Prof Peter Higgs inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel at CERN
Posted on 04/08/2008 6:06:11 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The scientist who came up with a legendary particle that has haunted physicists for a generation said he was confident that a £4.4 billion quest to find if it really exists will pay off within a year.
**Prof Peter Higgs profile
**The Big Bang: atom-smashing could uncover truth
**'Big Bang' machine could destroy the planet, says lawsuit
There is a palpable rise in tension among scientists worldwide as they await the start in July of a vast new atom smasher at CERN, the international nuclear laboratory outside Geneva, which will radically reshape our view of the universe when it goes into action in earnest later in the year.
Prof Peter Higgs inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel at CERN
The machine will slam subatomic particles called protons together to recreate conditions not seen since an eyeblink after the Big Bang of creation and explore new realms of nature, including finding the Higgs particle that plays a starring role in current theory, holding it together, and helping to endow matter with mass.
Named after Prof Peter Higgs, most physicists call the particle the Higgs boson. One Nobel laureate gave it the grandiose title of the "God particle", after his publishers refused to let him call his book "The Goddam Particle": everyone agrees that it is, without doubt, the slipperiest particle of physics.
The history of physics is full of apparent sightings and tantalising hints of the Higgs that could have been revolutionary but then evaporated. The biggest experiment on Earth at CERN, now three years overdue, is the latest chapter in the quest, involving 10,000 scientists and engineers from 100 countries, Prof Higgs says: "It is a bit staggering to think about it."
He stresses that the search for the particle is only one part of what the new machine will do, adding that it is "a possibility" that evidence for the particle may even be hidden in data already gathered by a rival lower-powered smasher already in operation, the Tevatron in Illinois. Discovery, he predicts, "is not far off."
When pushed, he agreed he was more than 90 per cent confident of success in the next year. He hopes to see it by his 80th birthday in May next year, if his "GP can keep me alive much longer."
The mildly spoken emeritus professor from Edinburgh University, one of three theoreticians to glimpse the existence of the particle in the mid 60s, is synonymous with the quest. He has a bottle of champagne to celebrate, though he says he will not put it on ice quite yet. "There will be a lot of analysis of data to be done."
The world's most famous scientist, Prof Stephen Hawking, is betting against the Higgs. But Higgs himself says he would be puzzled and surprised if the new effort fails. "If I'm wrong, I'll be rather sad. If it is not found, I no longer understand what I think I understand." Even so, a host of other particles may show up.
The new hunt is taking place 300 ft underground on the border between Switzerland and France. CERN's new atom smasher is formally known as the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC (hadron is the technical name of the class of sub-atomic particles to which protons belong).
Over the past few days, as 70,000 members of the public visited during an open weekend, Higgs paid his first visit since 1985. He went underground to see the two huge detectors - "eyes" of the machine - that will search for his particle, called CMS and Atlas. "The sheer scale of the detectors was overwhelming," he says. "I was very impressed by the number of very tricky technical problems which people had to solve."
In the 17 mile circumference smasher - think of London's Circle Line - they will collide beams of protons and use the detectors to study the debris of particles and energy to understand more about how our universe formed almost 14 billion years ago.
In this way they hope to unravel the relationships between these fundamental building blocks, perhaps eventually developing a unified Theory of Everything; that accounts for all the fundamental characteristics of matter and energy.
The Higgs is part of the quest because, while losing weight is an everyday concept to most people, physicists are still trying to find it. They don't know where the masses of the supposed elementary particles (quarks and leptons) come from, such as the three quarks that make up the protons they are banging together in the LHC.
Britain's contribution to the project comes from the Science and Technology Facilities Council, a research council, and it may have to make cutbacks at the LHC, after pulling out of a proposed "linear" smasher, because of an £80 million shortfall.
Prof Higgs says his opinions are "fairly unprintable. It looks like a major disaster in the funding of this kind of physics in the UK. We have to quit various international collaborations in a way which has not happened before. You are letting down your international partners and after that sort of thing has happened, they don't trust you any more. That is even worse."
As for claims that the LHC will somehow trigger apocalypse, or perhaps the birth of time travel, he says the fears are "inflated…out of hand" and he is not knowledgeable enough to comment on the prospect of Dr Who-like time jaunts.
In any case, no it won't destroy the universe, or do anything untoward for the following reasons:
1) Interactions of this sort are constantly occurring when cosmic rays hit the upper atmosphere. If the universe was going to blow up, it would have done so by now. We need the equipment, however, since those interactions are very hard to observe reliably. Also, to detect the Higgs effect clearly we need trillions of them.
2) Although a black hole may be created, it is outstandingly unlikely. It's only become a possibility infinitesimally greater than 0 due to some advances in superstring theory which have made people realize that gravity could have behavior at small scales which is different than large scales and be internally consistent. Just because it could, however, does not mean that it does. It does make for interesting press releases for the general public, however.
3) Even if the black hole was created, its rate of evaporation would be so astoundingly fast that it wouldn't be technologically significant at all, much less be able to grow out of control. About a year ago I posted a link here to a relevant paper on the subject. They concluded that the rate of evaporation was 10^25 times too fast to cause any runaway issues.
This research could be a possible precursor to Warp Drive mechanics, or it might not. If we knew, for sure, that it was, it wouldn't be research.
Harnessing the powers of a black hole will be, like everything else, fairly trivial once you've done it a few times. Black holes are actually astonishingly simple objects. Unfortunately, like most things in physics, when you don't have complete information, predictions usually are not that good. That's why we do experiments. Once we have the experience (assuming that this thing creates a black hole, which is EXTREMELY unlikely) you could easily teach a bright undergrad to do it. Given 20 years of practice by the researchers, it could be a hobby for any interested layman that he could pick up in a month. People used to think that computer programming was beyond most people's imagination too, remember?
In any case, there are no secrets. The whole thing has been extremely well covered in the press, at least to the ability of the reporters to understand the physics. (If you are watching CNN, I can see how you may have felt that you got little information, but we already know that their reporters are ignorant blow-hards. Try reading Science News, since their reporters actually understand their subject.) With a little web-surfing, you can find out everything you could possibly want to know about this experiment in excruciating detail.
"The last pieces of the puzzle Like the last pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle, the final components of the titanic Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments at CERN are slotting into place. At ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb the remaining large pieces of equipment are being carefully lowered into the caverns in preparation for the start up later this year of the most powerful particle accelerator ever, the LHC. "
Ok now I'm scared. "Titanic"? "God" Particle? Didn't anyone watch the titanic movie? This doesn't bode well.
Thanks for the compliment.
Well, there really isn’t any difference between collisions in the atmosphere and in the counter-rotating beams in a physical sense, since they are both occuring in a rareified near-vacuum environment. The moon surface might have slightly different types of collisions more often, since you could have interaction with the surface as a solid, but would still have all of the types that would happen in the collider, just very slightly less frequently.
If a cosmic ray hits the surface of the moon and produces a black hole, the black hole will have to travel through the moon interacting with all that mass as it goes. That means a very large number of collisions, each one of which will reduce its velocity, so, yeah, we should expect the moon situation to basically be identical with the counter-rotating beams.
As far as the black holes sticking around, they’d have considerably less velocity than the original particles in the collision, but they’d still be traveling near the speed of light. The counter-rotating beams are not well matched in velocity. Remember, that in relativity, very close to the speed of light with extremely small variation minus very close to the speed of light with extremely small variation equals almost everything from 0 to fairly close to the speed of light.
Also, if black holes are created by cosmic ray collisions and don’t evaporate, then the universe should be swarming with mini black holes. Since we don’t see this, we’re safe.
In any case, no it won’t destroy the universe________________________________________________________Universe !?, Who’s concerned about the freaking universe ?. I’d be more willing to bet that it’s the PLANET that’s on peoples minds !. Along with they’re thoughts of how science is willing to bet not only their lives but all future generations on the notion that it WON’T happen. Also, with any newly developed human technology; (there will be mistakes made along the way) that my kind sir is a given you cannot deny. The problem here is that there won’t be any reaction time allowed for: 1- I’m sorry but it wasn’t my fault, 2- Oop’s, 3- We can fix it, 4-We’ll pass the buck or 5- They short funded us so it’s all they’re fault ! -— {The only question left would be how many people die. Will it be Millions or Billions ?} —— Now of course I look forward to the new technolocal advances as anyone else would. I can’t wait to put Spock at the helm ! -— But I do have my reservations about this be tested here on Earth as opposed too, let’s say PLUTO. Yes, Pluto would be a much better place to conduct these experiments. Given there cannot be any 100% assurences given here.
Okay, I can’t give a 100% assurance, but I can say with 100% assurance that it is far less likely than the entire human race simultaneously having a fatal heart attack. Will that suffice?
It’d be much more worth your time to worry about “The Great Big One Elizabeth” than worrying about turning the Large Hadron Collider on.
Since we’re on the subject of speculatiion. It would be my guess that if the decision to power up were left to a vote from earths populations that the percentage of people voting against it would be closer to 99.99% ....... Call it a Hunch
1) Well, someone sent them 10’s of billions of $, so obviously this is not the case.
2) Most people I’ve met who’ve mentioned an opinion, even those that do not understand the science, are for it. Although that does not prove a majority, it is certainly enough to know the number of supporters is greater than 0.01% of the population.
3) Although there were a few theorists who posited that there were issues at the start about a decade ago, no one who could be expected to know the physics has had any serious concerns once it was determined that cosmic rays were above the energy threshold.
4) Free floating anxiety does not constitute a scientific argument, no matter how many people have it.
Let us all Hope the Jeenie goes freely back into it’s bottle
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