God is at the craps table again

On Wednesay, physicists at CERN fired up the big ol’ Hadron Collider and are now waiting for the magical appearance of the haloed Higgs Boson. This theoretical elementary particle has been dubbed by some “The God particle”, a name physicists despise because it overstates the importance of the Higgs Boson. Good to know that Big Daddy with the Dice is still respected in theoretical physics circles.

This nicknaming is the work of the four-tailed sulphur-spewing demons of the physics world: popularisers of science. They call the Higgs Boson the “God Particle” because it makes it sound revolutionary and revealing, something to be feared, and loved, and feared. By comparison, the idea of a little labourer particle accounting for the existence of all mass in the universe by its interaction with an invisible lattice field all around us just sounds so, well, boring.

Rumours are circulating that God is not too happy about the naming either. Some of my more connected friends have let me know that they recently heard a grumble in a thunderstorm that sounded almost exactly like “What, are you saying I’m fat?”

So, as I write, physicists are standing around waiting for Higgs Bosons to drop out of the Collider (I always picture them having a smoke, talking about football, maybe passing a Playboy around to check out the new centrefold). And while this is happening not more than a few hundred kilometres from me (although it might as well have been a million), I do share a concern with many other people.

To look for the Higgs Boson, physicists try to replicate conditions very shortly (10^-33seconds) after the Big Bang. To do this they collide two proton beams with each other, carrying an energy of up to 7 teraelectronvolts per particle. (That’s a lot of teraelectronvolt). Getting these two to hit each other has been likened to firing two needles at each other across the Atlantic Ocean, or getting your key into the front door after a night in the arms of the Russian Bear.

Now I’ve read all the CERN reassurances. These things happen naturally elsewhere in the universe (although that is not all that reassuring, considering that nuclear explosions happen all the time in stars), that the protons each have the energy of a mosquito, and that yes, tiny little black holes might be created, but really, they’re quite harmless, once you get to know them. That is not my point.

While I’m as keen as anyone to get some closure on the theological whodunnit, I do wonder whether it’s really such a good idea to replicate conditions of the Big Bang. You know, that day when nothing became something, and then it exploded? When time was created as a by-product, kind of like the sawdust of the universe? I’m not too scared of explosions 23km under the French-Swiss border. My concern is similar to the one I have before every weekend (although today it is a bit more intense): that logic will collapse and we will enter a universe of paradoxes.

I trust physicists. I think they are some of the most upright standing homo sapiens on the planet. But at the same time, they tend to burn toast. And they’re the people who use the “barn” as a unit of atomic measurement — because during the Second World War American physicists described their research as throwing rocks into a barn, to see which animals ran out. (Let’s see which animals run out this time). They taught me all kinds of wonderful things, like how a particle can be in two places at the same time, how you can look for hemorrhoids without a mirror if you approach the speed of light, and that glass is actually a liquid. All of these add to my discomfort at their comfort with the idea of creating a singularity.

I’m not saying that frustrated geniuses who struggle to get dates would want to destroy the logical order of the universe. But seeing as almost no one else can understand what it is they’re doing, who is keeping an eye on the toast? A singularity is an event where the laws of physics no longer apply. Where matter can become a hot fluid of gluons infinitely dense and small. Where light becomes trapped by gravity, we all become our own fathers and walk around saying “This sentence is false.” In this situation, God is not throwing dice — he is doing the hula with a lei around his neck while playing Russian Roulette with Van Hunks.

So the question becomes: Shouldn’t we first try these kind of experiments in another chapter of the multiverse? Outsource it to one of those poor universes and save a bit of cash? We could always try it later, when we’re bored, as a party trick for ourselves. You know, after the World Cup, or when Malema is no longer funny.

On the other hand, there’s something to be said for the self-inflicted apocalypse, if only on an aesthetic level. Bringing an end to it all, out the way we came in, a deus ex machina without the deus. Humanity as architect of our own downfall, all for the greater glory of knowledge and understanding, not for the stupid fire and virus ending we seem to be heading for at the moment. A tragic hero, not a fool. More Othello than Joost. I could live with that. Or die with that, as it were.

So I say go for it. Let’s give God a laugh, I think he deserves it after all the worry we’ve caused him. And I do love a surprise ending. Banana.