has been constructing this collider for the past 50 years– all to test a theory about the origin of the universe. They believe the boson is like a cosmic molasses that holds the universe together, but they had never ‘seen’ one – until July 2012.

As we know, science doesn’t prove anything, it only disproves something. In this case they were testing the probability of not finding the boson in the collusions. The statistics said if they did the experiment 3.5 million times they might find one collision with no boson. Within that limit, they decided to say they discovered a Higgs-Boson. Note, they ‘decided’ to claim discovery, the experiment gave a high probability they are right, but no proof!

So What!?

The Bible says that, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In the first chapter of Hebrews, it says God used Jesus to create the universe. That means that Jesus first created bosons, surrounded them with quarks and other particles, added some neutrons and protons and made an atom, and then another atom. From these He created a molecule, and so on until there were trees, water, land, sea, light, sky and on and on.

The book of Hebrews also says the bosons stay within the atoms by Jesus’ command! Someday He’ll remove his boson command and the earth will pass away.

Next, some perspective about our universe.

The Higgs-Boson is said to be the subatomic particle that defines mass and allows the universe to hold together. That caused me to look at our universe.

Light is the fastest thing we know, nothing in our world travels faster than light. We know things travel faster than light, but they don’t do it in our realm. Therefore, astronomers use light years (the distance light can travel in one year) to measure distance.

We need a warm-up for the numbers that are coming. We can see our Milky Way galaxy which is 100,000 light years away and it has 100 million stars, plus 100 million planets (an estimated average of one per star.).

Hang on!

Our Milky Way is a sub-set of one supercluster. Superclusters are a group of galaxies and they are the largest structure in the cosmos. Within one billion light years from earth there are 100 superclusters with a combine star count of 250,000 trillion (250 quadrillion) .

Take a deep breath.

Astronomers define the edge of our ‘visible’ universe to be 14 billion light years from earth. Within our visible universe there are 30-billion trillion stars, and that many more planets!

Un-cross your eyes, and breathe deeply.

The Bible says God knows about these 60-billion trillion objects, He counts them and calls each one by name! Jesus created every boson in every atom of every molecule of everything scattered over 14 billion light years! That’s our God!

God is a spirit, and He is present everywhere simultaneously, even 14 billion light years away. That means He travels (at least his thoughts) travel faster than the speed of light! God can observe a cosmic light show 14 billion light years across, and listen to every individual prayer at the same time.

Imagine a cosmic light show 14 billion light years across and being able to see the whole show at once. Wow, what a sight! Our best computer graphics are a pastel water color by comparison.

“What is man?”

When I considered the number of bosons required to make 60-billion trillion stars and planets scattered over a universe 14 billion light years across, I was reminded of King David:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? (Psa 8:3-4 NIV)

Someday we may know why God chose the dark, formless, empty earth (out of over 60 billion trillion stars and planets) to re-make it into a habitat  for humans. Someday we may understand why Jesus formed the bosons into our shape and breathed a soul into our dirt image.

Today, He has 7 billion humans on His planet, and the Bible says He loves every one of us! He created us and He loves us so much that for 33 years He abandoned all the other stars to come and tell us how to live with Him. We think it’s a miracle that God came to earth, Jesus thought it was a miracle that He became “the son of man”. The New Testament refers to the, “son of man” 89 times.

Jesus came, but we didn’t recognize Him! We killed Him!

His love for us (a love I can’t comprehend) was so great that, as He was dying on the cross He asked God to forgive us because we didn’t know what we were doing!

He loved us so much that He came back from the dead to tell us we can live forever with Him!

My only response is to join the choir as they sing, “My God, How Great Thou Art!”