Thursday, July 5, 2012

Woah science

Some time ago, I had an idea for a story. That story would start with the main characters flying through space on a ship that happens to fly straight through the center of the universe. Good stuff. Pretty quickly in (current estimate is between 20k and 25k words) one of the characters, a demented, sociopathic genius, activates a device, just as it passes through the center of the universe, and is able to destroy the universe and recreate it, however he wants it.

Luckily, most of the other main characters witnessed this device's activation, thus, they and the ship they were on survives, allowing them to undo the madman's work.

One of the questions I had to answer for this story was: "What the heck kind of device does this guy have?" It was one of the big ones, a pressing question that kept me from going forward. I haven't actually written that part, yet the thought dogged me.

But then July Fourth happened. In between explosions and grilling, lab-coated scientists in Switzerland, playing around with the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, discovered what could, maybe, possibly, be a Higgs Boson. Good enough for me.

The Higgs Boson is referred to as the "God Particle," a name which pisses off many a scientist, because all it really does is provide a testable hypothesis for the origin of mass in elementary particles. I copied that sentence from wikipedia and like, every word is linked to something. In truth, the concrete discovery of Higgie would leave more questions than it answered, mostly about the unification of quantum chronodynamics, the electroweak reaction, and gravity, as well as the ultimate origin of the universe.

Thinking that maybe I could use this particle as a basis for Crazy Guy's device (I call him CG in my notes because I don't have a name for him yet), I started researching, and I think it's doable.

The device would have to create a "Vacuum expectation Value (VeV)" of  246 GeV or General electron Volt (basically, 1.602×10−19 joules times 246). This is the VeV of a Higgs field, which is the field required to create the Boson unique to that field (Hence: Higgs Boson).

This diagram shows the HB interactions with other particles shown with the Standard Model. It's totally dissing Photons and Gluons
At the time of activation, CG's device would create the field, as well as a HB particle inside that field. To do this, the device would have to incorporate a particle accelerator (of which the Large Hadron Collider is the biggest in existence) to create an HB. This is where the "genius" part of crazy guy would have to come in. He has, in theory, developed a way to have a Higgs Boson be created just as it passes through the center of the universe.

And now all science goes out the window. I really have no idea if what I've said up to this point makes sense to someone who actually understands this gook, but from this point on: what I say, goes.

As Higgie passes through the center of the universe (Or "Into the point" as CG calls it) it simultaneously destroys and creates all matter. Because an HB is both its own antimatter and CP-even (Which means it would be the same if it was switched with its antiparticle and its left and right were swapped) it accomplishes both at once.

However, the last aspect of the device is that it draws matter...a DNA sample perhaps...from the user. It then imprints this sample as the new standard model for the universe.

This means that CG is able to create the universe in his own image and with his own rules. He is immortal, invincible, all-knowing and all-powerful. He is God, and king, and he rules forever. Yet his universe is still built on rules, and even he cannot break them.

Except that the people that witnessed him activating the device are also preserved, just as they are, stuck in a ship floating in space. And they are the only ones that realize what is going on.

Addition! Crazy Guy's name is unofficially Ulysses Divus. Which means that it's official unless I think of something better. Fun facts: "Divus" (pronounced Dee-woos) in Latin is the male singular of God, immortal, or deity. The female singular is Diva. Eh? Eh? Yeah.

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