God Particles & Black Holes

"There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge..." - CERN

The Large Hadron Collider was set to begin its work smashing the tiniest pieces of existence together. It was revved up on September 10th, with the first high energy collisions to be delivered a month later. Unfortunately, the operations were halted on September 19th due to a fault between two superconducting magnets. We will not know what this thing is truly capable of until this summer when the Collider is fixed and fired up again; however, the goal is to pin down the Higgs boson, the elusive “God Particle.”

I’m a layperson, so I don’t get it. I could probably spend 10 years reading physics books, and I still wouldn’t understand what this thing really does. What I do understand is the LHC could be one of the most important tools of science discovery in our history. Eight thousand (!) scientists from 85 different countries are putting their heads together to get what they can out of the $4 billion project. They hope to come away with the greatly sought-after Grand Unified Theory, which will, according to the scientific community, project us into the future of understanding and awareness.

However, the enthusiasm is not universal. Another (much smaller) group of scientists believe the LHC will create tiny black holes with the potential to consume our planet. While they seem like crackpots, I’m sure these scientists have better brains than mine.

Either way, we are moving towards the future with increasing velocity. And as we accelerate through time, our perception expands relativistically. The things our children will see would have been totaly foreign and extremely unsettling to our grandparents, and the things we know now will prove to be either incorrect or irrelevant to future generations. And this is the key to understanding the two most polarized cross-currents of modern society.

99.9% of humanity is time oriented. This vast majority subscribes to one of two directions: progressives look to the future; fundamentalists answer to the past, and it is interesting that in 2008, the two candidates for President of the United States were such wonderful examples of these opposing points of view. It's easy to draw distinctions between Left and Right, between conservatism and liberalism, between a belief in government responsibility and a confidence in free-market efficiency. However, what's really telling are distinctions of orientation. The election of Barack Obama was, for progressives, a triumphant battle in an elaborate war, a war not of ideology, but perspective.

It's interesting to follow each perspective to it's end:

The fundamentalist extreme adheres to books written thousands of years ago to determine how we should live, and therefore, force others to live in this modern age. It fully ignores the potential of the current and future climate to be affected by different premises than those of the past. It believes we have already been given the solutions to our problems, and if we ignore these solutions, we will continue to head in a wicked direction.

The progressive extreme looks to theories, new operational methods, and developing technologies to bring humanity to a healthier and more just state. It questions the efficacy and worthiness of past cultures and considers the ways of orthodox social systems to be irrelevant. The progressives believe a better world lives in the yet to be discovered, and that the ignorant ways of the past will only hold us back.

Most of us subscribe to a tricky combination of these two ideals. The older generation usually leans to the former, and the youth unsurprisingly lean to the latter. There is value to both, and there is a strong tension, especially in an election year with a divided citizenry. However, time moves in one direction, and no fundamentalist network is powerful enough to prevent our culture from following suit. So, as we are catapulted through an accelerated reality made up of God Particles and mini black holes, we really have no choice: we can look back and pray that our faith will be rewarded, or we can look ahead and know when to duck. Based on President Obama's landslide victory, I believe the majority of us are looking straight ahead, and when the LHC starts humming this summer, we will be ready.