By Michael Gerson, Friday, December 16, 5:09
AM
The God particle — really the
Higgs boson — still resists confirmation, though scientists at the Large Hadron
Collider recently reported “tantalizing hints” of its existence. They also
reject the notion that their search has anything to do with God, which is only
technically true.
Modern physics can explain just
about everything, except why anything has mass. The Standard Model of physics,
which emerged four decades ago, employs an elegant mathematical formula to
account for most of the elemental forces in the universe. It correctly
predicted the discovery of various leptons and quarks in the laboratory.
But the equation doesn’t explain
gravity. So the Standard Model requires the existence of some other force that
seized the massless particles produced by the Big Bang and sucked them into
physicality. The detection of Higgs bosons would confirm this theory — which is
why scientists are smashing protons into one another in a 17-mile round
particle accelerator and picking through the subatomic wreckage.
It will take a few more years for
definitive results. But most scientists don’t seem to appreciate the glorious
improbability — and philosophic implications — of the entire enterprise.
In 1928, theoretical physicist
Paul Dirac combined the mathematical formulas for relativity and quantum
mechanics into a single equation and predicted the existence of antimatter.
Antimatter was duly discovered in 1932. But why should a mathematical equation
— the product of brain chemistry — describe physical reality? It is not
self-evident that there should be any correspondence between mathematical
formulas and the laws of the universe. Modern physics does not consist of
measured phenomena summarized in elegant equations; it consists of elegant
equations that predict measured phenomena. This has been called “the
unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.” However unreasonable, it led to the
construction of the Large Hadron Collider along the border of France and
Switzerland, the largest machine ever built by human beings.
Dr. Ard Louis, a young physicist
teaching at the University of Oxford, recalls his first encounter with Dirac’s
equation. “How can mathematics demand something so fantastical from nature? I
was sure it couldn’t be true and spent many hours trying to find a way out.
When I finally gave up and saw that there was no way around Dirac’s result, it
gave me goose bumps. I remember thinking that even if I never used my years of
physics training again, it would have been worth it just to see something so
spectacularly beautiful.”
Louis describes a cumulative case
for wonder. Not only does the universe unexpectedly correspond to mathematical
theories, it is self-organizing — from biology to astrophysics — in unlikely
ways. The physical constants of the universe seem finely tuned for the
emergence of complexity and life. Slightly modify the strength of gravity, or
the chemistry of carbon, or the ratio of the mass of protons and electrons, and
biological systems become impossible. The universe-ending Big Crunch comes too
soon, or carbon isn’t produced, or suns explode.
The wild improbability of a
universe that allows us to be aware of it seems to demand some explanation.
This does not require theism. Some physicists favor the theory of the
multiverse, in which every possible universe exists simultaneously. If
everything happens, it is not surprising that anything happens. But this is not
a theory that can be scientifically tested. Other universes, by definition, are
not accessible. The multiverse is metaphysics — just as subject to the
scientific method as the existence of heaven.
One reasonable alternative — the
one advocated by Louis — is theism. It explains a universe finely tuned for
life and accessible to human reason. It accounts for the cosmic coincidences.
And a theistic universe, unlike the alternatives, also makes sense of free will
and moral responsibility.
This is not proof for the
existence of God. But the conflict here is not between faith and science; it is
between the competing faiths of theism and materialism, neither of which can
claim to be proved by science. Modern physics has accelerated smack into the limits
of the scientific method. It raises questions it cannot answer but that human
beings cannot avoid — matters of meaning and purpose. This is not a failure of
science, just a recognition that measurement is not the only source of meaning.
Our response to nature’s
astounding symmetries is not only rational but aesthetic. Some, like Louis,
feel goose bumps and thankfulness. Others are angered by such sentimentalism.
Yet this would be a sad epitaph for modern science: It revealed wonders but was
numb to wonder.
(Gerson writes about politics, religion, foreign policy and global
health and development in a twice-a-week column and on the Post Partisan blog)
