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CERN could lead to Discovery of Unseen Dimensions
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...08622617259052 The Spark That Caused the Big Bang There's a reason the newly discovered Higgs boson is called the 'God particle.' It started it all. By MICHIO KAKU July 5, 2012 6:57 p.m. ET Champagne bottles were being uncorked at particle accelerators around the world this week as physicists celebrated one of the great moments in scientific history: the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson. Hundreds of physicists and engineers were ecstatic, having devoted almost 30 years of their lives—and $10 billion—trying to track down this almost mythical subatomic particle. In their press release, the scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, were careful to say they've only found evidence of a "Higgs-like" particle. But this is too modest. With 99.9999% confidence, they can claim to have found the Higgs boson itself. The key to finding this particle is CERN's Large Hadron Collider, a monstrous doughnut-shaped machine 27 miles in circumference, so big it straddles the French-Swiss border and devours enough electrical energy to light up an entire city. Two beams of protons are shot through this colossal, circular tube in opposite directions. When they're accelerated to near light-speed velocities, they're forced to collide head-on, creating a huge burst of subatomic particles that scatter in all directions. The collision creates energies (up to 14 trillion electron volts) and blistering temperatures not seen since the Big Bang. That's why the collider is nicknamed "the window on Creation." It creates a tiny, mini-Big Bang at the instant of the collision. For a fraction of a trillionth of a second, the Higgs boson appears at the collision site, before it rapidly decays into a shower of ordinary subatomic particles. Some of the largest supercomputers on earth are then used to shift though this immense amount of data to identify the telltale tracks of the short-lived Higgs boson. It's akin to smashing two grand pianos together at high velocity, completely demolishing them, and then using supercomputers to analyze the noise of the crash to reconstruct a detailed blueprint of each piano—but far more complicated. For the past 50 years, this expensive process of smashing beams of particles has yielded an embarrassingly large zoo of hundreds of subatomic particles, which can be tediously reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle called the Standard Model of particles. More than 20 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to physicists who have pieced together parts of the Standard Model. All the particles of the Standard Model had been found, except the last, central piece of the jigsaw puzzle—the Higgs boson. That is why so much was resting on finding the Higgs particle. (If it had not been found, many physicists, I imagine, would have had a heart attack.) The press has dubbed the Higgs boson the "God particle," a nickname that makes many physicists cringe. But there is some logic to it. According to the Bible, God set the universe into motion as he proclaimed "Let there be light!" In physics, the universe started off with a cosmic explosion, the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, which sent the stars and galaxies hurtling in all directions. But the key question is left unanswered: Why did it bang? The big-bang theory says nothing about how and why it banged in the first place. To put it another way, what was the match that set off the initial cosmic explosion? What put the "bang" in the Big Bang? In quantum physics, it was a Higgs-like particle that sparked the cosmic explosion. In other words, everything we see around us, including galaxies, stars, planets and us, owes its existence to the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson also answers another profound physical question. Why is the universe so unsymmetrical and broken? When you calculate the masses of the subatomic particles like the electron, proton, neutrino or neutron, at first they seem almost random, displaying no rhyme or reason at all. The latest thinking is that, just before the Big Bang, the universe was very tiny but also perfectly symmetrical. All the masses of the particles were the same, i.e. zero. But the presence of Higgs-like particles shattered this perfect symmetry. Once the symmetry was broken, the particles were free to assume the various masses we see today. With the discovery of the Higgs boson, a whole new chapter in physics opens up. CERN's collider could lead to the discovery of unseen dimensions, parallel universes, and possibly the "strings" in string theory (in which the Standard Model is just the lowest vibrating octave). In other words, the discovery of the Higgs is but the first step toward a much grander Theory of Everything. Mr. Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at CUNY, is author of "Physics of the Futu How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by 2100" (Doubleday, 2011). --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com |
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CERN could lead to Discovery of Unseen Dimensions
On 03/10/2014 12:24 AM, FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer wrote:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...08622617259052 The Spark That Caused the Big Bang There's a reason the newly discovered Higgs boson is called the 'God particle.' It started it all. By MICHIO KAKU July 5, 2012 6:57 p.m. ET Champagne bottles were being uncorked at particle accelerators around the world this week as physicists celebrated one of the great moments in scientific history: the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson. Hundreds of physicists and engineers were ecstatic, having devoted almost 30 years of their lives—and $10 billion—trying to track down this almost mythical subatomic particle. In their press release, the scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, were careful to say they've only found evidence of a "Higgs-like" particle. But this is too modest. With 99.9999% confidence, they can claim to have found the Higgs boson itself. snip rest of breathless horsehit Look kiddies! This is what happens when politics and brainless journalists infest science. Even the theoretical physicists catch the disease! So there is a 99.9999% "consensus" for a Higgs "God" particle! Even the "God" name smacks of PURE journalism lies and hype. All that is needed now is a UN science "commission" to give us political summaries of what it all means and publish scare papers of what "could" or "Might" or "is predicted" to happen. So should we all be shaking in our boots as Higgs particles cause sea level to rise 120 meters flooding all major human cites? Maybe Higgs will change how all our cellphones work sending all our data to the NSA? Hard to say, but I"m guessing it's going to be SCARY unless we all start paying for more Higgs research! Just don't ask why if Higgs is 99.9999% certain that more tax money needs to be spent. Why not just sit back, retire, and bask in the glory of your magnificent discovery? |
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CERN could lead to Discovery of Unseen Dimensions
On Sun, 09 Mar 2014 21:24:14 -0700, FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer wrote:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/ SB10001424052702304141204577508622617259052 The Spark That Caused the Big Bang There's a reason the newly discovered Higgs boson is called the 'God particle.' It started it all. Well, that's the first sign of pop-Fizics. By MICHIO KAKU July 5, 2012 6:57 p.m. ET Champagne bottles were being Kaku?! I hope you got your dimes worth of "Gee-Whiz Fizics!" because it is all bull****. Please don't call it science, okay? |
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