The God Particle is a nickname for "Higgs boson", which may also be called "Higgs particle" to avoid the technical jargon "boson". This particle is the origin of mass. Without the Higgs particle, all elementary particles would be massless; the Newton's gravitational law would be useless; stars, Earth and life would not exist. Fortunately, the space is filled with a sea of Higgs particles. Whenever an elementary particle is present, it may acquire mass through its interaction with Higgs particles.

The name "God Particle" came from Leon Lederman's book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?. Lederman initially wanted to call it the "goddamn particle," because "nobody could find the thing."; but his editor would not let him (reference). The existence of the Higgs particle was first proposed in the 1960s based on theoretical evidence. Experimental proof was not simple. A major purpose of the Large Hadron Collider located near Geneva, Switzerland is to test whether the particle does exist or not. As of today, the answer seems to be yes, but not conclusive yet.

The Higgs particle plays a vital role in modern physics. If it does exist, not only can the origin of mass be explained, the origin of virtually everything can be understood, including ..... God.

Tachyon

The Higgs particle is closely related to a very weird type of particle known as tachyon. This word is originated from the Greek ταχύς, which means "fast". A tachyon always travels faster than the speed of light. How can this be possible? According to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, the total energy of a particle moving at the speed v is given by

where m is the mass of the particle and c is the speed of light. We can see that the denominator of the above equation will become an imaginary number (whose square is negative) if the particle's speed v is greater than c. For any ordinary particle that we know of, its mass is real (whose square is positive). The resulting total energy would become imaginary if the particle travels faster than the speed of light. Since an imaginary energy has no physical meaning, the Theory of Relativity suggests that the speed of light should be the upper limit for any particle. Then, how can the tachyon moves faster than light? Was Einstein wrong?

The Theory of Relativity can still hold if the tachyon also possesses an even more peculiar property: its mass is imaginary. In this case, the total energy will become real because an imaginary number divided by another imaginary number is a real number.

Imaginary mass? Faster than light? You may think this whole thing is just nonsense. In our three-dimensional (3D) world, we never observed any particle with these two bizarre properties. However, the string theory - which deals with the ten dimensional space - does predict the existence of such particles. As discussed in Chapter 4, a particle's properties can be obtained by solving the fundamental wave equation in the string theory. In principle, the string theory has the capability to know all kinds of elementary particles, including those that may exist outside our 3D world. A few solutions do contain imaginary masses. In the 1970s when the imaginary mass was first discovered in the solution, string theorists simply ignored them. Now they realize that these solutions may correspond to different types of tachyons, whose relationship with the Higgs particle is like water and ice.

A tachyon is not stable. It will quickly decay to a more stable state, where it does not have these two bizarre properties any more. Just like water at the freezing temperature is no longer called "water", but "ice", the stable state is called the "Higgs boson" (reference).

The tachyons and their stable counterparts, Higgs particles, could be the origin of virtually everything, including the Kingdom of God.

The Origin of the Big Bang

It has been known that shortly after the Big Bang, there was an inflation period during which our universe expanded at a speed faster than light. The inflation period may correspond to the phase transition from the tachyon state to the Higgs state (reference). The Higgs particles are not very stable either. They may decay to other elementary particles - all particles that constitute our ordinary matter are possible (reference). Therefore, the tachyon/Higgs particles are likely to be the origin of all ordinary matter in our 3D world. The question is: where did these tachyons come from?

According to the string theory, the 10D space may contain a special structure called brane, which may be considered as a sub-universe with up to nine dimensions of space. There are many branes in the 10D space. Our 3D world is one of these branes. Conceivably, some tachyons in the 10D space may collide with a brane, resulting in its explosion. However, to cause the Big Bang requires a huge number of tachyons bombarding the brane simultaneously. Besides, the properties of the elementary particles produced by Higgs particles must be exactly right (reference):

• If the strong nuclear force were slightly weaker, multi-proton nuclei would not hold together and hydrogen would be the only stable element in our 3D world. If it were slightly stronger, hydrogen would rapidly fuse into helium-2.
• If the weak nuclear force were slightly larger, little or no helium would have been produced from the Big Bang. As a result, heavy elements such as carbon could not be made.
• If the electromagnetic force between electrons and protons were changed, atoms and molecules would be significantly different.

In addition to ordinary matter, our 3D space is filled with dark energy and dark matter. The role of dark energy is to overcome the gravitational attraction so that our universe can expand, while dark matter serves as the seed for the formation of galaxies. It is unclear what kind of particles they are made of. Nor do we know if they have direct relationship with the tachyon or Higgs particle. In any case, their participation makes the creation of our universe less likely to be just a coincidence.

The Origin of God

Most of you may agree that "God" can be defined as the creator of our 3D world. Suppose God lives in the 10D space, but outside of any branes. Then, He could carefully select the tachyons with all required properties to bombard our brane. Other auxiliary particles could also be added, if necessary, for the creation of our universe. The assumption of God can explain the fine-tuned universe, but also raises the question: if God created us, who created God?

Well, this may not be an appropriate question. God does not need to be created by a higher being. There is another possibility. The Kingdom of God might arise from .... hummmmm..... many religious people may not like this idea: evolution.

If no higher being could create God, then evolution is the only answer. God is a highly intelligent entity, He could not suddenly appear out of nothing. This possibility is even smaller than the spontaneous creation of the Big Bang. A more likely scenario is that, in the 10D space, tiny elementary particles were created from tachyons. As time proceeded, some structures equivalent to our atoms or molecules could be formed. Eventually, a habitable environment and life could be developed.

How can elementary particles be created out of nothing? According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, we cannot determine energy and time precisely. Therefore, a particle with certain energy may be created out of nothing without violating the energy conservation law. The spontaneously created particle, however, has a finite lifetime. The more energy is created, the shorter its lifetime should be. This phenomenon is known as the "quantum fluctuation". The temporary particle is called a "virtual particle".

In most cases, quantum fluctuation cannot create real particles that stay longer than the duration dictated by the Uncertainty Principle. However, if during its lifetime, a virtual particle can decay into other types of particles, then the new particle will have the lifetime independent of the original quantum fluctuation, but dependent on its own property. In other words, they are real particles. The unique feature of the tachyon/Higgs particles is well suited for the creation of real particles out of nothing.

Quantum fluctuation has been widely used to explain the origin of the Big Bang. However, as mentioned above, the Big Bang involves a huge amount of energy which is unlikely to be created spontaneously. The Kingdom of God should not have started from a big bang - which would indicate creation by a higher being. Rather, it might begin with sporadic creation of tachyons via quantum fluctuation. These randomly created tachyons would quickly transform to more stable particles equivalent to the God Particle, which could subsequently produce the elementary particles in the Kingdom of God.

Frank Lee
Last updated: December 17, 2011