A Post by AnkhMorpork at ATS.
The Higgs Boson: A Natural Disaster!
However, problem. It’s mass was not what the standard model predicted, but was “fine-tuned” by trillions (quadrillions) of degrees or what I’ve seen other physicists refer to as “reductions”, the result for which appears to be entirely unnatural.
Solutions:
1) Supersymmetry – or anti-particles or sparticles for every particle. Problem. Not detected. Also, such supersymmetry could also mean that the universe should not be but would have self-annihilated the moment it was “born” with particle and sypersymmetrical anti-particle annhiliating each other. The LHC will be continuing to look for this, and an even larger collider may be built to test for it, but this solution isn’t looking promising.
2) Compositeness – the Higgs isn’t a fundamental particle, but a composite of still more fundamental particles that somehow self-adjust in their relationship to one another resulting in the appearance of unnatural fine tuning. Problem, nothing else and no other particles are coming out of the LHC and a larger collider might not produce them either.
3) Multi-Worlds, Multi-Verse Theory, with Strong Anthropic Principal. Problem – end of science, whereby all subjectivity and analysis is rendered moot as an unfathomable “coincidence” whereby we just so happen to be measuring in the one universe of an infinite possible array wherein the Higgs Boson only appears to have been unnaturally fine-tuned by quadrillions of reductions. In other words, it just is what it is mon (ire), and well, if it were any other way, then we would not be here to ask the question. Wut?! Huh?! Yea, the end of science, with no more particles forthcoming because there aren’t any more.
4) String Theory. Problem – same as multi-worlds/multiverse. String theory seems to describe every other universe but our own and does not appear to be subject to testing and verification by any empirical means so it will forever remain a theory. It also involves a direct appeal to the multiverse hypothesis with strong anthropic principal to try to explain the fine-tuning problem.
5) God did it, by super-intelligent design and with intent (by anticipation).
One way of looking at number five, if you’re uncomfortable with the idea of a creator God, would be to take on the idea of a field of infinite knowledge via accumulated information arising in eternity, like a Godhead of absolute formless potential (uncreated), whereby, beginning with the end in mind, having considered every possible outcome, and taking on the role of creator “you” measure twice and cut once since you could end up probing the impossible forever without arriving at what is now actualized. In other words you can’t get from there to here, except by anticipation. This mind-of-God explanation is in alignment with the work of physicists such as Bernard Haisch and Erwin Laszlo whereby Haisch employes the idea of the Godhead using the allegory of a filtered white light that, in order to differentiate itself and to make this life possible, including our own place in it, it must intelligently limit or reduce itself many many times, not unlike the fine-tuning of the Higgs, and limit or filter it’s infinite, absolute, formless potential. He then suggests that there’s no need to draw the distinction between God and Godhead of which we ourselves are not unlike a chip off the OLD block, by anticipation and with intent, presumably in order so that a shared and varied experience would be possible.
Problem. This would have to include not only the quantum realm, but also the precise organization of the material universe to bring about our present circumstance and thus the entire cosmic framework all the way to our own earth-moon-sun configuration (not as a mere chance or random occurrence).
The implications of unnatural fine-tuning, if Supersymmetry and Compositeness and the Multiverse (with Strong Anthropic Principal) must be discarded in favor of a new paradigm of some sort of intelligent creative X factor, cannot be underestimated, since they point to a whole new basis of our understanding of our place in the grand scheme of things, even as children of a loving and very generous God who it pleased to share his eternal kingdom of light, life and love.. “therefore fear not little ones nor let your hearts be troubled, for it pleased the father to share his kingdom”.
Can these ancient understandings and basis of reason and logic move from the realm of “religion” into the logical assertions of the empirical evidence of modern science at the very cutting edge, even to the very point of almost cutting off it’s own nose to spite it’s face amid the end of any reasonable inquiry into who and why the universe is the way it is?
Is this (Higg’s Boson unnatural fine-tuning) the end of scientific inquiry into the underlying nature of the material world, or will the new paradigm of an infinitely intelligent cosmological unity or self-aware universe that has included us on purpose, prevail, no matter what are it’s implications?
By avoiding the implication of a type of God Theory, would science be willing to shoot itself in the foot? I don’t think so. I have more faith in human curiosity and imagination than that. We go where the evidence leads us, no matter what are the implications..
Many of you will differ here of course, also to avoid the implication of the unnatural fine tuning of the Higgs Boson aka (ironically) “the God particle”, but it (a God Theory) is the most reasonable position to take in the face of the alternative multiverse, strong anthropic principal “hypothesis” which goes nowhere fast and leaves us in a state of perpetual uncertainty about the nature of reality.
“To be is to be perceived”
~ an adage of modern Quantum physics. (I just hope we get some privacy when we’re in the shower!).
Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Field, by Physicist Bernard Haisch
Bernard Haisch is an astrophysicist whose professional positions include Staff Scientist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Deputy Director for the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. His work has led to close involvement with NASA; he is the author of over 130 scientific papers; and was the Scientific Editor of the Astrophysical Journal for nine years, as well as the editor in chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
Quoting Bernard Haisch from “The God Theory”
If you think of white light as a metaphor of infinite, formless potential, the colors on a slide or frame of film become a structured reality grounded in the polarity that comes about through intelligent subtraction from that absolute formless potential. It results from the limitation of the unlimited. I contend that this metaphor provides a comprehensible theory for the creation of a manifest reality (our universe) from the selective limitation of infinite potential (God)…
If there exists an absolute realm that consists of infinite potential out of which a created realm of polarity emerges, is there any sensible reason not to call this “God”? Or to put it frankly, if the absolute is not God, what is it? For our purposes here, I will indentify the Absolute with God. More precisely I will call the Absolute the Godhead. Applying this new terminology to the optics analogy, we can conclude that our physical universe comes about when the Godhead selectively limits itself, taking on the role of Creator and manifesting a realm of space and time and, within that realm, filtering out some of its own infinite potential…
Viewed this way, the process of creation is the exact opposite of making something out of nothing. It is, on the contrary, a filtering process that makes something out of everything. Creation is not capricious or random addition; it is intelligent and selective subtraction. The implications of this are profound.
If the Absolute is the Godhead, and if creation is the process by which the Godhead filters out parts of its own infinite potential to manifest a physical reality that supports experience, then the stuff that is left over, the residue of this process, is our physical universe, and ourselves included. We are nothing less than a part of that Godhead – quite literally.
Ervin Laszlo
Ervin Laszlo is considered one of the foremost thinkers and scientists of our age, perhaps the greatest mind since Einstein. His principal focus of research involves the Zero Point Field. He is the author of around seventy five books (his works having been translated into at least seventeen languages), and he has contributed to over 400 papers. Widely considered the father of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, he has worked as an advisor to the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2004 and 2005. A multidisciplinarian, Laszlo has straddled numerous fields, having worked at universities as a professor of philosophy, music, futures studies, systems science, peace studies, and evolutitnary studies. He was a sucessful concert pianist until he was thirty eight.
In Laszlo’s view, the zero-point field (or the Akashic Field, as he calls it) is quite literally the “mind of God”.
Naming Hal Puthoff, Roger Penrose, Fritz-Albert Popp, and a handful of others as “front line investigators”, Laszlo quotes Puthoff who says of the new scientific paradigm:
[What] would emerge would be an increased understanding that all of us are immersed, both as living and physical beings, in an overall interpenetrating and interdependant field in ecological balance with the cosmos as a whole, and that even the boundary lines between the physical and “metaphysical” would dissolve into a unitary viewpoint of the universe as a fluid, changing, energetic/informational cosmological unity.”
An excert from Science and the Akashic Field, an Integral Theory of Everything
Akasha (a . ka . sha) is a Sanskrit word meaning “ether”: all-pervasive space. Originally signifying “radiation” or “brilliance”, in Indian philosophy akasha was considered the first and most fundamental of the five elements – the others being vata (air), agni (fire), ap (water), and prithivi (earth). Akasha embraces the properties of all five elements: it is the womb from which everything we percieve with our senses has emerged and into which everything will ultimately re-descend. The Akashic Record (also called The Akashic Chronicle) is the enduring record of all that happens, and has ever happened, in space and time.”
Science and the Akashic Field, an Integral Theory of Everything, 2004
www.amazon.com…=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249275852&sr=8-1
Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos: The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality
www.amazon.com…=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1249275852&sr=8-6
Maybe at the end of science there’s a joke at the expense of both science and religion that just keeps on getting better the more we come to grips with it and to better understand it’s implications.
Wouldn’t that be funny.. and interesting..?!