Do God Particles Exist?
Artwork details
Polina Zhadko · 2022
Oil, acrylic, paper, pin on canvas
70 × 60 cm
About the work
"This is the merry Higgs Field, That makes the Particle frequently tilt, That lives in the dark tunnel's gilt, In the Hadron Collider, That CERN built..."
The announcement of a Higgs boson discovery on 4 July 2012 gave this painting its scientific starting point. The particle’s popular nickname, the “God Particle,” becomes a bridge from physics to a metaphysical question.
The artist reflects on the Higgs field, which is associated with the Higgs boson and with the origin of mass for many elementary particles. In the painting, that scientific theme is translated into a meditation on the emergence of “something” from “nothing.”
Thus, “Do God particles exist?” resonates on another frequency: “Does God exist?” The work explores this question through analogy rather than offering a scientific answer.
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Augmented reality
The artist’s portfolio identifies this painting as part of a series viewable in augmented reality.