New start for never-ending story

By Drew Monkman
The Peterborough Examiner
July 19, 2012
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/2012/07/19/new-start-for-never-ending-story

"Everything is the sum of the past… There is nothing, not even the human soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not come within this universal law."

--French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin

Earlier this month, the existence of an entirely new fundamental particle, the Higgs boson, was confirmed by science. This particle is the reason why matter has form and mass and why a refrigerator is so hard to push. The Higgs boson also explains why we have galaxies, stars, planets and life itself. It takes us back to the moment of creation 13.7 billion years ago and may even have been the “spark” that set off the Big Bang. This discovery even allows us to think of the time before the Big Bang and may lead science in a very real quest for things as strange as parallel universes that co-exist with ours.

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At retreat, cosmologist offers insight on how to help the planet

By Sharon Abercrombie
National Catholic Reporter
July 17, 2012
http://ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/retreat-cosmologist-offers-insight-how-help-planet

Waking up to the enormity of environmental devastation can take a very long time. Mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme spent 17 years passing through the stages of shock, annoyance, sadness and numbness before the truth reached him at the levels of heart and gut.

"I was humiliated that it had taken me so long," he said.

His defining moment of illumination was learning that Earth is going through a mass extinction and human activity, "the activity of good people, according to Thomas Berry, is to blame," Swimme said at a weekend retreat June 29 at River's Edge, a Catholic environmental and wellness center operated by the Sisters of St. Joseph in Cleveland.

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