By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent

Results from the Tevatron particle accelerator in Boston released yesterday closely mirror the “hints” of the Higgs observed at the Large Hadron Collider late last year.

Because the two rival laboratories found strikingly similar evidence for the elusive particle despite having used different methods to look for it, the findings independently support the growing belief that the Higgs has been pinned down at last.

But even when taken together, the two sets of evidence are not strong enough for physicists to officially claim a discovery and some leading scientists still believe the particle does not exist.

The Higgs Boson is the last missing piece of the Standard Model which details what the universe is made of and how particles within it interact, but still only exists in theory because it has never been detected. Physicists using the Large Hadron Collider at the Cern laboratory in Switzerland expect to confirm or rule out the existence of a Standard Model Higgs by this autumn. (if this gets further pushed back, it might occur around Dec. 21, 2012-Editor’s note) Rest of Story HERE….

As WBBM Newsradio’s John Cody reports, Dr. Robert Roeser, a physicist at Fermilab in Batavia says computer analysis of particle tracks suggest, but don’t yet prove, they’ve found the elusive particle.

LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio’s John Cody reports

“A Higgs boson is an, at the moment, hypothetical particle, which if it existed would give scientists and explanation for how the fundamental particles that make up our universe have mass,” Roeser said.

As the Straight Dope explains, the Standard Model of quantum physics succeeds in explaining the relationships between electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force that holds atomic nuclei together, and the weak nuclear force that relates to radioactivity. But the model does not take into account the force of gravity, and fails to explain why subatomic particles such as electrons and quarks have mass.

Scientists believe subatomic particles gain mass by interacting with the “Higgs field,” a quantum field that fills all of space. The hypothesis is that this interaction involves, in essence, Higgs bosons sticking to the subatomic particles and thus gaining mass.

A Wikipedia article on the subject describes the Higgs field as “as a pool of molasses that ‘sticks’ to the otherwise massless fundamental particles that travel through the field.”

And why is the Higgs boson called the “God particle?”

The Straight Dope says the term was popularized after a book of that title, written by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman.

“Lederman says the God particle was so named because (a) it’s short for ‘goddamn particle,’ presumably owing to the difficulty of establishing its existence, and (b) finding proof of said existence would help us understand the ‘mind of God,’” the Straight Dope’s Cecil Adams wrote in 2009.

The Wikipedia article dismisses the term “God particle” as “generally disliked by the scientific community as media hyperbole that misleads readers.”

Scientists scanning collider data at CERN in Switzerland have reported data traces of the Higgs boson, and now the Fermi crew is reporting they have found similar data from the now shuttered Tevatron at Fermilab.

Dr. Roser says there’s 1 in a 100 chance the scientists are wrong, but they need only a 1 in 3.5 million chance they are wrong before certifying the conclusion that they have discovered the Higgs boson.

Peter Molyneux leaving Microsoft and Lionhead Studios- The video game genius behind the Fable series, the Black & White series, and Populous has announced that he is leaving the game developing company he founded for something “really amazing, scary and brave.”

Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/320795#ixzz1oRukQzlz

Evidence of Higgs boson found in U.S. collider data- Recently analyzed data from a defunded American particle collider in Batavia, IL shows that the elusive Higgs boson, the smallest theorized particle of matter, may have been found.

Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/320796#ixzz1oRuxD2mb

CHICAGO — Scientists say they are even closer to proving the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle” that supplies mass to matter and would complete Albert Einstein’s theory of the universe.

Analyzing data from some 500 trillion sub-atomic particle collisions designed to emulate conditions right after the Big Bang when the universe was formed, scientists at Fermilab outside Chicago produced some 1,000 Higgs particles over a decade of work.

“Unfortunately, this hint is not significant enough to conclude that the Higgs boson exists,” said Rob Roser, a physicist at Fermilab, near Chicago, in explaining the findings being presented on Wednesday at a conference in La Thuille, Italy.

The image scientists have of the short-lived Higgs particles, which almost immediately decay into other particles, is still slightly “fuzzy,” Roser said.

[np-related]

The probability that what physicists detected is not a Higgs boson and is instead a statistical fluke was 1 in 250, which is near the threshold of 1 in 740 that physics has set to establish proof of a sub-atomic particle’s existence.

The hunt for the Higgs boson is significant because it would show the existence of an invisible field thought to permeate the entire universe. The Higgs field was posited in the 1960s by British scientist Peter Higgs as the way that matter obtained mass after the universe was created during the Big Bang.

According to the theory, it was the agent that made the stars, planets and life possible by giving mass to most elementary particles. Some gave it the nickname the “God particle.”

Discovery of the Higgs would also complete Einstein’s Standard Model of Physics. If it does not exist, scientists would have to search elsewhere for how particles gained mass and why they are not merely shooting aimlessly through the universe.

The weight of Higgs particles found at Fermilab was consistent with those detected at the more powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, at the CERN research center near Geneva, Switzerland.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is hot on the trail of the Higgs boson and hopes to gain proof of the particle before its accelerator temporarily shuts down at the end of 2012 for an upgrade.

Before Fermilab’s four-mile (6.3-km) -long Tevatron was closed for good in September 2011 and the particle accelerator baton handed to CERN, scientists pushed the collider to produce as many sub-atomic collisions as possible.

The two circular accelerators operate differently, Roser said. Fermilab’s accelerator fired protons at antiprotons, while CERN’s 16.7-mile (27-km) -long accelerator creates collisions between two beams of protons.

An analogy posed by physicist Gregorio Bernardi in a statement released by Fermilab was of two people taking a picture of a child in a park from different vantage points.

“One picture may show a child that is blocked from the other’s view by a tree. Both pictures may show the child but only one can resolve the child’s features. You need to combine both viewpoints to get a true picture of who is in the park,” he said.

Physicists from around the world are at work at both laboratories, with hundreds still laboring at Fermilab analyzing the data from its experiments.

“We’ve used up most of our data” at Fermilab, Roser said. “We’ll do a few more experiments and try to have a final answer in June.”

The Large Hadron Collider

CERN

In the hunt for the Higgs boson, which is key to understanding why matter has mass, two teams of physicists using results from a now-closed American accelerator have come up with similar findings to those announced late last year by researchers at the more powerful Large Hadron Collider in Europe. While the scientists using the two accelerators have not found the elusive subatomic particle, they both have narrowed the area where it can be found, if it exists. And they know where it isn’t.

Work done in the Tevatron collider at the Fermi National Lab near Chicago provides important independent confirmation of the getting-closer announcement last year by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva, researchers said. The results from work by more than 800 scientists were to be announced in Italy on Wednesday.

“Globally the world is starting to see a consistent picture,” said Fermi physicist Rob Roser, a spokesman for one team. “I don’t think there’s any place for the Higgs to hide. We’ll know the answer one way or another by the end of 2012.”

Roser said just because they have seen hints of the Higgs, it’s not enough. “I’m not even willing to bet your house on it, let alone mine,” he said Tuesday.

At Fermi, two teams independently used the accelerator in different ways. Two other teams in Europe used the Large Hadron Collider. Fermi’s Tevatron collides protons and antiprotons together, while CERN smashes protons together. That means four different groups using different techniques and equipment have come to the same general conclusion.

Still, that’s not certain enough for scientists to even call it evidence, Roser said.

While the results from Fermi’s collider aren’t as precise as CERN’s, they are important because they give the European results more credence, Harvard University physicist Gary Feldman said.

The Tevatron closed in September, so it is likely that the final discovery of the Higgs will be in Europe, Roser said.

The Higgs, first hypothesized 40 years ago, is important to physics because it is crucial to the standard model theory that helps explain the six particles that make up the universe, Roser and Feldman said. Without it, there is no explanation for why the particles have mass.

“It would be a triumph of the theory to actually see that it happens,” Feldman said.

(© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

There’s some glad news that’s come in today from the Tevatron at Chicago, IL. The analysis of the data it collected last year before shutting down in September shows an excess of events in the mass range of 115-135 GeV/c², with a precision of 2.8 sigma (97.4% CL). This result coincides with the ATLAS and CMS results declared on December 13 last year, providing the broader scientific community and the world the first glimpse of the Higgs boson.

The results were announced at the ongoing Moriond Conference - spanning seven days from March 3 to March 10 - in La Thuile, Italy, which opened with an address by Prof. Francois Englert, one of the contributors who shaped the Higgs mechanism. Ever since the ATLAS/CMS results came out, one important thing as far as the hunt for the Higgs boson is concerned that scientists have learned is the different ways in which the elusive particle can decay. They have used this information to add more readout channels to existing ones at the ATLAS/CMS (two W-boson channels for the former) detectors as well as at the CDF and D-Zero detectors at the Tevatron. Each of these channels will track and monitor one decay channel, or one mode of decay.

Because the Tevatron has shut down, the data it’s yielded is more or less final; the only improvisations that can arise will be from refinement of the data. At the same time, apart from the addition of channels, the LHC will also run at a beam intensity of 4 TeV/beam instead of the 3.5 TeV/beam it’s been running with in 2010 and 2011. This can be attributed to the encouraging results that have been returned by the experiments hunting for the Higgs boson. The bunch-spacing will remain at 50 nanoseconds.

After 40 years, more evidence is being reported Wednesday that the end of the biggest manhunt in the history of physics might finally be in sight.

Physicists from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., say they have found a bump in their data that might be the long-sought Higgs boson, a hypothesized particle that is responsible for endowing other elementary particles with mass

That is our problem. Do you know how hard it is to create something out of nothing? ITS JUST AS HARD NOW AS IT WAS THEN. No one has taken the time to think that MAYBE these old thinkers were on to something by dabbling in various fields rather than just one. MAYBE, the combined knowledge of things helped them see from a more enlightened light. IDK, it could be anything. Just remember, that is much easier to learn calculus than it is to create it. What they did is extraordinary. What we do today, with our fancy trinkets and machines, deserves little applause. One would at least hope that we enjoy it. But now, we work our people to the bone harder than indentured servants had to work. They got reprieve after 7-12 years, if I’m not mistaken. Most people today aren’t free till they’re 65, and by that time, all creativity and originality has fled: crying, kicking, screaming as it was dragged deep into the recesses of the mind.

I hope you people understand what I’m getting at. We need to take the future in our hands and CHANGE IT. The adults are doing it all wrong. We cannot and SHOULD NOT believe that what they have done is the ONLY way to do things. It is NOT. We have something greater than virtual reality. We have reality. And in this reality, we can do almost anything.

Let’s perform a social experiment. Let’s all be famous by tomorrow. How would you like that? A lot, I bet. I think I can help you become famous by tomorrow. How does that sound? Now there are probably a few questions bobbing around your heads: how do I propose to help you do that; if I know how to, why haven’t I done it already? Would you believe me if i told you I was waiting for the right thing to stand up and fight for? The right thing to stick by wholeheartedly and beat the world down for? If you think I am talking about love, you can waltz back to your romance novels and forget about this conversation. What I am talking about is a belief personal to each of us that drives us to do something. it may be a simple observation of the world: something that stirs us up and bubbles the anger that lies latent within. It’s time to use that to our advantage. Tomorrow, do something that will change the world. Do something that will catch everyone’s attention. Do something that could go down in history. It all depends on your action. WAIT, BEFORE YOU GO, A FEW GUIDELINES. FOR THE LOVE OF THE FEW THINGS THAT ARE GOOD IN THE WORLD, DO NOT: HURT ANYONE OR ANYTHING, DESTROY THINGS, BREAK LAWS, OR ANYTHING THAT IS JUST STUPID. THIS IS A CHANCE TO DO SOMETHING THAT YOU WOULDNT NORMALLY DO SO THAT YOU CAN GRASP THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD. IT IS TIME TO CHANGE THIS DAMN PLACE. I’M SICK OF PEOPLE CONSTANTLY MAKING IT WORSE. WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO CLEAN UP THE MESS THESE IDIOTS HAVE MADE. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? NO ERA OF PEACE AND AWESOMENESS FOR US. WE WILL BE THE TIME PERIOD THAT SLAVED AWAY TO CORRECT RIDICULOUS AND STUPID THINGS. LET’S NOT LET THEM CREATE THINGS THAT WILL BE ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT TO CHANGE/FIX. WE NEED TO GRASP THE WORLD BY ITS COLLAR AND SLAP IT OUT OF ITS MANIACAL ANTICS. IT IS TIME FOR THE CHILDREN OF TOMORROW TO BECOME THE DECIDERS OF TODAY.

Go out tomorrow (todaY, technically) and do something you will be proud of. It can be as big as you want it to be. Do something you might not normally have courage for (as long as its legal) and CHANGE THE WORLD in any way you can. Let’s show the world just how much power we have and how very upset we are that they our fucking up our futures, nay our present. Let’s do this. Get off your lazy ass and go do something.

Aside from what many people have gleaned about the God Particle from the book and movie “Angels and Demons”, the God Particle is special. Various subatomic particles give matter different properties, but the God Particle is the only one known that can give mass to matter. What that basically means is the God Particle creates something out of nothing.

For example, protons and neutrons have mass while photons do not. No one is sure how that can be, it just is. Somewhere, something has to be able to create mass, which is where the God Particle comes in. The God Particle can give mass to a mass-less photon, and if that is proved, it changes the way physics has to be looked at in the future. As importantly, it changes the way many people are looking at things beyond particle physics as well which is where the controversy comes in.

In the very near future at the Large Hadron Collider, subatomic particles will collide which is going to prove one way or another to a fairly certain degree if the Higgs Boson Particle is what has been theorized. If it is not, then the search for answers to the universe goes on. If the findings do back up what is theorized then it creates a scenario some find less than comfortable.

There are people that believe faith in a divine creator and science cannot mix. They do not believe in evolution aided by divine intervention, and they do not believe in the possibility that there is a subatomic particle that can in essence create life. To discuss the possibility much less provide proof is bordering on blasphemy to them.

If proved a reality, the Higgs Boson Particle opens the door to there being a way to explain the creation of mass. Previously, anyone that felt the creation of mass was impossible could always say “show me the proof! Create some mass for me!” Of course no one was ever able to, and the challengers could walk away safe in their beliefs. To be able to create mass causes a dilemma for those antagonists – something previously explained as an act only possible by the hand of a divine creator can be replicated over and over again in a lab. That creates a fear that maybe – just maybe there is no divine creator.

Certainly not everyone feels that way, so far it has only been some fringe organizations against the upcoming test that are predicting doom and gloom and calling it a sign of the apocalypse. Any challenge to their hard line faith has to in their eyes lead to the end of days. They predict the wrath of God, reign of evil, boiling seas, and on and on. They warn of a huge black hole opening over the Earth and swallowing it whole, or fires nothing can extinguish ravaging the planet.

For the most part however people around the world are excited and looking forward to seeing if the Higgs Boson particle is all that is advertised. In a survey of 1,322 adults that identified as people devout to their faith, 89% responded that if the God Particle was proved to be able to create mass it would in no way change the depth of their religious faith. To summarize what one gentleman pointed out, there is nothing saying that you can’t believe God created the Higgs Boson particle to do just what it is, and that discovering that won’t shake real faith.

The belief is that the God Particle will finally be isolated, and that when it is nothing will change in the daily lives of people not actively employed in the fields of particle physics. Some may have their religious faith shaken, others strengthened that such an awesome power exists. There is even a small camp of people claiming the Higgs Boson Particle is God. Then again there are plenty of people that will likely give the discovery a passing glance and go on with their day not thinking of it until it appears in the news again. The only thing for sure is that whether the God Particle experiment goes as planned or not, something will be learned, progress will be made, and time will move on.

Then again it could change everything. What if man learns how to replicate the creation of mass at some point? Will it destroy organized religion? Will something go catastrophically wrong when particles collide? Anything is theoretically possible. Yes, the God Particle may change the world, it just isn’t likely to be something that happens while any of us are on the planet.

While the Large Hadron Collider is looking for the Higgs boson, we’re on the verge oftwo huge antimatter-related breakthroughs. One could finally solve the universe’s oldest mystery, while the other could reveal strange new particles that are perfect for quantum computers.

The first result comes from CDF, one of the two long-running experiments at the now deactivated Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab. CDF physicists had been studying the decay of subatomic particles called D-mesons – particles made up of massive charm quarks that form in the decay of even heavier bottom quarks, which in turn decay into kaons and pions.

Late last year, the Large Hadron Collider announced that there was something strange about this decay process. According to our current understanding of physics, the amount of matter and antimatter created in this decay should have been within 0.1% of each other. But the decay actually varied by 0.8%, creating a small but significant imbalance between matter and antimatter that, over the course of the entire history of the universe, could go a long way to explaining why our universe is almost all matter and devoid of antimatter.

READ FULL ARTICLE AT IO9

In a scientific sense, experiments are more precisely defined. In an experiment we are trying to distinguish between competing explanations of the world. We may expect one particular explanation to be correct, but it isn’t necessarily a failure if we turn out to be wrong. Either way, we may acquire knowledge. There is still such a thing as a failed experiment though. Since the goal of an experiment is to distinguish between hypotheses, we may get to the end of the experiment and still not have managed to do this. The only knowledge we gain is that the experiment wasn’t good enough.

Let’s take, for example, the search for the Higgs Boson. In a formal sense, the overall search is not an experiment. If we believe that the Higgs exists, as the Standard Model predicts, then the search for the Higgs is a  search for confirmation, rather than trying to falsify any particular hypothesis. We could search for a long time and still not have disproven the existance of our shy God Particle. However, each individual experiment within the program is set up to be able to state confidently that the Higgs does not appear at particular energy levels. So CERN is generating new knowledge whenever they learn with confidence that a particular version of the Higgs isn’t there.

Contrast this with those unlawful hooligans and now almost certainly non-existent particles, the faster-than-light neutrinos. If it turns out that the measurements are untrustworthy due to a cable connection, this is a failed experiment. We have learnt nothing except to take better care with cables. If it turns out to be something more subtle, we may advance our experimental methods so that future findings can be more certain and less error-prone.

Concern about failed experiments entered my life during a recent grant application. I was designing an experiment to test whether Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) produced trustworthy results. When it came to discussing the size of the experiment and the types of controls, I realised that my experiment had three outcomes. The expected outcome was that FTA would prove not to be trustworthy. This would justify my reasons for wanting to conduct the experiment, since many people place faith in FTA. A negative result would not find the untrustworthiness that I was looking for. This would still be knowledge, even though it is a negative outcome. I would have given FTA a solid workout, and confirmed the faith that is placed in it. The third outcome is that my results would be within the margin of error, or confounded by factors in the experiment design – ie, I could not draw positive conclusions either way. This would be a true failure, the chance of which could be reduced by increasing the size and cost of the experiment.

Not all experiments worry about margin of error. In medical drug trials, for instance, failure to show effectiveness above a certain significance factor is considered the same as not showing effectiveness at all. This does not confirm the null hypothesis, that the drug has no effect, but the research community is far more concerned with finding definitely effective drugs than in certain knowledge about ineffective ones. This does not mean that medical trials cannot fail – it is still possible to discover flaws which invalidate the knowledge gained. For example, if the dropout rates of experimental and control groups differ beyond what the experiment allows for, the original statistical design is broken and the experiment has failed.

As a general rule, there is a trade-off between experiment cost and the chance of failure from known causes. A bigger experiment has better power to detect differences between groups and samples, and can put in place more controls to avoid confounding factors. One big experiment which succeeds provides much more certain knowledge than many small experiments which are unable to distinguish between different possibilities. It is often possible to ask in advance whether an experiment has the power to find the effect it is looking for. On the other hand, there are always sources of failure which can ruin even well designed experiments. A poorly connected cable on a particle detector is a very expensive and embarrassing way not to learn anything.

The ATLAS detector has its thousands of eyes set on discovering the God particle. (Photo: ATLAS)

by Nino Meese-Tamuri

Did you ever wish that you could eat an unlimited amount of that favourite treat of yours without gaining even an ounce? A quick trip on the scale, however, tells you that that’s not possible. So why isn’t it?

Researchers at the world’s largest physics lab at CERN are working hard to find out what gives mass to matter such as that delicious piece of chocolate cake.

The God particle – or Higgs boson as it is officially known – will solve the mystery that currently is mass. In everyday life, mass is one of the most basic and intuitive concepts. We are constantly confronted with its effects through gravity. Remember that sandwich or ice-cream you dropped the other day? That’s mass revealing itself through gravity! However, for physicists the source of mass is a complete mystery. What gives matter its mass? How does it do that?

In the late 1960s, Peter Higgs and five other colleagues had the idea that there must be an invisible field stretching throughout all of space and giving matter its mass. That field was called the Higgs field. Just like an object moving through honey, matter would interact with the Higgs field and the strength of that interaction is what would determine its mass.

Now that sounds like a great idea. A field that we can’t see or feel giving things mass through an unknown interaction. How would you prove such a prediction?

As it turned out, Higgs thought of that as well. Where there is now this undetectable Higgs field, there once must have been corresponding particles associated with that field. Those particles were Higgs bosons and that time was our universe much closer to the Big Bang. Back then – some 13 billion years ago – the newly born universe was much hotter. Just like water changes its properties based on the state it’s in (ice, liquid or vapour), so too did the Higgs bosons change their properties as they cooled down with the universe. They turned into the invisible Higgs field we have today.

So what are the research teams currently doing at CERN to find evidence of the Higgs field? You guessed it. Cranking up the temperature and boiling the Higgs field until a Higgs boson pops out. The 6000 scientists involved have to use the world’s largest and most expensive physics toy – the Large Hadron Collider – to reach the required energies. The particle accelerator speeds up two beams of protons to near light speed and then collides them head on. Scientists then search for hints of the elusive particle amidst the debris.

That hint seems precisely what the research teams saw last December. Now, what do scientists do at this point? Exactly, get more data to be absolutely sure. Most scientists at CERN, however, don’t need much more convincing. They believe that they did see the real deal. An official discovery is expected during the summer of this year. Then we will finally know who to blame for our disappointing scale read-outs: the god particle.

Now here is something to really blow your mind: As it turns out, the god particle seems to have a mass of its own. It is expected to be 125 times heavier than a proton. If the god particle is what gives mass to matter, then what gives mass to the god particle?

(Video animation: Chris Mann)

It has taken me the course of my previous letters to cover, at least in basic detail, what Science and Religion do offer and assemble pieces from both sides as a means of building the foundation of what I want to present. Thus, given that I reached the point in the last letter where I have covered everything that I can find from these two sources, it is now time to move on and present what I believe is the truth about us and our existence. However, I will also turn your attention back to the first letter where I covered something very important about truth… that it is impossible to know on your own because it first requires knowledge of all things in order to establish it with surety. Thus, no human can know the truth on their own. However, as we have discussed in these letters, every indication points toward the fact that there is a God, and if such is the case, then someone does exist who does know all things and consequently he (God) becomes the only hope for ever knowing the truth. Thus, what I am really saying is – let me present to you what I feel God has presented to me.

We have covered two basic questions in these letters, “Who are we?” and “What are we made of?” Well, what if I tell you that both of these questions have the exact same answer… intelligence. In the last letter, we covered the writings of Father Abraham where in his conversations with God, God referred to us as Intelligences. He also told Abraham that he was the most intelligent of all of the Intelligences. Well, this leads me to ask, “Who are the Intelligences?” “How many things fall into this category?” We know from the writings of Abraham that God is one of them and that we (humans) are also from among them, but what about other forms of life? Are animals Intelligences? Are plants Intelligences? Well, as far as I know, the answer is yes and it goes much further than that.

Science has spent so much effort trying to figure out what the basic building blocks of Matter are. At present, the smallest known particles are Quarks and Leptons, but Science already has evidence that these particles are made up of even smaller particles.

What is it that makes up all Matter? As we discussed, it is something that has a conscience. It is aware of our intentions and reacts to them. It has the ability of hear and obey God… so what is it? It is Intelligence. Matter is made up of the Intelligences and yes, you can use logic to go from there. We are Intelligences who have the experience of our existence at the hands of other Intelligences who work together to create the World and Universe that we live in, or better said, who work together to provide us the means of experiencing the World and Universe that we are experiencing.

Now, I know that this is as far out there as it gets, but it all adds up and it is the only thing I can conclude that does. That being said, I am putting this out there for the picking apart. I am hoping that if it is not true, that someone will show me the evidence that proves such. However, I have at been this for quite some time and to date… it all adds up. Let me go on.

What do we see when we look out in to the Universe. We see something that is almost too big to understand, galaxies by the billions that are continually expanding and moving away from us. We also find evidence that all of this at one time started from a single point and thus Science looks at this and concludes The Big Bang Theory. Well, what if it is true that we and everything else, including God, are Intelligences? What if we are Intelligences that have no beginning and thus were not created but have always existed? If this is the case, then there must have been a time when we existed without any order or form in darkness (because nothing would have existed to give off light). Now, what if the most intelligent one among us was intelligent enough to (1), want something better than an eternal existence as a lone intelligence in darkness and (2), knew how to organize the rest of us so as to bring us out of darkness by organizing us into various forms (matter or light) and thereby begin to create the universe? What if that Intelligence thereafter continued this work of organization and creation, drawing from an infinite number of intelligences, and continued on until this day? Would such then not appear as if, from one single point in space (for as far as I know, an Intelligence by itself has no size), everything else expanded out from and eventually became the Universe as we know it? Well… if so, then so many other things begin to make sense. I will continue in the next letter.

Until then…

Joshua

So far, we have only discussed the relationship that we have with God (he being our father), which is valuable information, but it only serves to tell us that we are the same thing that he is. It does not tell us what “specifically” that is. However, as we have discussed at length in these letters, trying to answer questions of this nature on any other terms than his is illogical. Thus, the only means we have to answer this question is Scripture.

We learn early on (first chapter of the Bible) that God made us, “In his own image”. This is actually very valuable information, given that God could have created us to look any way he wanted to and consequently differently than what he does. Thus, this information tells us that we look like he does, but it does not answer the question at hand. It does not tell us what kind of beings we are. Thus, we have to keep searching and, as far as I can find, there is nothing else in Scripture that answers this question. However, there are existing writings that do offer information on the subject. What writings are they? Well, this brings me back to what I referenced in my first letter, the writings of the Mormons.

Now, before I proceed, I must go on a bit of a tangent and tell my experience with the Mormons. During my struggle to grasp the concept that we are young gods (being children of a God), I presented the concept to an acquaintance that I have of religious background and found that he considered the concept heresy (which didn’t surprise me). However, he also accused me of getting it from the Mormons because that is what they believe. Well, I had not gotten it from them, but I was very interested to know of others who had arrived at this same conclusion. Thus, I sought them out and found that indeed they do believe this along with many other things that are quite unique. However, I did not get any new information from them (the members and missionaries of the church that I spoke with) that served to help me answer my questions. In fact, they too were quite uneasy about all of my thoughts and theories and although they did not accuse me of heresy, I could tell that further discussion with them would not serve any purpose and so I bid them adieu. However, they allowed me to keep copies of their books and I later discovered that these books do address many important concepts directly relating to what I have been searching for, including information that answers (or at least lends significant insight to) the question, “What kind of beings are we?”

The Mormon books that provide this information are ‘The Pearl of Great Price” and “The Doctrine and Covenants” (strangely I found nothing that addressed the topic in their main Book of Mormon). I will start with what I found in The Pearl of Great Price. This book is comprised of writings that the Mormon’s claim were written by Moses and Abraham (of The Bible), and it is the writings of Abraham where I found what I was looking for (Chapter 3). The context is that of God speaking directly with Abraham and teaching him about the creation of the Universe, i.e. the stars and planets etc. which conversation God used to set the stage for presenting another very important concept, a concept that sheds light on the question. I cannot do these writings any justice by paraphrasing, so I think it best to simply include them:

1 And I, Abraham, had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me, in Ur of the Chaldees;

2 And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it;

3 And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.

4 And the Lord said unto me, by the Urim and Thummim, that Kolob was after the manner of the Lord, according to its times and seasons in the revolutions thereof; that one revolution was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest. This is the reckoning of the Lord’s time, according to the reckoning of Kolob.

5 And the Lord said unto me: The planet which is the lesser light, lesser than that which is to rule the day, even the night, is above or greater than that upon which thou standest in point of reckoning, for it moveth in order more slow; this is in order because it standeth above the earth upon which thou standest, therefore the reckoning of its time is not so many as to its number of days, and of months, and of years.

6 And the Lord said unto me: Now, Abraham, these two facts exist, behold thine eyes see it; it is given unto thee to know the times of reckoning, and the set time, yea, the set time of the earth upon which thou standest, and the set time of the greater light which is set to rule the day, and the set time of the lesser light which is set to rule the night.

7 Now the set time of the lesser light is a longer time as to its reckoning than the reckoning of the time of the earth upon which thou standest.

8 And where these two facts exist, there shall be another fact above them, that is, there shall be another planet whose reckoning of time shall be longer still;

9 And thus there shall be the reckoning of the time of one planet above another, until thou come nigh unto Kolob, which Kolob is after the reckoning of the Lord’s time; which Kolob is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets which belong to the same border as that upon which thou standest….

16 If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them; therefore Kolob is the greatest of all the Kokaubeam that thou hast seen, because it is nearest unto me.

17 Now, if there be two things, one above the other, and the moon be above the earth, then it may be that a planet or a star may exist above it; and there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it.

18 Howbeit that he made the greater star; as, also, if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other, yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal.

19 And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am amore intelligent than they all…

What kind of beings are we? According to this, we are Spirits. Who is God? The most intelligent of all the Spirits… quite an amazing concept. The chapter then goes on to offer a bit more insight:

22 Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;

23 And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.

24 And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;

25 And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them…

Intelligences is the key word here. Directly after referring to us as Spirits, God refers to us as Intelligences. So, here we have in writing, something that claims to be directly from God via Father Abraham that tells us that we are Spirits or more descriptively, Intelligences. However, we now have to ask, “What is a Spirit? What is an Intelligence?” In trying to dig deeper into the matter, I found nothing else in The Pearl of Great Price, but I did find more in The Doctrine and Covenants.

The Doctrine and Covenants was written by the Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, and is written in the context of him receiving his writings directly from God (as is the case in other forms of scripture). The information that I found applicable to this question is in two different chapters, 93 and 131. Chapter 131 is an odd chapter that is comprised of an assortment of random and seemingly unconnected spiritual concepts that are all strung together, one of which is applicable to the question:

7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;

8 We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.

How interesting that what we find here brings us back full circle to the topic that we have spent so much time on in these letters… Matter, and if this concept is true, then we have something very important to add to the topic. As is, The Matrix Theory postulate’s that Matter is not tangible but rather the light created images that exist inside of the computer-generated world and universe that we live in, and we actually reside somewhere else where we are plugged into the program (just like in the movie). However, this new concept indicates that even our real selves (whatever and wherever that may be) are likewise made of Matter, albeit a purer form. Thus, in order to ever understand what kind of beings we are, we have to somehow conclude what Matter is.

Let’s go now to the 93rd chapter of the Doctrine & Covenants and see what we find:

29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.

We are made of Matter and when we use Science to investigate Matter, we do not find solid tangible substance, but rather conscious energy or light. When we use Religion to investigate Matter, we find that God declared this same thing long ago… that we are intelligence and intelligence is light, even the light that comes from truth. Thus, the questions that we end up facing are, “What is light?” & “What is truth?” Well, we will dive into that in the next letter.

Until then…

Joshua

The only source I know of that provides detail on how God made the Earth is scripture, and I understand that in using these writings, I am making yet another assumption… that they are accurate. However, given that the theory already assumes that God exists, then I believe it reasonable to also assume that he has provided some way for us to know of him and his works, and scripture is the only thing that I know of that claims to have been written under his direct influence. Also, I know that there are different versions of scripture, Bible, Koran, Torah, etc. However, as far as I can tell, all of these writings agree on how God made the Earth. Thus, I feel it acceptable to use these writings in order to cover this topic, and I will hereafter refer to them simply as scripture.

When scripture speaks of God creating the Earth, it states that his means of accomplishing the job was simply to speak, making commands and directing the existing materials (Matter). As he did this, Matter obeyed his commands and this process continued until he had formed the Earth the way he wanted it. Thereafter, throughout the course of history, scripture also speaks of many instances where God spoke (or he had a servant speak for him) and again, whatever was commanded was obeyed by the very elements, i.e. “the waves of the sea obey his command”. Thus, it would seem that whatever it is that Matter happens to be made of, and as we discussed in Letter 4, it is some pretty weird stuff, it apparently also has the ability to hear and obey God’s voice.

So with this, let’s return to the question that we have spent so much time on, “What is Matter made of?” Summarizing what we have previously discussed together with what we have discussed in this letter we get:

Matter is something that appears to be tangible, but is not. Rather it is energy that  has the ability to present itself to our senses as tangible substance.

Matter is something that is influenced by our conscious intentions and it reacts to our desires, at least in small measures.

Matter it is something that has the ability to hear and obey Gods voice, and has yielded complete control of itself over to him, reacting in exact obedience to whatever he commands.

Now, consider these points for yourself and tell me, what do you make of it? Can you see how I arrive at the Matrix Theory? If this theory were an exact representation of reality then the truth about the world and universe that we live in would be as follows: (1) Matter is the light-created images that exist in the computer-generated world and universe that God programmed; (2) we are the ones whom he programmed it for (plugging us each in for a time); (3) he is the master programmer; and (4) the computer and program are voice activated, synced with his voice. However, the analogy is not a perfect representation of reality, it is too simplistic and needs more detail. Thus, let’s add more detail by turning back to the questions, “Who is God?”, “Who are we?”, and “What is our relationship to him?”

We already have the answer, it is part of Assumption Two – “We are God’s children” which concept comes readily from scripture. However, we have not discussed what that means and considered how it ties into everything else. It is such a basic tenant of Religion that I think we simply hear it and move on, but the most important of all details lies hidden in the consideration of this concept. It is the key to making sense of all of this. If we accept the assumption that we are God’s children, then the obvious question that follows is… “Are we not then also Gods, for what child is not the same thing that their parent is?”

Now, I know that this concept doesn’t go over very well with most folks and in fact, I don’t much like it either. When it first hit me upside the head I could not accept it but, after a long while of struggling with it, I was forced to admit that (1) I wasn’t sure why because it is the obvious logical conclusion if you accept that we are God’s children and (2), my efforts to deny it left me feeling like my friends who believe in Evolution – angry because the facts and pure logic don’t add up the way I want them to. Thus, I found my little logical self at an impasse where I either had to accept this concept as possible or abandon it and start over in my search. However, I did not have then nor do I have now any idea where else to start. If I discard the concept of being a child of God, then I can’t seem to make anything else add up. However, if I just go with the concept, and apply it to all of the surrounding truths, it becomes the key piece of the puzzle that makes the rest of the picture come together. In the next letter I will delve into what I mean by this, but for now, think about it.

See you next time.

Joshua

Roger Bacon ('Doctor Mirabilis') was a Franciscan friar (1214-1294) whose emphasis on the scientific method popularized it and made it the experimental method of choice for hundreds of generations of scientists, and continues to be to this day.

This is, for many reasons, important. When the media get excited, they often raise the expectations from a particular news story: they ensure that the story is exciting, that it is sufficiently unprecedented so that it challenges existing notions enough to incite interest. And here’s where ‘guilty until proven innocent’ gets to work its magic. Science stories that are capable of becoming exciting have by definition a low chance of being valid. If there was a high chance of the story being valid, it would border on being expected, predictable; covering such an event would be more a chronicling than a witnessing.

By holding a phenomenon guilty, however, nobody would get sucked up in what could be a wild goose chase.

There are a bunch of “discoveries” that, because of their unprecedentedness, purchased interest from the media and allowed the men and women behind the pseudo-discoveries to cash in. One of the greatest examples is the Fleischmann-Pons experiment in cold fusion. When Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah announced that they may have discovered cold fusion on March 23, 1989, there was a flurry of excitement that rippled through military quarters, media offices and the scientific community. According to their paper, there were indications of micro-scale fusion reactions at temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius (as opposed to the millions of degrees they were expected to be at) when deuterium-water was electrolysed in the presence of palladium metal.

Martin Fleischmann

The timing couldn’t have been better. The 1973 Oil Crisis was fresh in the minds of many people and, seemingly in response to that, cold fusion presented an alternate source of energy that was accessible and more efficient by orders of magnitude. Moreover, just three years earlier in 1986, high-temperature superconductivity had been discovered. When earlier certain materials were thought to be superconducting only at temperatures as low as 4-10 kelvin, a new breed of materials were shown conducting with zero resistance at temperatures as high as 90 and 120 kelvin. Its impact on the discovery of cold fusion was the exculpation of the crackpot: it told the world that having crackpot written all over an experiment didn’t mean it couldn’t be true.

Fleischmann and Pons were superstars. Soon, a $25-million federal grant was coming the way of U of Utah. However, disturbing developments were being reported from western Europe, other parts of the USA and Japan. The paper Fleishmann and Pons had published in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry did not include the experimental protocol, but that didn’t stop scientists worldwide from trying to replicate the research. And they had all been in vain: none of those experiments had detected fusion of any kind at any temperature. In fact, Nathan Lewis, a professor of chemistry at Caltech, set about trying to corroborate cold fusion systematically, trying out all kinds of variations on the process. None of them succeeded.

While the Utah chemists basked in the glory of their finding and the (carefully selected) findings of other groups in America, that also claimed to have observed cold fusion, the death knell was sounded so far afield as CERN: Douglas R. O. Morrison, a physicist, announced that all attempts in western Europe at replicating cold fusion had failed. In order to quell these doubts, Fleischmann and Pons published a “note” in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry in April 1989 that showed a gamma-ray energy peak from their experiment.

Now, it was known at the time that gamma rays released by a fusion reaction could transfer only a certain amount of energy to the detector, which is reflected as a sharp cutoff in the peak after which the energy seems to plummet. The cutoff is called a Compton edge and wasn’t observed in the chart in the Journal. When alerted to it, the chemists refused to take any blame, continuously asserting that their experiment was error-proof.

After this incident, interest in the matter rocketed – and negatively. The New York Times published a scathing article on April 30, 1989, titled The Utah Fusion Circus. Its last lines effectively drew the curtains on cold fusion and sent Fleischmann, Pons and the U of Utah back decades in terms of their credibility and accountability.

For Mr. Pons and Mr. Fleischmann, the best bet is to disappear into their laboratory and devise a clearly defined, well-understood experiment that others can reproduce. Until they have that, they have nothing. As for the University of Utah, it may now claim credit for the artificial-heart horror show and the cold-fusion circus, two milestones at least in the history of entertainment, if not of science.

What ultimately made the difference was replicability: when scientists found that the experiment couldn’t be replicated, the game was lost. Fleischmann and Pons were held guilty to the end. Their exculpation was all the time hinged on their ability to assert that the experiment would occur anywhere irrespective of geographic location as long as the experimental setup was the same. Because of the nature of their experiment, there was a sizeable measure of urgency to establish priority: as far as anything immensely profitable is concerned, primacy makes all the difference. Woe betide if anyone else claim it first – all would be lost! And in that moment, facts are not checked as rigorously as they should be.

More recently, the same went for the misbehaving neutrinos. When other experiments around the world tried to replicate the phenomenon, nothing happened. In fact, a sister-experiment of OPERA (which first announced the anomaly) called ICARUS drew the curtains more than halfway down within three weeks of the exciting announcement.

The ICARUS experiment at Gran Sasso National Laboratory, Italy

Replication is many things. At the least, it is consensus. At the most, it is a form of characterization that removes a phenomenon out of its germane environment and blesses it with universality, as a result making it explicable within a logical framework and scientific. If the Higgs boson were to be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012, that will be the first step in a series of experiments on which hundreds of scientists and thousands of engineers will be involved for tens of months. They will check, and then they will check again. If someone somewhere finds that such a boson couldn’t be spotted, he won’t be snubbed but encouraged to speak up: the closer to the truth you get, the more careful you need to be.

Unfortunately for quacks everywhere, everything about science is the truth.

–

In a curious turn of events, the National Institute of Advanced Studies, India, recommended the Indian government to resuscitate research in cold fusion in 2008. Projects were commenced at IIT Madras, the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, and BARC. However, because of persistent scepticism among physicists at chemists, research was halted as of 2011. Find the ToI article here.