Lawrence Johnston wrote:
> ASA'ers: If this discovery (from another List) is confirmed, it will be very exciting. It will have a very interesting effect on
> our "Fine Tuning" concept. If the Higgs Field does indeed determine the masses
> of all the elementary particles, that would reduce by quite a bit the number of
> independent "knobs" the Designer needed to adjust, in order to give us our life-
> friendlly Universe.
>
> Of course, it may turn out that these deleted knobs are still required to determine
> the complex properties of the Higgs Particle itself. What excitement wells up in
> this usually placid physicist!
>
> C U R R E N T N E W S S U M M A R Y
> by the Editors of ReligionToday
>
> September 20, 2000
>
> ---
> Physicists say they have glimpsed the "God particle." Officials
> at a laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, said they may have
> observed a type of tiny particle that lies at the heart of one of
> the most important mysteries of modern science, according to The
> Washington Post. Scientists have been searching for the particle,
> which they theorize gives all of the matter in the universe the
> property of mass. It is so important that Nobel physics laureate
> Leon Lederman calls it ''the God particle.''
> ...Officials of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics call
> the particle ''the missing link,'' the last tiny component of
> energy and matter that has not yet been observed. The particle is
> known as Higgs boson, named for University of Edinburgh physicist
> Peter Higgs, who first postulated a mass-conferring field.
> Scientists said they now will delay the start of construction of
> a $6 billion particle accelerator designed to find Higgs boson.
A few comments:
1) It goes without saying that the term "God particle" should be resisted by anyone concerned about serious science-religion discussions. Please spare us another "We've seen the face of God" declaration!
2) While gauge unification of EM & weak interactions now seems to be successful, I don't think it's so clear that those can be unified with the strong interaction in a GUT in the same way. Thus a single Higgs boson
may not provide what's needed for all massive particles.
3) Even if it does, there still remains the graviton & the problem of the relationship of gravitation to the other interactions.
Shalom,
George
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Sep 21 2000 - 07:39:10 EDT