God’s particle and COVID-19

With COVID-19 and its variants ravaging the world, one wonders if we are near the end of the world. But both religion and science have different interpretations on how the world was created and consequently how it will end.

The media call the Higgs boson the “God Particle” because, according to the theory laid out by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and others, it’s the physical proof of an invisible, universe-wide field that gave mass to all matter right after the Big Bang, forcing particles to coalesce into stars, planets, etc.

Since I was young we were taught simply that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The biblical interpretation comes from the gospel written by John, 1:1.

As the Apostle John starts his Gospel, he lays down some vital theology. Jesus is God’s revelation to humanity, which is why John calls Him the Word. Jesus was there from the beginning with God because He is God. He didn’t just appear when Mary gave birth to Him. It is essential to have the mindset that Jesus was there from the beginning and part of what we call the Trinity. That consists of God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is true for believers of the biblical interpretation, which I find fitting at the beginning of a new year. There is always optimism at the beginning of a new year, and rightfully so. Part of that optimism comes from the fact that Jesus will be with us through whatever happens. He was here from the beginning.

John does not talk of any scientific principle on how the world (the universe) began. His gospel draws from theology and for believers, there is nothing to fear.  How does one reconcile this with the science explanation on how the world began? With the Higgs boson theory of the God particle?

The Higgs boson is an elementary particle in the standard model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In 1964, Higgs, along with five other scientists, proposed the Higgs mechanism to explain why some particles have mass. (Particles acquire mass in several ways, but a full explanation for all particles had been extremely difficult.) This mechanism required that a spinless particle known as a boson should exist with properties as described by the Higgs Mechanism theory. This particle was called the Higgs boson. A subatomic particle with the expected properties was discovered in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMSexperiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The new particle was subsequently confirmed to match the expected properties of a Higgs boson.

On Dec. 10, 2013, two of the physicists, Peter Higgs and François Englert, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their theoretical predictions. Although Higgs’ name has come to be associated with this theory (the Higgs mechanism), several researchers between 1960 and 1972 independently developed different parts of it.

If you’re talking to a physicist about the Higgs boson, whatever you do, do not call it by its media-hyped nickname the “God Particle.” You’re almost guaranteed to elicit a wince, a grimace, or at the very least a flash of mild annoyance.

The phrase “God Particle,” from the 1993 book “The God Particle” by Leon Lederman, was plastered across the front pages of news outlets everywhere when the discovery of the particle was announced in 2012. “God Particle discovered” is a much sexier headline than “Higgs boson discovered,” but most physicists, including Higgs himself, hate the term, regarding it as sensationalism.

With the mystery of COVID-19 and its infinitesimal smallness, it is tempting to class it with “God’s particle.”