I’ve been doing physics lately, then pondering life. Its a bit like taking a boat out for a spin on a busy lake after watching Master Mariner; leaves you all full of big ideas but ill prepared for the thoughts that run through your head. We are matter, at least that’s what they tell us. There’s a possibility we might just be a part of the grand illusion, that we don’t really exist outside of our own minds, or even further down the rabbit hole, our minds are simply a virtual creation of another mind, or the virtual creation of yet another virtual mind and so on and so forth.
I watched Particle Fever yesterday, and for those of you who are part of the majority I normally reside with, the Higgs Boson particle was little more than a news flash from some lab in Switzerland. Turns out the Higgs Boson particle is thought to be the glue that holds all other particles (read: the world as we know it) together. The big deal was that physicists could create these collisions between particles in this machine called The Large Hadron Collider. They would send two particles in opposite directions in around the speed of light then, line them up and smash them together. This is how you find new particles.
The particle most in question was the Higgs Boson, called by some the God particle, it was first theorized by Peter Higgs in 1964. If discovered, the second question crucial to our survival, would be the mass of this particle. If it was 140 GeV or greater, it could be a bad thing as it would support the Multiverse theorists who believe that we live in this global collection of casually connected universes, and that our universe (all universes) are just some random places soon to topple; if it came in at 115 GeV or less, it would support the Supersymmetry crew that believe bosuns and fermions are just two ways of looking at a single unified object (read: life on planet earth is probably safe for awhile and may have been part of something bigger). Wouldn’t you know that it came in at 125 which supports neither. Inconclusive at best and still leaving the door open for either theory to be true. They say that particles know we are observing and act accordingly, maybe it’s supposed to be a secret. All I know is we’re still here.
So logically, the question I asked myself, is what does this mean for me? Am I part of a collective universe that all has to get along or do I control my reality inside my own head? Is there no physical world; just a series of neurone flashes painting pictures in my brain? Am I part of a continuum like the Borgs, cerebrally connected to all the other folks out there, living our life like some networked video game? All I really want to know, is what is the best approach to making my dreams come true (sorry Pedro). Is The Secret real? Can I just imagine cheques-in-the-mail and the perfect parking place and it will be so, or must I contend with everybody else’s dreams and desires and claw my way to the place I want to be, or does it ultimately even matter because we’re really just part of a big virtual conspiracy?
This, all because I wanted to inflate (for all you physics geeks) my reading experience . I go to the big book mall to look for the next instalment of my favourite dystopian fantasy trilogy, only to be disappointed by another author’s dalliances into character studies. I start thinking that maybe a little science might be a good thing, I’ve heard lots about quantum mechanics et al, so why not go directly to the source. Before picking up Hawking, Guth or Greene, I decide to start a little lighter and pick up a copy of Amanda Gefter’s Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn. I’m really enjoying the book, she’s no lightweight herself but has woven a story amongst the theories to ease the pan. Still, I spend half the time looking up definitions, then use youtube and TED talks to understand the definitions. You might say, it’s exactly the wrong way to become knowledgeable about a subject as important as the creation of the Universe, but as physics has taught me in this short while, it might be exactly the right approach.
I digress; time to call it a wrap and put this first post to bed. Nothing deep, just a little, why am I here, am I really here and is anybody out there. Nothing too serious.
note: forgive all the cool physics terminology, I’m neither a physicist nor claim to understand most of it, but it’s a lot of fun trying to use the words in a sentence.
-Billy
