Scientists hope the world's most powerful atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, will unlock the secrets of the elusive 'God Particle' when switched on later this year.
Credit: CERN
PARIS: The boundaries of knowledge in particle physics look set to be broken soon with scientists around the globe locked in a multi-billion-dollar race to solve two great mysteries.
Their quest: find the secrets of dark matter and the 'God particle' - a sub-atomic particle that is fundamental to understanding the nature of matter, but so elusive that, physicists quip, it can only be compared to divinity.
Last week, an international consortium stepped up the pace by announcing in Beijing, China, a design for the world's most expensive atom smasher - the US$6.7 billion (AU$8.6 billion) International Linear Collider (ILC).
In a double tunnel 31 kilometres long, particle physicists would collide electrons and their antimatter opposites, positrons, at energies of 500 billion electron volts.
The scheme - which could be extended to 50 kilometres and a trillion electron volts - will hurl these particles at close to the speed of light.
The resultant collision could unlock dark matter and dark energy, the invisible, enigmatic substances that together are thought to comprise 96 per cent of the mass of the universe.
Engineering studies for the ILC will start later this year with the idea of making a decision in 2010 on whether to press ahead with building the machine. If all goes well, ground will be broken in 2012 and the collider itself will be fired up at the end of the next decade.
"The ILC probably represents the maximum that can be achieved with this type of technology," said Guy Wormser, head of France's Linear Accelerator Laboratory, who took part in the Beijing meeting.
Scientists in the U.S. and Europe, meanwhile, are grappling to be first to detect the most eagerly-sought particle in physics - the Higgs Boson. Construed in the 1960s by a British physicist, Peter Higgs, the Boson is thought to exist in an all-pervading field, giving all other particles their mass.
If the Higgs exists, it would fill a worrying gap in the Standard Model, the century-old notional structure for describing the fundamental nature of matter. But if the Higgs doesn't exist, it will be back to the drawing board.
The Europeans are months away from switching on the world's most powerful smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is being built at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland, using a 26-kilometre underground ring.
The LHC will whizz protons, which are far heavier particles than electrons, to energies of up to 14 trillion electron volts.
Until a few months ago, it seemed that the prize of the Higgs would almost certainly go to the LHC. It alone had the power to explore the theorised particle's mass, which was deemed to be a maximum of 166 giga-electron volts (GeV).
But researchers at the Tevatron collider, at the famous Fermilab facility near Chicago in the U.S., believe they could be in with a chance. New calculations suggest that the upper limit for the Higgs is 153 GeV, which is within the Tevatron's range.
Meanwhile, physicists at Stanford University in California said they have conducted an experiment that proves the viability of a low-cost collider technology called a plasma accelerator.
Instead of using a giant magnet and a huge tunnel to accelerate the particles, their accelerator uses a tunnel just three kilometres long to speed up a beam of electrons.
By passing the electrons through a cloud of ionised gas, or plasma, that is just one metre across, the team were able to double the particle's energy - a massive booster effect, they report in the British journal Nature.
Only a tiny fraction of the electrons in the beam were accelerated this way, though, and the beam itself is not 'concentrated' enough to get a good yield of particle collisions.
According to Wormser, "Plasma accelerators are a promising technology and may be the solution for the future, but on a timescale of 20 to 25 years at least."
Only comment is a Wow
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." - Elanore Roosevelt
Only idiots with a tiny mind discuss people problems.
Dr. Roessler estimates 50 months accretion time
Professor Dr. Otto E. Roessler estimates 50 months Earth accretion time from a single micro black hole captured by Earth's gravity (www.golem.de/0802/57477-4.html, translation at www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=52)
particle collider test
'I think it's a shocking idea that scientists have taken to playing God with the human race. When the Big Bang happened there was no life on Earth as we now know it. We're like sitting ducks. Whatever happens the real God will have to pick up the pices and the tab.
Elizabeth Murray Brown
Fort William
Scotland
LHC concern
From what I understand particles will collide at nearly the speed of light. This may recreate the Big Bang and regardless of black holes and all that, I'm thinking that if the Big Bang was supposed to have created the universe then how are physicists justifying the safety of the LHC experiments?
Does anyone know of any serious debates relating to this or even if the goverments of the countries involved are concerned? Or am I'm worried for no reason as there is some logical scientific fact - not theory FACT - that will ease the concern that mine and my family's life could end due to the proposed experiments at cern, US or China?
Particle collider testing
Here's a comment. So maybe we have traveled in time as mentioned In the 2012 statement. Then the time loops from this worm hole created by man and were stuck in an entagled loop. Even if you unlock this mystery what's the next. If the universe is vast then so are questions and answers. There is no end, there is no finding God or how space or time was created. Just more questions. Every generation leaves something unlocked but the final answer come on. What if we got the final answer then think does that final answer apply through a worm hole, black hole or another dimension. I guess from reading this Blog we should be happy were breathing. Is dark matter going to be contained in a vacum? I think we should spin an atom at the speed of light squared, while spliting or smashing it into another atom spinning the opposite direction. Let's race to send something through a black hole or get to the deepest part of the ocean. If God is energy then maybe we are made in it's (his) image. Third rock from the sun and some.
2012
So this is how the human species as we know is going to die!! Don't these scientists know about the prophecy! I guess they are trying to prove it wrong! The Mayan calendar and Egyptian pyramids end December 21, 2012. Guess we'll see what happens!
I want a black hole for christmas too daddy
For being intelligent people, you sure are a bunch of &^%$ idiots. Since no one is going to stop them I guess we should all just get drunk and &^%$ like rabbits.
Stitch in Time
The various scientists and physicists around the world are competing to find the source of the "Super String" and claim it to be their country's "prize". While this is happening they are grossly underestimating the power in which they are dealing with. Even with Hawking's theories regarding the weak black holes this could theoretically produce, we are taking the balance of our solar system into our own hands before we even realize any sort of proven fact.
As a scientist I am outraged that people in my field are willing to risk billions of peoples lives in order to possibly find an answer to a question we have no right to know at this time. I don't care if it's a trillion to one chance. It's a chance that is not worth chancing. The other accelerators are not built for what the ILC is going to achieve. They may put out a lot more power per square meter but they aren't using the accelerator in the same fashion. What they are talking about is not just dark matter it's the proverbial "stitch in time". They are talking about poking a hole in the 10 dimensions of the Universe in order to better understand it. I compare it to a caveman cutting himself just to see that he can bleed and then dying of gangrene all because he was too ignorant to understand the ramifications.
Dark matter and 'God particle'
The all human efforts to know GOD will open new puzzles as on we learned from the past from the prediction of Ether to Dark matter from 5 elements (earth, water, fire, air and space) to more than 106 Elements in Perodic table from electrons to the search of Higgs Boson.
Supporse we find the elementry particle of nature and also The Unification theory (as Einstein wants) but it only gives us the prospective with which humans learned the things and concluded that every thing is working like this, BUT now comes the quantum physics playing with human mind and informing us that is this correct that what we see is really what is happening ?? never say or what about cautiousness.
With all this experimental prof and reaserch we only verifying the way human learned the happening of events around him self with his own perception. But never though like the way which is out of reach of human mind.
manb_2002@yahoo.com (please reply for my views)
Is it possible for human to disclose the secret of God?
I always feel for the universe and I just cry when I feel that how little I am in this universe. I don't know whether human will able to disclose the secret of life and the creation of the universe but one thing I can do now is to think about this whole thing in a great amusement.