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2) Why do the known elementary particles, such as quarks and electrons, have such different masses?
One pivotal building block of the Standard Model has yet to be observed. It's called the Higgs boson, after British theoretician Peter Higgs, who theorised the eponymous particle as an elegant after-the-fact fudge to explain why the mass of elementary particles spans such a humongous range, with the top quark being 370,000 times heavier than the electron.
The nature of mass is truly an old riddle. Newton and Einstein both plunked down m for mass in their famous equations, but neither explained where the property came from. The puzzle is actually even deeper than that, entering into a nether region called spontaneous symmetry breaking, a physicist's catchphrase for an especially perplexing conundrum.
At the fundamental level, the same mathematical equations describe both the electromagnetic force, such as light waves, and the weak force inside the nucleus, which is involved in radioactivity. But they look nothing alike.
The belief is that in the early universe some unknown agent came along and spontaneously broke a natural symmetry that then existed between the two forces, causing them to look different. That symmetry breaking might have involved the Higgs boson, or a Higgs wannabe.
Current thinking is that the as-yet-undetected Higgs permeates space like an invisible quantum fluid, exuding a sticky force that slows the motion of other particles and which they register as mass. So the top quark becomes like Britney Spears pushing through a crush of paparazzi, while the electron enjoys the easy passage guaranteed a tax collector anywhere.
Since these various particles are the building blocks for the constituent parts of atoms and molecules, the Higgs would eventually explain the mass of everything. Yet there are serious shortcomings with the Higgs as postulated (such as it should weigh more than is suggested by indirect evidence) and physicists have long been straining for answers in the terascale.
Probably no sooner than a year after the first trial proton beams its course around the LHC racetrack, more than 3,500 scientists and engineers on two large teams will launch the hunt for the Higgs in a serious fashion. The current wisdom is that it should show up at an energy somewhere between 115 GeV and 182 GeV, levels that are child's play for the multibillion-dollar collider.
"The LHC goes where no accelerator has ever gone before. Any way the Higgs chooses to behave we have it covered, all the way from below 200GeV to several thousand GeV if necessary," says John Ellis, who is CERN's resident guru of the New Physics.
Yet the Higgs hunt is still much more complicated than non-physicists can possibly fathom, involving aspects such as gluon-gluon production and four-lepton decay modes. There's also the question of sheer numbers. Because the Higgs boson gives off weak signals against a noisy background, lots of collisions are needed to generate enough new particles to reach the statistical power that would support a claimed discovery.
For example, particle collisions in the LHC detectors are projected to occur at a rate of 600 million a second, but scientists estimate that a single Higgs boson will be produced only every 2.5 seconds – under optimal conditions.
But since the LHC was specifically designed to find the Higgs, or a particle that performs the Higgs role in creating mass, failure is almost inconceivable to most investigators. "If we don't find the Higgs or a stand-in, then something is drastically wrong with our current laws of physics. Or else everything is wrong, or else quantum mechanics is wrong, or else so much is wrong that we don't even have the language to describe it," says Arkani-Hamed.
Yet the often-predicted Higgs discovery could also be a big let-down, notes William Trischuk, who directs Canada's Institute of Particle Physics from an office at the University of Toronto. "Deep down in our hearts if we found a Standard Model Higgs boson that tied up all the loose ends, we might ask 'is that all there is?'"
Safety Rebuttal
Excellent quality article.
The dice with 3 sixes is a bit ominous. Some of us are hoping CERN does not roll 3 sixes when high energy collisions begin.
A number of PHD level theoretical scientists also have questions about LHC Safety.
The most notable is Professor Dr. Otto E. Rossler, most famous for his contributions to Chaos theory.
Dr. Rossler refutes CERN's safety arguments and proposes that if micro black holes are created (some say the odds are 1 in 1000, others say the odds are 1 in 2) they would grow large enough to threaten Earth in 50 months to 50 years.
Got LHCFacts?
Cosmic Roulette
Intersting article, and very well written. However it would be nice to proffer the objections to the project, as one commentator has suggested. There are two sides to every story. Howabout examining what happens if things go wrong?
A bit of "doomsday" in the article would be enjoyable for the cynics. Moreover, suppose that the negative scenario does happen, are there any procedures in place to rectify them? I mean, flipping the on-off switch isn't exactly going to make a black hole go away, if one is created.
cosmic roulette
The earth is already bombarded with cosmic rays many thousands of times more energetic than the beams at CERN. If high energy collisions were dangerous, catastrophe would have happened already.
LHC - another white elephant
The whole dark matter concept is a patch up band-aide to save big bang from the dustbin of scientific history. It is futile. Einstein’s field equations for the static vacuum gravitational field, i.e. Ric = 0,violates his ‘Principle of Equivalence’ – the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass, and the laws of Special Relativity, cannot manifest in a spacetime which is by definition empty, that contains no matter. QED. Consequently, if his energy-momentum tensor is zero there is no Einstein gravitational field. Hence his field equations take the following form:
Gij/k + Tij = 0, (subscripts)i,j = 0,1,2,3, k = constant,
wherein the Gij/k are the components of a gravitational energy tensor. Thus the total energy of the gravitational field is always zero; the Gij/k and Tij must vanish identically; there is no possibility for the localisation of gravitational energy (i.e. there is no possibility for Einstein’s gravitational waves). Moreover, this means that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity violates the experimentally well established conservation of energy and momentum, so if the usual conservation of energy and momentum is valid (bearing in mind that there is no experimental evidence to refute it) then Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is invalid. Also, Einstein invented his pseudo-tensor by which he and subsequent big bangers and LIGOers and LHCers claim that his gravitational energy can be localized. However, Einstein’s pseudo-tensor is a meaningless concoction of mathematical symbols for the following reason – it implies the existence of a 1st-order intrinsic differential invariant which depends only upon the components of the metric tensor and their 1st-derivatives (to see this just contract his pseudo-tensor and apply Euler’s theorem). But the pure mathematicians G. Ricci-Curbastro and T. Levi-Civita proved in 1900 that such invariants do not exist! In addition, Einstein and the subsequent big bangers and LIGOers and LHCers resort to linearisation of Einstein’s field equations to localize his gravitational energy. This too is nonsense, because linearisation implies the existence of a tensor which, except for the particular case of being precisely zero, does not otherwise exist, as proven by H. Weyl in 1944. So the big bangers and the LIGOers and their international counterparts such as the AIGO in Australia and VIRGO in Europe, are all destined to detect nothing.
As for black hole collisions, mergers and binaries producing gravitational waves, that too is nonsense by the foregoing. To amplify, let’s assume for the sake of argument that black holes are predicted by General Relativity. The simplest black hole is the so-called “Schwarzschild black hole”, obtained from Ric = 0, which is a statement that there is no matter in the Universe. Since the ‘Principle of Superposition’ does not apply in Einstein’s theory, owing to it being non-linear, one cannot, by an analogy with Newton’s theory (where the Principle of Superposition holds), just arbitrarily insert lumps of matter into any given spacetime for his gravitational field. Now according to the black holers and gravitational wavers , two “Schwarzschild” black holes (concocted by stupidly applying the ‘Principle of Superposition’ of Newton’s theory), each obtained separately from Ric = 0 (an empty spacetime), can mutually interact in a mutual spacetime that by definition contains no matter! That is nonsense, but the simplicity of it escapes their poor brains. Furthermore, before one can talk of black hole interactions it must first be proved that the two-body problem is well-defined within General Relativity. This can be done in only two ways, (a) derivation of an exact solution to the field equations for two bodies, or (b) proof of an existence theorem by which it can be shown that Einstein’s field equations contain latent solutions for such a configuration of matter. There are no known solutions to the field equations for the interaction of two or more bodies, so option (a) has never been fulfilled, and no existence theorem has ever been proven, so option (b) has never been fulfilled either. Moreover, General Relativity has not been able to account for the simple experimental fact that two fixed bodies will approach one another upon release. So all talk of black holes interacting is nonsense. However the whole issue is moot, since black holes are in fact forbidden by the Theory of Relativity (it forbids infinite densities), and owing to the violation of the usual conservation of energy and momentum, General Relativity is invalid, and with it the alleged big bang. The LHCers various claims for bangs and holes are just plain poppycock. Finally, despite the claims that black holes have been "discovered" all over the place, nobody has ever found one because the signatures of the alleged black hole, (a) an infinitely dense point-mass singularity and (b) an event horizon, have never been found. Claims for their discover is wishful thinking, not science. The LHC is just like LIGO et al, a massive gravy train for its participants, at the great expense of the taxpayer.
More non-mathematical details are here:
http://www.sjcrothers.plasmaresources.com/Unicorns.html
For those who want the mathematical proofs, go here:
http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2008/PP-12-11.PDF
And here: http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2007/PP-09-14.PDF