The God Particle? The Higgs Boson hunt was on. When Washington decided to build America's Super Conducting Super Collider in a small Texas town, the gold rush and land grab was on, too. News of the Super Conducting SuperCollider brings all sorts of brows - high and low - into the race to get rich quick and discover "the mysterious molecular nature of the universe." (historical fable) Peach trees have no real reason to grow in a hot climate like Parker County, Texas and you could almost say the same for some locals. But life presses on and biology teacher Ledonna Truehart can't understand what all the fuss is about when a band of residents petitions the court to have a pig fetus removed from her junior high biology lab. For her, it's enchanting evidence of "the mysterious molecular nature of the universe." For them, it's a threat to decency. But attention shifts when word leak that the United States intends to break ground on America's first Super Conducting Super Collider (Atom Smasher) in their town to discover "the secret of life." ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY(c)1999 Albert Goodman's original screenplay with revisions. Why a screenplay? Peach Trees was written as a dialogue driven "tone poem"; the screenplay format keeps the dialogue up front and flowing. Those unaccustomed to reading screenplays may have initial trouble with the format and keeping the character's straight. This book is offered only in the SCREENPLAY format. Why Build an Atom Smasher? The first and most important order of business is to prove (or disprove) the existence of a single particle known as the Higgs boson -- a speck so precious that it has come to be called "The God Particle," a reference to the theory that Higgs gives mass to all matter in the cosmos. The significance of the God Particle is as old as time itself: scientists believe that at the moment of the Big Bang, when the universe was born, there existed a moment of incandescent beauty -- of perfect symmetry -- in which all things and all forces were in absolute agreement. The universe's four forces -- the weak force, strong force, electromagnetism and gravity -- had yet to differentiate, and the tiny particles that carried those forces had yet to emerge as separate entities. As the explosion cooled and its contents scattered, complexity engulfed the universe, splitting its symmetry asunder -- a cosmic parallel to Adam and Eve. Harrell, Eben Why the Collider Matters: In Search of the 'God Particle'.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1977062,00.html