Something from Nothing: from Republican Barracudas to God Particles

When bad news abounds, I like to find solace in particle physics (no, not quantum of solace—blech).

First the bad news: North America enjoys paternalizing, destroying, saving, and sexualizing women politicians (watch out, this Globe article is accompanied by an image of the front page that refers to Sarah Palin as a "Republican Barracuda”--Wow).

Also, apparently the province of NB has decided to appeal the ruling made in August allowing Morgentaler “standing” to launch a court battle to force NB Dept of Health do its job—provide free and accessible abortions to women who need them. Morgentaler hasn’t actually sued the province yet, because first he must prove his right, as a man, to represent the women of NB. The Province will apparently stop at nothing to prevent proper access, and continues to insult the women of this province.

With Palin, no matter how much I abhor her politics, it still infuriates me to see the simultaneous demonization and sexualization of her by so many media outlets; the media spin on her ultra-conservative anti-feminist
politics as being feminist; the assumption that women can be duped by a skirt; and the focus on her appearance. My quick google search of her name says it all:


The Good news: we’re close to discovering how to go from nothing to something.

Higgs boson (otherwise known as the “God particle”) is a hypothetical “massive scalar elementary particle” predicted to exist by particle physics (first theorized in 1964). Hypothetical as in, it has yet to be observed. This is where the Large Hadron Collider at CERN comes in. Basically, observing the Higgs boson particle would help explain how massless elementary particles somehow construct mass in matter—the difference between the massless photon and bosons with mass.
To be clear: How did the big bang happen? How do you go from nothing to something, from zero mass to particles/matter with mass. These are the thoughts that used to keep me up at night, clutching the bedcovers to keep from spilling out into space.

This brings us to CERN, where the Large Hadron Collider is housed. The LHC is in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference. The tunnel is buried about 100 metres underground between the Swiss and French borders on the outskirts of Geneva.

According to the official Large Hadron Collider website, the goal of the experiment is “to smash protons moving at 99.999999% of the speed of light into each other and so recreate conditions a fraction of a second after the big bang”. Based on the results, the LHC experiments will try and map out what happened.
Though some people believe that colliding high speed protons in an underground circle of life will spark the bang to end all bangs, CERN continues to issue press releases to allay all fears.

The researchers at CERN (the birthplace of the WorldWideWeb (though not the Internet per se) thanks to Tim Berners-Lee) will be flipping the “switch” on the LHC tomorrow September 10th, circulating the first high energy beams, after months of preparatory actions. The first collisions at high energy are expected to happen about a month from tomorrow.

So, tomorrow the countdown is on to discovering how it all began on a micro and macro level simultaneously.

In case my explanation is too banal (or just plain wrong), here’s a thorough rap explaining all.

Large Hadron Collider:



Sweet Dreams!