Physicists hate the term, 'God particle' but they love the publicity. The Higgs boson 'discovery'.... attaches a real particle to an expectation that, buried inside force fields, was the key to why subatomic particles have mass. Behind all the hoopla and uncertainty, the news flew around the world that a basic building block of the universe has been uncovered, bringing quantum physics closer to its triumphant goal of explaining creation - hence the inflated and rather silly label of God particle. Yet, from another perspective, nothing like an explanation of the universe is emerging at all. Physics may be getting closer to the day, in fact, when the way it views the universe classically reaches a dead end....
The Missing Link
The preliminary discovery comes as a culmination of many years of both theoretical and experimental work, since 1964 when the British physicist Peter Higgs, along with six others hypothesised the existence of a field, filling all vacuum. They used symmetry breaking (which would allow particles to acquire their masses without violating other aspects of theory that were correct). This ubiquitous Higgs field would allow all particles in the universe to acquire mass through interactions with it, through a kind of dragging as they move in space. High energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider should, in principle, reveal the elusive Higgs. The Higgs, unlike the photon, has a mass, expected to be in the approximate range of 125 (or more) times the mass of the proton.
The Higgs boson is the last missing link in the highly successful quantum theory of particles, called the Standard Model. It is also highly unstable, very elusive. To detect it, one has to observe many, many high energy collisions of protons and build up the statistics. In the LHC, particles are accelerated through a tunnel, brought together at speeds close to the speed of light, producing showers of particles, with high energies, capable of generating the Higgs particle. It exists for only a tiny fraction of a second before breaking up into many other particles, and can be detected only indirectly by identifying the results of its immediate decay and analysing them to show they were probably produced from a Higgs boson.
Even in its lowest energy state, the Higgs field filling all vacuum has non-zero values everywhere. In fact, ripples or waves in the quantum Higgs field, create for fleeting moments the Higgs particles.The Higgs boson is itself very massive, and it must interact with itself. It itself mediates interactions with the Higgs field, and is itself an excitation of the Higgs field.
Even in its lowest energy state, the Higgs field filling all vacuum has non-zero values everywhere. In fact, ripples or waves in the quantum Higgs field, create for fleeting moments the Higgs particles.The Higgs boson is itself very massive, and it must interact with itself. It itself mediates interactions with the Higgs field, and is itself an excitation of the Higgs field.
The full properties of the Higgs (or whatever was observed by the teams) are not yet known. In fact, the signature of what they observed, may be multiple Higgs bosons with the properties required by the next theory that the Standard Model would extend into supersymmetry.
Cosmologists seem to agree that all luminous matter in the universe makes up only four per cent of whatever there is in the universe.... The rest of it may be in the form of dark matter and dark energy. So if the 'Higgs-like' particle near-discovery at CERN turns out to be a more exotic form, it could help us understand at least dark energy. These possible future developments could get us closer to what particle physicists call the Theory of Everything, but the theory cannot say anything about life, evolution and the phenomena of mind and awareness.
It is not even clear how gravity, the last of the four forces of nature, will fit into the Standard Model, developing into supersymmetry and perhaps superstring theory. But it would be a start.
Some scientists see that the materialist view of the universe doesn't hold water because quantum theory demolished the solid, reassuring physical universe almost a century ago. Once it was discovered that matter is made up of invisible clouds of energy, once photons were found to behave like particles in one mode and energy waves in another, once the Uncertainty Principle turned actual existence into virtual existence, the blows to materialism became decisive. Quantum pioneers noted definitively, that all other fundamental particles, have no fixed physical attributes. Instead, particles are pure potential existing in a quantum force field, and they collapse into being a particle you can see and measure only when observed by the scientist who is measuring them.
Some scientists see that the materialist view of the universe doesn't hold water because quantum theory demolished the solid, reassuring physical universe almost a century ago. Once it was discovered that matter is made up of invisible clouds of energy, once photons were found to behave like particles in one mode and energy waves in another, once the Uncertainty Principle turned actual existence into virtual existence, the blows to materialism became decisive. Quantum pioneers noted definitively, that all other fundamental particles, have no fixed physical attributes. Instead, particles are pure potential existing in a quantum force field, and they collapse into being a particle you can see and measure only when observed by the scientist who is measuring them.
'Why are we here?' is a universal question, and to answer it, you must ask, 'Why are we conscious? Where did mind come from?' In the alternative explanation, the entire universe is imbued with consciousness. Just as there are force fields, invisible but all-pervasive, a consciousness field can exist to uphold the activity we call 'mind'.
Infinite Consciousness
The universe evolves, regulates itself, takes creative leaps, and exhibits exquisite mathematical rigour and beauty. The hallmarks of intelligence are there, waiting for the next paradigm shift. At the moment, the word 'intelligence' brings up the red herring of intelligent design, which no one except religious fundamentalists want to be associated with. 'Consciousness' gives us a less tainted word, and there is a growing community of theorists seriously thinking about a conscious universe.
If it exists, then you and I are embedded in the consciousness field. It is the source of our own consciousness, which means that we are not alone. As one physicist said, "The universe knew that we were coming." An infinite consciousness that spans all of creation sounds like a new definition of God; we are part of God's mind; that includes science.
Take Your Time, Discover
The whole argument leads to a wild conclusion by most people's standards: it is God who is discovering the God particle. Infinite consciousness has created individual consciousness to go out into creation and look around. As it does, individual consciousness - meaning you and I - has been given free will and choice. We don't have to see our link to the infinite consciousness field. We can take our time discovering who we are and where we come from. Soon it might seem quite natural to say that the conscious universe saw us coming.
Rudolph Tanzi teaches at Harvard Medical School; Prof M Kafatos, Chapman University.
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