What do you think, Andy?

The God Particle -- an image by Winthrow

My friend, Andy -- not to be confused with my cat, Andrew, nor my brother in Connecticut (whose name isn't even "Andy") -- has taken up Field Theory as something to do when he's not knocking on doors (long story) or procrastinating on helping a younger friend get his telescope up and useful without a constant jitter.

Well, he might get some help later this year when the Large Hadron Collider is made (partially) operational and yet later on -- around 2020 -- when the Chinese (with Japanese^*, Haliburton's and others' help) build a 20-mile-long machine in Beijing, China with the goal of finding what's been dubbed as the "God particle." Most of you already know that scientists have long taken issue with string theory because it does not make testable predictions. Researchers have now developed an important test that involves measurements of how high-energy particles scatter during particle collisions.

They believe these collisions will be observable at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN which will be operational later this year.

The test involves how W bosons scatter in high-energy particle collisions.

Oh yes, W bosons carry the weak force.

String theory uses these assumptions: (1) physics laws are the same for all uniformly moving observers, (2) a rather ill-defined smoothness criteria for the scattering of high-energy particles after a collision, and (3) the necessity that all probabilities add to one. Yeesh! That does sound a little like "God," doesn't it?

Anyway, the new test will set bounds on these assumptions and if the bounds are satisfied, it would still not prove string theory correct.

If violated, string theory would need a major overhaul ... or be dumped altogether ... along with at least five or six of the ten (or eleven) dimensions that it requires.

String theory posits that everything consists of strands of vibrating energy in multiple dimensions. These strings supposedly produce all known forces and particles in the universe.

Dissenters argue that it does not make testable predictions.

Tests of string theory have remained elusive because today's colliders were considered too low-powered.

At the same time, scientists announced plans^* last week to build a 20-mile-long machine in Beijing, China with the goal of finding what's been dubbed as the "God particle." [Nobel prize-winning physics guru Leon Lederman helped coin the term "God particle" in a book by that name.] The book describes one of the most mysterious "what-ifs" in physics. What if an as-yet-unseen "something" provides the universe with the physical property called mass? That “something” is associated with the God particle.

Why do we need a God particle?

According to scientists, mass is the amount of matter contained within a physical object. Yet scientists do not really understand what causes objects to have mass. Why, they ask, is there a physical reality to atoms and molecules? In principle, these physical objects could just as well exist as pure energy, in accordance with Einstein’s famous equation:

E = mc²

A possible explanation for the reason that mass exists arose in the 1960s (my hey-day), when physicist Peter Higgs first asserted that all of space – throughout the entire universe – is permeated with an invisible lattice work. It would be a "field" similar to the more familiar field created by electricity, but more broadly highlighted in mathematical Field Theory. Interactions within this so-called "Higgs’ field" may be what produce mass.

Then again, God might.

Which brings us back to Andy.

^*Plans to build the International Linear Collider in China were announced last week by a collaboration of over 1,000 scientists from 100 countries and led by Shin-ichi Kurokawa, of Japan’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (HEARO). The "Asian atom smasher" is expected to be completed by 2020. It’s through these atom smashers that the God particle -- whose presence would reveal the field that is the source of all physical reality -- might ultimately be found.