So what exactly did happen a billionth of a second after the Big Bang?
That's the question particle physicists from around the world are trying to answer via a little science experiment using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
This week, researchers reported that they are one step closer to verifying the existence of the elusive Higgs Boson (a.k.a. the "God particle"). If they find it, it will be one of the biggest scientific discoveries in 50 years. "Our whole picture of how matter exists within the universe depends on the existence of the Higgs Boson," said project physicist Dr. Robert Orr.
And it seems we'll spare no expense or effort to prove it's there. Budget? $10 billion. The plan? Fly protons around a 17-mile-long ring at 11,000-revolutions-per-second (99.99991% of the speed of light) and then smash them together. The purpose behind it all? To try to understand how matter and mass came to be!
To try to understand how we came to be.
It's a worthy question.
Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg said, “The urge to trace the history of the universe back to its beginnings is irresistible.”
"Humans long for coherence and completeness,” wrote University of British Columbia professor Dr. Dennis Danielson in "The Book of the Cosmos."
We are meant to know where we came from and how we got here. This is what's driving us to invest so much energy and attention into this project. We're searching for the big story, a "grand theory," something that makes sense of all of this.
And our need to know is pushing us to the very edge of our potential.
The fact that we can conceive of and implement an experiment like this is quite remarkable. God really did make us "a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned [us] with glory and honor." Richard Dawkins even agrees: "Our ability to understand the universe and our position in it is one of the glories of the human species.”
We are made in the image of a God who made the universe. So, when we bring the brightest and best minds in the world together to try and recreate a moment that is similar to that which occurred just after the Big Bang, we are imaging the God who was there when it happened the first time.
In a way, it makes perfect sense that humanity would come to a point where it would reflect God's "particle physicist" mind through a scientific experiment like this. And what's really exciting is the possibility that the LHC's findings will reveal something new about the mind of God.
The more those scientists uncover, the more we'll have to know, love and worship God with ... to worship Jesus Christ with, the one through whom all things were made.
Imagine, the Large Hadron Collider revealing the mind of Christ.
They say that one reason scientists can do this experiment today is the fact that we now have the technology to focus enough energy into very small spaces. “It takes a huge amount of energy to create mass/matter," said one expert.
When I read that quote, I thought about the energetic power of God and how much he must have exerted when his Spirit first "hover[ed] over the waters…”
What power. What a mind. And to do it all out of nothing.
We should be thankful for experiments like the LHC. They pull back the veil and allow us, in a sense, to look back in time to the beginning of all things. By recreating a 13.7 billion-year-old moment, the world's scientists are giving us a better understanding of the Alpha nature of our Maker.
And God is glorified.
(Image depicting an experiment conducted by the Large Hadron Collider courtesy of CERN.)
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Comments (7)
If God created the matter of the universe out of the void at the Big Bang, the massive energy must have come from the only source around, theologically speaking - God Himself.
I think the Physics rules were created to accompany our universe to keep everything nicely working so God can focus on less orderly creations, like us.
The Law of the Conservation of Energy may tell us something about God's gift of His own energy to our impermanently matter bound existence:
"Energy in a system may take on various forms (e.g. kinetic, potential, heat, light). The law of conservation of energy states that energy may neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore the sum of all the energies in the system is a constant."
By the end of our conversation we had concluded that all the atoms in our tea and the mountains, streams and the homeless guy downtown were all made of the innate and indestructible energy of God in a very real and Physics way. Matter is a form of potential energy. My Poet brain sees a Trinity metaphor now too.
When someone says "What's the matter with the world today?" it makes me wonder....
When will we be ready to see that we are all "God Particles"?
Thank you for a smashing article!. :)
There are a lot of Christians contributing to the LHC. Some even believe that Evolution exists in some form, others don't buy into evolution at all.
While it is true that some in science think that this will disprove God when we find the "god particle" others believe that this will simply further our knowledge on the building blocks that God created to create our universe.
"Everything was created through Him and for Him. He existed before anything else and He holds everything together." Col. 1:16-17.
"For in Him we live and move and have our being." Acts. 28:17.
Discovering more about the mechanics of the universe, even the possible mechanics of its origin reminds me of a conversation between characters that C.S. Lewis wrote in "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader":
"In our world a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
"Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of."
Nobody is going to hold a Higgs Boson in their hands, or pass it around, or even look at it at leisure under a microscope. Instruments are going to give off readings that for a split second are consistent with the possibility that something we define as a Higgs Boson was isolated from all other matter for that split second, or less.
After all, if there is such a thing, there are billions of them all around us, even within our own bodies. We just can't prove it.
I can only think of two solutions to the problem of first cause, God and always was. I can't think of any objective way to choose between them. Personally, I take the "fire insurance" way out.