Planet Waves: October 2008

The Atlantis Factor

by Eric Francis Coppolino, September 29, 2008

The other night while I was exploring the astrology of the Large Hadron Collider—a particle smasher that scientists will use to study the formation of the universe—I joked that the lead scientist, Professor Peter Higgs, was a holdover from Atlantis. It went well with the story of a multibillion-dollar machine supposedly designed to have some kind of spiritual outcome and a chart that looked a little like a runaway train.

I am careful what I joke about; there’s this odd spell that follows me around, under which my jokes come true. Looking at his face peering out from beneath his dashing green hardhat, I started to recognize him. You know that odd feeling of having met someone before, but it wasn’t any time in the past few thousand years?
Higgs is the namesake of the “God particle,” which this $8 billion machine was designed to discover. Science is the fairly recent development in human consciousness that supposedly replaced religious dogma and superstition. In its latest major chapter, science has gone on a hunt for a subatomic particle that gives birth to all other basic subatomic particles, a kind of portal to another dimension. If anything, it’s the Goddess particle. Meanwhile, these scientists think that this device they’ve created 500 feet under the ground is so powerful that it could, under the right circumstances, create mini black holes.

I kept looking at Professor Higgs, who is described as humble and unassuming, and wondering who he really is. I wondered what he must feel like, having the God particle named after him. This is what put the feeling into the pit of my stomach: He’s back, in the form of a British physicist, one of the people I think of as the Engineers. One of my reincarnation theories is that people come back with similar jobs or roles, perhaps more or less harmless, sometimes trying to grow up get it right this time, and others undecided or firmly committed to making matters worse.