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A vast cavern is the stage for tests to find the 'God particle'
The Times ^

Posted on 06/09/2003 6:11:13 AM PDT by andy224

Atlas holds key to scientists' map of Universe By Mark Henderson A vast cavern is the stage for tests to find the 'God particle'

SCIENTISTS have taken a step closer to finding the “God particle” that is thought to shape the Universe. In a concrete cavern 130ft deep and bigger than the nave of Canterbury Cathedral, they will mimic the high-energy conditions that existed fractions of a second after the Big Bang to study a beam of energy a quarter of the thickness of a human hair.

The vast Atlas cavern, which was completed last week at Cern, the European nuclear physics laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border, will house parts of a giant atom-smasher that is expected to solve the most elusive riddle in physics.

When the £1.5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is switched on in 2007, it will determine once and for all whether the Higgs boson, a mysterious fundamental particle held to give matter its mass, really exists. If the machine finds the boson, proposed by Professor Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University in 1964, it will prove that the Standard Model for the nature of the Universe is correct. If not, the maxims of modern physics will be thrown into disarray.

The boson was nicknamed the “God particle” by the Nobel laureate Leon Lederman for its centrality to the cosmos. Although it will be so small that its presence can only be calculated, not seen, the search for it requires some of the largest and most advanced scientific instruments designed.

The LHC itself is a ring 17 miles (27km) in circumference, buried up to 100m (330ft) underground, through which streams of protons will be bent by the world’s most powerful magnets and smashed into each other at close to the speed of light.

The new cavern, which will house the Atlas detector for tracking the Higgs and other particles, is 40m (130ft) deep, 55m (180ft) long and 35m (115ft) wide.

However, the proton beam that runs through both devices measures just 10 microns in diameter: less than a quarter of the thickness of the average human hair. Roger Cashmore, a British physicist and Cern’s director of research, said: “It is an astonishing feat of engineering. The consultants were on the verge of saying it was impossible to build. But the Atlas cavern is finished, the biggest of its kind in the world, and these experiments are going to tell us whether we’re right about the Universe.”

The current best guide to the nature of the Universe is the Standard Model, an elegant theory that describes how most particles and forces interact. The Higgs boson is its missing keystone: without it, there is no good explanation for why matter has mass and therefore exists.

According to the theory, the Universe is permeated by a field of Higgs bosons, which consist of mass but very little else. As particles move through the field, they interact with it like a ball dropped into a tub of treacle, getting slower, stickier and heavier. Their ultimate mass depends on the strength of the interaction.

Though mathematics predicts its existence, the Higgs boson has never been detected. It is so heavy that the biggest atom-smashers, Cern’s Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP) and the Tevatron at Fermilab in Illinois, have been unable to generate the high energy collisions needed to reveal it, although they have found hints that it is probably there. This is where the LHC comes in. It is 70 times as powerful as the LEP and seven times stronger than the Tevatron, covering all the energy values at which the Higgs might exist. If it is there, it will find it.

What is more, if the “God particle” proves to be a false deity, the LHC will unlock the secret of what is out there instead. “If it doesn’t find the Higgs, it will find what substitutes for it,” Dr Cashmore said.

Jim Virdee, Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London, and a leading Cern researcher, said: “There has to be something else, beyond what we have found already, that explains mass. We believe it’s the Higgs, but Nature may be smarter than us. Either way, the results will tell us what is the right road.”

The atom-smasher will accelerate protons so close to the speed of light that they become 7,000 times heavier than normal. The beams are bent into a circle by superconducting magnets, cooled by liquid helium at -271.4C, almost a degree colder than outer space.

When the protons collide, they are destroyed in a huge burst of energy. This energy coalesces into very heavy particles, one of which scientists hope will be the Higgs.

As the boson is unstable, it will quickly decay, scattering a characteristic signature of smaller particles and energy. These will be picked up by the LHC’s eyes — the Atlas and a sister detector — which surround the collision points.

The detectors, which stand 22m (72ft) and 15m (49ft) tall respectively, are “giant microscopes” built like onions, with several layers of instruments that track particles and measure energy.

The experiments will generate enormous quantities of data, much of it unwanted. “Colliding two protons is like colliding two oranges,” Dr Lyn Evans, director of the LHC project, said. “You’ll occasionally get a collision between two pips, the interesting bits, but you’ll get a lot of pulp. We need to reject an enormous amount of data to pick out the important bits.” Professor Virdee said that the data generated in one second was the equivalent of what all the world’s telecommunications generated in one year.

Even if this wealth of information proves the existence of the Higgs boson, the LHC will continue to serve scientific knowledge for decades.

“Let’s say we have the Higgs,” Dr Cashmore said. “I’d feel warm and content for a few microseconds, then I’d be asking new questions. Why does it affect different particles in different ways? “It would be spectacularly good to find it — I’m not trying to knock it — but it will pose a whole new set of problems. If we are an inquisitive society, these are the things we ought to be doing."


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blackholes; crevolist; higgsboson; stringtheory
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To: f.Christian
Always start the movie in the middle. Go ape if anyone attempts to play the beginning, and never watch the ending!

If you believe in eternity, we are always in the middle.

101 posted on 06/09/2003 11:57:04 AM PDT by Semper
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To: Physicist; Right Wing Professor
Apostles (( spores )) of anarchy ... evo science - art (( oxymorons )) --- # 63 !!
102 posted on 06/09/2003 11:59:22 AM PDT by f.Christian (( apocalypsis, from Gr. apokalypsis, from apokalyptein to uncover, from apo- + kalyptein to cover))
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To: TomB
"You said that much better than I did. I was trying to phrase it in a way that would prevent me from being buried under a hundred Bible quotes."

You'll likely get that on here eventually anyhow. I am interested in putting the two theories (i'm gonna get clobbered for calling creationism a theory) together and see where that goes but I'm not a science whiz. It seems to me that someone saying "a day" in the bible could also mean "an era" or any section of time so 7 days could end up meaning 7 million years or 7 billion years. Like saying "back in my day" means "back when I was young" rather than one specific day. I think the christian bible, other religions "bibles" (not sure they call them their bibles or what) and mythological stories have similar creation stories and just maybe they all are takes on the same thing by different people. Does that make sense? (i just took my medicine and am a little loopy for an hour after I take it so i may not have explained it well.)
103 posted on 06/09/2003 11:59:29 AM PDT by honeygrl (maybe i need to get out my flame retardant clothing...)
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To: AndrewC; Physicist
Or never there.
104 posted on 06/09/2003 12:04:27 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: HoustonCurmudgeon
PLEASE! Someone can be found who is offended by anything that is posted. ;-)

Apparently someone was offended by #80.

105 posted on 06/09/2003 12:14:04 PM PDT by js1138
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To: ShadowAce
God keeps making more, they are like Doretos from Heavan. Crunch all you want He'll make more. CB^)
106 posted on 06/09/2003 12:14:41 PM PDT by Cyber Ninja (His legacy is a stain on the dress.)
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To: Consort
I was referring to your homo apologist posts of the past. Were you not suggesting that there is some "Greater" logic outside what science knows through measurable natural law.
By doing this...can there really be a standard? We don't live in the 5th dimension...we live in this one. So what ever discoveries we have must be explained by the mathematics or science of where we are now.
107 posted on 06/09/2003 12:16:55 PM PDT by I got the rope
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To: js1138
It is real easy to offend people here. I apparently offended someone once when I used a word that appeared 14 times in the posted excerpt. CB^(
108 posted on 06/09/2003 12:21:03 PM PDT by Cyber Ninja (His legacy is a stain on the dress.)
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To: js1138
I was trying to make a point about the stretched logic of Consorts comment...using her previous comments. I guess I could have been more tactful, been then again f. Christian is here again and I still can't figure out what he's saying.
I give this thread a thousand posts before JimRob pulls it.
109 posted on 06/09/2003 12:22:31 PM PDT by I got the rope
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To: clamboat
Let's say an electron, a particle we are all at least vaguely familiar with. Prasumably, all electrons must have arisen from a primordial vacuum at some point, no? And they last a hell of a long time, no?

You're confusing real and virtual particles. You can always pry real electrons out of the vacuum by providing enough energy. Since electrons weigh 511 keV, it takes 1.022 MeV to produce an electron-positron pair. (Whether we're talking about real or virtual electrons, you have to produce a matter-antimatter pair to preserve such things as angular momentum and electromagnetic charge, while a Higgs, being its own antiparticle, can be produced as a singlet.)

[Geek alert: You may have noticed that this implies that the numbers of electrons and positrons should be exactly equal. In the early universe, they were almost--but not exactly--equal. After some time, they all annihilated each other, leaving the residue of matter we see today. The difference between "exactly" and "not exactly" is due to a phenomenon called "CP violation", which among other things establishes a direction to time. (And here you thought I was going to attribute it to the number of Hertz.)]

A virtual electron-positron pair, by contrast, is here and gone in a very brief time (order of 10-21 seconds). I know it happens, though, because for the brief time the pair exists, it constitutes an electrical dipole. Since space is full of these momentary dipoles, I can use an electric field to line them up, and get them pulling in the same direction. It is an experimental fact that the "empty" vacuum can be polarized in this fashion.

110 posted on 06/09/2003 12:23:18 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: AndrewC
That makes it continuous, zero being the briefest. That means the particles are always there.

"Always" isn't the briefest time, but the longest time. "Never" is the briefest.

111 posted on 06/09/2003 12:24:19 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: Physicist
Post 104, but what I was trying to determine was the limiting factor on the "existence" of all particles in all of space.
112 posted on 06/09/2003 12:27:01 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: I got the rope
I give this thread a thousand posts before JimRob pulls it.

I've been on 6000 post threads. I treat them like telephone conversations. They have high and low points, then they end. I suppose someone is adding links to a superthread, so it's better if they fade away rather than get killed, but not tragic if they get deleted.

113 posted on 06/09/2003 12:29:21 PM PDT by js1138
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To: AndrewC
I'm afraid you'll have to spell it out; I don't see where you're going with this.
114 posted on 06/09/2003 12:34:03 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: I got the rope
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension ofimagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.
115 posted on 06/09/2003 12:35:10 PM PDT by Brooklynman
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To: honeygrl
Does that make sense?

Absolutley. But don't expect to get anywhere with the Bible quote throwing crowd.

In the one Astronomy course I had in college, the professor saved the last lecture to discuss how Astronomy and the origins of the universe didn't clash with his Christian faith. I was very enlightening.

And don't feel bad, I'm loopy with or without meds.

116 posted on 06/09/2003 12:39:44 PM PDT by TomB
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To: Physicist
How many different particles can I make from a "point" in space?

If it is only one, then if I can borrow zero energy for an "infinite" amount of time and I can borrow an "infinite" amount of energy for zero amount of time, it appears to me that I can borrow something close to zero which keeps other things from occurring for a very very very ... long time. I also get the feeling that small pilfering is more likely than large pilfering. So looking at space that way, why would anything happen?

On the other hand, if many different particles can arise from the same point, I would expect something to "always" occupy the point.

117 posted on 06/09/2003 12:50:28 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: Physicist
"Always" isn't the briefest time, but the longest time. "Never" is the briefest.

Clarification please. "Always" and "never" don't seem to include the limiting concept of time, while "longest" and "briefest" clearly do include the element of time. In other words, how can "never" be equated to "brief" since the former is without time and the later implies some degree of time?

118 posted on 06/09/2003 12:50:46 PM PDT by Semper
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I told you.......
119 posted on 06/09/2003 12:51:34 PM PDT by TomB
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To: Physicist
A virtual electron-positron pair, by contrast, is here and gone in a very brief time (order of 10-21 seconds). I know it happens, though, because for the brief time the pair exists, it constitutes an electrical dipole. Since space is full of these momentary dipoles, I can use an electric field to line them up, and get them pulling in the same direction. It is an experimental fact that the "empty" vacuum can be polarized in this fashion.

Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for the lucid explanation.

120 posted on 06/09/2003 12:52:12 PM PDT by clamboat
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