Big Bang: Is there room for God?

[Gerald]

The discovery of the Higgs boson is so fresh that the exhibit in Cern's museum has not yet been updated.

In the exhibit - a short film that projects images of the birth of the Universe onto a huge screen - the narrator poses the question: "Will we find the Higgs boson"?

Now that the Higgs has finally been spotted - a scientific discovery that takes us closer than ever to the first moments after the Big Bang - Cern has opened its doors to scholars that take a very different approach to the question of how the Universe came to exist.

On 15 October, a group of theologians, philosophers and physicists came together for two days in Geneva to talk about the Big Bang.

So what happened when people of such different - very different - views of the Universe came together to discuss how it all began?

"I realised there was a need to discuss this," says Rolf Heuer, Cern's director general.

"There's a need for us, as naive scientists, to discuss with philosophers of theologians the time before or around the Big Bang." Cern's co-organiser of this unusual meeting of minds was Wilton Park - a global forum set up by Winston Churchill.

It is an organisation usually associated with high level discussions about global policy and even confidential exchanges on matters of international security, which perhaps emphasises how seriously Cern is taking this exchange.

But even the idea of a "time before the Big Bang" is impossible territory for physicists.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19997789


Note: 19 October 2012 Last updated at 23:33 GMT