The impending coup d’ état of "God"

The excellent article The elusive ‘God’, which appeared in the Frontline of September 23, 2011, deserves to be read at least by those who do not hide behind vacuous excuses like, “Overhead transmission!” It was for me too, but I at least get to be amazed at the way human brain works itself into a frenzy.

Well, you may say that I too avoid reading fiction, poems etc. Your point is not well taken, because and only because, I TAKE the effort. I read poems often, even though my interpretation of what the writer says is rejected. I have difficulty discerning the message in a fiction, yet I read. I implicitly honor the writer through my effort.  My dismissal is not a priori, one must understand. I am ready to “waste” time reading stuff I know will be hard for me to understand. Ask yourself, if you consider yourself one of the “excusables”, whether you would like to join my club. If yes, you are most welcome. And, I promise you that the transmission will be a low-hanging fruit, truly tasteful.

As is becoming a habit, I launched this post on an orbit of digression! Let me get back to the assigned one.

The strap line of the article says: “The Lepton Photon Conference in Mumbai ended with a feeling that the Higgs particle does not exist …” The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland was configured to find the Higgs Boson, the Higgs, in short. One may recall the serious breast beating of the physics community when the facility went through the equivalent of a partial melt down a few years ago that set back the schedule significantly. Now, it is again up and running but will shut down for about a year and a half at the end of 2012.

Fortunately or unfortunately this particle has been christened the “God particle”. It imbues all the other particles with mass; hence omnipotent. Parallel with God, if you wanted me to be specific. And, it has proven most elusive. It is the last of the particles that the Standard Model, which has postulated the fundamental particles and explains all interactions among them, whose existence has not yet been confirmed. God’s existence has not been confirmed either, the last I heard. So, the naming appears apt, on two counts, omnipotence, and elusive existence at best.

And, the recent high level conferences on high-energy physics and such esoterica are placing limits on where on the mass scale the particle can reside. More and more it is becoming clear that the Higgs is finding less and less room to hide. Is “God (particle)” doing a Cheshire cat on us, grinning its way to non-existence? Is God doing a Cheshire cat on his brood of believers?

The Standard Model does not predict a value for the mass of the Higgs. However, it puts an upper limit of 186 GeV – giga electron volts. To understand how heavy this is, you may want to compare it to a proton that weighs in at about 1 GeV, which is about 2000 times heavier than an electron (mass measured in energy terms in line with Einstein’s iconic equation, which may be under threat). It is this heaviness that required the strength of LHC to spot the Higgs. “God” particle does not come light or easy and neither does God.

The Higgs cannot be lighter than 114 GeV. But, between 114 and 155 Gev, it is truly tantalizing. However, you mention “tantalizing” to the popular media, they go to town on it. Hype goes on overdrive. This has happened twice, as per the article. Here too, there is a parallel between the “God” particle and God. Remember Lord Ganesha drinking milk, or the Mithi River (aka the sewage drain) water turning sweet?

But, there is a crucial difference between God and the Higgs. If Higgs is proven not to exist, physicists will lick their wounds and turn their attention to other avenues of figuring out what is happening in nature, indeed what is nature. It will parallel the current excitement about the speed of neutrinos, and LHC playing the spoiler! Double scoop of excitement!

No such luck in the case of God. First, the disclaimer that God’s existence cannot be proven. It has to be taken on faith. Yet, God is a scientific concept. Second, God is not a repeatable experiment. If God were repeatable, he would be cheapened.

Why does LHC exist? The cynic might answer: to put food on physicists’ tables! The truer answer could be that physicists are curious. And that, religionists are not.

I hope the transmission was brought down to levels that are grabbable.

Raghuram Ekambaram