The Large Hadron Collider and the Hubris of Science

So, apparently tomorrow (September 10th), CERN will be circulating the first protons in the Large Hadron Collider in an attempt to find the elusive Higgs Boson. Why should you care?

Well, some would say you should care because of the ever so slim chance that it could create a miniature black hole and of course destroy us all. As I understand it, however, this exciting possibility is mostly fantasy. In the remote chance that it does create a miniature black hole, it would be incredibly unstable and be gone in a blink of an eye.

Why you should really care is that there is a tremendous amount of scientific knowledge riding on this experiment, namely the standard model. For those of you unfamiliar, I'll give you the basic gist as described by an artist. I highly recommend you read all about it though, it's terribly interesting.

The Artist's Gist

The standard model is basically about the smallest constituents of "matter", the building blocks of well, everything. These particles make up everything you see. The standard model is the mathematics that tie it all together. Imagine Einstein's E=mc2 but several pages in length and completely mind numbing.

So, what's the problem? Well basically the standard model seems to allude that no particles have mass at that level. But, we experience mass on a daily basis, so where's it coming from? In order to compensate for this, there is what's called the Higgs Field. Basically, this is some kind of field which permeates everything and which "slows down" some elementary particles, giving them mass. Now, the only way to verify this field's existence is to find it's corresponding particle: enter the Higgs Boson. This particle has been labeled "The God Particle" because it's the keystone to making the standard model work and "completing" our understanding of the basic building blocks of nature.

These alleged particles where only in existence during the Big Bang, so in order to verify them, we need to smash protons together at such a speed as to break them apart , singling out the Higgs Boson. Up to now, we've not had particle accelerators powerful enough to do the trick. The Large Hadron Collider developed by CERN has this potential. But, the success/failure of this experiment is more than just possibly finding the Higgs Boson.

As I understand it, if we do not find this Higgs Boson in this experiment, it simply means it doesn't exist. In turn, it unravels the Standard Model and science has got some splainin' to do, Lucy. So, tomorrow we'll apparently find out if our greatest minds over the past decades have actually figured out life or whether our universe is far more mysterious and elusive that anyone could have imagined.

I'll have more to say on this later but sufficed to say that I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the latter option. I have a hunch that this cosmic circumstance we find ourselves in is far more complex than we can ever truly comprehend and thus maintaining the mystery of life and a humble attitude to it's wonder.