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5) Is a 'theory of everything', with gravity and the three other fundamental forces uniting at much higher energies than the terascale, possible?
Among the longest odds on the roulette table are for what's sometimes called the Theory of Everything, or quantum gravity. Einstein pursued this particular Holy Grail for the last two decades of his life, attempting to write equations that would unite the very small realm of quantum physics inside the atom with the very large realm of gravity, which spans the universe.
This would require a coming together, or unification, of the four forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force (all encompassed in the Standard Model) and gravity, which appears to be many times weaker than the others.
Most theories predict that unification of the forces would take place at very high energies (1019 GeV), so could be sensed only indirectly at the collider.
But a few physicists speculate that nature has more tricks up her sleeve, such as making total gravity stronger by having it operate in extra dimensions. If the threshold to those extra dimensions lies in the low end of the terascale, then experiments at the LHC might produce some indirect evidence for the ultimate unification of the four forces. "This is a big maybe question," says Ellis.
THE LONG SHOTS: Some results would be given extra tough scrutiny. In addition to the five most popular bets already outlined, the LHC roulette game also features a plethora of long-odds wagers, such as finding mini-black holes, antimatter, clues to the nature of cosmic inflation or the longest shot of all, unparticles, proposed by Harvard physicist Howard Georgi.
Unparticles are a completely new kind of matter which have no definite mass and yet theoretically can have every possible mass simultaneously, a trait allowing them to masquerade as fractions of particles. Picking up on this notion, other theorists have proposed that unparticles could even exert an "ungravity" force on normal particles, providing an alternative explanation for dark matter.
If this sounds too bizarre to be credited, even by the sometimes flaky standards of high-energy physics, consider that Georgi pioneered the theory of supersymmetry in 1981, along with Savas Dimopoulos at California's Stanford University. As well, other theorists have so far produced more than 100 papers exploring various aspects of unparticles.
Says Georgi: "Unparticles would be a much more striking discovery than supersymmetry or extra dimensions. Unparticle stuff would astonish us immediately."
Unparticle theory is still very much in its infancy. There's no consensus, for instance, on whether they're all of a kind or come in different varieties, as do protons and electrons. Yet current thinking says unparticles are immune from even E = mc2, because their chameleon-like nature eliminates any fixed relationship between their mass, energy and speed of travel.
The largest bet at the roulette table, however, has nothing to do with which competing theories about the New Physics will eventually prove correct. It centres on whether governments see a payoff from terascale particle accelerators that's worth the billions invested. And the signs are not encouraging: late last year, both the U.S. and Britain eliminated from their national budgets their share of research and development funding for the International Linear Collider, the follow-on to the LHC.
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