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New Frontiers Science. Non-technically it can be understood as the quantity of material stuff in a body. Mass is something fundamental for material reality since its absence leads to a chaotic situation. Elementary particles will simply fly around aimlessly with lightning speed, being unable to bind together to form atoms. In that case, the universe, as we have it now, will be impossible. To get a clearer understanding of the place and significance of the God particle we need to situate it in the context of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, a comprehensive theoretical framework which explains the structure and operations of the universe. Developed from 1960 onwards, this model describes the world of elementary particles in terms of 12 matter producing fermions (6 quarks and 6 leptons) and 4 force-carrying bosons. Fermions and bosons are the two general categories into which elementary particles have been divided. The name ‘boson’ has been given in honour of the Indian scientist, Satyendra Nath Bose, who wrote a groundbreaking paper, “Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta” in 1924 which laid the foundation for Bose-Einstein Statistics. Despite its great success, this Standard Model remained incomplete because the fundamental property of mass was left unaccounted for. Hence in 1964 Peter Higgs, R. Brout and F. Englert, G.S. Guralnik, C.R. Hagan and T.W. Kibble added one more boson to the list, known as Higgs boson, to remedy this serious lacuna. This Higgs boson eventually came to be popularly known as the God particle. The Large Hadron Collider of CERN Higgs bosons invest material bodies with mass by a process known as the Higgs mechanism, according to which somehow the Higgs energy field is created in the universe. When particles move around in this “sticky” field, they interact with and attract Higgs bosons in varying numbers, thereby having lower or higher mass. Particles like photons are unaffected by this field, and are, therefore, considered massless (zero rest mass). Although all other particles predicted by the Standard Model were already detected, Higgs boson remained elusive till recently. This can be explained in terms of the special nature of this boson. Particle masses are measured in terms of GeV (gigaelectronvolt, a unit of energy equal to one billion electron volts), and the mass of the Higgs boson is about 125 GeV. Such a highly massive particle cannot be produced and detected under normal conditions for a number of reasons. First, its production requires a very high energy situation. In fact, it is found that these bosons were produced a few nanoseconds after the Big Bang, the only natural source where such enormous energy was available. Secondly, they decayed very fast into lower particles making direct observation impossible. Their occurrence is inferred by carefully scrutinizing their decay products. With the discovery on 4 July 2012, the last particle predicted by the Standard Model was detected. The God Particle of the Godless Scientist Despite its highly technical nature, with almost no immediate practical benefit for ordinary humans, the announcement of 4 July has captured the attention of people from all walks of people. Undoubtedly, the secret of this unusual popularity is the catchy name ‘God particle.’ However, as many have pointed out, including Guy Consolmagno, the internationally reputed Jesuit astronomer of Vatican Observatory, Rome, this boson has no direct linkage to God, religion or theology. Leon Lederman, the Nobel laureate, introduced this name in his popular book of 1993, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? He himself admitted in his television interview with science writer Joanna Rose in 2001, that he was not referring to a theological God, but a philosophical God. He clarified that he was using ‘God’ here as a metaphor for nature. However, a careful reading of his book, particularly chapter 2, reveals that he was not fully innocent of “taking God’s name in vain”! In his own words, “This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle.” Initially he called it “the Goddamn particle” because that seemed “a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing.” However, his publisher talked him out this mischievous move, and persuaded him to call it ‘God particle,’ a title that guaranteed wide public attention and a welcome boost in the sale of the book. JIVAN: News and Views of Jesuits in India OCTOBER 2012 6
Cover Feature Lederman gives another reason for implicating God into this issue, one taken from the Bible itself. He draws a parallel between the Tower of Babel of the Babylonians in the Old Testament and the super powerful accelerator of contemporary science. In 1993 he was probably referring to the Tevatron of Fermilab, the second highest energy particle collider in the world with its 6.28 km ring capable of producing particles of energies up to 1 TeV (trillion electron volts). According to Lederman, both the Tower and the accelerator stood as striking symbols of human ingenuity and power. God was displeased with both these daring adventures of humans, and wanted to stop them. God put an end to the ambition of the Babylonians by giving multiplicity of languages, thereby confusing them and disrupting their unity. In a similar way, he thinks that God has put this Higgs boson in the universe “to test and confuse scientists” and prevent them from knowing “the mind of God.” Interestingly, Higgs himself in whose honour this particle is known in the scientific world, has distanced himself from this name. Despite being a professed atheist, Higgs says: “I find it (the name ‘the God particle’) embarrassing. Although I am not a believer, it is the kind of misuse of terminology that may offend some.” The Large Hadron Collider Higgs and others postulated the existence of the boson in 1964, but observational evidence for it came only in 2012 - after 48 years! It is well known that in the scientific world technology, and hence the practical dimension, always lags far behind theory. In the case of the God particle this was unavoidable since according to theory, these particles were produced a few nanoseconds after the Big Bang explosion, and they decayed into lighter particles almost instantaneously afterwards. Hence any detection of them is possible only if scientists can recreate the scenario immediately after the Big Bang, with its incredibly enormous energy – almost an impossible task! This marvellous feat was achieved by means of the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. This $10 billion mammoth ultramodern research laboratory of CERN is housed some 175 metres underground in a massive 27 kilometre circular tunnel in the Franco- Swiss border near Geneva. This has been an outstanding display of scientific ingenuity and constructive confluence of many cutting edge branches of contemporary science like Relativity, Satyendra Nath Bose’s God particle Particle Physics and Computer Science. This is also an admirable instance of international collaboration and global support. More than 10,000 scientists from over 100 nations, including some 150 from India, are actively engaged in this ambitious programme.The basic strategy of this device is to accelerate two beams of protons in opposite directions along the long tunnel until they attain near light-velocity. Then they are made to collide with each other producing a near Big-Bang energy scenario. This is possible since, according to Relativity at the speed of light any material particle is capable of attaining near infinite mass-energy. In this near Big Bang condition Higgs bosons are produced, and can be detected. Scientists working on the God particle project at CERN collected data from trillions of such collisions, analyzed them and found the presence of a particle having very similar properties attributed to Higgs particle at an accuracy level of 5-sigma. Some Scientific Implications a. Reconfirmation of Several Outstanding Scientific Theories Since this mega-project involved many scientific theories like Special Theory of Relativity, the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe, the Standard Model of Particle Physics, many theories of Computer Science, etc., a successful outcome of this project serves as a strong reconfirmation of all these theories. The Higgs boson was predicted by the Standard Model, but it had eluded experimental detection for decades. With its discovery, the last particle predicted by this model has been experimentally detected. This project also involved several aspects of the Theory of Relativity, like the relativistic increase of mass with velocity, the possibility of a material body attaining infinite mass-energy at the velocity of light, etc. This experiment has reconfirmed all these aspects of the Theory of Relativity. This project had recourse to some aspects of the Big Bang Theory of Abbe Georges Lemaitre. For instance, according to the theory, the Big Bang involved the near infinite energy situation and the Higgs bosons were formed a few nanoseconds after the explosion. The CERN announcement JIVAN: News and Views of Jesuits in India OCTOBER 2012 7
Page 2 and 3: By Kinley Tshering, SJ Garden Out o
Page 4 and 5: New Frontiers By Job Kozhamthadam,
Page 8 and 9: New Frontiers of 4 July, 2012, reaf
Page 10 and 11: Jesuits - Assistancy Assam governme
Page 12 and 13: Jesuits - Assistancy Students of th
Page 14 and 15: Interview Only love defeats exhaust
Page 16 and 17: Perception By William J. O’Malley
Page 18 and 19: Mosaic At least 3,000 people sought
Page 20 and 21: Jesuits - World Efforts to re-creat
Page 22 and 23: Jesuits - Asia Pacific Cardinal Sha
Page 24 and 25: Jesuits - World Why healthy people
Page 26 and 27: Jesuits - World Exiled Jesuit pries
Page 28 and 29: Obituaries G.V. Doorssealaer, SJ (M
Page 30: By Joseph Cardozo, SJ Lessons 10 Le

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