You like to keep us busy with very good question, don’t you? 🙂 I don’t know – and I think it’s one of the questions most scientists would love to be able to answer! But then we’d be able to answer things like that we’d find science less challenging – kind of thing that keeps us busy 🙂
All the mass at the beginning of the universe already existed in the form of energy, highly concentrated. What has happened since then is conversion from energy to mass and vice-versa. But the amount of total energy is still the same that existed then.
Basically, the answer is that nobody really knows and although we have various theories, we’re still not that close to undersatnding the origins of mass. Some theorists think that before mass there was a lot of energy that existed in the form of light, but then we have to ask where did the light come from? And if we come up with anothe scenario to explain where the light came form, we would have to ask ‘but how did the thing that created the light come about’? And so on.
The Super Hadron Collider was built to help try to resolve this fundamental question and scientists hope they will find evidence for or against the theoretical ‘Higg-Boson’ particle (the ‘God’ particle, which they believe to be the origin of mass…..but then the viscious circle does on – if we discover that the Higgs-Boson particle DOES exist, and is therefore an explanation to where mass came from, then we will want to know where the Higgs-Boson particale came from!!
These sorts of questions make me fully appreciate why religion may originally have come about – as intelligent life forms, we feel the need to have an explanation for everything, and so before we had the technology to prove some of this stuff, we may have used religion as a way of explaining to unexplainable.
This is a very philosophical question and i imagine you will be a good philosopher one day if you keep asking questions like this!
Noone is sure yet exactly where the mass of the universe comes from – there are a number of complex theories (which I would do a rubbish job trying to explain!) but really we don’t know
Did anyone hear what the ‘God’ particle might sound like on the news this morning?? It sounded suspiciously like a group of men with big strokey beards had found a box of musical instruments and, with no musical talen whatsover, had decided to try and recreate the sounds of the universe. Absolute bonkers…..but at least it made me smile this morning!
I think it’s just a different why to try to engage people. And it makes sense: the way they’ll detect the particle is all about energy so you can translate it to sounds if you just define the high/low energy parameters.
I thought it was really cool!
And unlike Nathalie, I don’t like that they call it “God particle”… It’s mixing religion into a very precise scientific problem and I don’t think that’s the way forward…
Comments
Katy commented on :
Did anyone hear what the ‘God’ particle might sound like on the news this morning?? It sounded suspiciously like a group of men with big strokey beards had found a box of musical instruments and, with no musical talen whatsover, had decided to try and recreate the sounds of the universe. Absolute bonkers…..but at least it made me smile this morning!
Katy commented on :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10385675.stm
Laura commented on :
LOL you’re exactly right! How bizzare!
Nathalie commented on :
Love the name of the particle though…
Moderator - Nic commented on :
I heard that on the news too, as I was preparing for a day of moderating 🙂
Moderator - Sophia commented on :
The Lily Asquith quoted in that story is actually one of our IAS scientists. She’s in Fluorine Zone.
Paula commented on :
I think it’s just a different why to try to engage people. And it makes sense: the way they’ll detect the particle is all about energy so you can translate it to sounds if you just define the high/low energy parameters.
I thought it was really cool!
And unlike Nathalie, I don’t like that they call it “God particle”… It’s mixing religion into a very precise scientific problem and I don’t think that’s the way forward…
Nathalie commented on :
Paula – how many years in the UK and you still struggle with irony?
Paula commented on :
Problem with text – no way to tell the tone things are said in… and there were no smileys or any other hints 😉
Argument still stands! Just not aimed at your comment anymore! 😉
Nathalie commented on :
lol – fair enough 😉