Stephen Hawking has bet $100the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) won’t find “God’s Particle.”
I hope he’s wrong, but either way I’m sure this experiment is going to result in a really kick-ass episode of The Universe.
Just in case all the scientists are wrong and universe does explode, I’m going to eat some trans-fats tomorrow (maybe Arby’s).
Incase you have know idea what I’m talking about, below is a great explanation of the experiment from Brian Greene’s TED presentation.
Skip ahead to about the 16 minute mark if you’re not interested in string theory.
–UPDATE–
After watching the MSNBC people downgrade the LHC story to the “News You Can’t Use,” segment of their morning show, I was happy to see Google’s logo this morning.
I’m normally a defender of the mainstream American media (it’s the capitalist in me), but seriously the BBC News devoted 10 minutes to this and even went live to scientists answering questions. While, everything I’ve seen from the U.S. media has basically just called it a 10-billion-dollar black-hole maker.
God is already conveniently immune to empirical study. If you want to assert God must live in another dimension because (like God) we can only theorize about other dimensions then go ahead. But to do such a thing only shrinks the scope of God’s power even more than science already has.
For example:
If you don’t understand genetics you might reason that your eyes are blue because God made them that way. If you don’t understand that a rainbows are caused by refracted light you might assert that God made rainbows as well. Since we can’t comprehend what other dimensions are like, we might as well assume that’s were God lives.
I can see how deists or pantheists might accept an idea such as this, but Christians, Muslims and Jews would likely reject an idea that so neatly tucks God away into the subatomic fabric of the universe.
The link to the string theory discussion was great- thanks for sharing it! If the string theory is correct, and it ultimately leads us to recognize as many as ten dimensions, plus time, then doesn’t it stand to reason that we may not be able to assert definitely that there is no God. If God does exist, he presumably dwells in a dimension beyond us; a dimension which may not be known through the normal kind of empirical study. A few years ago the notion of “strings” seemed implausible.
Andrei of Cisco
I can’t say I share your support of the mainstream American media, but I completely share your excitement about the LHC story. Brian Greene’s video was one of the best explanations I’ve heard of string theory.
It’s also been fun to hear Otto Rossler and others claim that the collisions will “eat the planet from the inside.” Can’t wait.