Nat Geo: The Apostles, Part2

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SPREADING THE GOSPEL

by National Geographic

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/apostles/apostles-art-gallery

The Bible says Jesus named a dozen of his most devoted disciples Apostles, or messengers, choosing a number that paid homage to the 12 tribes of Israel. The 12 Jews preached their new faith across thousands of miles in the first century A.D., changing history. Several early converts—including Matthias, Mary Magdalene, Mark, and Luke—also became apostles. A vision transformed Saul, a persecutor of the early Christians, into Paul. His missionary journeys helped spread Christianity throughout the Mediterranean.

MARY MAGDALENE

Mary, from Magdala, followed Jesus after he cured her of “seven demons.” She stayed

near him during the Crucifixion and was the first to see him after his resurrection.

BY DOMENICHINO, ARTE & IMMAGINI SRL/CORBIS

PETER

Jesus gave some disciples a second name; Simon the fisherman was also Peter, the “rock.”

He was the first to invite non-Jews to join the early church.

BY EL GRECO, ERICH LESSING, ART RESOURCE, NY

ANDREW

Persuaded by John the Baptist, Andrew and his brother Peter became Jesus’ first followers.

Andrew later preached in Greece and perhaps Ukraine.

BY EL GRECO, SCALA/ART RESOURCE, NY

JAMES THE GREATER

He was a fisherman with his brother, John, and was beheaded in Jerusalem. Some

believe that he preached in Spain and was buried there.

BY GAROFALO, FINSIEL/ALINARI/ART RESOURCE, NY

JOHN

John and his brother, James, “sons of Zebedee,” were in Jesus’ inner circle. The

fourth Gospel, three epistles, and the Book of Revelation are attributed to John.

BY VALENTIN DE BOULOGNE, RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX/ART RESOURCE, NY

PHILIP

Like nearly all of the Apostles, Philip hailed from Galilee, the region in northern Israel where

Jesus’ ministry was centered. He may have been martyred in Hierapolis.

BY POMPEO GIROLAMO BATONI, ILIFFE COLLECTION/ NATIONAL TRUST PHOTOGRAPHIC LIBRARY/JOHN HAMMOND/BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

BARTHOLOMEW

Some believe he was Nathanael, who questioned the Messiah’s small-town origin: “Can

anything good come out of Nazareth?” He may have gone to Turkey, India, or Armenia.

BY REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, FRANCIS G. MAYER, CORBIS

THOMAS

Though doubting Thomas needed to touch Jesus’ wounds to be convinced of the

resurrection, he became a fervent missionary who is said to have proselytized in India.

BY EL GRECO, UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/ ART RESOURCE, NY

MATTHEW

Jesus shocked Jewish society by dining with Levi, whose job as a tax collector had made

him an outcast. As an Apostle, Levi was called Matthew and wrote the first Gospel.

BY GUERCINO, HANS-PETER KLUT, BPK, BERLIN/ GEMÄLDEGALERIE ALTE MEISTER, STAATLICHE KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN DRESDEN/ART RESOURCE, NY

JAMES THE LESSER

The Bible reveals little about this James—only that he was a “son of Alphaeus.” Most

scholars think a different James wrote the biblical epistle of that name.

BY GEORGES DE LA TOUR, PHILIPP BERNARD, RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX/ART RESOURCE, NY

THADDAEUS

Several stories connect Thaddaeus, known also as Lebbaeus or Jude, to Persia. According

to Eastern tradition, he converted the city of Edessa after healing its king.

BY ANTHONY VAN DYCK, FRANCIS G. MAYER, CORBIS

SIMON

The Bible calls him Simon the Zealot, perhaps a reference to his political affiliation. Later

accounts depict him as a missionary to Persia, where he was martyred.

BY EL GRECO, ERICH LESSING, ART RESOURCE, NY

JUDAS ISCARIOT

Famous for betrayal, Judas (gold robe) was paid 30 pieces of silver for leading Roman soldiers

to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas later repented and hanged himself.

BY PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE, ERICH LESSING, ART RESOURCE, NY

MATTHIAS

To replace Judas Iscariot, the Apostles chose Matthias, who was a disciple during

Jesus’ ministry. Post biblical lore says he preached in the “land of the cannibals.”

BY ANTHONY VAN DYCK, ELKE ESTEL AND HANS-PETER KLUT, BPK, BERLIN/STAATLICHE KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN DRESDEN/ART RESOURCE, NY

MARK

Also called John, he was mentored by Peter—his likely source for writing the second Gospel -

and traveled with Paul to Antioch. Mark founded the Church of Alexandria.

BY VALENTIN DE BOULOGNE, DANIEL ARNAUDET AND JEAN SCHORMANS, RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX/ART RESOURCE, NY

LUKE

A gentile physician from Antioch who joined Paul’s missions, Luke chronicled the

development of the early church in the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.

BY EDWARD MITCHELL BANNISTER, SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, D.C./ART RESOURCE, NY

Paul

Nat Geo - The Apostles, Part 1

 

ISRAEL
Franciscan priest Fergus Clarke gazes at the Tomb of Christ in Jerusalem's Church of the
Holy Sepulchre. The tomb's emptiness echoes the Apostles' message: Jesus rose
from the dead. Photograph by Lynn Johnson.

 

In the Footsteps of the Apostles

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/apostles/todhunter-text

They were unlikely leaders. As the Bible tells it, most knew more about mending nets

than winning converts when Jesus said he would make them "fishers of men."

Yet 2,000 years later, all over the world, the Apostles are still drawing people in.

By Andrew Todhunter

Photograph by Lynn Johnson

March 2012

In the town of Parur, India, in the southern state of Kerala, the polished stone floor of the old church of Kottakkavu gleams so brightly that it mirrors the crimson, pine green, and gold-upon-gold altarpiece like a reflecting pool.

Around the altarpiece, painted clouds hover in a blue sky. Small statues stand in niches backlit with brilliant aqua. On a rug near the church wall a woman in a blue sari with a purple veil covering her hair kneels motionless, elbows at her sides, hands upraised. In a larger, newer church adjacent, a shard of pale bone no bigger than a thumbnail lies in a golden reliquary. A label in English identifies the relic as belonging to St. Thomas. On this site, tradition says, Thomas founded the first Christian church in India, in A.D. 52.

In Parur and elsewhere in Kerala exotic animals and vines and mythic figures are woven into church facades and interiors: Elephants, boars, peacocks, frogs, and lions that resemble dragons—or perhaps they are dragons that resemble lions—demonstrate the rich and decidedly non-Western flavor of these Christian places. Brightly painted icons are everywhere, of Thomas and the Virgin Mary and Jesus and St. George. Even Hindus pray to St. George, the dragon slayer, believing he may offer their children protection from cobras. At Diamper Church in Thripunithura a painted white statue of the pietà—the Virgin Mary holding the dead Jesus—is backed by a pink metal sun radiating rectangular blades of light.

Kerala's Thomas Christians—like Christians elsewhere in Asia and in Africa and Latin America—have made the faith uniquely their own, incorporating traditional art, architecture, and natural symbolism. And so a statue depicting Mary flanked by two elephants shading her head with a bower seems at home among the palms of southern India.

INDIA
India’s 27 million Christians credit the Apostle Thomas with bringing Jesus' message
there - and dying for it. Adhering to a faith that challenges the Hindu caste system can
still be risky: In 2008 extreme nationalists killed at least 60 Christians and displaced
some 60,000 in Odisha state. Worshippers there still gather, but less openly, in a
pastor’s home (above). Photograph by Lynn Johnson.

SPREADING THE GOSPEL

The Bible says Jesus named a dozen of his most devoted disciples Apostles, or messengers, choosing a number that paid homage to the 12 tribes of Israel. The 12 Jews preached their new faith across thousands of miles in the first century A.D., changing history. Several early converts—including Matthias, Mary Magdalene, Mark, and Luke—also became apostles. A vision transformed Saul, a persecutor of the early Christians, into Paul. His missionary journeys helped spread Christianity throughout the Mediterranean.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/apostles/apostles-art-gallery

Thomas, or Doubting Thomas as he is commonly known, was one of the Twelve Apostles, disciples sent out after Christ's Crucifixion to spread the newborn faith. He was joined by Peter, Andrew, James the Greater, James the Lesser, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thaddaeus, Simon—and Matthias, who replaced the former disciple and alleged traitor, Judas Iscariot. In time the terms "apostle" and "apostolic" (derived from the Greek apostolos, or messenger) were applied to others who spread the word. In the case of Paul, he claimed the title of apostle for himself, believing he had seen the Lord and received a spiritual commission from him. Mary Magdalene is known as the apostle to the Apostles for her role of announcing the resurrection to them. Although only two of the four Evangelists—Matthew and John—were among the original Apostles, Mark and Luke are considered apostolic because of the importance of their work in writing the New Testament Gospels.

In the first years after the Crucifixion, Christianity was only the seed of a new religion, lacking a developed liturgy, a method of worship, and a name—the earliest followers called it simply "the way." It was not even a formal sect of Judaism. Peter was the movement's first champion; in the Acts of the Apostles we hear of his mass conversions and miraclemaking—healing the lame, raising the dead—and in an un-Christian flourish, calling down a supernatural death upon one couple who held back a portion of their donation to the community.

In its earliest days the movement was too insignificant to attract wide-scale persecution, and Christians, as they came to be called, had more friction with neighboring Jewish sects than with the Roman Empire. The faith's first martyr, according to the Bible, was St. Stephen, a young Christian leader who enraged a Jewish community by suggesting that Christ would return and destroy the Temple of Jerusalem. After he was tried for blasphemy, around the year 35, his accusers dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death while he prayed for them. The young Saul—who would soon become Paul in his celebrated conversion on the road to Damascus— observed Stephen's execution, minding the cloaks of those who stoned him.

In the year 44 King Herod Agrippa I imprisoned and beheaded James the Greater, the first of the Apostles to die. In 64, when a great fire in Rome destroyed 10 of the city's 14 quarters, Emperor Nero, accused by detractors of setting the fire himself, pinned the catastrophe on the growing Christian movement and committed scores of believers to death in his private arena. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote: "An immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind … Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired." In the year 110 Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, was arrested by the Romans under Trajan, shipped to Rome, and condemned to death ad bestias—by beasts—at the public games. Bloody episodes like this would recur sporadically for the next two centuries.

Tradition holds that 11 of the Twelve Apostles were martyred. Peter, Andrew, and Philip were crucified; James the Greater and Thaddaeus fell to the sword; James the Lesser was beaten to death while praying for his attackers; Bartholomew was flayed alive and then crucified; Thomas and Matthew were speared; Matthias was stoned to death; and Simon was either crucified or sawed in half. John—the last survivor of the Twelve—likely died peaceably, possibly in Ephesus, around the year 100.

SPAIN
Wending across northern Spain, the Way of St. James has brought pilgrims to James the Greater's
presumed tomb in Santiago de Compostela since medieval times. About 200,000 made the trek last
year. Some collect stamps for church-issued "passports" as a record of how far they've walked. For
others, progress is marked by spiritual transformation. Photograph by Lynn Johnson.

In the early days, Columba Stewart, a Benedictine monk and historian at Saint John's Abbey in Minnesota, told me, "the organizational structure, the great institution of the church—signified for Roman Catholics today by the Vatican and its complex hierarchy—simply wasn't there. There was an apostolic band of followers. There were missionary efforts in major centers, first in Jerusalem, then Antioch, then Rome, but certainly no sense of a headquarters. Instead you had this tiny, vulnerable, poor, often persecuted group of people who were on fire with something."

The Apostles were the movement's cutting edge, spreading the message across the vast trade network of the ancient world and leaving small Christian communities in their paths. "To study the lives of the Apostles," Stewart said, "is a bit like what we've been doing with the Hubble telescope—getting as close as we can to seeing these earliest galaxies. This was the big bang moment for Christianity, with the Apostles blasting out of Jerusalem and scattering across the known world."

Thomas the Apostle went east, through what is now Syria and Iran and, historians believe, on down to southern India. He traveled farther than even the indefatigable Paul, whose journeys encompassed much of the Mediterranean. Of all the Apostles, Thomas represents most profoundly the missionary zeal associated with the rise of Christianity—the drive to travel to the ends of the known world to preach a new creed.

Mark the Evangelist too spread the word, bringing Christ's message to Egypt and founding the Coptic faith. But for some Catholics, Mark represents most emphatically the saint as political symbol, powerfully linked with the identity of Venice. Although a figure from the ancient past, he retains a stronger grip on the consciousness of modern-day Venetians than Washington or Lincoln holds on most Americans.

If Thomas is the iconic missionary and Mark a political cornerstone, Mary Magdalene epitomizes the mystical saint, closely associated with grace and divine intercession. Other saints, including Thérèse of Lisieux and Teresa of Ávila, play a similar role among Catholics, but none has exerted a stronger pull on the imagination, or created more controversy, than Mary Magdalene. Once maligned as a reformed courtesan, venerated today by millions worldwide, she was a significant presence in Christ's inner circle.

Although one tradition holds that she died in Ephesus, others maintain that she traveled from the Middle East to southern France. But establishing with scientific certainty that Mary Magdalene came to the hills of Provence, or that Thomas died in India, is likely to remain outside our grasp. Scientific analysis of relics is invariably inadequate, often confirming only that the bones are of the right gender and period. Advances in testing and archaeology, together with the discovery of yet unknown manuscripts, will continue to refine our historical knowledge of the saints. But much will remain inconclusive. How best, then, to understand these individuals if the reach of science is limited? As with most of the earliest Christians, we must rely largely on legend and historical accounts, acknowledging the power these mythic figures still exert today, some 2,000 years after their deaths.

INDIA
The scar on 19-year-old Anil Kuldeep’s thigh recalls the eight-hour beating he endured for
refusing to renounce his Christian faith when Hindu extremists attacked his village in 2008.
Now at a makeshift camp in Odisha, he wants to return to school but can’t
afford the tuition. Photograph by Lynn Johnson.

THE GREAT MISSIONARY

Many historians believe that Thomas landed on the palm-lined coast of Kerala at a site now called Cranganore. He is reported to have established seven churches in Kerala and to have been martyred 20 years later on the other side of the country, in Mylapore, now a neighborhood in Chennai. At Palayur Church in Guruvayur, Thomas is said to have raised the first cross in India and performed one of his earliest miracles: When he encountered a group of Brahmans throwing water into the air as part of a ritual, he asked why the water fell back to Earth if it was pleasing to their deity. My God, Thomas said, would accept such an offering. He then flung a great spray into the air, and the droplets hung there in the form of glistening white blossoms. Most onlookers converted on the spot; the rest fled.

My guides in Kerala were Columba Stewart and Ignatius Payyappilly, a priest from Kochi in Kerala whose connection to Thomas is personal. He and his mother nearly died during his birth, but his grandmother and mother, the latter slipping in and out of consciousness, prayed fervently to St. Thomas. "And we were spared," Payyappilly told me.

Stewart is the executive director of his abbey's Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, which has been preserving religious manuscripts around the world since 1965. Payyappilly and his small staff spearhead the effort in Kerala, digitizing and preserving thousands of inscribed palm leaves and other manuscripts. Theirs is a race against a humid climate, which destroys manuscripts if they're not properly cared for. Since 2006 the team has accumulated 12 terabytes of digitized data—one million images of manuscripts. The oldest document in their possession, a collection of ecclesiastical laws, dates to 1291. These extraordinary documents are important to Thomas Christians, linking them to the founder of their faith.

In India, Thomas is revered as a bold missionary. In the West, he represents the believer who wrestles with uncertainty. "The classic portrayal of Thomas," Stewart said, "is the doubting Thomas. That's a little inaccurate, because it's not so much that he doubted the resurrection but that he needed a personal encounter with Jesus to make the resurrection real. So you might think of him as the pragmatic Thomas or the forensic Thomas. The guy who's so experiential that he said, 'I need to put my finger in the wounds in his hands and in his side.' And this experience gave him the fuel he needed to do amazing things."

Thomas's moment of incredulity has proved a two-edged sword in the history of Christian thought. On the one hand, some theologians are quick to point out that his doubt is only natural, echoing the uncertainty, if not the deep skepticism, felt by millions in regard to metaphysical matters. How can we know? That Thomas challenged the risen Christ, probed the wounds, and then believed, some say, lends deeper significance to his subsequent faith. On the other hand, his crisis of doubt, shared by none of the other Apostles, is seen by many as a spiritual failure, as a need to know something literally that one simply cannot know. In the Gospel of John, 20:29, Christ himself chastises Thomas, saying, "Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

His skepticism notwithstanding, St. Thomas still stands as the direct link between his converts in Kerala and the founding Christian story on the shores of the Mediterranean, clear across the known world of the first century. Unlike later Christian groups in Asia who were converted by missionaries, Thomas Christians believe their church was founded by one of Christ's closest followers, and this is central to their spiritual identity. "They are an apostolic church," Stewart said, "and that's the ultimate seal of approval for a Christian group."

The Apostle Paul
Photography by Lynn Johnson

THE SOUL OF VENICE

Mark the Evangelist is indelibly associated with pride in place: No historical figure is more clearly linked with Venice than her patron saint. His square is the heart of Venice, his basilica the center of its ancient faith. Mark's symbol—the winged lion, its paw upon the open Gospel—is as ubiquitous in Venice as the gondola. For the Venetians of the ninth century and after, "Viva San Marco!" was the battle cry, and legends of St. Mark are entwined with the earliest roots of the Venetian Republic. And yet, tradition tells us, Mark died a martyr in Alexandria, Egypt. How did he gain such importance in a Western city-state?

In the delicate balance of political one-upmanship in ninth-century Italy, a young power bound for greatness required theistic no less than military legitimacy. As its patron, the city needed not the third-string dragon slayer it had, St. Theodore, but a titan among saints. And so was born a masterstroke of shadow politics unrivaled in medieval history: In 828, presumably on the orders of the doge, two Venetian merchants named Bono da Malamocco and Rustico da Torcello stole the remains of St. Mark from his tomb in Alexandria or, some say, conned it from the possession of local priests. Returning to their ship, the conspirators put the saint's remains in a basket, covering them with pork to discourage official entanglements. When Muslim port authorities stopped the thieves and peered into the basket, they recoiled in disgust, crying "Kanzir! Kanzir!"—"pig" in Arabic—and commanded the Venetians to hurry along. On the voyage home, legend tells us, a tempest blew up off the Greek coast. St. Mark, his remains lashed to the mast, quieted the storm, saving the vessel. However embroidered by legend, this brazen theft of the Evangelist's relics gave the fledgling republic a spiritual cachet matched in all of Latin Christendom only by that of St. Peter's Rome. This extraordinary coup set in motion brilliant successes that brought forth a Venetian superpower.

From the earliest days of the Republic, "St. Mark was the flag of Venice," Gherardo Ortalli, a medievalist at the University of Venice and a leading expert on St. Mark, told me. "I don't think there are other examples of saints who were so important politically. Wherever Venice left her imprint, you find Mark's lion—in Greece, Crete, Cyprus, Alexandria. On the old Venetian gold coin, the ducato, St. Mark offers the flag of Venice to the doge."

And what of the saint's relics? Are the remains entombed in the sarcophagus in St. Mark's Basilica in Venice really his? What of the skull in Alexandria that the Coptic Church claims belongs to the saint? What of the relic, possibly a bone fragment, said to be Mark's, given to Egypt by the Vatican in 1968, in effect as an apology for the ninth-century theft? Are any of these relics, including that tiny piece of bone in the church in Kerala attributed to Thomas, genuine?

"It's not important if they have the real bones or not," Ortalli said, "because in the Middle Ages they had a very different mentality. You could have 50 fingers of a saint. It wasn't a problem."

For scientists, nonbelievers, many believers, and perhaps for the forensic Thomas, 50 fingers of the same saint is a problem. Even the Catholic Church calls in pathologists to examine, date, and preserve relics in the church's possession. Based in Genoa, Ezio Fulcheri is a devout Catholic and trained pathologist who has worked on church relics for decades. He has studied and preserved the remains of many saints, including John of the Cross and Clare of Assisi, a friend of St. Francis's. "Whenever we can find a relic that is clearly not authentic," Fulcheri said, "we acknowledge that. The church does not want false relics to be venerated." But what of those relics, like St. Mark's, that have yet to be tested? Scholars, scientists, and even clerics within the Catholic Church have called, without success, for scientific testing of the remains in Mark's sarcophagus. Clearly the church has little to gain, and quite a bit to lose, by testing bones of such critical importance. In the case of St. Mark, perhaps it's safer not to know—at least for now.

Not all scientists are eager to press too hard on holy relics. Giorgio Filippi, an archaeologist employed by the Vatican, told me he had opposed the recent analysis and dating of Paul's relics in Rome, announced by the pope in 2009. "Curiosity does not justify the research. If the sarcophagus was empty or if you found two men or a woman, what would you hypothesize? Why do you want to open St. Paul's tomb? I didn't want to be present in this operation." The subsequent investigation, through a finger-size hole drilled in the sarcophagus, produced a bone fragment the size of a lentil, grains of red incense, a piece of purple linen with gold sequins, and threads of blue fabric. Independent laboratory analysis, the church claimed, revealed that they dated to the first or second century. Not conclusive, but better news for the faithful than if they had hailed from the fourth century. The first-century date would mean the bones could be those of St. Paul. Until science advances to the point that testing can reveal fine details such as that the person was short, bald, and from Tarsus—Paul's presumed birthplace on the Turkish coast—we're not likely to get much closer to the truth.

Mark's bones aside, I asked Ortalli if the pious of Venice pray to their patron saint.

"It's better to pray to the Virgin or to Christ," he said. "St. Mark is more complicated. Apart from the basilica, it is difficult to find a place to light a candle to St. Mark. He is many things, but you don't go to St. Mark with a candle." In Catholic and Orthodox churches believers often light candles to accompany prayers to the saints, mounting them before favored icons or statues. "St. Mark is part of [a Venetian's] identity," Ortalli continued. "It's something in your bones—you have two feet, and you have St. Mark. When older people are drunk on the street late at night, they often sing, 'Viva Venezia, viva San Marco, viva le glorie del nostro leon.' Venice was constructed with a soul in which St. Mark is the center."

When the Venetian Republic was finally dissolved under Napoleon, the cry of mourning and defiance on the streets was not "Viva la libertà" or "Viva la repubblica" but "Viva San Marco."

ITALY
The reverent touch of countless pilgrims has worn smooth the toes of the Apostle Peter's bronze
likeness in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Bible portrays Peter as a leader among the
Twelve Apostles; Catholics call him the first pope. Photography by Lynn Johnson.

THE PASSIONATE MYSTIC

East of Aix-en-Provence, in the face of a broad, forested massif overlooking a high plain, lies the cave of Sainte-Baume. Here, according to Roman Catholic tradition, Mary Magdalene spent the last 30 years of her life. From the parking lot, a steep hike through the forest brings you to the cave and a small, adjoining monastery. On a clear June morning the cave's interior was noticeably colder than the air outside. In the candlelight a stone altar glowed in the center of the grotto, and statues of Mary Magdalene were visible in the cave's irregular corners. Two relics of the saint—a lock of hair and the presumed end of a tibia, dark with age, lay in a gilded reliquary.

I later spoke with Candida Moss, professor of New Testament and Christian origins at the University of Notre Dame. Moss has a particular interest in early martyrs; I asked if work had been done on the psychology of relics. "People have looked at relics as part of a grieving process," she said. "When my mother died, they offered each of us a piece of her hair to keep, and we all did. So I think anyone who has ever mourned would understand why you would fixate on things associated with someone you loved. Even more so in small Christian communities. The appeal was of a person in your midst, with whom you could have direct contact after his or her death."

In the cave of Sainte-Baume I sat in a rear pew during Mass, joined by a handful of pilgrims and a large group of cheerful French middle schoolers, arms crossed against the cold. Later, Fathers Thomas Michelet and François Le Hégaret led vespers. Sitting near me was Angela Rinaldi, a former pilgrim and a resident of the area since 2001. Rinaldi first came to the site with her companion at that time, a modern shaman drawn to Sainte-Baume not for its Catholic significance but for its reputation among shamans and New Age practitioners. Local tradition holds that the cave long ago served as a shrine for pagan fertility rites and endures as a pilgrimage site for those seeking feminine spirituality. The Catholic faith of Rinaldi's childhood eventually reasserted itself, and she began to help out at the small bookshop.

I asked how her perception of Mary had shifted while she'd been at Sainte-Baume. "In the beginning," she said, "I compared myself a lot to her … My life before was a constant seeking for something different, for something else. For a great love—not just love coming from another person but a love which can only come, I believe, from a spiritual dimension.

"There is some sort of force everywhere in this forest—not just in the cave. It has nothing to do with the representation of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel. It's an energy which makes you stand up afterward." She paused. "I don't know how to explain it," she said, laughing. "There is a silence in the cave which is full of life."

The cave has been cared for by the Dominican Order since 1295. Earlier in the day I visited with Michelet and Le Hégaret over lunch in the monastery's simple, beautifully antique dining room. Through its open leaded windows, from the monastery's great height upon the cliff face, the forest and the plain below could be seen for miles during breaks in the fog.

"After the Virgin Mary," Michelet said, "Mary Magdalene is the most important woman in the New Testament. And yet we speak of her very little. It's too bad, as many could be touched by this woman, who was a sinner and who was chosen by Christ as the first witness of his resurrection. He didn't choose an Apostle or the Virgin Mary. He chose Mary Magdalene. Why? Perhaps because she was the first to ask forgiveness. It was not yet the hour of Peter," he said, referring to Peter's rise to fame as a miracle worker and the founder of the Catholic Church. "It was the hour of Mary Magdalene."

The significance of this moment in the New Testament when she first witnessed the risen Christ has been debated for centuries. In the Gospel of John, three days after Christ's burial Mary Magdalene went first to the sepulchre, "while it was still dark," and found that the stone covering it had been moved. She ran to find the disciples, who returned with her and saw that the tomb was empty. "Then the disciples went away again to their own homes," reads the scripture. "But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping." She stayed, as she had remained at the foot of the cross. When she peered again into the sepulchre, she saw two angels where the body of Christ had rested. "Woman, why are you weeping?" they asked her. "Because they have taken away my Lord," she said, "and I do not know where they have laid him." And then, the Gospel says, the risen Christ appeared to her.

Such tenacity would have served her well if she did indeed spend three decades in the cold and damp of the Provence cave. "This is known as a place of penitence," Le Hégaret said. "In winter it's austere. Very few people come up to the cave. The road is frozen for weeks. There is a great simplicity here." He chuckled. "There is a proverb among the brothers of Provence: At Sainte-Baume either you go crazy, or you become a saint." With Christian Vacquié, the warden responsible for the ancient forest at Sainte-Baume, I visited a much smaller cave in the same massif that had contained the remains of Neanderthals from 150,000 years ago. This cave and others nearby have a distinctly female-reproductive organ shape, leading some to believe that they were fertility-cult sites in prehistoric times. One can imagine barren Neanderthals performing fertility rituals many tens of thousands of years before the arrival of Mary Magdalene.

Protected by the state and cherished for its rich biological diversity, the forest itself has long been held sacred. "There was once a priest at the grotto," Vacquié told me with a grin, "who said that while he was Mary Magdalene's majordomo, I was her gardener." The forest and local caves are still believed to have a strong connection to fecundity, and women have come here for millennia to pray for children. To this day some women even rub their abdomens against the statues of Mary Magdalene as they pray. This physicality is not encouraged by the church, Le Hégaret told me, but it's difficult to prevent. On the walls of the cave are notes and plaques of gratitude in many languages. "Thank you Saint Mary Magdalene for healing my daughter," reads one in French dated October 1860. Another reads simply, "Merci pour Marion."

ISRAEL
Many of the nearly 3.5 million tourists who flocked to Israel in 2010 went to visit places linked with
Christ's life, such as the Sea of Galilee. Its shores are where the Gospels say Jesus met the four
fishermen—Peter, Andrew, James the Greater, and John—who became his first disciples and the
nucleus of his Twelve Apostles. Photography by Lynn Johnson.

The Dominicans manage a hostel on the plain at the foot of the massif, the Hôtellerie de la Sainte-Baume, receiving pilgrims, students, scholars, and other travelers. There I spoke with Marie-Ollivier Guillou, a novitiate and former sailor who served four years as a priest on French submarines, including Le Terrible, before being transferred here two years ago. "For me," he said, "Mary Magdalene is the saint of love. She was a very courageous woman. She was one of the few who stayed at the Crucifixion. Most of the others ran for their lives, but Mary Magdalene stayed at the foot of the cross, ready to die for Christ. In this sense she is the model for the religious life."

Near the end of my time at Sainte-Baume I went back into the cave and climbed the short flight of steps to the rise of stone on which legend says Mary Magdalene slept; it's the only spot in the cave that remains dry. The last of the other visitors had left; fog rolled through the open doorway. Standing in the shadows, I reached through the grating and pressed my hand against the stone. The grotto was perfectly silent, save for the faintest occasional drip in the cistern, the same ancient spring that would have supplied the saint with fresh water.

When I had suggested to Thomas Michelet that Mary Magdalene may never have come to Provence, he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "There was a priest who lived here at the cave for decades. He said that while it's impossible to know if Mary Magdalene truly came here in the first century, that certainty was of less importance. She's here now."

Andrew Todhunter is at work on a book about St. Mark and early Venice. Frequent contributor Lynn Johnson traveled to six countries for this story.

Continue -

Nat Geo: The Apostles, Part 2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/nat-geo-disciples-of-christ-mary-paul.html

Columbia University - Panel Discussion on the Higgs Particle Research at CERN

Ask Brian Greene: Why Do We Think the Higgs Particle Exists?

http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/ask_brian_greene_why_do_we_think_the_higgs_particle_exists

About This Video

Brian Greene explains why the theoretical Higgs Boson is so important to the

Standard Model of Physics, the backbone of how we understand the world around us.

Image courtesy of ATLAS; Recorded June 2011; Posted December 2011

Brian Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University,

and is recognized for a number of groundbreaking discoveries in his field of superstring theory.

Event Link -

http://www.worldleaders.columbia.edu/events/what-if-we-find-higgs-particle-and-what-if-we-don039t

Vid Link - A 10 min. Intro with pictures; then the panel discussion begins on a new vid screen (my unofficial transcript follows below so you can read along) - http://news.columbia.edu/higgs

If Broken go here - http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=columbia

Panel Members

MT - Michael Tuts, Columbia University Professor of Physics and U.S. ATLAS Operations Program Manager at the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory in Geneva.

BG - Brian Greene, Columbia University Professor of Physics and Mathematics.

DO - Dennis Overbye, The New York Times science reporter covering physics.

MDC - Mariette DiChristina, Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American.

[Unofficial Transcript]

MDC: What is the Higgs-Boson particle? (hbp/hb)

MT: In Geneva, Switzerland, is the CERN large Hadron collider which houses one of seven particle detectors. One is the ATLAS accelerator which is like a large sub-atomic microscope that can measures things like light (photons), plot particles trajectories when they smash, and take pictures of 100 billion protons  traveling towards another 100 billion in the opposite direction, where only some particles will smash into each other. When they smash new particles will be created. The Atlas is like a 100 million pixel camera taking 40 million pictures across a 100 million channels instantaneously.

We study things like quarks, leptons and electro-magnetic forces found in the world of the small. And have been studying these and many other particles and forces over the last 40 years trying to determine their relationships with one another, their undergirding structure, the antimatter twins, and have been relating these particles to non-particles called strings which seem to best describe the 124 basic particles which we have been able to determine. MT then discusses individual particles and forces and what they think they see with a Higgs particle decaying upon impact.

Summary of interactions between particles described by the Standard Model

Left-handed fermions in the Standard Model

Generation 1
Fermion (left-handed)	Symbol	Electric charge	Weak isospin	Weak hypercharge	Color charge [lhf 1]	Mass[lhf 2]
Electron						511 keV
Positron						511 keV
Electron neutrino						< 0.28 eV[lhf 3][lhf 4]
Electron antineutrino						< 0.28 eV[lhf 3][lhf 4]
Up quark						~ 3 MeV[lhf 5]
Up antiquark						~ 3 MeV[lhf 5]
Down quark						~ 6 MeV[lhf 5]
Down antiquark						~ 6 MeV[lhf 5]
Generation 2
Fermion (left-handed)	Symbol	Electric charge	Weak isospin	Weak hypercharge	Color charge [lhf 1]	Mass [lhf 2]
Muon						106 MeV
Antimuon						106 MeV
Muon neutrino						< 0.28 eV[lhf 3][lhf 4]
Muon antineutrino						< 0.28 eV[lhf 3][lhf 4]
Charm quark						~ 1.337 GeV
Charm antiquark						~ 1.3 GeV
Strange quark						~ 100 MeV
Strange antiquark						~ 100 MeV
Generation 3
Fermion (left-handed)	Symbol	Electric charge	Weak isospin	Weak hypercharge	Color charge[lhf 1]	Mass[lhf 2]
Tau						1.78 GeV
Antitau						1.78 GeV
Tau neutrino						< 0.28 eV[lhf 3][lhf 4]
Tau antineutrino						< 0.28 eV[lhf 3][lhf 4]
Top quark						171 GeV
Top antiquark						171 GeV
Bottom quark						~ 4.2 GeV
Bottom antiquark						~ 4.2 GeV
^ a b c These are not ordinary abelian charges, which can be added together, but are labels of group representations of Lie groups. ^ a b c Mass is really a coupling between a left-handed fermion and a right-handed fermion. For example, the mass of an electron is really a coupling between a left-handed electron and a right-handed electron, which is the antiparticle of a left-handed positron. Also neutrinos show large mixings in their mass coupling, so it's not accurate to talk about neutrino masses in the flavor basis or to suggest a left-handed electron antineutrino. ^ a b c d e f The Standard Model assumes that neutrinos are massless. However, several contemporary experiments prove that neutrinos oscillate between their flavour states, which could not happen if all were massless. It is straightforward to extend the model to fit these data but there are many possibilities, so the mass eigenstates are still open. See neutrino mass. ^ a b c d e f W.-M. Yao et al. (Particle Data Group) (2006). "Review of Particle Physics: Neutrino mass, mixing, and flavor change". Journal of Physics G 33: 1. arXiv:astro-ph/0601168. Bibcode 2006JPhG...33....1Y. doi:10.1088/0954-3899/33/1/001. http://pdg.lbl.gov/2007/reviews/numixrpp.pdf. ^ a b c d The masses of baryons and hadrons and various cross-sections are the experimentally measured quantities. Since quarks can't be isolated because of QCD confinement, the quantity here is supposed to be the mass of the quark at the renormalization scale of the QCD scale.

BG: How significant is the HB discovery? If found it will be huge. If not then that will be huge too.

HB says that space is filled with a glue like substance. This is all mathematical right now without verifiable objectification still undergoing for its discovery. If not there what other theories out there? Technicolor is another approach for generating mass from the super-microscopic realm… a deeper level of structure. However, the HB is more elegant in its structural hypotheses.

MT: Can the Technicolor be verified? We are already looking at this possibility along with looking for tiny black holes, etc.

MDC (Scientific American): What is the next particle to be found?

BG: “Where did the Higgs come from!?” J …in an endless stream of discovery and speculation.

MT: We are probing for everything out there that has been theorized.

DO (NYT): Nothing new has been discovered in the last 40 years… why is that?

BG: Isn’t that unfair to say? What about the discovery of the “top quark?”

MDC: However the particle/force table has been filled out…

DO: CERN and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a massive, jointly national project that has been enormously expensive but now proving to be very helpful in detailing the birth of the universe and the energies that make it up. So then, my question is this… 125GeV energy level have shown the bumps in the detection. It’s this “bump” or nothing which can be massively awkward.

MDC: Whether true or not, this stream of discovery must be undertaken to rule out further errant theories. Super-symmetric particles were found to NOT be in a certain energy range which is a necessary discovery, not a meaningless discovery.

DO: Brian, please talk more about the Higgs field and how it affects the universe.

BG: The larger story beyond the Higgs will be the idea that a new form of matter will have been discovered for the first time with the difference being that the Higgs is uniquely different from all other particles found. Higgs is a particle of spin 0. No other particles have been found with no spin. This is therefore exciting to find. As example, the Big Bang theory leaves out the “Bang” in the theory… we get inflationary cosmology but no Higgs which we think is the compulsory “push” outwards cause the “bang” in the BB theory.

MDC: Everything looks promising but how will you know when you have verified the Higgs?

MT: The number of standard deviations driven by statistical results will tell us. Data is counted in inverse phantom bars? which we wish to quadruple our data at higher energy levels (from 7 trillion electron volts to 8 trillion electron volts). The higher energy levels have helped us in our research. Will it be enough? We don’t know.

Audience 1 (A1): How do we justify our massive expenditures to the public?

MT: By communicating our discoveries through the press. Through sharing our scientific discoveries and processes with the scientific community at large. By helping profit-based products be successful. By inspiring the next generation of global youth towards exploration.

BG: Not everybody has to be excited by CERN’s discoveries. Many want more practical objectives, services, and products.

MT: A particle physicist? Oh… discussion done. With the Higgs it can generate a bit more discussion.

A2: How long do you continue your search?

MT: This year should tell us through our data sets. But expect about the next 20 years to focus on this at CERN.

A3: Does the Higgs have mass?

BG: Yes. 125X more massive than a proton. Is it made up of more stuff? We don’t know just yet.

MT: Spin 0 particles need clarification. Is it the thing (a HBP) that we think it is. Does it decay into things that we thought it would decay into.

A4: The Standard Model of Particle Physics (SMPP)

BG: Physics is a field written generally in the language of mathematics. This field constantly critiques itself in a never-ending process of qualification and predictive discovery. From the math physicists go out and test those mathematic models. Gravity, super symmetry, Technicolor, string theory, are constantly proved and re-proved from a number of different angles.

A5: Strong and Weak nuclear forces.

BG: Energy levels are known at speculative force levels. Yes links are being examined from exotic theories. But the Higgs has a linkage that grab at our imaginations.

A6: Does the exact mass teach us anything? Does the Higgs exist anywhere in the world?

MT: The Higgs decays very, very quickly once it is seen. The SMPP teaches us a lot. But it is still being explored.

DO: If the Higgs is at 125 GeV what does that tell you?

BG: Yes, it proves the supporting math being it. If found to be at 142 GeV than we have the wrong math.

DO: This value is torture for theorist according to one physicist.

MDC: If not at 125, then what?

BG: It can affect super-symmetric theories, yes.

A7: null

A8: How can you deny conclusively the HB if you can’t prove it?

MT: We will find range-bound observations that will be conclusive relative to whether the Higgs exists at 125 or not.

BG: Other ideas would then arise that would be examined for helpfulness.

MT: Moreover, on the downside, the LHC will be found not be large enough to prove this theory by at least 3x.

A9: null

BG: We will go from mathematical theory to mathematical theory and in so doing better integrate our physical models.

Conclusion

MDC: Why should people care? “It’s always about where have we come from and where are we going.”

DO: null [Gawker.com]

BG: My mind is always open to discovery. Especially in linking the world of the small to the world of the large. Proving exotic ideas. Building big machines. Finding astronomical data that can be helpful to microscopic physics. Background radiation, [dark matter, and dark energy].

MT: Proving the Higgs theory is one goal. Improving precise measurements. Being open to the next frontier of discovery.

End

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

"God particle" redirects here. For the book, see The God Particle (book).

For the "Oh-my-God particle," see Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray

The Higgs boson is a hypothetical elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. It belongs to a class of subatomic particles known as bosons, characterized by an integer value of their spin quantum number. The Higgs field is a quantum field with a non-zero value that fills all of space, and explains why fundamental particles such as quarks and electrons have mass. The Higgs boson is an excitation of the Higgs field above its ground state.

The existence of the Higgs boson is predicted by the Standard Model to explain how spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry (the Higgs mechanism) takes place in nature, which in turn explains why other elementary particles have mass.^{[Note 1]} Its discovery would further validate the Standard Model as essentially correct, as it is the only elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model that has not yet been observed in particle physics experiments.^[2] The Standard Model completely fixes the properties of the Higgs boson, except for its mass. It is expected to have no spin and no electric or color charge, and it interacts with other particles through weak interaction and Yukawa interactions. Alternative sources of the Higgs mechanism that do not need the Higgs boson are also possible and would be considered if the existence of the Higgs boson were ruled out. They are known as Higgsless models.

Experiments to determine whether the Higgs boson exists are currently being performed using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and were performed at Fermilab's Tevatron until its closure in late 2011. Mathematical consistency of the Standard Model requires that any mechanism capable of generating the masses of elementary particles become visible at energies above 1.4 TeV;^[3] therefore, the LHC (designed to collide two 7-TeV proton beams) is expected to be able to answer the question of whether or not the Higgs boson actually exists.^[4] In December 2011, Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli, spokespersons of the two main experiments at the LHC (ATLAS and CMS) both reported independently that their data hints at a possibility the Higgs may exist with a mass around 125 GeV/c² (about 133 proton masses, on the order of 10⁻²⁵ kg). They also reported that the original range under investigation has been narrowed down considerably and that a mass outside approximately 115–130 GeV/c² is almost ruled out.^[5] No conclusive answer yet exists, although it is expected that the LHC will provide sufficient data by the end of 2012 for a definite answer.^[1][6][7][8]

In the popular media, the particle is sometimes referred to as the God particle, a title generally disliked by the scientific community as media hyperbole that misleads readers.^[9]

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory concerning the electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear interactions, which mediate the dynamics of the known subatomic particles. Developed throughout the mid to late 20th century, the current formulation was finalized in the mid 1970s upon experimental confirmation of the existence of quarks. Since then, discoveries of the bottom quark (1977), the top quark (1995) and the tau neutrino (2000) have given further credence to the Standard Model. Because of its success in explaining a wide variety of experimental results, the Standard Model is sometimes regarded as a theory of almost everything.

Still, the Standard Model falls short of being a complete theory of fundamental interactions because it does not incorporate the physics of dark energy nor of the full theory of gravitation as described by general relativity. The theory does not contain any viable dark matter particle that possesses all of the required properties deduced from observational cosmology. It also does not correctly account for neutrino oscillations (and their non-zero masses). Although the Standard Model is believed to be theoretically self-consistent, it has several apparently unnatural properties giving rise to puzzles like the strong CP problem and the hierarchy problem.

Nevertheless, the Standard Model is important to theoretical and experimental particle physicists alike. For theorists, the Standard Model is a paradigmatic example of a quantum field theory, which exhibits a wide range of physics including spontaneous symmetry breaking, anomalies, non-perturbative behavior, etc. It is used as a basis for building more exotic models which incorporate hypothetical particles, extra dimensions and elaborate symmetries (such as supersymmetry) in an attempt to explain experimental results at variance with the Standard Model, such as the existence of dark matter and neutrino oscillations. In turn, experimenters have incorporated the Standard Model into simulators to help search for new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Recently, the Standard Model has found applications in fields besides particle physics, such as astrophysics, cosmology, and nuclear physics.

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN

CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire), known as CERN ( /ˈsɜrn/; French pronunciation: [sɛʁn]; see History), is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border. EWikiMiniEstablished in 1954, the organization has twenty European member states.

The term CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs just under 2400 full-time employees and hosts some 10000 visiting scientists and engineers representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities.

CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research. Numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them. It is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web. The main site at Meyrin also has a large computer centre containing very powerful data-processing facilities primarily for experimental data analysis and, because of the need to make them available to researchers elsewhere, has historically been a major wide area networking hub.

The CERN sites, as an international facility, are officially under neither Swiss nor French jurisdiction. Member states' contributions to CERN for the year 2008 totaled CHF 1 billion.

The Atlas Group

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS_experiment

Computer generated cut-away view of ATLAS detector

showing its various components.

ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) is one of the seven particle detector experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, LHCb, LHCf and MoEDAL) constructed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a new particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. ATLAS is 44 metres long and 25 metres in diameter, weighing about 7,000 tonnes. The project is led by Fabiola Gianotti and involves roughly 2,000 scientists and engineers at 165 institutions in 35 countries.^[1][2] The construction was originally scheduled to be completed in June 2007, but was ready and detected its first beam events on 10 September 2008.^[3] The experiment is designed to observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators and might shed light on new theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.

The ATLAS collaboration, the group of physicists building the detector, was formed in 1992 when the proposed EAGLE (Experiment for Accurate Gamma, Lepton and Energy Measurements) and ASCOT (Apparatus with Super Conducting Toroids) collaborations merged their efforts into building a single, general-purpose particle detector for the Large Hadron Collider.^[4] The design was a combination of those two previous designs, as well as the detector research and development that had been done for the Superconducting Supercollider. The ATLAS experiment was proposed in its current form in 1994, and officially funded by the CERN member countries beginning in 1995. Additional countries, universities, and laboratories joined in subsequent years, and further institutions and physicists continue to join the collaboration even today. The work of construction began at individual institutions, with detector components shipped to CERN and assembled in the ATLAS experimental pit beginning in 2003.

ATLAS is designed as a general-purpose detector. When the proton beams produced by the Large Hadron Collider interact in the center of the detector, a variety of different particles with a broad range of energies may be produced. Rather than focusing on a particular physical process, ATLAS is designed to measure the broadest possible range of signals. This is intended to ensure that, whatever form any new physical processes or particles might take, ATLAS will be able to detect them and measure their properties. Experiments at earlier colliders, such as the Tevatron and Large Electron-Positron Collider, were designed based on a similar philosophy. However, the unique challenges of the Large Hadron Collider—its unprecedented energy and extremely high rate of collisions—require ATLAS to be larger and more complex than any detector ever built.

Large Hadron Collider

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/large_hadron_collider/index.html

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

Updated: Dec. 13, 2011

Call it the Hubble Telescope of Inner Space

The Large Hadron Collider, located 300 feet underneath the French-Swiss border outside Geneva, is the world’s biggest and most expensive particle accelerator. It is designed to accelerate the subatomic particles known as protons to energies of 7 trillion electron volts apiece and then smash them together to create tiny fireballs, recreating conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old.

Whatever forms of matter and whatever laws and forces held sway Back Then — relics not seen in this part of space since the universe cooled 14 billion years ago — will spring fleetingly to life. If all goes well, they will leave their footprints in four mountains of hardware and computer memory that international armies of physicists have erected in the cavern.

After 16 years and $10 billion, on March 30, 2010, the collider finally began its work of smashing subatomic particles. The day was a milestone — delayed a year and a half by an assortment of technical problems — and brings closer a moment of truth for CERN and for the world’s physicists, who have staked their credibility and their careers, not to mention all those billions of dollars, on the conviction that they are within touching distance of fundamental discoveries about the universe. If they fail to see something new, experts agree, it could be a long time, if ever, before giant particle accelerators are built on Earth again, ringing down the curtain on at least one aspect of the age-old quest to understand what the world is made of and how it works.

“If you see nothing,” said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN, “in some sense then, we theorists have been talking rubbish for the last 35 years.”

Looking Back in Time

Machines like CERN’s new collider get their magic from Einstein‘s equation of mass and energy. The more energy that these machines can pack into their little fireballs, in effect the farther back in time they can go, closer and closer to the Big Bang, the smaller and smaller things they can see.

The new hadron collider, scientists say, will take physics into a realm of energy and time where the current reigning theories simply do not apply, corresponding to an era when cosmologists think that the universe was still differentiating itself, evolving from a primordial blandness and endless potential into the forces and particles that constitute modern reality.

One prime target is a mysterious particle called the Higgs that is thought to endow other particles with mass, according to the reigning theory of particle physics, known as the Standard Model.

In December 2011, two teams of scientists sifting debris from high-energy proton collisions in the LHC said that they had recorded “tantalizing hints” — but only hints — of the long-sought Higgs boson. It is likely to be another year, however, before they have enough data to say whether the elusive particle really exists, the scientists said.

The putative particle weighs in at about 125 billion electron volts, about 125 times heavier than a proton and 500,000 times heavier than an electron, according to one team of 3,000 physicists, known as Atlas, for the name of their particle detector.

The other equally large team, known as C.M.S. — for their detector, the Compact Muon Solenoid — found bumps in their data corresponding to a mass of about 126 billion electron volts.

Over the last 20 years, suspicious bumps that might have been the Higgs have come and gone, and scientists cautioned that the same thing could happen again, but the fact that two rival teams using two different mammoth particle detectors had recorded similar results was considered to be good news.

Read More...Cosmic Leapfrog

The advent of the CERN collider cements a shift in the balance of physics power away from American dominance that began in 1993, when Congress canceled the Superconducting Supercollider, a monster machine under construction in Waxahachie, Tex. The supercollider, the most powerful ever envisioned, would have sped protons around a 54-mile racetrack before slamming them together with 40 trillion electron volts.

For decades before that, physicists in the United States and Europe had leapfrogged one another with bigger, more expensive and, inevitably, fewer of these machines. The most powerful American accelerator now operating is the Tevatron, colliding protons and their antimatter opposites, antiprotons, with energies of a trillion electron volts apiece, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. It is presently expected to run through 2010 or 2011.

Once upon a time, said Lyn Evans, who led the building of the CERN collider, “There was a nice equilibrium across the Atlantic. People used to come and go.”

Now, he said, “The center of gravity has moved to CERN.”

The Development of CERN

CERN was born amid vineyards and farmland in the countryside outside Geneva in 1954 out of the rubble of postwar Europe. It had a twofold mission of rebuilding European science and of having European countries work together.

Today, it has 20 countries as members. Yearly contributions are determined according to members’ domestic economies, and the result is a stable annual budget of about a billion Swiss francs. The vineyards and cows are still there, but so are strip malls and shopping centers.

It was here that the World Wide Web was born in the early 1990s, but the former director-general of CERN, Robert Aymar, joked recently that the lab’s greatest fame was as a locus of conspiracy in the novel “Angels and Demons,” by the author of “The DaVinci Code,” Dan Brown. The lab came into its own scientifically in the early ’80s, when Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer won the Nobel Prize by colliding protons and antiprotons there to produce the particles known as the W and Z bosons, which are responsible for the so-called weak nuclear force that causes some radioactive decays.

Bosons are bits of energy, or quanta, that, according to the weird house rules of the subatomic world, transmit forces as they are tossed back and forth in a sort of game of catch between matter particles. The W’s and Z’s are closely related to photons, which transmit electromagnetic forces, or light.

The lab followed up that triumph by building a 17-mile-long ring, the Large Electron-Positron collider, or LEP, to manufacture W and Z particles for further study. The United States started and then abandoned its plans for an accelerator, which would have been named Isabelle, but in the meantime, CERN physicists had been mulling building their own giant proton collider in the LEP tunnel.

The Collider’s Cost Problems

In 1994 CERN’s governing council gave its approval. The United States eventually agreed to chip in $531 million for the project. CERN also arranged to borrow about $400 million from the European Investment Bank. Even so, there was a crisis in 2001 when the project was found to be 18 percent over budget, necessitating cutting other programs at the lab. The collider’s name comes from the word hadron, which denotes subatomic particles like protons and neutrons that feel the “strong” nuclear force that binds atomic nuclei.

Whether the Europeans would have gone ahead if the United States had still been in the game depends on whom you ask. Dr. Aymar, the former director, who was not there in the ’90s, said there was no guarantee then that the United States would have succeeded even if it had proceeded.

“Certainly in Europe the situation of CERN is such that we appreciate competition,” he said. “But we assume we are the leader and we have all intention [in the world] to remain the leader. And we’ll do everything which is needed to remain the leader.”

Sunken Cathedrals

The guts of the collider are some 1,232 electromagnets, thick as tree trunks, long as boxcars, weighing in at 35 tons apiece, strung together like an endless train stretching around the gentle curve of the CERN tunnel.

In order to bend 7-trillion-electron-volt protons around in such a tight circle these magnets, known as dipoles, have to produce magnetic fields of 8.36 Tesla, more than 100,000 times the Earth’s field, requiring in turn a current of 13,000 amperes through the magnet’s coils. To make this possible the entire ring is bathed in 128 tons of liquid helium to keep it cooled to 1.9 degrees Kelvin, at which temperature the niobium-titanium cables are superconducting and pass the current without resistance.

Running through the core of this train, surrounded by magnets and cold, are two vacuum pipes, one for protons going clockwise, the other counterclockwise. Traveling in tight bunches along the twin beams, the protons will cross each other at four points around the ring, 30 million times a second. During each of these violent crossings, physicists expect that about 20 protons, or the parts thereof — quarks or gluons — will actually collide and spit fire. It is in vast caverns at those intersection points that the detectors, or “sunken cathedrals” in the words of a CERN theorist, Alvaro de Rujula, are placed to capture the holy fire.

Detectors And Their Quarry

Two of the detectors are specialized. One, called Alice, is designed to study a sort of primordial fluid, called a quark-gluon plasma, that is created when the collider smashes together lead nuclei.

The other, LHCb, will hunt for subtle differences in matter and antimatter that could help explain how the universe, which was presumably born with equal amounts of both, came to be dominated by matter.

The other two, known as Atlas and the Compact Muon Solenoid, or C.M.S. for short, are the designated rival workhorses of the collider, designed expressly to capture and measure every last spray of particle and spark of energy from the proton collisions.

Or as Katie McAlpine, who writes about science for the Atlas group, put it in “The L.H.C. Rap,”

“LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone.

Alice looks at collisions of lead ions.

CMS and Atlas are two of a kind,

They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.”

The last two, Atlas and C.M.S., represent complementary strategies for hunting one of the prime targets of the collider, a particle known as the Higgs boson, which is expected to disintegrate into a spray of lesser particles. Exactly which particles are produced depends on how massive the Higgs really is.

One telltale signature of the Higgs and other subatomic cataclysms is a negatively charged particle known as a muon, a sort of heavy electron that comes flying out at nearly the speed of light. Physicists measure muon momentum by seeing how much their paths bend in a magnetic field.

It is the need to have magnets strong enough and large enough to produce measurable bending, physicists say, that determines the gigantic size of the detectors.

The Compact Muon Solenoid weighs 12,000 tons, the heaviest scientific instrument ever made. It takes its name from a massive superconducting electromagnet that produces a powerful field running along the path of the protons.

Conversely, the magnetic field on Atlas wraps like tape around the proton beam. At 150 feet long and 80 feet high, Atlas is bigger than its rival, but it is much lighter, about 7,000 tons, about as much as the Eiffel Tower.

The two detectors have much in common, including “onion layers” of instruments to measure different particles and the ability to cope with harsh radiation and vast amounts of data. The central C.M.S. detector is made of strips of silicon that record the passage of charged particles. It is in effect a 60-megapixel digital camera taking 40 million pictures a second.

To manage this onslaught the teams’ computers have to perform triage, and winnow those events to a couple of hundred per second. Even so, the collider will produce the equivalent of 3 million DVDs worth of data every year, and a grid computing system of more than 100,000 processors from over 170 sites in 34 countries has been constructed to cope with it.

*The competition between Atlas and the C.M.S. is in keeping with a long tradition of having rival teams and rival detectors at big experiments to keep each other honest and to cover all the bets.

At the Fermilab Tevatron, the teams, several hundred strong, are called CDF and D0. In the glory years 20 years ago at CERN, they were called UA1 and UA2. Over the years, as the machines have grown, so have the groups that built them, from teams to armies, 1,800 people from 34 countries for Atlas and 2,520 from 37 countries for the C.M.S. The other two experiments — Alice with 1,000 scientists, and LHCb with 663 — are only slightly smaller.

Cocktail Party Physics

The payoff for this investment, physicists say, could be a new understanding of one of the most fundamental of aspects of reality, namely the nature of mass.

This is where the shadowy particle known as the Higgs boson, a.k.a. the God particle, comes in.

In the Standard Model, a suite of equations describing all the forces but gravity, which has held sway as the law of the cosmos for the last 35 years, elementary particles are born in the Big Bang without mass, sort of like Adam and Eve being born without sin.

Some of them (the particles, that is) acquire their heft, so the story goes, by wading through a sort of molasses that pervades all of space. The Higgs process, named after Peter Higgs, a Scottish physicist who first showed how this could work in 1964, has been compared to a cocktail party where particles gather their masses by interaction. The more they interact, the more mass they gain.

The Higgs idea is crucial to a theory that electromagnetism and the weak force are separate manifestations of a single so-called electroweak force. It shows how the massless bits of light called photons could be long-lost brothers to the heavy W and Z bosons, which would gain large masses from such cocktail party interactions as the universe cooled.

The confirmation of the theory by the Nobel-winning work at CERN 20 years ago ignited hopes among physicists that they could eventually unite the rest of the forces of nature [known as the Theory of Everything, or TOE].

Moreover, Higgs-like fields have been proposed as the source of an enormous burst of expansion, known as inflation, early in the universe [the Higgs particle is what gives the push to the Bang - res]; and possibly, as the secret of the dark energy that now seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe. So it is important to know whether the theory works and, if not, to find out what does endow the universe with mass.

But nobody has ever seen a Higgs boson, the particle that personifies this molasses. It should be producible in particle accelerators, but nature has given confusing clues about where to look for it. Measurements of other exotic particles suggest that the Higgs’s mass should be around 90 billion electron volts, the unit of choice in particle physics. But other results, from the LEP collider before it shut down in 2000, indicate that the Higgs must weigh more than 114 billion electron volts. By comparison, an electron is half a million electron volts, and a proton is about 2,000 times heavier.

The new collider was specifically designed to hunt for the Higgs particle, which is key to the Standard Model and to any greater theory that would supersede it. The Tevatron [near Chicago] is also searching for the Higgs.

Theorists say the Higgs or something like it has to show up simply because the Standard Model breaks down and calculations using it go kerflooey at energies exceeding one trillion electron volts. If you try to predict what happens when two particles collide, it gives nonsense, explained Dr. Ellis. 

Particles in physics Elementary Fermions Quarks u ·u · d ·d · c ·c · s ·s · t ·t · b · b Leptons e− ·e+ ·μ− ·μ+ ·τ− ·τ+ ·ν e ·ν e ·ν μ ·ν μ ·ν τ ·ν τ Bosons Gauge γ ·g ·W± ·Z Others Ghosts Hypothetical Superpartners Gauginos Gluino ·Gravitino Others Axino ·Chargino ·Higgsino ·Neutralino ·Sfermion Others A0 ·Dilaton ·G ·H0 ·J ·m ·Tachyon ·X ·Y ·W' · Z' ·Sterile neutrino Composite Hadrons Baryons / Hyperons N (p ·n) ·Δ ·Λ ·Σ ·Ξ ·Ω Mesons / Quarkonia π ·ρ ·η ·η′ ·φ ·ω ·J/ψ ·ϒ ·θ ·K ·B ·D ·T Others Atomic nuclei ·Atoms ·Diquarks ·Exotic atoms (Positronium ·Muonium ·Tauonium ·Onia) ·Superatoms ·Molecules Hypothetical Exotic hadrons Exotic baryons Dibaryon ·Pentaquark ·Skyrmion Exotic mesons Glueball ·Tetraquark Others Mesonic molecule ·Pomeron Quasiparticles Davydov soliton ·Exciton ·Hole ·Magnon ·Phonon ·Plasmaron ·Plasmon ·Polariton ·Polaron ·Roton ·Trion Lists List of particles ·List of quasiparticles ·List of baryons ·List of mesons ·Timeline of particle discoveries Wikipedia books Book:Hadronic Matter ·Book:Particles of the Standard Model ·Book:Leptons ·Book:Quarks

Cosmic Dreams

If the CERN experimenters find the Higgs, Nobel Prizes will flow like water. But just finding the elusive particle will not be enough to satisfy the theorists, who profess to be haunted by a much deeper problem, namely why the putative particle is not millions of times heavier than it appears to be.

When they try to calculate the mass of the Higgs particle using the Standard Model and quantum mechanics, they get what Dr. Ellis called “a very infinite answer.”

Rather than a trillion electron volts or so, quantum effects push the mass all the way up to 10 quadrillion trillion electron volts, known as the Planck energy, where gravity and the other particle forces are equal.

The culprit is quantum weirdness, one principle of which is that anything that is not forbidden will happen. That means the Higgs calculation must include the effects of its interactions with all other known particles, including so-called virtual particles that can wink in and out of existence, which shift its mass off the scale.

As a result, if the Standard Model is valid for all energies, physicists say, they are at a loss to explain why the Higgs mass isn’t a quadrillion times bigger than it is. Another way to put it is to ask why gravity is so much weaker than the other forces — the theory wants them all to be equal.

Theorists can rig their calculations to have the numbers come out right, but it feels like cheating, and they would like to have a theory in which the numbers emerge naturally.

One solution that has been proposed is a new principle of nature called supersymmetry that, if true, would be a bonanza for the CERN collider.

It posits a relation between the particles of matter like electrons and quarks and particles that transmit forces like photons and the W boson. For each particle in one category, there is an as-yet-undiscovered superpartner in the other category.

These superpartners cancel out all the quantum effects that make the Higgs mass skyrocket. Supersymmetry also fixes a glitch in the age-old dream of explaining all the forces of nature as manifestations of one primordial force. It predicts that at a high enough energy, all the forces — electromagnetic, strong and weak — have identical strengths.

For several years, supersymmetry has been a sort of best bet to be the next step beyond the Standard Model, which is undefeated in experiments but has enormous gaps. The Standard Model does not include gravity or explain why, for example, the universe is matter instead of antimatter or even why particles have the masses they do, and so few physicists think it is the end of the story of the universe.

But so far there is no direct evidence for any of the thousands of versions of supersymmetry that have been proposed. Indeed, many theorists are troubled that its effects have not already shown up in precision measurements at accelerators.

Physicists say the best indirect evidence for supersymmetry comes from the skies, where the galaxies have been found to be swaddled by clouds of invisible dark matter, presumably unknown particles left over from the Big Bang. Astrophysical and cosmological calculations suggest that this dark matter makes up 25 [23% - wikipedia] percent of the universe by mass. By comparison the atoms of which people and stars are made comprise only 4 percent of nature [the remaining 73% is dark energy, as yet undetected - res].

The Higgs is expected to occur once in every trillion events, and it is expected that it will take a couple of years of running in order to get enough data to say if it exists. But some supersymmetric particles, if they exist, should be produced abundantly and could thus pop out of the data much sooner.

The prospect of discovering the identity of a quarter of the universe, or even something more surprising and fundamental has sustained physicists over the decades it has taken to build the collider and its detectors. Without these experiments, said Jim Virdee, of Imperial College, London, and spokesperson for the C.M.S. team, “this field which began with Newton just stops.”

“When we started, we did not know how to do this experiment and did not know if it would work,” he said. “Twenty-five hundred scientists can work together. Our judge is not God or governments, but nature. If we make a mistake, nature will not hesitate to punish us.”

The Collider in Operation

The first experiments with the collider were delayed by over a year when an explosion vaporized an electrical connection and spewed tons of helium underneath the Swiss-French countryside in the fall of 2008. The explosion took place only nine days after the physicists celebrated threading the first protons around the 17-mile underground racetrack by drinking Champagne. The incident exposed a weakness in the connections between the collider’s thousands of magnets that will mean a longer wait until it is ready to operate at peak power.

On Nov. 23, 2009, the first collision was produced in a test of the collider systems’ ability to synchronize the beams, in which bunches of protons travel along at nearly the speed of light, and make them collide at the right points. The protons were at their so-called injection energies of 450 billion electron volts, a far cry from the energies the machine will eventually achieve.

Four months later, the collider went into full operation for the first time, whipping protons to 99 percent of the speed of light and to energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece. That was cause for great celebration, but the machine is still operating at half of peak power.

Because of the defective joints and some mysteriously underperforming magnets, the collider will not run at or near full strength until at least 2012. According to theoretical models, that would stretch out the time it should take to achieve the collider’s main goals, including producing a particle known as the Higgs boson, which is thought to be responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.

The results from two collider teams announced in December 2011, giving hints that the Higgs boson existed, led to predictions that scientists there would be able to answer the question one way or another by the end of 2012.

 For more Information go to:

Biologos: Particle Physics of the Universe & Multiverse, Parts 1-4

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/04/biologos-universe-multiverse.html

The Higgs-Boson God Particle Found

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/12/cern-physicists-find-hint-of-higgs.html

CERN physicists find hint of Higgs boson

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/12/cern-physicists-find-hint-of-higgs.html

Brian Greene Hosts "The Fabric of the Universe" on NOVA

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/brian-greene-hosts-fabric-of-universe.html

Alan Guth on Inflationary Cosmology

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/12/alan-guth-on-inflationary-cosmology.html