The whole within which we find ourselves at every conscious moment is a miraculous gift that we take for granted in our culture. Everything can be understood inside the world, so we believe in science – except for the qualia (like color) and also for the Now which both are non-existent in physics (although this is almost never mentioned).
For 4 days now, something that unlike the qualia and the Now exists within rather than outside the scope of science is just as baffling: the Higgs field. As Matt Strassler explained two years ago, the everywhere constant Higgs field is responsible for the masses of all elementary particles – without an exchange of particles being involved — provided it will be discovered experimentally via the signature of a first field-specific particle. Thus an immutable constant influence makes itself felt inside creation for 4 days. The freshly discovered Higgs particle can be called the first unmistakable miracle found in nature, because it reflects the presence of an everywhere constant field of unknown origin.
The discovery comes with a price tag which is none of its own fault. The machine made to find it was designed so as to also generate a second totally new animal in the hope that at least one of the two would be found: miniature black holes. The latter have eluded finding so far we are told, but this is not certain: a double success cannot be excluded.
This is because a trivial new implication of Einstein’s “happiest thought” of 1907 revealed that black holes possess radically new properties. The latter cause black holes to arise much more readily and make them invisible to CERN’s detectors. In addition they grow exponentially inside matter. Therefore if one specimen gets stuck inside earth, the planet will be eaten inside out after an asymptomatic period of a few years, so as to assume the size of a chestnut while retaining its gravitational influence on the moon.
No one likes this new implication of relativistic physics, published in the African Journal of Mathematics. In the current euphoria about the newly discovered Higgs miracle (a discovery planned to be made more significant by doubling the cumulative collision number during the remainder of the year 2012), there is no chance anyone will waste a thought on this unrelated second possible success of the LHC experiment. Hence no one cares about the new “safety report,” overdue after 4 years, or about the “safety conference” kindly requested by a court on January 27, 2011. When the most illuminating finding of history is waiting to be investigated further, a second sensational effect has lost all interest even if not uplifting but maximally dreadful in character.
Only if Professor Higgs himself spoke up in favor of a brief break in the experiment before the planned doubling in luminosity, would humankind get a chance to have the still valid proof that the dream result achieved is accompanied by the worst nightmare of history, punctured before continuing.
I need to talk to Professor Higgs immediately to win his sympathy and support. Is someone kind enough to introduce me to him?
P.S.: My anonymous colleague Bernd and I discovered today that the Higgs field is (like mass and charge) subject to a locally imperceptible reduction proportional to the gravitational redshift valid relative to the distant stars.