You’ll forgive us for interrupting your rants on trivial matters such as, for example, the next rental property or, even worse, the massacres in the Middle East. Here the world is burning and we haven’t gotten the memo!!!
Just at 4 PM on the past January 16th, we were randomly confronted with the terrifying question: what can you do with 380 million Higgs bosons; Because (we know) you think that “Higgs bosons” are euros or dollars, so there’s a jackpot in some lottery and whoever wins 380 million of them has solved their life’s problems, well then, you’re in deep darkness! What is at stake is… the fate of the universe! And this is not announced somewhere randomly, in some “crap” media. No. It is announced in some outpost of the famous large accelerator of hadrons, commonly known as CERN. So, read (the emphases with underlining are ours) just one excerpt. No more, because you’ll fall into pills (or even more pills):
The Higgs boson is uniquely simple – the only particle of the Standard Model without spin. Paradoxically, this allows its behavior to be uniquely complex, mainly due to the “scalar potential” created by the strength of its own field. With a Mexican hat shape, the Higgs potential has a local maximum of potential energy at zero field and a ring of minima surrounding it.
In the past, the Higgs field was installed in this ring, where it remains to this day. Since then, the field has been permanently “switched on” – a field without direction with a non-zero “vacuum expectation value” that is present everywhere throughout the universe. Its interactions with a series of other fundamental particles give them mass. What remains unclear is how the Higgs field behaves when pushed away from this native minimum. Where will it go next, how did it get there in the first place, and could new physics modify this picture?
Only the LHC has shed experimental light on this physics. Further progress in this fascinating frontier of fundamental science requires upgrades and new accelerators. The next step in this journey is the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), which is scheduled to begin operations in 2030. The HL-LHC is expected to far surpass the LHC, with a total dataset of 380 million Higgs bosons produced within the ATLAS and CMS experiments—a sample more than 10 times larger than any studied so far (see the box “A leap in technology”). We still have to unlock the full potential of the HL-LHC, but three scientific questions can serve to illustrate what can be studied with 380 million Higgs bosons.
What is the fate of the universe?
The stability of our universe hangs on a thin balance. Quantum corrections could cause the Higgs potential to bend downward again at high values of the Higgs field, creating a lower energy state beneath our own (see the box “The Higgs potential”). Through quantum tunneling, microscopic regions of space could spontaneously transition, releasing energy as the Higgs field settles into a new minimum of the Higgs potential. Bubbles of the new vacuum would expand at the speed of light, changing the vacuum state of the regions they encounter.
Details matter. The Higgs potential is modified by the influence of virtual loops from all particles that interact with the Higgs field. Bosons push the Higgs potential upwards to high field values and fermions pull it downwards. If the Standard Model remains valid up to high field values, perhaps as high as the Planck scale where quantum gravity is expected to become relevant, these corrections may determine the ultimate fate of the vacuum. As the most massive particle of the Standard Model discovered so far, the top quark has a dominant negative contribution at high energies and field strengths. Together with a smaller effect from the mass of the Higgs boson itself, the mass of the top quark defines three possible regimes…
We recognize that we have a playful to provocative disposition! If the “lot of emptiness” is about to be determined, shouldn’t those who already feel such a tormenting (emptiness) within themselves also be asked? Is “instability” a consolation?
… If a second, lower minimum is formed at high field values, but is protected by a large energy barrier, the vacuum could be “metastable.” In this case, quantum tunneling could in principle occur, but on timescales exceeding the age of the universe…
So: if you don’t understand what’s happening in the universe, then it’s not your fault!!! It’s because the most fundamental science of all sciences, physics – and physicists – has/have become “disconnected from reality.”
But in the capitalist division of labor, this kind of “takeoff” has consequences, possibly serious ones, on the humble “ground.” The “ground,” that is, you and me, DOES NOT understand. And therefore it falls into the uninteresting (from the point of view of cosmic study) situation of the one who pays. And it enrages him. Period.
This is not something rare. Since capitalist education managed to mass-produce “specialists” (specialized fools, the Establishment once wrote, and they were absolutely right!), for the “unskilled” (fools or not) to explode has become as common as the “law of gravity” – which, by the way, all these “specialists” as we will see next have no idea what it’s about.
For the skeptics: the Higgs boson as Thatcher or Thatcher as the Higgs boson.
There is not alternative!!!
Thus, science became an open religion (it was almost always underground). With believers. But also with unbelievers who are mandatorily condemned to some torment, on earth. Let us not blame the scientists: we belong to the same species, which has very limited capabilities, which it tries (our species) to compensate with permanent aggressiveness. Physical, moral, but also intellectual. Consequently, disbelief in science deserves to be punished, especially when (this happens almost always) it seeks the comfort of some paradise in one of the other religions, the “classical” ones.
This is not our case here. We are atheists for the joy of liberating atheism; but no paradise for us! Spiritual entertainment on earth – as opposed to that (science, generally and specifically) which is interesting as an intellectual adventure but nothing more…
In the beginning was…
This report here started by chance, when I came across this conversation (the spelling of the original):
… Now then, we are seeking the answers that the Ancient philosophers were searching for regarding the beginning of the Universe. For me, at this stage, it is enough that within the so-called “unified theories,” which constitute the field we are discussing, we may possibly be able to answer existential questions that have existed since eternity.
And I am not the only one saying these things. We are an entire scientific school that considers it our duty to seek these answers supported by scientific experiments and data…
Who says that and where? The… cyborg Upper Kathmandu? No!! It was said (among other things), with the title The Higgs boson was the end of a book, but also the beginning of the next!, by the famous astrophysicist Mr. Dimitris Nanopoulos, on the TEE website – on July 15, 2022.
With all due respect: Mr. Nanopoulos, when did you discover that you have “eternal existential questions”? Because it didn’t happen to us! Should we perhaps look into it???
Until we fall under the jurisdiction of a powerful techno-medical prescription for “correction/restoration,” we can assure you that “eternal existential questions” are NOT a “natural phenomenon” on this planet!!! This is proven by the life of millions of species that do not have such questions at all! It is also proven by the fact that our species lived for an unknown number of millennia in its evolution from that primitive cell without being tormented by such doubts. On the contrary, it is logical (although not “scientifically provable”…) that eternal existential questions were an invention of the first (and second… and up to today) priests separated from the rest of the species, who in order to maintain their privileged position (: they were fed by the others…) began to fabricate “questions” that no one else in the tribe could answer. “Eternal” and “existential.” We mean: nothing “eternal,” nothing “existential”! Pure division of labor and pure organization of power!
In other words, we argue that references to “primordial existential questions” are a pretext used by various specialists (whether within or outside academic institutions) to establish and expand one religion or another. “How was this world created?” is a deceptive question that would never occur to any living being on this planet, including even our own species during its early years of completely rational and social life—unless someone deliberately raises or directs it toward ulterior motives: to (pretend that one) can answer it in one way or another (with the Jewish mythology of the “Old Testament,” or with the mythology of the Maya… or…) under the premise of an uncompromising obligation for those who never had such a doubt, and therefore cannot find any answer to serve those who claim they do have such questions, along with the answers—or pretend to conduct scientific experiments to discover it.
We know we are doomed to be crushed: “science is not religion…” they will throw at us “because science has practical results!!”. Unfortunately for this certainty, religions also have practical results! Among other things, mobilizing what remains mysterious for the sciences (even more mysterious than gravity) and is called self-confidence. (In religions it is called “faith”. And in finance as well…)
In the name of Newton!! We don’t want to eliminate sciences!!! We just want to recall what has made every epistemology honest with itself since Kuhn’s era and beyond: these terrifying and awe-inspiring “scientific truths” are entirely relative and of limited value over time, no matter how much they swear the opposite. For example (well-known…), for decades in the 19th century and up until the mid-first decade of the 20th century, the dominant scientific truth among leading physicists/chemists was the existence of an invisible, odorless gas that floods the universe and allows the propagation of light and the movement of the Earth: it was the Ether. The idea was Newton’s, but later prominent figures in physics such as Maxwell and Lorentz, or the chemist Lavoisier, were certain of its existence. Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity” initially shattered that dominant scientific truth about the Ether, and it was the support of Heisenberg and other German physicists that prevented the new and threatening scientific truth from being thrown into the trash… Today, at the cutting edge of physics, the “General Theory” no longer holds up so well…
Moreover, these “scientific truths” are often very expensive for the “laypeople” who fund them; while any wise conclusions of theirs become weapons and methods of obedience at other times. Scientific, of course!
In the end, why should we believe in the big bang and the Higgs boson (affectionately: “God particle”)? Because… they are proven? You would be joking of course: half-knowledge is much worse than ignorance!
Because they have become the excuse for extremely expensive mechanical constructions? And the pyramids on the Nile were also extremely expensive mechanical constructions, they had concentrated unknown knowledge/technology, they remain “mysterious” – but they are just a tourist attraction!!! Moreover, there are fairy tales about the origin of the world (as if we are saying: answers to eternal existential questions, provided that such things are constructed…) which are much cheaper and much more graceful and playful! You can have your fun with nonsense, brother!!!
Science differs from religions only in this: it does not deal with ethics. However, when it is accused of ethical issues (e.g. firearms, biological weapons, chemical weapons, atomic bombs – and these are the old ones, there are new ones too), then the responsible scientists fall back on ethicists. Justin Rosenstein, a programmer at Facebook and inventor of the “like” button, regretted his achievement and resigned from the company. Earlier, Einstein and Oppenheimer (and perhaps others…) regretted their contribution to the construction of the first atomic bombs which, because they were in “good hands” (not those of the Nazis, that is), led to the instantaneous slaughter of 250,000 unarmed people, the disabling of another 100,000, the imposition of a global “nuclear terror” on the entire planet for decades, and we still don’t know where it will end.
This is what happens with Christianity-which-is-a-religion-religion: you repent and get absolved. Anyway, neither the above nor others repented who were top physicists, top scientists in general and not top saxophonists or top dancers: science is above and beyond ethics (so they say…) except (fuck!) for a few rare exceptions.
This is how capitalism progresses and the smooth extraction of surplus value. With the “underground forces” that Mr. Karolos used to talk about.
Chthonic forces
Finally, after nearly 50 years of research and investments of almost 9 billion dollars in the Large Hadron Collider / CERN (on the border of France and Switzerland), the Higgs boson was found. «Found»? If the verb refers to a tangible discovery, no. However, in any case, its “existence” would be indirectly confirmed.
This is supposed to have happened in 2012. We say “supposed” because other experts, outside of CERN, dispute the finding. And furthermore, because the scientific spirit is insatiable, new questions arose. Is the Higgs boson unique, or does there exist a larger family of bosons with similar characteristics? If one insists on the affectionate term “the God particle” for this particular boson, then the above question resembles a schism between monotheism and idolatry! No one can calculate how many years, how many billions of euros, and how many Great Accelerators will be needed to locate—if they are ever located—the siblings of the currently lone Higgs boson. Perhaps (and this would be the worst outcome) the end will come before the whole truth about the beginning of the world is uncovered (the answers to the eternal existential questions of those who have them)… not the end of everything, just on this little stone called “Earth.”
In order to somehow enjoy this very luxurious campaign with such uncertain results, we republish our “effort” regarding this topic from the distant 2008 and the 20th (paper) issue of Sarajevo. With the title Genesis: one more exception!
You will forgive us this persistent audacity… (In the end, we are just a bunch of bosons. Unexplored….)
And please: no, we are not “enemies of science”, “irrational” and the like. We just envy! We have fascinating ideas about various things, among which are gravity and levity…
But no one funds us…
genesis: one, more, exception!
The “pure” techno-science (science + technology), that is, the techno-science that does not yet have applications, is far removed from any criticism. Because criticism (usually: unjust criticism) has been reduced to the measures of experience – experience as shaped by the specifications of the spectacle. Ultimately, “pure” techno-science occasionally appears before us dressed up like the greatest sorceress: achieving accomplishments that are incomprehensible to the common mind. Which oracles undertake to serve us with “special” references.
And if a “pure” science is once removed and protected from criticism, it is twice removed and protected from our knowledge. From our ignorance, more accurately. If someone makes a simple vector map of the “development” of science and technology (with parameters being the “internal criteria” of evolution in physics and mathematics) over the two centuries of urban history, it will easily show that especially the 20th century was an era of turbulent, exponential “takeoff” from the horizon of what would be called “average daily life and knowledge.” The theories, the overhauls of theories, and the new theories in both mathematics and physics have become a body of knowledge inaccessible even to the formally “educated” individuals within the system, let alone for the “common citizens.”
Not at all coincidental is how (selected) applications (mainly from biotechnology and informatics/robotics) fall from the distant sky of pure techno-science into (whatever) everyday life like magic. If the evolution of techno-science has ruptured – and in our opinion the specialists in the field have done so deliberately – any rational relationship between average social knowledge and its own achievements; if, in other words, techno-science is systematically mystified, it provokes and mobilizes – whenever it needs to make a “presence” felt – irrational affirmations or/and rejections on the part of societies. Next to the sacred awe of religions, technoscientists have constructed their own, even more sacred, observatories. They prefer it this way, and they persist strongly in it.
The numerous priesthood of specialists does not want to be held accountable for anything; that much is absolutely certain. Yet they do want to be paid their (own) bill—and more. What any technological “miracle” or technological stupidity costs socially (what it costs in terms of labor, natural resources, and their exploitation) is beyond any discussion. Who decides, and how, about the enormous waste of resources and labor for the sake of technological “miracles” and follies, is also a forbidden topic. The specialists themselves decide, through their respective states. Through “their” capitalisms. End of story.
Is there a social margin for criticism against the incredible pharaonism of modern techno-science? Let’s be honest: the same that existed against the building of the Egyptian pyramids, in their time. That is: none! In the end, the proletariat suffers from far more mundane deprivations. And it drowns in far cheaper intoxicants. Where can it find the space and time to bring heaven down to its feet?
So we here in Sarajevo are “demonstrative” once again. And yet we persist: criticism of modern techno-science must not only be founded from the proletariat’s side, but also, this can be done. In defiance of its (designed) ignorance and the mature mysticism of the spectacle, the techno-scientific included. It takes some effort – but not in vain.
God’s plan
…After decades of research, fifteen years of construction at a cost exceeding 3.5 billion euros, funded by nearly 30 countries from around the world, with the participation of at least 500 universities, technological institutions and institutes, and nearly 6,500 scientists (almost half of the global workforce of those involved in particle physics), CERN [Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire – European laboratory for particle physics], with the construction of the LHC [Large Hadron Collider], is at the forefront of the search for greater knowledge, a search rooted in human nature. The search for the Unknown and the explanation of Nature.
Typical paean – from a relevant site.
The “donations” (from states and philanthropists) for the relief of victims of major natural disasters never reach their intended purpose… They get lost somewhere along the way. However, the funding for such mega-mobilizations and large-scale projects always arrives precisely on time. It would therefore suffice for such a grand celebration (where impressive numbers of money, states, universities, and scientists are displayed for the sake of the naive public) to ask: for what purpose is this waste being made?
First, a little physics. At a school level narrative.
In the 19th century, atomic physics learned that the smallest constituent of matter is the atom. It “learned” this—in this case, as in the entire narrative, the verb has an allegorical meaning. It assumed—this is a more accurate verb.
At the beginning of the 20th century, it learned that it was mistaken. The atom was not the ultimate indivisible form; in 1911, Ernest Rutherford (a baron, member of the Order of Merit) proposed that the atom also consisted of smaller (and more “peculiar”) particles: a nucleus at the center and orbiting electrons around it. The nucleus did not remain indivisible for long: in 1932, Sir James Chadwick took it even further—he discovered yet another fundamental particle hidden inside the nucleus: the neutron. Along with it came the proton.
But despite this confidence, physics was again mistaken. Protons also consisted of even smaller particles: quarks. Two quarks. They were baptized “up quark” and “down quark”…
Were these “discoveries” (perhaps more accurately: inventions) the end of uncertainty about “what is matter?”. No! From the 1960s onwards, a regular army of subatomic particles began to be born, initially “theoretically”. Because their “existence” had to justify (or cover the gaps in) new theorems about what matter is. Their naming (since they themselves, although if they “exist”, do not speak…) could show humor; or some kind of deadlock: “charmed” quark, “strange” quark, “top” quark, “bottom” quark, neutrino, muon, pion, boson, gluon… What physics “learned” as it progressed was that every “solution” revealed a new “problem”: what exactly is matter? What exactly is energy?
This spectacular journey/downward path towards ever smaller and “stranger” forms was not the result of improving the natural’s gaze. No, at least not in the conventional sense of “seeing”, of “visibility”. From the electron and “below”, all subatomic particles have a size smaller than the wavelength of light. Therefore, they are (literally) invisible. All the diagrams of atomic and nuclear structure that accompany school (and not only) physics books, exuding certainty, security and obviousness, are as valuable as the images of miracles in Christian churches: they are didactic (that is, ideological) representations. But they are not the truth: that, still, is being sought…
Ideological representations: any physicist who respects their role would indignantly reject attributing to the mother of all sciences, physics, ideological functions. However, the history of physics, regardless of what its priests may say, is part of social history. And physics, as such, is more of a path of epistemological representations than of “truths.” The fragments of theories that once soared as nearly perfect discoveries prove this; only to be subsequently dismissed as absurdly foolish.
This is proven by more mundane – and particularly annoying – issues. For example: gravity. Gravity, Newton’s narrative of the force that in the 18th century replaced (for others: made tangible) the grandeur of God, this birthday for the modern physical explanation – of – the world, remains stubbornly mute on the question of “what it is”! In schools, we surely “learned” what gravity is…. We did a lot of “exercises” with it, solved countless “exercises” using it…. We drew infinite arrows that gave it shape… And of course, although it would be easy to admit at any moment that we know nothing about it, that we have simply submitted to a convention (convention? what convention? ideological devil!), we believed…. We simply believed! Wrong (and one of education’s deceptions): the essence of gravity remains a huge mess for the most modern – contemporary physics!
Why then, while we the simple citizens enjoy the “securities” and misfortunes of this “force” that holds us on the planet (and throws our houses on our heads whenever the planet feels like it), the most advanced vanguards of technoscience break their own heads to give some explanation of it? It is time to make an ironic comparison. Once upon a time (though not so long ago…), the “heads” of Christianity were breaking each other’s heads to determine the “essence” of the “Holy Spirit”; that thing which millions of faithful had accepted, in the form of a dove…. Why those (Christian) scholastics?
We will leave the Christians behind. Because we will find them again later, uninvited, right in front of us. The physicists’ quest for gravity and its “how and why” begins and ends with a great, a tremendous dream. Their own promised land: the Theory of Everything!
What (should) the “theory of everything” be? We’ll put it in our own, completely non-scientific words: it is the (dream) of a unified explanation of everything in physical phenomena. From the origin of the world and the behavior of the universe to the ultimate micro-physics of matter and energy.
The idea (and even more so: the desire) of a unified “explanation of everything”, where every phenomenon would simply be a case or sub-case of a single set of “laws of nature” of universal application, may be old news. It is certainly wedged at the center of any religion. For mainstream scientists, it must have become somewhere (early?) in the 20th century a kind of collective psychosis.
In recent decades, the quest for a theory of everything has focused on the theoretical unification of the “knowledge” about the 4 “forces” considered fundamental in nature: electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, and gravity. Scientists believe they have made promising progress in synthesizing explanations/theories for the first 3.
Gravity, however;…. Gravity is a stubborn pest! The “laws” of it insist on obeying their “own god.” At this point (in the hope, that is, that some secret of matter will be revealed that will allow scientists to “interpret” – that is, define – gravity in such a way that its laws will be unified with those of the other 3 forces) we come to CERN and the “Large Hadron Collider”. Before we reach it, however, we need a little more guidance.
The God particle
The fact that the demand for a “theory of everything” is genuine theology we leave for later. It is worth seeing where the doctrine stands today.
Various experiments over the past decades have “proven” (the quotes refer to the relativity that proofs have in physics: they are always proofs – in – relation – to – specific – theorems!) that electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces behave similarly at very high energies. Therefore, they can be described by a “unified theory.” This unification was named the Standard Model (with capital letters) and is today’s most accepted theory on the matter – until it collapses. The Standard Model was first proposed in 1967. The physicists who developed it (Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg) received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this invention, but much later. In 1979, when the majority of the rest of its scientific community was convinced that they weren’t dealing with lunatics….
The Standard Model may be “standard,” but that doesn’t mean it’s “adequate.” It has quite a few flaws (some of which are problematic for you and me). There are at least two, however, that someone with high school knowledge might suspect are significant. First, the Standard Model does not agree at all with General Relativity, which is also a very official doctrine of physics. And they disagree on the key issue: the interpretations each theory gives to gravity. The problem with the Standard Model is that the interpretations of General Relativity are considered to be extremely well-verified. Therefore, it cannot abolish them; it must “assimilate” them as a sub-chapter of its own… if gravity, as “interpreted” by the Standard Model, is ever to be finally incorporated into the longed-for theory of everything…
The second little problem is that the Standard Model includes at least 17 “constants” (some argue that ultimately they could become 23 or even 25) of the kind g, c, etc. The issue with these “constants” that we learn about indifferently at school is that from their very conception they are “axioms.” They are not explained! Moreover, ladies and gentlemen, in the temple of rationalism the famous “constants” are ex cathedra! These are rather like patents, numerical inventions, so as to overcome various “difficult” points of the theories and not paths that will someday lead to the same avenue; the same theory of everything. So it’s a bit (or very?) funny that one who seeks “how everything started” in the universe cannot simultaneously answer “why this constant” is a constant quantity, and moreover such and not different….
Think about it! It’s like wanting to conquer the highest altitude in the world without knowing how to tie your shoelaces…
However, technoscientists have learned to be far less demanding of themselves than they pretend (to others) to be. And priests, for that matter, are far less “faithful” than they want their flock to believe about them. In practice, technoscientists are quick conjurers: they set aside the inconvenient gaps in their theories to explain them “later,” when the “main body” of their theory has been “proven.” It is a kind of “forward escape” which, if someone tried to employ it in their everyday relationships, would get them slapped. By contrast, scientists are entitled to hide their shortcomings with patchwork. In the spirit of Feyerabend,1 they are always eager to sell a new suit, putting pockets over the holes in the fabric.
Such a theory, which, leaving aside the numerous holes of the Standard Model, tries to give it life (always for the strategic goal: to “catch” the damned gravity in a way that fits with the other forces) is the one proposed by physicist Higgs. According to Higgs, the entire universe is permeated by a (not yet detected, electromagnetic) field, whose existence is due to a subparticle. Everything we know as matter (that is, the “known” subparticles) acquires mass through energy interactions with this field. Which, in honor of its inspirer, is called the “Higgs field”. If a common mortal said these things, he would definitely be considered crazy. But Higgs was an established scientist.
As you might understand (if you are familiar with high school physics), all the weight of the Higgs inspiration is transferred to this mysterious particle, about which nothing is known (except for predictions/conjectures about what and how it could be in order to fit the theory). The particle is also called the Higgs particle. And since this is what creates the primordial universal field within which energy becomes mass (and thus, phew, we’ll sort out the gravity issue, which is a “phenomenon” of mass…), then HOW DOES THIS EXIST?
And here, the Higgs theory/inspiration does something remarkable: it suggests that this primordial particle, which creates the field within which all other subatomic particles—and thus matter—are formed, was created “on its own,” through the self-interaction of the field itself! In simple terms: we have a field and a particle that have created (and continue to create) each other, back and forth! And since this isn’t a case of the chicken and the egg, the Higgs particle, which has been classified in the category of “bosons” (which doesn’t tell you much), is affectionately called: the God particle! That tells you something! Great are you, boson, and wondrous are your works!!! Affectionately yet unaffectionately, the nickname shows reverence: a “self-created particle/field” can be nothing less than a “manifestation of God”! Necessarily so! Even if it lacks “will”—who indeed can be categorical about such an absence? It surely has the other essential quality: it was created by itself, out of nothing, to create the world…
It is audacity to say that from the “theory of everything” to the minimum indivisible “point” of cosmic self-creation, all this fairy tale, may indeed have some interest, but far, far less than the theogony of ancient civilizations. It is audacity to say that the other fairy tales, with monsters that pave and create the world, are offered, hmmmm… for more amusement. It is audacity to tell them that if anyone asked, no one would pay a bent dime for a “genesis” that has Higgs particles, self-interactions, and metaphysical self-satisfaction. It is audacity to ask why they spent so many years “researching” (and mostly: so much money) to end up where every theology begins. It is audacity to tell them “return the money – you deceived us.” No!
The devil’s heads
You might think of us as “impossible, they don’t know what they’re talking about!” We don’t have “scientific credibility” to “prove” to you that this is how things stand. However, we assure you that we have researched the matter thoroughly, and we have no interest in dishonor: After decades of research, fifteen years of construction at a cost exceeding 3.5 billion euros, funded by nearly 30 countries from around the world, involving at least 500 universities, technological institutions and institutes, and nearly 6,500 scientists (almost half the global potential of those involved in particle physics), CERN [European Council for Nuclear Research – European laboratory for particle physics], with the construction of the LHC [Large Hadron Collider]… yes, all these impressive, pharaonic feats have been accomplished, with the flag being the search for… the Higgs particle! Which, according to “theory,” may exist everywhere, but since it is impossible to be detected anywhere, its existence must be investigated under special experimental conditions. Of the 3.5 billion euros as a lower estimate. So far.
If everything goes well and there are no accidents (because such things do happen) the large hadron collider will start working this summer…
Of course you (should) wonder what the hell “existence” of such a thing means. Is there any chance that one can “see” it? No – but common sensory “proofs” are for common people. In particle physics which, as we mentioned earlier, deals with particles not perceptible, the “existence” or “non-existence” of one or the other (including the God particle) concerns the interpretation of a “cloud of events”… Which interpretation, following a certain formalism, will interpret (or not) these “events” as proof, rejection, suspicion or probability of “existence” of a cause (a particle for example) behind them…. Which “existence” in turn will or will not fit with a theoretical prediction for it.
These are “hyper-intellectual” systems of thought/action whose only reality is to be overthrown by other similar ones. For example: even before the Higgs particle was “detected” (and while various predictions have been made about its mass), hypotheses have already been formulated that perhaps it might not be just one. Perhaps there “exist” five (different) God particles. Stephen Hawking, on the other hand, this sacred monster of modern physics, laughs categorically: You won’t find any “Higgs particle,” he says. It doesn’t exist…
He is wrong. With such a massive exclusion of social wealth in its pockets, techno-science has the luxury to baptize findings and also the “non-findings.”
How different, to begin with from a narrow intellectual point of view, are these kinds of investigations accompanied by deliberations (and disputes, and arguments, and counterarguments, and conferences, and sessions) concerning the “nature of God” among Christians; regarding whether “the Son is of the same substance as the Father” or not, and whether “the Holy Trinity has a triple nature or a single one”? Much, far too much blood has been spilled over these issues – although, we should immediately add, with strong pretenses these questions. The only difference that can exist between the question “is the Son of the same substance as the Father?” and the question “how is the self-generated Higgs particle?” is a matter of code. Within the code of theology, the first question is reasonable while the second is sheer nonsense. Within the code of physics, things are the opposite…
However, both of them share a fundamental, monstrous, and defining similarity: they constitute “questions” possibly within a specific division of labor and wealth. Someone who is starving and thirsty, someone who dies from illnesses that elsewhere are treated as a joke, someone who is killed so that electricity can be provided for the super-electromagnets of the large hadron collider (there are countless such people throughout the planet—but not near Geneva…), or someone who barely feeds their stomach, their mind, their heart, and their gender with the bare essentials has no room for such inquiries, experimentally or “revelatorily” answerable. And many, very many such people—starving and thirsty, dead, half-dead, or on the brink of survival—secure (against their will) the opportunity for just a few, merely a few thousand, to deliberate about “essence,” or to hunt for the particle / primal truth. The “question” of modern techno-science is neither innocent nor automatically “ontological.” It is class-based! Only class polarization allows 6,500 physicists to set up their supercomputers around a tunnel, claiming they will witness a homemade mini Big Bang.
Within the confines of dogmas, disputes and confirmations come and go, leaving their central function untouched: the “legitimization” (theological here, scientific there) of plunder. One could say that we are “poor in spirit,” which is why we fail to grasp the grandeur of the Quest for the Unknown—or the Explanation of Nature. Poor indeed, because we are worldly, we are suspicious of this “grandeur.” But mostly, we are certain of its value: violence and exploitation.
In the urban capitalist world, there is not a single achievement of this “grandeur,” no matter what code it was recognized as such, that is not simultaneously a sign of barbarity.
Behold, another PIN – from – Revelation!
The theory of the “Big Bang” will concern us on another occasion…. In any case, it is by far the most dominant today “scientific answer” to the (completely metaphysical!) question “how was the world created”. The experiments at CERN and elsewhere are a byproduct of this theory.
But behold, the imagination of luxury never ends, not even for scientists… At the beginning of June, a new theory was published in the journal Physical Review Letters, originating from a team of astrophysicists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). According to these expensive stars of the scientific establishment, the Big Bang is not “the beginning of everything”! That “bang” which occurred 13.7 billion years ago was not the eccentricity of the Land of Nothingness. Physicists from Caltech argue, on the contrary, that the universe was created by an explosion that happened… in another universe… a “mother” one, let’s say!
OK: the hypothesis, in its “popular” expression, is suitable for a comic! When the Universe hiccupped, it created the Universe blablabla… The Italian Calvino2 would have enjoyed it!
At more scientific levels, however, the key, or more accurately, the driving force towards such a theory lies in the unexplained arrow of time. While most known “laws of nature” are reversible in relation to the before and after of the phenomena which scientists observe (more accurately: rename), there is the second thermodynamic axiom (an inviolable law until now) and common experience showing that time has absolute direction. To explain therefore how such strict temporal order (a before and an after) was created from nothing, the Caltech team supports that the universe, ultimately, has a “mother”. Another universe. (And phew, from the beginning…)
And because every far-fetched theory dressed in the armor of science must have a reason – and – for – the – public, Professor Sean Carroll, speaking at an astronomical conference in Missouri, took his advocacy of the new theory to this point: A universe can begin forming here, now, in this hall – but we will never know it…
Another comic: by the time you read this comment, the next cosmic birth may have already begun right in front of you.
(Something from here, something from there, everyone working on “anti-globalization”: another universe is possible! Here and now!)
On this occasion, let us recall another “genesis” theory, that of Neil Turok and Paul Steinhardt, which is spread across the techno-scientific tables: that of the twin 9-dimensional braneworld-universes, i.e., the two 9-dimensional membranes, with the small gap between them (“small”; we say now…), where periodically the membranes attract each other causing big bangs….
There is, of course, also our own theory: the question about the origin of the world is due to the Great Misunderstanding! We will present it in the future, but it has (we say this from now on) an unbeatable trump card compared to any other: it costs nothing!
Ziggy Stardust
- The Austrian Paul Feyerabend, a liberal professor of philosophy of science at Berkeley, with his book Against Method: For an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge (it has also been published in Greek – ed. “Contemporary Issues”) caused a stir among technoscientists internationally in 1975. In a brilliant way, he demonstrated the view that throughout the history of physics, scientific truths were not even “internally” consistent with the “objective proofs” that bourgeois materialism has as its premise; and anyway, they were not more “true” nor more valid than metaphysical/religious “truths”… Obviously, his view raised a cloud of skeptical objections. Scientific ones.
Later, he moderated his provocative disposition. However, he remained “heretical” until his death in 1994. ↩︎ - The Italian Calvino (Italo Calvino) with his “Cosmicomics”, a collection of short stories, plays in a whimsical way with the “beginning of the world”… ↩︎