Faith, Physics and Film
Last November, ChristianCinema.com released a David de Vos film called The Theory of Everything. One of the film’s central characters is a physicist (Victor Lundin) trying desperately to prove the existence of God by searching for the “God Particle” (envisioned at right). Very basically, it is a particle called the “Higgs boson” that could be the elementary particle of all matter. In theory, it gives all other particles mass, and thus is the basic building block of all matter.
Five years ago when David researched material for the script, he postulated that Fermilab (a particle accelerator laboratory in Illinois) would beat CERN (another accelerator laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland) to this discovery. (Side note: on the CERN website, they claim to be the place where the Web was born. Al Gore must have been working there at the time!)
Very early this past Monday morning (June 18th), a posting on the Wired.com website reported speculation that David’s prediction had come true. Rumor on the physics blogosphere has it that Fermilab has beaten CERN to the punch and documented the existence of this particle.
For the non-scientists among us, what does that mean? It means that Dave did excellent research for his film. He has raised the bar for anyone wanting to develop a story about scientific material.
Second, this discovery could shake up science’s understanding of fundamental interactions of nature. I don’t understand enough particle physics to go any further (I’ll leave that to my brother-in-law Jon), but I do know the discovery of this particle will almost certainly lead to a Nobel Prize for someone. It may even convince more scientists that there is a God who created the universe and all that is therein.
I had high hopes that when CERN switched on the LHC in November of this year, they would inadvertently create a black hole, thus increasing the sales of my book, ‘The Ancient Order of Moridura’ (with a related theme of a nascent singularity created by a meteorite impact in Extremadura).
But then I realised that the extinction of the planet - and probably the solar system - would prevent me from collecting my royalties. Life can be unfair sometimes!
However, doomsday has been postponed until April/May of 2008 because of problems with magnets.
The Higgs boson must be chuckling quietly in interstellar space, its anonymity preserved for a little longer.
But I leave you with a quote from Brother Anselmo, the Abbot of El Monasterio de Moridura -
“It is my belief, and that of the Chapter, that whatever natural event created the topography of La Copa – we believe it to have been a meteor impact and La Copa to be its impact crater – also created a gravitational anomaly, an instability in the mysterious force that pervades our Universe. Modern science has only a very partial understanding of this force, and, in its speculations about dark matter and black holes, sometimes seems no better equipped than a medieval theologian or alchemist to give an account of it.”
For a moment, a lighter note entered his voice, almost bantering.
“My scientifically-inclined brethren tell me that one current of thought in the world scientific community is that gravity and the three-dimensional nature of the observed universe are but illusions, and that we are in fact two-dimensional creatures inhabiting a two-dimensional world. It gives us some harmless amusement to consider that the very scientists who sometimes dismiss religious belief as superstition now seem to be the flat-earthers!”
http://moridura.blogspot.com
regards
Peter Curran
Edinburgh, Scotland
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:19 am
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