Laura and I just read The Golden Compass so when I saw this article on a “God particle” I immediately thought of Dust. (If you haven’t read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, this will mean nothing to you.)

Here is what the scientist has to say about the God particle:

Nobel laureate Leon Lederman has dubbed the theoretical boson “the God particle” because its discovery could unify understanding of particle physics and help humans “know the mind of God.”

Fancy! Wikipedia explains that in Pullman’s novels Dust is:

Unlike ordinary particles, Dust is conscious. It falls from the sky and is attracted to people (especially adults) and objects made by people. This makes it of great interest to the Church, which believes that it may be the physical manifestation of Original Sin. It is later learnt that Dust actually confers consciousness, knowledge and wisdom, and that Dust is formed when matter becomes conscious.

Compare that description of Dust to National Geographic’s article on the God particle aka the Higgs particle:

The preferred name for the God particle among physicists is the Higgs boson, or the Higgs particle, or simply the Higgs, in honor of the University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed its existence more than 40 years ago. Most physicists believe that there must be a Higgs field that pervades all space; the Higgs particle would be the carrier of the field and would interact with other particles, sort of the way a Jedi knight in Star Wars is the carrier of the “force.” The Higgs is a crucial part of the standard model of particle physics—but no one’s ever found it.

If the God particle indeed functions like a carrier of matter, it could be considered the substance from which matter springs. As a field in which matter exists, we could imagine it as a canvas on which a picture is drawn. The canvas is the field of creativity, of consciousness, from which all matter arises, just as in most spiritual traditions Being arises from Non-Being. I’m not sure that the God particle could be considered Non-Being, but it is an interesting parallel. Pullman’s Dust is consciousness which is creative potential, the God particle is a field of potentiality in which matter exists. Here we have art, science and spirituality converging on the same idea: God is creativity is consciousness is source.

Physicists in the audience, feel free to shoot my conclusion to pieces.