Monday, 28 September: Microverse
The Large Hadron Collider: CMS detector. Steered proton beams will collide in the middle of the CMS and the three other detectors. Credit: Guido Mocafico
(Source: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/why_a_large_hadron_collider/)
What are some entities smaller than us?
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The Standard Model (http://www.particleadventure.org):
Physicists have developed a theory called The Standard Model that explains what the world is and what holds it together. It is a simple and comprehensive theory that explains all the hundreds of particles and complex interactions with only: 6 quarks, 6 leption s (with the best-known being the electron) and force carrier particles , like the photon
All the known matter particles are composites of quarks and leptons, and they interact by exchanging force carrier particles.
The Standard Model is a good theory. Experiments have verified its predictions to incredible precision, and all the particles predicted by this theory have been found. But it does not explain everything. For example, gravity is not included in the Standard Model.
BUT...
While the Standard Model provides a very good description of phenomena observed by experiments, it is still an incomplete theory. The problem is that the Standard Model cannot explain why some particles exist as they do. For example, even though physicists knew the masses of all the quarks except for top quark for many years, they were simply unable to accurately predict the top quark's mass without experimental evidence because the Standard Model lacks any explanation for a possible pattern for particle masses.
This does not mean that the Standard Model is wrong -- but we need to go beyond the Standard Model in the same way that Einstein's Theory of Relativity extended Newton's laws of mechanics. Isaac Newton's laws of mechanics are not wrong, per se, but his theory only works as long as velocity is much smaller than the speed of light. Einstein expanded Newtonian physics with his Theory of Relativity, which allows for the possibility of very high velocities. We will need to extend the Standard Model with something totally new in order to thoroughly explain mass, gravity and other phenomena.
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My thoughts:
One thing that really impressed me was the Large Hadron Collider!
[In particle accelerators, scientists accelerate particles to high speed (high KE) and collide them with target atoms. The resulting pieces from the collision, as well as emitted radiation, are detected and analyzed. The information tells us about the particles that make up the atom and the forces that hold the atom together.]
Scientists are hoping that with the LHC, they would be able to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson (the last unobserved particle among those predicted in the Standard model) and at the same time other new particles predicted by Supersymmetry.
View of the ATLAS detector in the experiment hall, roughly 100 meters underground. ATLAS is one of the five particle physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. Credit: Guido Mocafico.
(Source: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/why_a_large_hadron_collider/)
"Over 100-billion protons will traverse its pathways at near-light speed, guided by some 9,300 superconducting magnets, each weighing several tons and chilled to temperatures colder than deep space. At four points in the tunnels, the counter-revolving protons are to smash into one another at a rate of nearly one billion per second.
At the crossing points, huge detectors are in place to register the tiny wisps of debris that emerge from each of the collisions. One of these instruments has enough iron to re-construct the Eiffel Tower; another is two-and-a-half times larger than the Parthenon and taller than the Colossus of Rhodes. Information from these subatomic traffic accidents will be sped around the globe on the largest computer grid in existence—the nervous system for all the brains that will struggle to make sense of the myriad data. All these superlatives exist for one reason: To understand the universe."
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I think that it is rather amazing how scientists have managed to, with the help of technology, recreate such an environment/system (super high KE) for the particles to collide, and detect or capture the resulting debris of the collision given the short time frame of the whole process.
And I think it is a rather clever way of discovering the new particles within particles :D by making them at full speed/energies and banging them together to result in a series of explosions?
The intricacy of the conditions the LHC has provided, the size and speed of the particles, the instantaneous moment when the particles collide as contrasted against the vast amount of time, effort and resources invested in the whole project (just for that one ground-breaking discovery) -> Looking again at the SCALE of things, I feel truly amazed. :)