Does God Believe in the God Particle?

 

An interesting question to contemplate. I wrote this post about it on my new science-related Substack. Comments encouraged!

The Verdant Lawn and the Library

 The word verdant seems exactly the word to apply to the grassy lawn of the park, which is actually a thing green of green grass, somewhat yellowed this time of year, that surrounds the pond. The pond itself is brilliant blue reflecting the sky above. A heron comes to the pond as park of its territory. It often arrives in the morning. The green of the grass around seems gorgeous and inviting. It is like the golf courses around here. They look like little bits of curated Eden against the brown dirt and rocks. The border is always abrupt. The mountains in the background look like the desert floor, but thrust against the sky, as close up as I remember the Colorado Front Range foothills, when one is a mile away.

The green of the grass is a very different hue that the green of the desert. The desert here is very green---the Sonora is a living desert, as they say--but the green of the desert is dull sunwashed green, like the color of World War II Army uniforms. 

You can't see the verdant lawn as one comes into the park from the north, because it is on the sloped lawn leading down to the sunken pond. One approaches on the path, seeing the pond and the green grass as one approaches. A little bit of Eden. Civilized.

As one approaches the ramada that sits on the southwest corner of the path around the lake, one sees the latest addition to the park, which arrived only last month. It is one of those little library boxes, brilliant red like a London phone booth in miniature, mounted on a metal post painted in glossy black. Civilization.

I walk past the library each day on my way to the ramada to study physics. I always inspect the library, to see what comes and goes. There is nothing in the box I would probably read. I recognize some of the popular authors. All the books are ffiction, I think, on the top shelf. Novels. The bottom shelf is all kids books.

Proceding on the ramada, I bring out my copy of Itzykson and Zuber's Quantum Field Theory, the Dover reprint I bought that smells of liquid laundry detergent, and  with its cover now well worn backwards.  I've got almost the whole second level of the table of contents memorized now using my method. I realize I said the concrete pad under the ramada was rectangular. Of course it is not. It is rectangular on three sides, but along the side it connects to the graveling walking path, it is actually the arc of a circle, such that the pad flares outward there, instead of being rectangular. I use the creases in the concrete to memorize chapters. Where the inset reaches the edge of the pavement I assign a chapter and put the title there. I memorize them by pointing at the intersections at the edge of the pad.  I assign the subsections as places nearby. I've gotten to four subsections in each chapter. Most of the thirteen chapters are now complete in my memorization.  Only a few of the chapters have five subsections, and these I am still working on.  Only one chapter has six subsections. By this I know the authors gave this chapter special attention. 

Learning to Share the Desert

 The park across the street in which I have been spending so much time lately, memorizing the headings in the table of contents of my quantum field theory book, is the development that replaced a portion of what I called the "undeveloped desert" next to our complex. This is where I spent so much time walking by myself in mediation, or sitting on my tripod camping stool in various favorite spots obscured from the street and any nearby houses. 

I've written about some of my favorite particular spots in the past, including locales I called "the Sandy Bottom", which was a portion of a small wash where it widens out just upstream from an ancient ironwood tree, and flanked by a palo verde and towering majestic saguaro. The cluster of these three great trees around this spot in the wash became a regular, almost daily, retreat for me from the world. This was especially true during the days of the 2020 lockdown. Thankfully our lockdown in Arizona was mild, and things returned to normal fairly quickly here, as opposed to other states where the politics drove mandates to keep everyone indoors as much as possible, in part a rebuke to those of us who wouldn't accept their authority to tell us what to do.

This patch of the "undeveloped desert" is actually a remnant of the sprawling ranch that once existed here, which stretched along the base of the McDowell Mountains, and which gave way in the 1980s to the many modern housing developments, including the apartment complex in which we found our current home (it was the most expensive complex we could find in north Scottsdale at the time! The undeveloped desert was one of the perks for me. I almost never saw anyone out there in the day, but I would find remnants of the presence of young people who knew some of the secret spots for night activity. I began to feel as I were the "ranger" of the land there, and found myself at times cleaning up trash, or pushing stolen shopping carts over the rocky ground and then wheeling them back to the nearby grocery store.

At the time we moved in, there were already signs posted along the road indicating that the land would be developed into a park, deeded over to the City of Scottsdale for just such a purpose. The signs had information about websites to visit to see the plans, and dates for hearings regarding the development. The dates were in the past, and the signs were somewhat faded in the sun, which happens rapidly here, as one might imagine. I had been hoping that our tenure here would pass entirely without the development of the park coming to pass, as I knew it would make over, perhaps destroy, not only my little "spots", but the general isolation and peace I found there.

If nothing else, the shutdown put any plans on hold because no one was doing any work on such projects for a year. Then in late 2020 new signs went up indicating that "phase whatever" of the plans were proceeding, with new hearings coming and going. A small protest movement among homeowners nearby sprung up against the plans, not against the development in general, but. because the small lake that was to built there was not aligned in a way that people walking their dogs would get the best view of the nearby mountains. I kid you not--that was what people cared about.

This was playing out right after the 2020 elections, which was a time in which I felt that America might have been lost entirely, given over to the tyranny of stolen elections. During those desperate weeks, I was convinced, as many were, that Trump would certainly not let such a result stand. When January 20, came and went, and Biden was inaugurated in a sealed-off nonpublic ceremony in Washington, D.C., it was as if the entire nation had become a prison.  We were numb, those of us who saw what had happened.

It was exactly then that the construction equipment arrived on the undeveloped land, and the big chain link fences went up sealing off a big chunk of it. My only consolation then was that the fences did not surround my favorite spots, including the Sandy Bottom and its majestic trees I love. But they were right up against the fence. The new park would come within a few feet of my favorite spots. I could not bear to visit them for many months, stretching to over a year. The development was slow. How long does it take to develop a park? Apparently a long time, in part because the park was meant as a flood control and water storage facility for a huge complex of soccer fields being constructed on more undeveloped land to the south (the loss of which I also mourned, but knew was inevitable).

Those were the months during which my spirits were low, and I felt nothing but loss of things I had loved---not only my little comforts and joys, but all of America, in some form or another.

The months came and went, and I ignored the development, only sometimes peering over the fence at the scraped surface of the desert, and the large basin being dug in the ground for the new lake. I avoided allowing myself to feel anything at all over it, because it would be only painful. I periodically checked to make sure that the saguaro and the ironwood were still standing just outside the chain link fence, defiant next to the cloth curtain on the fence that became ripped from the wind over until it finally gave way. Things were touch and go for a while, as the contractors had created a make shift road for their heaviest of equipment to access a gate in the fence right next to the palo verde. In doing so, they destroyed the upstream part of the wash entirely (goodbye my rabbit friends, may you find new homes!), filling it with large chunks of gravel. The drainage of the wash would no longer be needed, as the water would shunted upstream into underground pipes that would feed the lake as flood control, apparently.

I barely noticed when the park officially opened, with a little parking lot for people to enter, and a walking path and access road around the sunken lake, which was surrounded. by verdant green grass, a spectacular with the brown desert around it, now cleaned up and landscaped. The access road passed within a few yards of the wash and thus the Sandy Bottom, and other little spots of which I have not written.

Finally last month I grudgingly began accepting the park and going into it. It is still relatively little used, and I often have the park to myself, with perhaps a few other souls.  Yesterday was an exception. On Thanksgiving morning, it was crammed with perhaps a dozen people, most of them couples walking their dogs on leash and off leash. When I see this, I typically try to avoid getting anywhere near them, as people who let their dogs run off leash, from my experience, believe that their dog is a perfect friendly animal and universally accept the rule of "the dog gets one free (friendly) jump on anyone who comes near it." They will call their animals off of you only after this initial assault, when its paws on your chest, whether you wanted that or not. The idea as that I shouldn't even be there without a dog myself for the other dog to jump on. Without my own dog, I become the target, and that is just how it has to be.

Fortunately the park is ample enough that I can gently avoid getting near anyone I suspect of that. I can negotiate interactions, depending on my mood, and often pretend to wander off the road if I see someone coming like that. There is plenty of room for all of us.

The ramada where I bring my books to study is on the far corner of the park and lake from where I enter, and thus I can spot from a distance whether it is occupied. Usually it is not. I can see the empty metal round picnic tables and make my way to them. As people come along the path, I am thus placed in the ramada away from the way at enough distance that I am not being overtly rude if I stay absorbed in my reading as people pass. Or I can look up and nod and say hello, which I enjoy doing most of time, truth be told. I like people, and all animals including dogs. It is just a matter of choosing when I want to interact with them.

I still go out to the remaining undeveloped part of the land, and even have new spots I have found. I still still next to the ironwood, even though I am only about twenty feet from the paved path where people now walk. I sit unseen and undetected by the shrubbery and the large limb of the ironwood that hangs over the wash.

But I have come to love the ramada as well. There is something beautiful about civilization, and being able to sit in comfort at the metal table, with a view under the roof of the ramada across the peaceful little pond and its surrounding verdant landscape, with the brown McDowell Mountains in the backdrop, the flanks of which are only minimally developed as the site of the most expensive homes in the state (typically twenty million dollars and up). I would not trade my view for the ones from the home in any circumstance. I like that this spot is public. I like that I am not the "owner" but a "sharer."

Trump's Rule of Five

 "In any textbook or monograph, etc. on a scientific topic, the most important chapter tends to be Chapter Five."

The Ramada Method of Learning Advanced Science Subjects

 Having finished my talk at Threadfest for nonphysicists (see two posts back), and having returned hone from Dallas to Scottsdale, my self-appointed task this week, during this break of otherwise calm especially after the recent election, is to devote myself at last to the delayed task of writing a scholarly physics article for the proceedings of the conference I attended last summer in Prague. 

This is a monumental task for me, to write my first real scholarly article in a quarter century. Among other things, I have to relearn the typesetting language for physics and mathematics articles, of which I was once an expert at using back in 1997. I bit the bullet and relearned it, because I cannot do such technical things on a computer while also thinking about nature in the deep way demanded to be a physicist.

I need to get the paper out fast. The deadline has already passed, but Martin (who is in charge) assures me I still have time. He has not lined up the referees yet. I have known him long enough to know that I can get in a paper, but I want to do it swiftly as it is bothersome to him to have "herd cats" with the attendees to get their submissions in. Over time I have earned a reputation of being one of the few who bothers to reply to his emails, and to heed deadlines. If I run over, I want it to be worth it. I want to say something meaningful. Fast and meaningful means my paper must be short and to the point. This is the challenge--to say what I need to say in as direct manner as possible. I have no idea who the referee will be. They could be friendly, or they could be hostile, even within our small sect of heretics outside the physics establishment. In principle it should be no problem getting my paper accepted as part of the proceedings, as it will in part report on my talk last June. But I'm addressing big issues. The wrong referee could lose his mind seeing the citations I am going to use. I go on worst case scenario, This my argument must be impeccable.

At home I pace around, then go to the computer and write. I take long breaks when needed to walk out doors in the desert. I take breaks not when I am hard up for thoughts---I have too many to use. Rather I take breaks when the ideas and thoughts are coming too swiftly. I take walks to cool them down. I bring a physics book on advanced theory, on the very subject I am writing about, from the standpoint of its conventional accepted presentation. The book is one of the most well-known on the subject, written four decades ago but still used as a standard reference on the theory of particle physics.

I barely cared about the material in the book for much of my time in graduate school and after, in the twilight when I still did physics, or thought I could. Now, many years later, I return to these sources. I have kept all my books on physics and they are now in sight of me on the shelf as I write this. This particular book is one that had been missing in my library back int he day. I had other well-known books on the subject, and I could not make my way through them, and my budget did not allow for purchase of all the books I wanted. But in returning to physics I acquired this one, using spare income that barely mattered to me now. It arrived in the mail last year, a paperback reprint. As I opened the package, it reeked of scented laundry detergent that had been spilled along its pages, staining them. I could have demanded a refund from the seller, but I decided this was the copy I was meant to have. It still reeks of scented detergent, but less so. As I dig into the later chapters that have so-far escaped my obsession to learn, I smell fresh waves of scent being liberated from the paper.

The condition of the book allows me to take it outdoors without a thought of damage (I have since acquired another indoor-only hardbound copy of the same volume). On some days I walk through the parts of the undeveloped desert near me that still remains undeveloped after the recent park-building that took a chunk of it away, and which lasted over. a year and half, during which I shunned the desert entirely out of sorrow for what was being lost to me.

On this way I went into the park, which I have come to love. The sacrifice was worth it--the small lake which is part of the irrigation system, surrounded by green grass and with proper walking paths. On most days I find it empty, or with only a few other people (so long as I don't go out during prime dog-walking hours). The treasure of the park is a small ramada at its southwest corner, under which are two round metal picnic tables. They are almost never occupied, either one, and so I usually can count on being able to bring my book there, and to sit flipping through the pages, back and forth and all over the book, trying to push forward my understanding of this complex subject by a small amount, looking for some big breakthrough of understanding all of it, but in my wisdom anticipating that if I can walk home with even a small bit of the picture of theory added to my understanding, and have it be a permanent insight, then the time outside will have been well worth it.

I spent a half hour using what are now my methods for absorbing advanced material. One of the basic principles I have learned that saves a lot of time is to realize that you can't just pick up any physics book and read it like a book from the first chapter to the last. Even physicists who know the material don't read the book that way. Classes are taught that way to graduate students, but it doesn't work to do it sequentially.

The subject is a very hard subject, the core subject that gives rise most advanced in theories of particle physics, namely quantum field theory. 

How do you learn a subject like that with a book like this? My method is to first memorize the table of contents.  Do not memorize it in its detail sequentially, but approach it top down. If the book has sections, learn those first, then the chapters, then the subchapter, etc. If you do this, I guarantee you that you will a much better experience learning any advanced scientific topic, for example organic chemistry, microbiology, etc. The idea is to build an architecture of the knowledge of the subject in your mind, and then to slowly fill in the rooms of the architecture with details. 

The ironic thing is that I had stubbornly refused to use my own method on this very book I was taking to park. I had been dong a preliminary "plowing through" of the first few chapters, doing it the hard way.  In part I wanted to test my own method, and see what happened once I used it for real.  

Sometimes, sitting at the picnic table or on my stool, I let the book (now getting well worn in my day pack) fall open to a random section. This is the most sporadic way possible to approach the subject.

On this day I decided to finally use my method. I was going to liberate myself. I was ready to understand quantum field theory. I needed to know it in a way that I had not known it. I was like Popeye taking the spinach. 

The book, at almost six hundred pages (if I recall here) is divided into thirteen chapters plus an Appendix. The Appendix is actually the most important part, because that it where the author shoves the mathematical tools necessary to understand the rest of the material.  For now I just memorize the sections, as the terms in the section headings are well familiar to me. It am memorizing them so my mind will associate them with the chapter headings I will now memorize.

I have been reading through various parts of the book for months, so the chapter headings aren't new to me. But until this moment, I could not have told you which chapter was chapter 5. Maybe I could guess. Now I will know, and it will be permanent knowledge.

To memorize the chapter headings, I decide to use the ramada itself, in particular the rectangular edge of the concrete patio on which it stands, which gives way on its various sides to either the gravel path, or the grassy lawn, or (on its rear side) the (relatively raw) landscaped desert portion of the park. 

In Battle Against CERN

After my talk at Threadfest in Southlake, my ego was greatly inflamed from the praise and flattery I received. In some sense, I had claimed the mantle of "house scientist" among our small community. From now on, I have to live up to it. This means, I realize, that in following through I will need to be more public in persona and come out from hiding. I am currently in the midst of figuring out how to do that.

All that ego inflation is coming crashing down this week because I am turning my attention to writing up the scholarly paper based on the talk I gave in Prague this summer. This is to be peer-reviewed and to appear in the conference proceedings. The deadline has already passed but I am assured I can still sneak my paper in.

This is very humbling because my paper is to be full-on attack on the current regime of high energy physics and advanced particle theory. It is humbling for many reason, not the least of which is relearning how to use LaTeX (pronounced LAH-TEK) after many years. This the typesetting "language" that for many years has been used to markup scientific papers for submission, so that equations look nice in print. I was once an expert on LaTeX to the point of typesetting a 400-page book full of equations and diagrams. That was back in 1998. Learning LaTeX again is like learning to walk again in physical therapy. It is coming back very slowly to me.

Even more humbling is the idea that all the mouth-shooting-off I've been doing to lay folks about how CERN is perhaps a big nothingburger when it comes to the fundamental elements of the universe will come smack up against some referee who may not be friendly to me. So I write the article with this in mind. I want to say only things I can legitimately defend as truth. What do I know, compared to all those super-smart folks?

Even more humbling still is that once in print, my paper will be read by other people who may base their opinions on mine. This is the heaviest burden of all in my mind. It makes me terrified of spreading error. We have so much error lately.

Teaching Physics in Texas---Again

 November has come and we are almost at Thanksgiving. I am spending a peaceful Monday in what feels like a moment of weightless calm amidst all the activity lately. On Nov 9 we flew to Dallas to attend the second Threadfest conference, where as before I was a speaker.  At the previous one in April in Nashville I gave a talk called "Nashville and Narrative", which I later transcribed as a movie to my Rumble channel here. The subject is the history of American media and technology, as it relates to the Cultural War against traditional values and middle/rural America. The talk, and the conference as a whole, were massive hits and I got much positive feedback.

This time the conference was in Southlake, Texas, which is closer to the home of the organizer of the conference, Patrick, who became a friend of mine last year when I met him at a patriot's conference in Las Vegas. I reminded him of that this time in Texas, and we both marveled at home much the world has changed since October 2021, when we still felt in exile.

So much has changed even since April. I went to Europe and gave my first real physics talk in over two decades, and it too was a big hit in its own way. When I told Patrick about it, and mentioned the subject, he was greatly intrigued, and he asked me to do a lay version of it for the next Threadfest. Up until the last minute, I was not sure I could pull it off, but this time too was a huge hit with the attendees---several hundred in the hotel ballroom. It was my first time "teaching physics" in Texas since 1998, a fact I mentioned to the audience.  The title of my talk was "Does God Believe in the God Particle?".  I'm hoping to do an online version of it as well using Apple Keynote and iMovie.

Just as at the first Threadfest, I helped Patrick out by being "co-emcee" at the event, and stepping in to during transitions when he was occupied, and introducing a few of the speakers. I love doing this kind of thing. It brings back my own limited theater training. One of the things that I told Patrick we needed at the first event was to make it "not only a conference, but a show." It was almost a huge disaster, of course, but we pulled it off, and this time it was much easier, in part because Patrick thoroughly vetted the venue by multiple visits. He has already declared that the next Threadfest, in November 2023, will in the same location. He likes the hotel staff and he actually made money this time, instead of having to be bailed out from the room commitment as he did in Nashville. 

The theater part is fun for me because it feels as if I contributed "classical knowledge" to all these younger folks, at least half a generation younger than me, who did not get the benefit of coming of age during a time when classical arts of all time were still being passed along. I just imagine what would Johnny Carson do. We need people on our side who understand the power of theater. 

At the first time event, I even prepared a humorous karaoke number, poking fun at us and our "mini-movement". It turns out there was not a good time for it in Nashville (The show must go on!) but I put that up on my Rumble channel as well. You won't get the inside references, but you can at least hear me sing.