Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

Good morning. Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the so-called ‘God particle’, or to give it its proper name, the Higgs boson, the sub-atomic particle which gives other particles their mass. The discovery took place at CERN, the massive scientific complex in Geneva, with its famous Large Hadron Collider. Thirty years ago, while researching for a book, I found myself inside one of the tunnels at its American predecessor, Fermilab. It was a bit like a tunnel on the London tube. While bison grazed above us on the lush grass of Illinois, scientists working underground accelerated particles to unbelievable speeds and made them smash into each other, leaving traces of ever smaller and more elusive entities. At CERN, they now have a new quest, this time for the mysterious dark matter which, theory suggests, makes up the larger part of our universe. This dark matter has been described as ‘the holy grail’ of physics, and if discovered, would complete, challenge or overthrow our understanding of what the universe is, and how it came into being. The scientists I’ve met who’ve been involved in this quest are extraordinary people, driven by a thirst for knowledge of ultimate things. Few of them were religious in a formal sense; the culture of science tends to be agnostic and for some there was almost a passion to disprove the notion of any creator. But they reminded me in an odd way of hermits and monks; their hard work, rigorous schedules, single-mindedness, and commitment to truth. Some of them spoke of how they had originally been drawn towards fundamental science by the night sky and the mystery of stars and galaxies. Every Sunday in Church we say the ancient Christian creed, ‘We believe in One God, maker of heaven and earth and of all things, visible and invisible’. The dark matter is currently invisible, but to identify it through interactions with particles we already know, would bring it out of darkness. Finding dark matter might even help to resolve the problem of how the large-scale map of the universe, described by Einstein’s relativity theory can be reconciled with the small scale map of quantum mechanics. Some believe that if we cracked that, we would know everything. But I’m not sure that the itch for discovery would end. That quest, that desire for truth, that I have seen in many men and women of science is not only of the head but of the heart, and as a Christian believer, while I thrill to the excitement of the quest, I think this world ultimately rests on what is undiscoverable except by humility, prayer and love.