God Particle

Chapter 1

1

THE GOD

PARTICLE

If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is

the Question?

LEON LEDERMAN

WITH DICK TERESI

Delta

Trade Paperbacks

•I •

THE INVISIBLE SOCCER

BALL

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space;

everything else is opinion.

— Democritus of Abdera

there was a void—a curious form of vacuum — a

nothingness containing no space, no time, no matter, no light, no sound.

Yet the laws of nature were in place, and this curious vacuum held

potential. Like a giant boulder perched at the edge of a towering cliff . . .

Wait a minute.

Before the boulder falls, I should explain that I really don't know what

I'm talking about. A story logically begins at the beginning. But this story

is about the universe, and unfortunately there are no data for the Very

Beginning. None. Zero. We don't know anything about the universe until

it reaches the mature age of a billionth of a trillionth of a second — that is,

some very short time after creation in the Big Bang. When you read or

hear anything about the birth of the universe, someone is making it up. We

are in the realm of philosophy. Only God knows what happened at the

Very Beginning (and so far She hasn't let on).

Now, where were we? Oh yes ...

Like a giant boulder perched at the edge of a towering cliff, the void's

balance was so exquisite that only whim was needed to produce a change,

a change that created the universe. And it happened. The nothingness

exploded. In this initial incandescence, space and time were created.

Out of this energy, matter emerged — a dense plasma of particles that

dissolved into radiation and back to matter. (Now we're working with at

least a few facts and some speculative theory in hand.) Particles collided

and gave birth to new particles. Space and time boiled and foamed as

black holes formed and dissolved. What a scene!

As the universe expanded and cooled and grew less dense, particles

coalesced, and forces differentiated. Protons and...