Cornucopia of familiar particles spraying out from each collision will include, just occasionally, something new and wonderful.
Image: Sum Films
They call it the terascale. It is the realm of physics that comes into view when two elementary particles smash together with a combined energy of around a trillion electron volts, or one tera-electron-volt. The machine that will take us to the terascale—the ring-shaped Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN—is now nearing completion.
To ascend through the energy scales from electron volts to the terascale is to travel from the familiar world through a series of distinct landscapes: from the domains of chemistry and solid-state electronics (electron volts) to nuclear reactions (millions of electron volts) to the territory that particle physicists have been investigating for the past half a century (billions of electron volts)..
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7 Comments
Add Commenthey, i found this to be very interesting, it reminds me of a book i just finished reading by the author Hasanuddin, called the dominium. He writes about how the possible research at CERN could lead to the end of the world, really interesting stuff.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the one hand, the study of physics seeks information about the nature and properties of matter and energy, and at the same time it is resistant to available information about the nature and properties of matter and energy. The limited definition of matter, within contemporary physics, as a physical substance, distinct from mind and spirit; that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, esp, as distinct from energy, sets the field up for failure, as nothing that is lifelike possesses rest mass and nothing lifelike is distinct from energy. These are principles that we learned, or should have from our fathers, Newton and Einstein. Equally valid definitions of matter sees it as a substance in, or discharged from the body, something that evokes a specified feeling, something that is the concern of a specified person or agency, or the reason for distress or a problem to be of importance; to have significance. Well then, whats really is the "matter" in this day and age?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment; a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject. Do we, humans, exist wIthin the field of theoretical and experimental physics?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not sure that LHC could bring to us a true answer or even a real one . Anyway , we just wait .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStructure frames and bodies that can handle high G-Forces, wind-forces, and seismic-forces by including proportionally combined compression and tension resistance components, now that this technology has been developed, should be the next big push in Physics! Functional, affordable, and makeable building, structure, container, and vehicular structure frames/bodies that can survive tornados, earthquakes, durational loadings and aging, and large object impacts shoul also be the next wave in Industrial Products Design and Assembly! Imagine your home staying up in a tornado, trips to the moon taking hours instead of days, and communities in the waters of the oceans, lakes, and rivers, all realistic possibilities with this new technology, and you can see where this new technology is leading to. Structural Strap-Net systems that give the primary rigid frame/body additional reinforcing, retainment and containment improvements, and act as spherical shock-absorbers, is a major development!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe celebration of IYP 2005 and IYA 2009 indicates that all is not well with "learning" of "O" level physics n astronomy too. In particular, it is to be noted that Frank Wilczek (Nobel Laureate, Physics, 2004) had maximum trouble in learning classical mechanics. So it is quite reasonable to assume that there could be some more Frank-like students who could have gone away from physics due to the same reason. So readers of "Future of Physics" can find my Letter on the same useful. See "Space Research Today" #174, April 2009, p. 68 or contact me by email.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fundamental discovery of physics of importance to Mankind already was made a generation ago when matter was confirmed to be "constituted" of absolutely nothing--for neither quarks nor electrons have size and are therefore not in space, strictly defined as a receptacle for extended entities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurthermore, the quarks, in each eternal proton a trinity of self-constituted, self-regulating, self-directing energy, occupy from their own perspective an infinite space within which to work--and work they do in concert, as the source of all energy and contituting the only true light at the heart of the visible World.
In a deep sense, there is only one proton, the fast redoubt of a Triune Mind who has reflected Himself sufficiently to build a Universe around Himself for purposes obvious to all but militant atheists, which most physicists, after the death of the soulful Heisenberg, demonstrably are. They keep looking but the answer lies at their unwashed feet.
There is nothing else. There is no H-boson, for no finite field (the "Higgs field") can possibly enter the color vacuum of the nucleon. The nucleonic barrier is absolutely impregnable to finite relations. As Heisenberg said again and again, everything beyond the calm exterior of the World is but a Resonance of the energy we ourselves put in.
Quark "mass" is entirely energetic, as it well-known and, like light itself, will never be explained as a mechanism. Neither, for than matter, will the electron, an infinite Quantity in disguise, hidden behind a virtual cloud, as we know from the theory itself. The Infinite Self-Energy of the Electron that bedevils the theorists is in fact really There.
Mass so-called seeks for a center eternally outside itself, a conceptual idea defined 180 years ago in Germany, and which will never find its explanation in mechanisms of any kind, the "Higgs mechanism" included. Place your wagers here, gentlemen! Six thousand physicists can be wrong! We will know in about a year from now (i.e., July 2010).
Peter Higgs in particular need not wait in his old age for vindication of his mid-life construct. He would do better, like most physicists, to walk into the nearest church for a little chat with the Author of his Being, as they used to say in Scotland before the heady days of microphysical roulette. The essence of that Being lies within us, as we have been discussing, and is therefore a Presence beyond all worldly values.
Physics itself through quantum theory has long since completely overthrown mechanistic materialism, and has gone---if truth be told--much, much farther, for it has done nothing less than prove, despite its barbaric proclivities, that the Absolute Religion is correct in all its fundamental intuitions. Here we can fault Orthodoxy, for its idiocy and ignorance of evidence.
For the foregoing insights we owe no thanks to Leon Lederman and his "God Particle," but all should rise in applause for Prof. Gell-Mann, though in his aged years chasing after jaguars and still in denial, upon whom the Triune Being years ago bestowed, with a kind of gentle jest well-meant, obviously, an inspiration and honor in fact completely outside the ken of his Tribeand even beyond the understanding of the august Nobel Committee. Ah, Life!
Ronald Schleyer, Mankato, MN (schleyer@earthlink.net)