There are few pastors about who can interact with the physics of the Higgs-Boson discovery. However, my UK friend, Pastor Roy Summers has a PhD in physics and is up to the task. He writes:
What is the Higgs Boson?
Over the 20th century, physicists discovered a whole zoo of elementary particles and a few forces along the way: particles such as electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos, along with some very exotic elementary particles that lasted for a moment in time, plus the forces of electromagnetism, weak force and strong force.
Now, the human mind is not happy with a disparate set of forces and particles. Something within us believes that there must be order and simplicity (where does this come from, I wonder?) and so physicists began to develop a “model” – a consistent theory – which would explain how all these particles and forces relate to each other. What emerged was “The Standard Model”, depicted in terms of the particles and force carriers, in the diagram.Everyday stable stuff around us is made from the first generation of matter (I in the diagram), with protons and neutrons made up of up and down quarks.
Unfortunately, the maths of the Standard Model, did not allow matter to have mass – a wee problem, considering our daily experience requires mass be accepted as a reality.
In stepped Peter Higgs, a clever Englishman who suggested a way out the mathematical quagmire of the early Standard Model. He suggested that if the whole universe was bathed in a field (the Higgs field) then particles could acquire mass as they passed through and interacted with this field. The maths worked too.
It is worth click through to read his conclusions. Read the rest here.
Feature that no one commented on this post. What a great post! Not because I have enough of a brain to comprehend theories of this sort, but because I love it when some one who does shows us how God is reflected in them. (I still like my x’s and y’s in my words and not my ciphers)