Particle Physics



Parallels between the God Particle and the Hard Problem of Consciousness

The cover of the new issue of New Scientist highlights the improvements made to the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, not only the world’s most advanced atom-smasher, but the most sophisticated piece of technology ever built by humankind.  The cover says, “Forget the Higgs, Now we’re searching for the root of reality.”  Meanwhile, at the other  end of the scientific spectrum, neuroscientists remain lost in the quagmire of solving the so-called hard problem of consciousness, which, according to David Chalmers is “the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences.” So with the Large Hadron Collider, the question is whether physicists will find the answer to the mystery of the universe in computer-generated images of colliding subatomic particles.  With the hard problem of consciousness, the question is whether neuroscientists will find the secret to the vivid, three-dimensional awareness we call consciousness in the firing interactions between brain...

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News Flash: The World is Not Made Out of Particles

In a  recent article, What is Real?, published in Scientific American, Meinard Kuhlmann, Professor of Philosophy at Bielefeld University in Germany, breaks the news: the world is not made out of particles after all. This conclusion may come as a shock to the vast field of particle physics and the thousands of physicists working at the $6 billion Large Hadron Collider in Europe.  As Professor Kuhlman writes, “one must conclude that ‘particle physics’ is a misnomer: despite the fact that physicists keep talking about particles, there is no such thing.” Quantum theory, in fact, spelled doom for particles almost 100 years ago, but modern physics has not quite absorbed this point into its worldview.  Quantum theory, as Professor Kuhlman writes, is based upon on the fundamental precept that no such thing as a particle can be localized in a particular place or time; Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle forever dispelled the notion that we...

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