God’s Particle 

Perhaps one of man’s greatest discoveries was announced just two weeks ago when physicist publicized the potential discovery of the Higgs boson, also known as The God Particle. This particle, the God Particle, is probably one of the more talked about subjects in recent news reports. When you fuse two words that almost contradict each other on this scale, it creates an intriguing oxy-moron, inquiring minds would want to know more. Well is the public’s thirst for knowledge on the God Particle being quenched? If you ask any two or three people about the God Particle (which I have done a few times) you may find yourself coming to the same puzzled conclusion as the answers they have given you.

As much information that has been put out about the God Particle since its July 4 discovery most people you ask couldn’t explain the theories behind it, much less tell you what it is. Now excuse me for the spoiler alert, but I’m not a physicist and I am not going to explain to you the history behind the discovery of the God Particle. But what I will like to bring to you is my best explanation, once proven, on the impact of this discovery and how the God Particle will affect our lives. And this is when I present to you our second spoiler alert…it likely will not affect our immediate lives in the least bit.

So at this point if you’re still asking what on Earth is the God Particle, I can attempt at helping you the best I can. The God Particle, or what most scientist refer to ask the Higgs boson, to put is simple, is the particle that gives other particles mass, giving us matter and possibly explaining how or why anything and everything exist. Now for those who wish to revisit high school chemistry, or take it a step further to collegiate physics, you can go all day in describing how in 1964 physicist Peter Higgs only suggested that the particle existed. The particle itself, at the time, almost impossible to prove would go decades before anyone could try at such an attempt. Two years ago, work on the Large Hadron Collider was complete in Switzerland, and scientists were able to began experiments to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, or the God Particle. Scientists, however did not prove the existence of God, as the particle’s nickname may suggest. In the previously mentioned brief explanation on the God Particle, not once did I mention that God had anything to do with it (I’m not say he/she didn’t either). The nickname of the Higgs boson came from a 1993 published book about the particle, where author, Leon Lederman, gave it that nickname because he either A, wanted to properly illustrate how critical of a scientific discovery this particle would be, or B, really did initially want to call it the Goddamn particle.

However it got its name, the only thing that we can take away from this discovery, once proven, is its nickname, which to scientists is not a proper nickname for the particle. But for the religious population, the God Particle, is just like any other particle, God’s particle. So this discovery of the Higgs boson, does not prove much to those who “believe”. In fact, some of those great minds believe science only proves the existence of God. But will it come down to a final decision on what created life, Earth or the universe? Is the God Particle responsible? Or are God’s particles responsible?

Not for nothin’, but this could possibly go down as the greatest discovery in recent history. Definitely the greatest discovery of our infant millennium, but exactly how great is it? There are some great discoveries out there. Fire, the universe, the atom, penicillin, America…all can make an argument for the greatest discovery. But if the Higgs boson adds itself to that list of the greatest discovery of all time, what will it do for us and our understanding of our universe and how we were created? As in, are we going to now start using it to start artificially creating matter? Probably not, that’s still a long way away. It took scientist 50 years to make this discovery, any practical use of it is not in the foreseeable future. It would be my guess that what this leads to could be one of our greatest discoveries, but just not now. But since people of faith have been brought in to this discussion of the God Particle by an unfounded nickname, perhaps their (the) greatest discovery of all time has already been uncovered through their faith.