Head on with Hadron

The search for the God particle leads to a collision, an answer – and an endless quest for a question.

550 feet below the Franco-Swiss border, a group of scientists convened, excited at the prospect of advancing technology. The touchscreen Ouija board that they gathered around had come alive - the laser pointer moved to form the word ‘universe’. They were puzzled - if the universe was the answer, what was the question? They hadn’t asked one.

 “Technology can find the question when pigs fly,” the critics snorted. Angry Birds made that happen. But the question still eluded them. Finally, a detective was summoned.

Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock Holmes never stated, "It's elementary, my dear Watson” or anything to that effect. Graham Bell did say "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you." And Crick (of the DNA fame) did announce, “Watson, we’ve found the secret of life”. But as for Holmes, he probably said that the game's afoot, which itself is borrowed from Shakespeare’s Henry V, thus leading to the other famous quote - 'When you've eliminated the source, whatever remains, however improbable, is your own quote'. The misquote however, could be attributed to a transmission loss over the ages. What he had actually said was, “It's hypothetical elementary, my dear Watson”.

Holmes was cryptically referring to the Higgs Boson, the world's first hypothetical elementary particle. Then came the key question - if something is hypothetical, how could it be elementary? This divided scientists the world over into two factions – those who espoused concern and those who chose to discern the truth. To avoid a collision course, they embraced common ground – CERN, and made a beeline for Geneva, Switzerland to the Large Hadron Collider, which was located in a deep tunnel, the same one at the end of which they had expected to find light. “Hadron? Doesn’t that sound a lot like Hades?” one of them asked. That’s when the others began to examine the close links.

Hades was associated with the underworld and the Hadron Collider was pretty much in the underworld, around 175 meters below the ground. Hadron is a particle that could be a proton. Hades was also known as Plouton (pardon the lisp). Did the answer – or rather, the question, lie underground?

Heads spun, vision blurred. The Large Hadron Collider seemed to spiral endlessly until it resembled… a large Mayan calendar. The concentric circles at the center, the spokes going outward, everything seemed to match. But the clincher was that the Mayan calendar was rumoured to end in 2012. “Did you say 12?” asked one of the scientists. “But everything in this universe is made up of 12 fundamental particles.”

And what plays a key role in giving these 12 particles mass? The Higgs Boson, also known as God’s particle! And it was the Higgs Boson that was being explored in the Large Hadron Collider. So the scientists were back to where they had started – 550 feet below the Franco-Swiss border.

Finally, a scientist lost it. “Look, we’ve been spending years looking for God’s particle, the Mayans and Sherlock Holmes. We’ve spent over nine billion dollars on the collider and are yet to find a thing. If only we had handed over the search to the guys who make twice that amount each year by just searching for everything on earth, including…”

“…the earth!” the others chorused. That was when they arrived at the question. So, if the universe is the answer, the question is - just how much can a Google search cover?