Quantum of Solace

British physicist Stephen Hawking once made a bet with another physicist that we would never discover the Higgs Boson, also known as the "God particle," because it was the one missing link in the Standard Model that would make everything else make sense.  It was assigned the task of giving all things mass.  So it was something of an all-or-nothing proposition:  Find the Higgs Boson and everything falls into place, or don't find it, and everything is still lacking in any singular sense of order.

Then Hawking theorized something else, and it was reported just yesterday.  He believes that the Higgs Boson and the field it occupies is set at, or contains, a set amount of energy.  This very specific setting has it perched between two opposing contingencies.  If it acquires more energy, then everything spins out of control.  If it loses energy, then everything spins out of control.  It may also somehow "tunnel" from one trough in the energy graph to a lower trough, thereby neither gaining or losing energy in the conventional sense, but everything spins out of control nevertheless.

This spinning out of control creates a super vacuum that begins expanding at the speed of light until it consumes the universe.  For you and me, sitting in our homes on a little insignificant rock, third one from an insignificant star, out on a spiral arm in an insignificant galaxy, which is also out on the fringe of an insignificant supercluster of galaxies, we would never see it coming.

We would be literally annihilated in a instant.  The expanding vacuum would have hit us at the speed of light, so there would be no warning.  In fact, no warning would be possible.  To make Hawking's theory even more tantalizing, this vacuum disturbance may have already occurred somewhere and is expanding -- it just hasn't hit us yet.

And what is striking about this entire expanding theory is not just its subject matter.  What is striking is the ability of theory to expand outside of known contingencies to explain (or create) another possibility.  There are possibilities that are not yet known, but that must be theorized and (if possible) tried.  Theory builds upon theory, and other realms of possibility can come into being to explain something that was limited before.  These are possibilities that are not yet immediately readily apparent.

Could the same be true for problems we face today as a people?  Could the same be true for problems we face today as a civilization?  Could the same be true for problems we face today as economists, politicians, social scientists?

In the 1970's and 80's, we saw the massive destruction of the Earth's ozone layer.  When scientists investigated the cause of the problem, it was discovered to be chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's).  These chemicals were used as a coolant in various applications by consumers and industry.  When they escaped into the environment, they destroyed the delicate layer of O3 that loomed in the upper reaches of the atmosphere and that reflected dangerous ultraviolet spectrum rays from the Sun.

So government regulators sprang into action.  This was a time before the Republican party was hellbent on killing anything that prevented the wholesale and free use of the environment as an externality by their donors, Big Energy and Big Mining.  They were able to pass actual bans on CFC's -- something that the Republican party as agent of Big Energy and Big Mining would never, ever allow -- and get other nations to join.  Many thought that, even though the bans were accomplished, there was still too much damage already done to the ozone layer.  At most, its destruction could be slowed, but never stopped.

A report that came out eviscerated those concerns.  The ozone layer, almost as a living, breathing, organic thing, has not just ceased being depleted.  It is slowly -- every slowly -- beginning to recover itself.  This shocked environmentalists and politicians alike.  And it shows, most importantly, that there is another realm of possibility outside that in which we currently operate.  Things may actually work.  There are some actions we can take, and they may be successful.  All is not necessarily lost.

These days, this, at least, can give us some quantum of solace.