Posted on 12/18/2006 4:02:58 PM PST by blam
Source: Imperial College London
Date: December 17, 2006
Preparing For The Biggest Experiment On Earth
An international team of over 2,000 scientists, led by Professor Tejinder Virdee from Imperial College London's Department of Physics is stepping up preparations for the world's largest ever physics experiment, starting next year at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.
The enormous CMS particle detector is being assembled piece by piece under the supervision of Imperial's Professor Tejinder Virdee.Ads by Google Advertise on this site
Professor Virdee is the lead scientist on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) particle detector experiment, which will aim to find new particles, detect mini black holes and solve some of the mysteries of the universe such as where mass comes from, how many dimensions there are and what constitutes dark matter. Particles are the building blocks of matter and are even smaller than atoms. Scientists hope the CMS experiment may also help them progress towards a unified theory to explain all physical phenomena – a theory that has eluded scientists up until now.
The CMS experiment has so far involved thousands of scientists and engineers working for 15 years to design and build the massive particle detector, which is currently being lowered – huge bit by huge bit - into a chamber 100 metres below the French town of Cessy, near the Swiss border. Next year, CERN's Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator will be switched on for the first time, accelerating beams of particles around a 27km circular tunnel underneath the Swiss/French countryside. These particles then collide with each other – with higher energies than in any experiment ever before – at the precise location where the particles are passing through the CMS detector.
Professor Virdee explains: "When the particles smash into each other inside the CMS detector the high energy conditions created in these collisions will be similar to those that occurred in the first instants of the universe, immediately after the Big Bang. The unique conditions created by these collisions will create many new particles that would also have existed in those early instants. Resultant particles will fly away from the site of the collision in all directions. The different layers of our complex detector will measure the properties of these particles, track their paths, and measure their energies. An extremely powerful magnet built into the detector will bend the paths of electrically charged particles, which will help us identify the different types of particles produced in the collisions."
One of the particles that Professor Virdee and his colleagues are hoping to detect is the Higgs-Boson, a particle which has been theorised but never actually recorded. "It would be a real coup if we recorded, for the first time ever, the existence of the Higgs-Boson particle," says Professor Virdee. "Scientists believe the Higgs-Boson is the particle that gives the property of mass to other particles such as electrons and so on. If we can prove that it exists and that this is the case, we will have taken a big step towards a much fuller understanding of how the universe works, and indeed, what happened in the instants immediately after it was formed."
The CMS detector is one of four experiments sited at different locations on the 27km ring of CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The construction of CMS is an international effort, with different parts of the various layers of the detector being made by scientific collaborators from 37 different countries.
Constituent parts of CMS, weighing up to 2000 tonnes, are currently being lowered, by a specially-adapted shipbuilding crane, down 100 metres into the cavern where they will be re-assembled and prepared for data taking over the course of the next year. It is anticipated that the particle accelerator will be switched on just before Christmas 2007, at which time data will begin to be recorded.
On December 19th from 9pm - 11pm CST, streaming via Real Media here:
THE LATEST RESEARCH AT ARGONNE AND FERMILAB
Chicago is home to two of the top scientific research facilities in the country—the Argonne National Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, perhaps better known as Fermilab. Both are affiliated with the University of Chicago and both conduct experiments that are on the forefront of astrophysics, particle physics, biochemistry, and more. Tonight, we welcome researchers from both facilities who will discuss their latest breakthroughs and detail how Fermilab and Argonne are key players in today’s international science scene. Our guests are TOM ROSENBAUM, Vice President for Research and Argonne National Laboratory at the University of Chicago, ROBERT ROSNER, director of Argonne National Laboratory, PIER ODDONE, director of Fermilab, and MICHAEL TURNER, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago and a researcher at Fermilab.
If you should happen to start delving into the show's audio archives be sure to check out his interview with Mark Steyn on October 17th. They formed a great tag team against terrorists.
They weren't so much scientists as they were AI, though.
Why????
President Bill Clinton (1993). Letter of June 16, 1993 to William H. Natcher, Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations. Archived at Fermilab’s High Energy Physics Information Center. In part, the text reads “As your Committee considers the Energy and Water Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1994, I want you to know of my continuing support for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). ... Abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science - a position unquestioned for generations. These are tough economic times, yet our Administration supports this project as a part of its broad investment package in science and technology. ... I ask you to support this important and challenging effort.”
Guess I missed this one the first time around - I probably should look at “sell by” date.
Preparing For The Biggest Experiment On EarthWe already know what the answer is going to be:
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If the planet Earth was being consumed by a black hole at any noticeable rate, the gravity would have been to strong for them to escape.
Keep in mind- science fiction. It’s not going to have it right. Thats the point of it.
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