The Big Bang – it happened, thank God.

I was worried, as I am from time to time, that we’re not here in spite of all appearances – all this extraordinary diversity of life on Earth, the sun, the moon, us – none of this really exists.  Thanks to Herranen, Markkanen, Nurmi and Rajantie, in their piece just published in Physical Review Letters, I feel reassured, at least for the moment.

Herranen and co-authors theorize that it does not take any new kind of theory to explain why the universe didn’t collapse some 13.8 billion years when the Higgs boson appeared.

Phew!

Remember the big splash the Higgs boson made in the summer of 2012?  It’s is one of those subatomic particles that the Standard Model of physics suggests should exist and, in 2012, after some $13.25 billion dollars of research, a bunch of scientists confirmed that indeed the thing exists.  Not bad – about a dollar a year, every year, since time immemorial.

The Higgs boson was given the popular name, the God Particle because it is the particle that gave mass to the other subatomic particles.  Without it, we’d be massless.  The problem is that cosmologists working at a different facility, one called the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2, or BICEP2, provided data that, in combination with what we learned from the Large Hadron Collider about the Higgs boson, suggested that shortly after the Big Bang (like less than a second!), the universe should have collapsed.

Proof of the Higgs boson.

In other words, the God Particle was a capricious little thing that, though it made the universe interesting by giving its particles mass, in the act of so doing, it destabilized the universe.  Our baby universe should have collapsed back into itself.  The Big Unbang should have followed the Big Bang.

Thank God it didn’t.

The fact that the universe did not collapse must, for some, confirm the existence of God, and the fact that the God Particle is not a capricious little thing that could have destroyed the baby universe, is a great relief to them.  It’s a bit convoluted, this thinking, but it goes something like this.  Scientific Creationists believe in the exceptionalism of our species – God loved us most out of the all the millions of species ever created.  Like any group of people that think themselves exceptional, they are terrified by any idea that may prove them not to be exceptional.  Thus, to be related to and on equal footing with birds, morpho butterflies, monkeys, and whales is a terrifying thought.

It’s hard, when you have lots of siblings and you thought you were your parents’ favorite, to discover that you’re not.  Creationists are so mad at this fact of unexceptionalism revealed by evolutionary biologists, that they go through incredible lengths to try to dismiss evolution – but they never win this “debate” they invented.  This constant defeat is doubly frustrating to them, I’m sure because not only can they not win the very debate they invented, they must also accept that their parents love all 8.7 million of their children equally.

Personally, that’s a kind of love I find much more comforting than exceptionalism.  Parentally-invoked exceptionalism creates huge pressures on kids.  I speak from experience.

Since Scientific Creationism was struck down by evolution, creationists have been working to make the alternative view, known as Intelligent Design, scientifically prove human exceptionalism.  The basic idea is that if something in the long history of the universe should have snuffed us out and it didn’t, then there is nothing random or capricious about the universe – it’s all part of an intelligently designed plan.

For them, the fact that the God Particle did not destabilize the cosmos serves as further proof of Intelligent Design.  God made all the particles and forces to have just the right properties so that the universe did not collapse shortly after creation.  Then, 10 billion years later, starting with the primordial ooze on the baby Earth, birds, morpho butterflies, monkeys, whales, and some 8.7 million other species now exist.  They built a magnificent, robust, vibrant and beautiful biosphere, though it took a while – over 3.8 billion years.    God’s endgame was clearly to create an exceptional species that would appreciate His work.

To subscribe to Intelligent Design does mean having to give up Scientific Creationism and give up tilting at evolution, but perhaps this is a small price to pay to feel like God loves us most.

So, thank God for our investment in the Large Hadron Collider and BICEP2!  They proved the God Particle exists and the Big Unbang did not happen.

It is convenient, of course, from time to time, to come to the conclusion that what surrounds us isn’t real.  Maybe I have no committee meetings this week.  Maybe all those things I’m supposed to do, but haven’t gotten to, aren’t real.  Maybe these bills I have to pay are an illusion.

Alas, to put it simply, as Herranen and colleagues explained, though it is terrifying that “If H ≫ 109 GeV, the inflationary fluctuations of the effectively massless Higgs field immediately trigger a transition to the false vacuum as the probability density at the barrier scales as P ∼ expð−8π2Vmax=3H4Þ,” they found that “for a high inflationary scale H ≫ Λ¯ max ∼ 108 GeV the UV-induced (subhorizon) curvature corrections alter the SM Higgs effective potential significantly during inflation.”

OK, I’ll be honest.  I look at it this way – they say that the more you think you understand the Standard Model, the more you can be certain you don’t, so I’m proud to say I really don’t think I fully understand Herranen and Co., which means I get what they’re saying – the universe didn’t necessarily have to become unstable and collapse once the Higgs boson entered the scene.

So maybe God has been watching over us since the beginning and all this is real and I do have to go to meetings and I do have to make those deadlines and I do have to pay those bills.  It also should mean, for the Scientific Creationists and subscribers to Intelligent Design, we could very well be an exceptional species.  If you believe that, then we should be saving the living world that supports us, just as God would.

Wrecking the Biosphere – not what an exceptional species would do. Red represents fires we set.