Cosmology - CathNews New Zealand https://cathnews.co.nz Catholic News New Zealand Wed, 14 Aug 2013 04:25:14 +0000 en-NZ hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://cathnews.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cropped-cathnewsfavicon-32x32.jpg Cosmology - CathNews New Zealand https://cathnews.co.nz 32 32 70145804 A universe from nothing? https://cathnews.co.nz/2013/08/16/a-universe-from-nothing/ Thu, 15 Aug 2013 19:12:56 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=48546

Most things sound convincing when Morgan Freeman says them. The host of Through the Wormhole and the voice of God himself recently told told Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show that the Higgs Boson "explains everything - creation." "Oh oh", replies Ferguson, "that's not going to be popular." The "science puts God out of a job" Read more

A universe from nothing?... Read more]]> Most things sound convincing when Morgan Freeman says them. The host of Through the Wormhole and the voice of God himself recently told told Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show that the Higgs Boson "explains everything - creation." "Oh oh", replies Ferguson, "that's not going to be popular."

The "science puts God out of a job" trope has been championed by a number of scientists in recent times. "We have discovered," says Lawrence Krauss, "that all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing. In this sense ... science makes it possible not to believe in God."

Krauss is in Sydney to debate the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" - the traditional starting point for an ancient argument for the existence of God. Kraus, of course, is a cosmologist, known in the field for his work on the cosmological constant and dark matter, and to the wider public for books such as The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. Krauss's opponent is the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig. He has built a career around the philosophical defence of theism, and is best known outside academia for his many public debates with atheists.

I am, like Krauss, a professional cosmologist and astrophysicist. I've also interacted with a philosopher or two, and I've read a lot of Craig's work. So I thought it might be opportune to offer a guide to the uninitiated.

Science versus God

There is a temptation among the opponents of God to defend the following argument: "Science, science, science, science, science, science. Therefore the universe is all there is." The assumption is that science will automatically push God out of reality.

What is science? Here's what I try to do in my day job. Physics uses a rather peculiar approach to studying the universe. We can translate physical (measured) facts about the universe into mathematical facts about a "model" of the universe. Mountains of data are neatly summarised in a few equations. Having made the leap into mathematical space, we look for mathematical facts corresponding to measurements we haven't made yet - in other words, predictions. We can then, for example, build a 27 km long, multi-billion dollar machine under France to smash protons together at ludicrous speeds to see if we were right about a type of particle predicted on paper in 1964. This actually works. Continue reading

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A universe from nothing?]]> 48546 Vatican scientists welcome discovery of "god particle" https://cathnews.co.nz/2012/07/10/vatican-astronomer-welcomes-discovery-of-god-particle/ Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:29:56 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=29186

Brother Guy Consolmagno, a researcher and spokesman at the Vatican Observatory, has described the probable finding of the Higgs boson particle, the so called "god particle", as an important achievement. While it has no direct bearing on theology or revelation, the scientific discovery hailed by some as the "god particle" is an important achievement, Br Read more

Vatican scientists welcome discovery of "god particle"... Read more]]> Brother Guy Consolmagno, a researcher and spokesman at the Vatican Observatory, has described the probable finding of the Higgs boson particle, the so called "god particle", as an important achievement. While it has no direct bearing on theology or revelation, the scientific discovery hailed by some as the "god particle" is an important achievement, Br Guy says.

Theoretical Physicist Fr. Gabriele Gionti also from the Vatican Observatory says "It is a wonderful piece of science.

"The fact that we see this harmony in nature, like the harmony that is in the Higgs particle, the fact that we now have a mechanism and a particle that is able to explain how to give mass to other particles, is not against the fact that there is a benevolent God who created the Universe," said Gionti. Listen to interview

The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs who, along with others, proposed its existence in 1964. The existence of the Higgs boson and the associated Higgs field would be the simplest known method to explain why certain other elementary particles have mass. In this theory, an unseen field permeates all of space; various other elementary particles obtain mass when they interact with it.

"God particle" is the name physicist and author Leon Lederman gave to the Higgs boson in his book "The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?" It's meant to communicate the importance of the particle to the understanding of physics; Lederman has also said that he settled for the "God Particle" because the publisher rejected his intended title, "the Goddamn Particle". Higgs, himself an atheist, does not agree with the "god particle" nickname as it "might offend people who are religious".

One of the primary goals of the Large Hadron Collider ("LHC") at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland—one of the most complicated scientific instruments ever built—was to test the existence of the Higgs boson and measure its properties which would allow physicists to confirm this cornerstone of modern theory.

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