And Buddha says Make Me One With Everything

How many physicists does it take to find God? Apparently 1000. How many of those physicists are wearing a clown nose and Groucho Marx hair? Eight.*

For those of you who haven't been watching, let me pull back the veil and reveal the search for the origin of the universe, genius-style. One thousand physicists have been working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory trying to find the 'God Particle', also called the Higgs boson, which is said to be responsible for for creating the universe as we know it. For taking the Big Bang and letting it linger, thus giving life to our unbelievable planet, our wondrous animals, our skyblue seas, our seablue skies, our far from endless bounty, BP, good things happening to bad people, bad things happening to everyone else, BP getting away with murder, Rush Limbaugh, movies featuring a naked or semi-naked Ewan McGregor, and yoga. Not necessarily in that order.

Over the last decade physicists - yes, God bless them - have examined a thousand trillion collisions of protons and anti-protons looking for signs of that singular spark that created us. All of which begs some serious questions.

First, how does someone count to a thousand trillion? That has to be exhausting. Five hundred trillion is exhausting enough and I'm not counting I'm merely typing. Secondly, is God truly in the God Particle and what does that name actually mean? GP: It's the Theory of Everything, and finding it would explain how all the forces in the universe interact to produce the world we know now. It's a theoretical energy particle that would reveal why things have mass - and why we, our planet and everything around it - was created out of chaos. It's never been observed. Never located. It's a phenomena that remains hidden, a mystery. What's essential is invisible to the eye.**

Origin of the Universe. Dark Matter. The Reason We're Here. 'Scientists Inch Towards Finding God Particle' the headlines screamed today. Will we ever get there? Or will the universal rug be pulled out from under us, Harpo honking in the background, Loki laughing at our misery? God, you trickster you, waiting behind the curtain, always in the details.

*This number subject to debate.

**Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince. Read it. It's beautiful.

-Janet