Part of my morning by the pool involved catching up a bit on my currently favorite magazine - wait for it, wait for it... Scientific American. Yes, I am a sci geek, but you knew that already. In any case, it's one of the only magazines I read, but I'm so busy with a million other things, I'm usually a month or two behind in reading issues.
I'm not a physicist, though I find physics quite fascinating, and this morning I was particularly intrigued by an article discussing some ideas surrounding a unified physics. If that sounds like Greek, don't worry, I won't go into the details in this post; but if you're interested in the article itself, you can find a preview here.
The article discussed some current issues in particle physics, particularly with respect to work being done at the Large Hadron Collider (a.k.a. the LHC, in Switzerland). Yes, this is the collider that some people thought would create a black hole and destroy the world when it became operational a few years ago; obviously, we're all still here, and that's another discussion for another time. Aside from its supposed apocalyptic potential, the LHC has also made news for its use in the search for the Higgs boson - better known to some as the "God particle." Again, this is another discussion for another time, but the Higgs boson being nicknamed the "God particle" has absolutely nothing to do with this particle being the origin of life, or God, or anything like that - the story behind the nickname is much more mundane than that - that's not what I want to talk about tonight, though.
The LHC hasn't found the Higgs particle yet. Of course, there is the possibility it might not exist. There's also the possibility that the LHC has detected the Higgs, but it's buried in data, and the scientists working on the project haven't uncovered its signature yet. Or, its signature is different that what is expected.
What the whole problem may come down to, and what was discussed briefly in the article I was reading this morning, is that the problem may really come down to detection. Currently, all efforts to detect the Higgs particle - and which are used to detect many other particles - are indirect observations. Researchers are looking for a signature, a trail, left by these particles, because they cannot observe the particles themselves, directly. Quite simply, the detectors available for these experiments cannot directly "see" what they're looking for - they only see the evidence that gets left behind. I'm sure technology will eventually advance to improve this, but it's not there yet.
As a spectroscopist, this is something that I'm familiar with. So often, we are detector-limited - the electronics we have in the lab detect finite energy ranges, at finite resolutions. Sometimes, in order to identify the presence of a certain element or compound, we have to look for its "signature" in another element or compound. Indirect detection.
For Christians, this is something we're also familiar with. We're "detector-limited" in many ways... we don't "see" God, but we see his signature in our lives and the lives of those around us. It's like that classic question, can you see the wind? No, but you can feel it, and you can see its effects. Indirect detection, if you will.
But sometimes, we're also "detector-limited" by our own hearts and minds - we only see what we want to see, we only love what we want to love - and not what God wants us to see and love... all of his creation, and all of his people. We don't have to wait for technology to improve to be able to see and love the way God wants us to. All we have to have are willing and open hearts.
+Peace and good.
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