Mike,
If the Higgs Boson is uncovered, it will lead to the next questions,
like: What compels its behaviour? Why is mass formed at all? Must
something be measurable or observable to be real? Is any of what is
objectively observed, real?
It's not the research that's getting beyond us, it's what becomes of the
findings that puts a pause on progress, and morphs into decades of fear
and destruction. We could easily have our needs met without compromising
this kind of scientific research.
Of course the Hadron Collider is relevant to this list. A third of the
world's top physicists are provided with work. They've just found the
beauty particle, or bottom quark, somehow previously discovered 1977. If
they can isolate anti-matter safely, though I don't know how that's
possible, we will have access to an amazing alternate energy. Then, the
world's elite can harness and exploit it. It will likely become the next
Atomic bomb thing, and just think of how many jobs that inspired. Hell,
not just jobs, but entire economic models based on defensiveness and
chronic states of war.
Search for antimatter may all be based upon the assumption of matter and
antimatter being asymmetrical. But, what if it isn't? What if it was
just a local spacetime condition only prior to the Big Bang? Well,
observing particles will keep the physicists from working on more
sophisticated weaponry. That's my skeptical side. My quantum solopsist
side has great hope for a scientific explanation of how mind (not just
exclusive to highly evolved bi-pedal hominids) focuses will to cause
wave function collapse. Is mind the hidden variable?
It's possible that mind is everywhere, not merely localized, as in
countless atomic minds merging to form one mind. Perhaps we became
atomically conscious? The Cabala claims that your soul will find you;
that your one higher self seeks to find your many scattered minds. I was
influenced by other material to arrive at the belief that it is mind
which tells brain what to do, not the reverse.
Natalia
Mike Spencer wrote:
Ed wrote:
For example, the CERN Hadron Collider is currently being used the
attempt to find the Higgs Boson. If it is found, it will move from
scientific theory to scientific reality.
My scientific study ran aground on the shoals of higher math somewhere
between statistical thermodynamics (which I got) and quantum physics
(which I didn't.)
So I don't understand the wave equation. But, eventually, I think I
may have gotten a notion of what the wave equation is *about*:
The wave equation is a *probability* wave. An electron isn't
*anywhere*. It exists, more or less everywhere, but it's not there,
not any place in particular. It's is just more probably in a certain
set of places, less probably in others with a negligible (but
non-zero) probability of being anywhere in the rest of the universe.
Until you observe it, that is, whereupon, it's precisely where you
observed it. Oy.
The scanning tunneling electron microscope works this way: You make a
very, very pointy thing and contrive that many electrons are very
probably near the point. Then you get that point very, very near to
something else, so near that there is an increased probability that
some of the electrons are on the other thing rather than on the pointy
thing. Then you try to observe them and, if the pointy thing is close
enough to the the other thing, some of them will be observed on the
other thing. Counting the electrons (if any) observed on the other
thing gives a measure of how close the pointy thing is to the other
thing and (by inference from some other constraints) the shape of the
surface of the other thing.
I don't know whether that's science, mysticism, metaphysics or just
rather arcane and high-brow humor.
If the Higgs boson is an object that, in some manner even more
incomprehensible that the above, causes other objects such as
electrons and neutrons to have mass but we can't observe one (if we
ever do) without expending enough money to repave all the roads in
Texas and enough energy to fire a 1959 Buick to the moon (not to
mention enough brain power to create a cure for cancer) then science
has gone beyond my reach as well as my grasp.
What does the existence of the CERN collider say about the status of
"Re-Designing Work, Income Distribution,Education".
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
- Mike
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that
remains is more and more precise measurement.
-- Lord Kelvin, 1900
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