SOMETIME in 2012, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (more commonly referred to as CERN laboratory) in Geneva, Switzerland, announced that they had found the Higgs Boson, or the “God Particle”, so called after the title of Nobel physicist Leon Lederman’s “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?”, which contained the author’s assertion that the discovery of the particle is crucial to a final understanding of the structure of matter.
Higgs Boson is the carrier particle of the Higgs (named after physicist Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburg) Field – a field that permeates space and endows all elementary subatomic particles with mass through interactions with them.
Effecting proton-proton collisions via the Large Hadron collider at the CERN, the Higgs Boson experiments prove scientifically that an invisible energy field fills the vacuum of space.
Describing the quantum dynamics of the Higgs Field, Gregg Braden, American scientist and New York Times’ best-selling author, commented:
“It appears that everything is made of vibration but there is ‘nothing’ being vibrated. It is as if there has been an invisible dancer, a shadow dancing hidden in the ballet of the universe. All the other dancers have always danced around this hidden dancer.”
“It is as if we have observed the choreography of the dance, but until now we cannot see the dancer, the so-called “God Particle”, the properties of the base material of the universe, the heart of all matter which would account for the unexplained mass and energy that drive the universe’s expansion,” Braden added.
But the most revealing, if not stunning, empirical evidence of God’s thumbprint immanent or present in the universe and all life comes from mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot’s “fractal geometry of nature”.
A “fractal” is a rough geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole pattern – a property called “self-similarity”.
In a sense, each part has the same statistical character as the whole, or that each part, though limited in view of the whole, possesses the infinity of the whole.
This fractal principle of self-similarity is manifestly evident in the ubiquitous natural pattern and dynamics of the cosmic “spiral” which is considered the “intelligence or mind of God”.
One cannot fail to observe the properties of “symmetry, order, intelligence and logic, beauty, self-organizing and inter-connectedness” that are common to these “spirals” pervading in our universe.
This “spiral” pattern and dynamics can be observed in all natural patterns and life processes: from the galaxies to the ancient geographic spirals in Europe, North America, China and Asia; from our weather systems to the spiral vibration of water in our bath tubs; from the logarithmic spirals of snails, spider webs, fossils, sea horses, shells, to the pentagonal spiral pattern of star fish, slice of okra; from the growth spiral of life in plants, to the golden mathematical ratio in the arrangement of plant leaves and flower petals; from architectural geodesic dome structures, to coral structures, mushroom, and cabbages; from the spiral flying pattern of birds of prey to the self-assembling character in nano technology; from Jurassic creatures to phytoplanktons and simple cellular organisms; from the awe-inspiring pattern of the DNA to that of our human brain, and many more.
In all these spiral patterns and dynamics, it can be said that nature is indeed precise and extremely efficient.
From this fractal demonstration of the divine thumbprint or “God principle” at work in the physical universe, I am impelled to infer the following underlying suppositions, thus:
1) There exists a mysterious “force” or thread animating all life and things;
2) The patterns, processes, mechanisms, and dynamics are in common natural order, symmetry, logic or intelligence, beauty, self-organization, and self-similarity, and;
3) There is singularity and inter-connectedness in all of life and things.
Admittedly amazed, indeed, I cannot avoid recalling now the prayer line we used to recite daily many years ago back in the seminary:
“The grandeur of the mountains and the vastness of the oceans, the breathtaking wonder of the interstellar space, all these proclaim the glory and majesty of God!”
In final reckoning, much as science has been aggressive in scouring the farthest horizons of our external worlds for empirical evidence of God’s thumbprint, I cannot be more animated as St Augustine in exploring the deepest recesses of the internal world within ourselves to embrace the omnipotent presence of God:
“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”