For eighteen anxious months CERN super collider scientists have been racing ATOMS around a circular track at close to the speed of light in order to produce atomic smashups. Collisions burst open each atom and send particles, and the hopes of CERN’s scientists, flying off in all directions. In doing so, scientists hope to re-create the teenage excitement of blowing up Coke bottles with cherry bombs. They also expect to find the Higgs boson.
The Higgs boson is a subatomic particle which, like most of the small bits and quarks of subatomic physics, has never been seen or heard from. Yet for the most part, as long as detection monitors register a tangled chaos of particle tracks flying away from the point of atomic collision – ike teenagers escaping a midnight party drug raid – scientists will acknowledge that the subatomic world has some pretty good substance.
However, the Higgs boson hasn’t laid down its tracks and, thus, is mostly predicted to exist. That is, certain differential equations balance out only if the Higgs boson, often called the God particle, leaves an algebraic signature.
According to the mathematics, the earth can support up to three hundred physicists who have the ability to read the Higgs equations. While this postulate has never been tested, it is well known that ninety six scientists required two weeks bed-rest after writing out the Higgs equations.
In any case, according to the Higgs equations, the Higgs boson–or God’s own particle– creates the Higgs field.
The Higgs field also has never been seen and thus, lies abandoned somewhere in this universe, avoiding being hit by property taxes and stray dogs.
According to theory, without the Higgs field, particles would have no mass. Without mass every breathing human being would be an empty void, flitting about like neutrinos and flying unimpeded, by the trillions, straight through miles of the earth’s rock crust and magma core every second. Thus, without the Higgs boson every person on the earth would have the TV journalist’s ability to bombard a two hundred mile wide block of lead with political commentary and still not raise its IQ one point.
In the past, rather than spending billions of dollars to build circular race tracks to smash up speeding atoms; humankind searched for the source of the universe’s existence by smashing chairs, beer bottles and pool sticks together at barrooms. In these collisions, as well as those between armies carrying shields, swords, and spears, God was to be found mostly in the grand scheme of things; while the devil was found clogging up the details.
Now a CERN physicist, working until 3 am each night, searching through millions of photo detection-plates, claims that he has found Jesus. In doing so, the physicist has upended scientific theory, and legal contracts, by asserting that it is not the devil, but Jesus, that lies in the details. And the discoverer, who refuses to disclose his name or arrest record regarding cherry bomb explosions, claims that by finding Jesus ascending out from each atomic collision, he has provided circumstantial evidence for the existence of Higgs God particle.
Scientists and religious scholars remain skeptical; questioning what Jesus would be doing inside the nucleus of every atom. Both groups insist that hemmed in by quarks, the strong force, and radio-active decay, the message of Jesus could lose its gravity and could decay into a charm quark or even implode into a neutron.
Religious scholars claim that the ghost-like tracks of CERN’s photo detection plates only represent subatomic angels ascending into heaven after a night of dancing on the head of a plastic disco-pin.
America’s Republicans asked CERN scientists to search the detection plates for signs of a new Presidential candidate. Physicists say they have found several particles with a rightward spin, no mass, and oscillating electric charge, but which disappears from view in micro seconds. Republicans say they already have candidates that fit that description.
Meanwhile scientists, and Catholics, are debating if a subatomic Jesus could perform the miracle of giving the universe mass. Thus, scientists are uncertain if the subatomic Jesus meets the requirements to be the Higgs-God particle.
Church organizations asked that the CERN super-collider shut down for a year, while they unravel the meaning of a quantum edition of the Ten Commandments. Scientists say that they would be willing to shut down CERN if, for compensation, the churches provide them with two millions bottles of church wine — and three million cherry bombs.