Quark by quark, the Large Hadron Collider is getting closer to mimicking Big Bang-like conditions.
Credit: European Organisation for Nuclear Research
PARIS: The world's biggest atom smasher has scaled up in power even faster than hoped for and may soon unlock some of the universe's deepest secrets, scientists at a top physics conference said.
After a shaky start and a 14-month delay, experiments at Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have in a few months replicated discoveries it took decades to complete at the rival Tevatron accelerator in the United States.
At this pace, the more powerful LHC could begin to deliver new insights into the fundamental nature of the cosmos within months, they said. It may even put researchers on a discovery fast track for the elusive Higgs Boson, or 'God particle'.
LHC ready to "see new physics"
Already in March, the 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) circular accelerator buried under the French-Swiss border set records for smashing protons fired in beams approaching the speed of light.
"It is barely four months since the first collisions with this machine at high energy levels, and we have increased the collision rates by more than a factor of 1,000," said Rolf Heur, director of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), which operates the LHC.
Scientists sift through the wreckage of the sub-atomic crashes for new particles.
"The experiments show that the LHC is ready to see new physics - if there is a new physics," he said at a International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris running to July 28.
The most fleeting of particles caught
One goal of the massive 3.9-billion-euro (5.2-billion-dollar) machine is to affirm or disprove the so-called Standard Model.
Experiments at the Tevatron's Fermilab in the US have found most of the tiny and ephemeral matter predicted to exist by the theory, including a family of particles called quarks.
The heaviest among them, known as the 'top quark,' is so fleeting that it only exists for a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second before turning into something else.
THE UNRELENTING HUBRIS OF SCIENCE
Here's a comment I'll try not to let be described as Luddite.
After all, the so-called "God" particle is a bit of a stretch, is it not?
I'm not here to talk about God though, I'll leave that to the religious and the scientific -who also seem never to want to let the topic of God go.
Nope. I'm going to talk about freedom, my freedom, and also academic freedom.
Most everyone here, especially the editors, will likely come to this comment will their fullest support of the supposed academic freedoms completely intact. Let me see if I cannot shake that surety from some of you.
Say, I were a scientist. And also say I were to come across a theoretical breakthrough that made it exceedingly obvious humanity had a delusion inherent to its understanding of reality, a delusion, that once removed -some heretofore remarkable and horrifying things became apparent to those who thought-through the implications of this new foothold in the understanding of reality.
After all -reality is infinitely complex.
Human delusions about reality, and how we fit into this reality, must be common enough. There is plenty of historical evidence of human conceptual delusions.
Upon this basic premise we each can agree then, that, reality is infinitely complex, and any knowledge we humans glean from the infinitely complex reality around us, should then be viewed against the backdrop of this infinite complexity, so that we might fully appreciate the nature of our intellectual accomplishments, and how much higher the necessary mountain of knowledge must be in order that we might have something approaching a god-like knowledge of this infinitely complex reality surrounding each of us and making each of our lives possible, and as wonderful as these all are.
Now say as a scientist having made such a breakthrough, I realize it is all-too-obviously possible to remove the life-sustaining-necessities of this reality, a new kind of bomb or weapon if you will, that made extinction of everyone on the planet an easy task, and something any teenager would find easy to do -had they access to just a few hundred dollars worth of commonly available items.
Such a discovery would have dire and dangerous implications for humanity.
We exist in our reality today, believing such things are not possible. Or at least, few have considered the notion such a discovery could possibly be looming in our immediate future. We generally accept an almost unlimited academic freedom as a basic right -in part because we do not worry about such a discovery occurring.
Scientists are however, always looking for theoretical breakthroughs, and, reality is infinitely complex. Upon this we can agree, that reality is infinitely complex, and that none of us can rule this sort of theoretical breakthrough from the realm of possibilities in this reality.
So then, where does this new discovery leave our academic freedoms?
I would say it leaves them hindered to some degree.
In fact, a question arises for all of us at this juncture of having punctured our reality with a new theoretical breakthrough as we have just discovered about the complexity of reality and the possibility that there might be knowledge too dangerous for anyone to safely discover.
That question is, Who has the moral right to risk destroying the world by their intellectual curiosity or bravado?
And the answer is clearly, -NO ONE DOES.
I want to live in a world free of this sort of danger. And more importantly, that is the sort of world I want to bequeath to the future.
For me, that is my choice of freedom.
Don Robertson
Hubris
Don, have you considered joining the Amish?
asd
the only way your "world" could exist would be if we all went Amish, and that's not possible. homo sapiens started with sticks and stones, went on to guns( yh i skipped a lot) , bombs, the nuclear bomb and the latest hydrogen bomb. sure nowadays it would be easier to kill everyone on earth, but your world would doom us to die from asteroid collision or later, the sun going nova. the only way i can see for the survival of humanity would be to firstly expand to mars and later to other solar systems, all of which would require a lot of scientific breakthroughs
In Denial
Don, What are you thinking?
We have the gift of curiosity and the intellect to satisfy that urge. What should we do with such a gift, just stick our heads in the sand! I can't believe that someone with the intellect to construct such an intricate argument could fail to realise that with all new knowledge comes the risk of exploitation in the wrong hands. This in itself teaches us to be humble and to develop strategies to control our new knowledge.
Wake up, the fact that you can write gave the opportunity to others to write things that could be harmful to the human race, should we have abandoned writing?
You're not right and need to re-think what you have posted.
Yours respectfully,
Robin Collis.
All the responses/rebuttals thus far...
These responses/rebuttals want us to accept unrestrained academic freedom -on the faith- that we can avoid such a calamity.
Faith?
Life is far too inexplicable for me to have -faith-.
The conversation is good.
But my search for a freedom from this fear -is left unrequited.
Don Robertson
Comment on "Hubris"
It seems almost impossible that someone, somewhere won't stumble upon a scientific discovery that could simply and easily destroy our way of life. This is a much more likely senario than opposing groups of mankind destroying themselves through war. Due to the age of the known universe I suggest there have already been intelligences which have already obliterated themselves due to an undisciplined pursuit of scientific discovery. Since it is such a logical progression I surmise that this is how the life and death process is sustained on a universal scale. I agree: NO-ONE has the right, but even with a careful, non-ego, moral scientific approach accidents will happen. The resulting catastrophe is as serendipitous as a fatal aneurism. Anyone's reality could end at any time. The question is almost too massive to question or worry about.
Which god?
Really Cosmos with so many "gods" to chose from why not just try sticking to "Higgs Boson" it would help the poor reader to decide if the item might be readable scientific journalism or anoth religious rant!