>> ^spawnflagger:
I wonder what his take on antimatter/dark-matter is? Is it something which is being created in the LHC?

Dark matter isn't being created in any human experiment yet.

When matter/antimatter is created, what happens is merely that energy goes from one form (kinetic energy in particles) to another (rest mass of matter). The same would go for dark matter if it was ever going to be created in an experiment.

I would assume that he also does not believe in a "soul" (defined however you want) and that humans (and any other intelligent life) are simply the sum of their biological components. (like God, the existence of a soul cannot be proven. I'm not trying to prove it, but I like to think that we are more than an amalgamation of cells and electricity)

I wonder what his take on antimatter/dark-matter is? Is it something which is being created in the LHC?

Also, what about observability? Is it possible for something to exist outside of our observable universe? Mathematically, we need 10 dimensions (+time) for string theory, so what if our observable universe is in a subset of those 10 dimensions, and there are many other universes for which it is impossible for our universe to interact? If you accept that, then one could argue that our big bang was caused by an unobservable event that took place in other (disjoint) dimensions. So, it's possible for "god" to exist (in another subset of dimensions), and to have created our universe, but it would be impossible for that "god" to interact with our universe in any way. I don't think this "god" is the God that religions speak of, nor the one that Scott the protagonist is trying to disprove. But I still think it's important just to point out that he was not thinking of extra dimensions...

Funny how he talks about the forefront of science in part 3, and mentions all the unsolved problems at the time of filming. All the problems he mentioned have since been solved, and it turns out reality is simpler than what he describes here, just like he predicted. For instance, we now know that there are 6 different quarks (plus the antiquarks) instead of 3, and that this simplifies the equations greatly.

The LHC is right now investigating the possibility of another property of physics called super symmetry, which if true would double the number of particles we know of. One or more of these new particles might turn out to be what the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the material universe is composed of. These are exciting times indeed.

Let me phrase it differently: science defines which laws exist by ruling out alternatives. So an experiment that yields a certain predicted outcome doesn't itself prove a law. I brought that up because while we can rule out our old theistic theories on how the world operates, we can't yet rule out other aspects of their beliefs. We just have our five senses, and with those senses we can create tools that have other senses, but there is always more that we can't detect. Prior to the microscope, we had no idea germs existed. Prior to the discovery of radio waves, we had no reason to think they existed either. Similarly, we can't rule out the possibilities of extra dimensions that intersect ours, or new forms of energy and matter. That is why science only works in negatives and probabilities. It means more than "nothing at all."

When it comes to my personal beliefs on existence (which aren't Christian), my own reasoning is that my consciousness existing just once is more improbable than my consciousness existing more than once, given that time is infinite or recursive. A once-off universe doesn't make sense to me. Also, the idea that the force of my awareness is the result of atomic matter alone is implausible. My awareness is as of yet undetectable and unmeasurable, and even finding the consciousness switch in our brains wouldn't make it any more measurable. It'd be like theorizing that your light switch generates the electricity in your light bulb. Regarding the idea of god, I don't see any reason to seperate out another being to be the cause of all existence. I much prefer the idea of the Tao, the singularity with infinite regressions, in which everything is relative rather than absolute.

I don't think atheists are bad people--I am one, after all--but I find that we don't have the same easy access to community-based support groups that our theistic neighbors do. Of course there are secular alternatives to everything religion does, they just don't come as easily or automatically.

Any kind of forceful movement creates an unhelpful backlash. The Taoist way is to let change happen naturally. Education and rising standards of living made more atheists than Dawkins and Bill Maher ever will.

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
But you just contradicted yourself... You say in one sentence that if the LHC fails to detect the Higgs boson, it'll be proven not to exist, and then you say that "what we can't prove doesn't exist" is a false statement.

Einstein's quote is correct, but it's meaning doesn't relate to what we're talking about. The best way to counter a scientific theory is by a single example of where that theory is fallacious. If someone were to claim that all odd numbers are prime, all you would have to do in order to "prove" him false is demonstrate that his statement fails in one specific point, like the number 9.

There is a massive difference between "what we can't prove doesn't exist" and "what we can prove doesn't exist, doesn't exist". The first statement actually should be "what we can't yet prove, may exist, but may not", which in scientific terms means nothing at all.

My gripe with your comment, though, wasn't because of the science remarks, but rather over the atheist ones. I'm not sure if you noticed it yourself, but your comment is built on a premise that atheists never do any of the good things Christians do, like participating in the community and so on.

I'm not sure why Christians believe Atheists are the scum of the earth. I don't know why you believe that if I don't believe in the story of the Jewish zombie who was his own father and is coming to save you, but only if you pretend to eat his flesh, drink his blood and communicate your desires to him telepathically, that makes me a bad person. I'm really not.

And about the argument from ignorance, believing in God is an argument from ignorance. You assert a claim that something exists, even though you yourself acknowledge there is no way to prove it, and that it has to be taken on faith alone. That is the very definition of an untestable theory. Your comment was based on the claim that religion is somehow superior, when the core of religion is the deity, or God.

To conclude, I'm a little annoyed right now at work, so don't take this post as me being offensive, please. It's really not meant that way. Maybe I should have put some emoticons all over it to express that

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
Science does in fact work through falsifiability. If the LHC doesn't end up finding a Higgs Boson, then the Higgs Boson theory in its present form will have been disproven. That is just how science and experimentation works. "What we can't prove doesn't exist" is an inherently false statement and incorrect world view because there are countless things we cannot test or prove that must exist. To quote Einstein, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

I wasn't arguing from ignorance because I wasn't asserting an untestable theory. All I said in my comment was that many religious practices have personal and societal benefits that atheists tend to undervalue because they are associated with religion. I've seen data that supports my theory.

But you just contradicted yourself... You say in one sentence that if the LHC fails to detect the Higgs boson, it'll be proven not to exist, and then you say that "what we can't prove doesn't exist" is a false statement.

Einstein's quote is correct, but it's meaning doesn't relate to what we're talking about. The best way to counter a scientific theory is by a single example of where that theory is fallacious. If someone were to claim that all odd numbers are prime, all you would have to do in order to "prove" him false is demonstrate that his statement fails in one specific point, like the number 9.

There is a massive difference between "what we can't prove doesn't exist" and "what we can prove doesn't exist, doesn't exist". The first statement actually should be "what we can't yet prove, may exist, but may not", which in scientific terms means nothing at all.

My gripe with your comment, though, wasn't because of the science remarks, but rather over the atheist ones. I'm not sure if you noticed it yourself, but your comment is built on a premise that atheists never do any of the good things Christians do, like participating in the community and so on.

I'm not sure why Christians believe Atheists are the scum of the earth. I don't know why you believe that if I don't believe in the story of the Jewish zombie who was his own father and is coming to save you, but only if you pretend to eat his flesh, drink his blood and communicate your desires to him telepathically, that makes me a bad person. I'm really not.

And about the argument from ignorance, believing in God is an argument from ignorance. You assert a claim that something exists, even though you yourself acknowledge there is no way to prove it, and that it has to be taken on faith alone. That is the very definition of an untestable theory. Your comment was based on the claim that religion is somehow superior, when the core of religion is the deity, or God.

To conclude, I'm a little annoyed right now at work, so don't take this post as me being offensive, please. It's really not meant that way. Maybe I should have put some emoticons all over it to express that

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
Science does in fact work through falsifiability. If the LHC doesn't end up finding a Higgs Boson, then the Higgs Boson theory in its present form will have been disproven. That is just how science and experimentation works. "What we can't prove doesn't exist" is an inherently false statement and incorrect world view because there are countless things we cannot test or prove that must exist. To quote Einstein, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

I wasn't arguing from ignorance because I wasn't asserting an untestable theory. All I said in my comment was that many religious practices have personal and societal benefits that atheists tend to undervalue because they are associated with religion. I've seen data that supports my theory.

Science does in fact work through falsifiability. If the LHC doesn't end up finding a Higgs Boson, then the Higgs Boson theory in its present form will have been disproven. That is just how science and experimentation works. "What we can't prove doesn't exist" is an inherently false statement and incorrect world view because there are countless things we cannot test or prove that must exist. To quote Einstein, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

I wasn't arguing from ignorance because I wasn't asserting an untestable theory. All I said in my comment was that many religious practices have personal and societal benefits that atheists tend to undervalue because they are associated with religion. I've seen data that supports my theory.
In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
>> ^Lodurr:
Science doesn't say "what we can't prove doesn't exist"; science says "what we can disprove doesn't exist." That's the distinction in which I find many atheists to be on the wrong side.

You are wrong, sir. It's "what we can prove exists". Science will never attempt to prove a negative. If a scientist told you he managed to disprove God, you would only change your own definition of God and say "A ha, science, you are the one who's wrong".

What you are doing is called Arguing from Ignorance, which basically means you maintain that something is true because no one proved it isn't.

If we were to actually debate the merits of religion, God and why your particular faith is the correct one, you would not be able to finish the argument without invoking either the "Because the Bible says so" or "God did it" arguments. In the place of the words "Bible" or "God" insert the names of your holy scripture and deity, as are relevant to your particular faith.

*dupeof=http://science.videosift.com/talk/Cool-LHC-webcam

I see the LHC is working by the black hole consuming the earth

"Religious" implies being part of a larger belief structure. Supernatural beliefs (ghosts, souls, universal consciousnesses) are not necessarily religious. I'm mainly concerned with what (if any) evidence is considered in forming a belief. Atheism is generally seen as applying to a belief in god(s), though I personally extend it to any belief which cannot be tested or observed. Believing something is possible is different than believing it is true.

Likewise, believing somethings are more likely than others, is different than holding no belief at all. If anything, I'm probably closest to a Deist, or some such. You are right however, I should have used a term like personal "spiritual" beliefs.

I will gladly answer this question, but given the nature of the question I must first ask you to define "consciousness". My answer will depend on your definition. I do not believe in "free will", if that helps any.

And this is exactly my point about any deity. Until you define the term, I'm agnostic. There is a simple reason why, depending on how you define the term, my answer would change.

If it makes no predictions then I'm not sure what we would be testing. If it cannot be tested then I wouldn't elevate it to the level of relativity or quantum mechanics. Still, I'm not sure how a particle accelerator of that magnitude would prove the existed of god(s).

It can be tested, just with a particle accelerator a quadrillion times more energetic than the LHC. For all utilitarian purposes, it's untestable.

Refreshness on theoretical physics should be always welcome , however to be technically careful with new proposals is mandatory !
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"Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Published: 6:02PM GMT 14 Nov 2007
Comments 596 | Comment on this article

The E8 pattern (click to enlarge), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right)
An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.
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Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).

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In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."
Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.
Although the work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos.
Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.
"Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.
"Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. "This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."
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The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.
He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation" for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.
The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.
But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: "The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in."
And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: "Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot."
Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.
E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."
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What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.
Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"
What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.
Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?" he says.
The crucial test of Lisi's work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.
"The theory is very young, and still in development," he told the Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelyhood to this prediction.
"For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online."

while i love the idea of science looping back to faith in a science fiction context, and would love to see a proper film on the subject, but the number of people who in reality believe this AND truly understand these theories they are discussing is probably fairly near zero
anyone looking into these will see that there's a huge bunch of theories competing with eachother, waiting for LHC to finally give results to show which of them are false
if there's faith to be had in science, it's here
nothing wrong with exploration, but be sure to be ready to abandon it if or when the evidence contradicts it

He made a great point that most particle accelerators are in hospitals making isotopes for cancer medication. Next time someone hates on the LHC you can mention that little nugget.

>> ^NobleOne:
Why are they using the CERN to find the God particle?


I'll move off-topic a bit in defense of CERN and the LHC. Sorry, I can't help myself.

In short: they're not. First of all, the "god particle" is a dumb hype name popularized by the media for the hypothesized Higgs boson, a scalar particle the existence of which is predicted by the standard model of particle physics. The misconception is that, if found, it would 'explain all of physics', which is, again, a major overstatement. Secondly, they're using the LHC for a variety of different purposes - you should read the wikipedia article, because it's a fascinating experiment and people are, for the most part, largely ignorant or misinformed about it.

>> ^direpickle:
>> ^zomgunicorns:
so apart from answering some physics questions (according to the Wiki entry on the LHC), is there some end reason why they are doing this? Is there something they can use from the results to benefit mankind or are they just hoping to blow up the universe?

There is unlikely to be any direct benefit to mankind from the LHC aside from increasing our knowledge of the fundamental laws of the universe. I did see an interview with one guy from CERN claiming it could help us develop teleportation-type technology, but I think he was just trying to get the interviewer to care.
High-energy physics does tend to push the technology envelope, though, which often forces advancements that are useful in other industries. The world wide web was born at CERN.


Goddamn realists. What do any of the ventures of mankind do to further our goals and what are our goals? To entertain and to be entertained. If I want to live longer I will eat an apple and go to the doctor regularly; if I want to continue my species, I will become well adjusted, find a mate and make babies; if I want to go to Heaven, I will pick up the Bible and trust Jesus Christ as my lord and savior; if I want to be a good citizen, I will sing the pledge of allegiance and -- Naw, I'm just kidding, I have nothing.

>> ^zomgunicorns:
so apart from answering some physics questions (according to the Wiki entry on the LHC), is there some end reason why they are doing this? Is there something they can use from the results to benefit mankind or are they just hoping to blow up the universe?


There is unlikely to be any direct benefit to mankind from the LHC aside from increasing our knowledge of the fundamental laws of the universe. I did see an interview with one guy from CERN claiming it could help us develop teleportation-type technology, but I think he was just trying to get the interviewer to care.

High-energy physics does tend to push the technology envelope, though, which often forces advancements that are useful in other industries. The world wide web was born at CERN.