The Search For The God Particle
Disclaimer: I know nothing about physics, other than it really turns me on. Handy then, that Rich has a degree in it. Getting him to write about it is a somewhat harder task however, so you‘re gonna have to out up with my feeble stab at it instead. Incidentally this has nothing whatsoever to do with photography. But it does make me horny.
People of the cloth will always tell you that mankind will never be able to prove that God exists, or how the universe was created. You have to take it on faith. That doesn’t stop scientists trying, however, and they are about to come mighty close to proving the existence, not of God Himself, but of His particles. The intention is to answer the unanswerable question: how does matter have mass, and thus exist in a form that results in the creation of the universe and all that comprises it?
This is no less than the quest to prove how the world was created, and has been the Holy Grail of physics for over 40 years, ever since Peter Higgs proposed in 1964 that the universe is pervaded by an invisible field of tiny things called bosons which consist of mass but not much else. As particles move through this field, the bosons stick to them, thus increasing their mass whilst leaving others, such as photons (light particles which have no mass), unaffected.
This mysterious boson has become so fundamental to physics that it is known as The God Particle. But no-one has been able to prove it is real. Until now. Later this year, a mysterious device in Cern, Geneva called an atom-smasher (or Large Hadron Collider or LHC to give it its proper name) is apparently virtually guaranteed to find these bosons. Scientists have glimpsed them from experiments using smaller particle accelerators, but they’ve never been able to categorically prove their existence.
Bosons are elusive little buggers by all accounts. They are supposed to exist only at very high energies, which last existed in the moments after the Big Bang, and thus the only way of finding them is using the homogenously large atom-smasher. And big it certainly is. It will fire beams of protons around seventeen miles of underground tunnels before they eventually reach the speed of light and collide, thus releasing vast bursts of energy. The boson particles will then be found by specially developed detectors which are situated in cathedral-sized caverns under the ground. Then of course begins the mammoth task of sifting through and analysing the vast amounts of data before scientists can categorically prove that the God Particle exists. The final results should be ready some time in 2009.
So this is the story so far. If they scientists pull this off, one of the most fundamental questions of physics will be answered, namely why matter has mass. Make no mistake people, this is BIG. Does the God Particle exist, or is it just a figment of imagination? Can we finally find a small piece of the most important puzzle in the history of the universe: the mystery of how our world was created?
Are you getting excited yet? Because I certainly am.
Amy, searching for her own bosons.
People of the cloth will always tell you that mankind will never be able to prove that God exists, or how the universe was created. You have to take it on faith. That doesn’t stop scientists trying, however, and they are about to come mighty close to proving the existence, not of God Himself, but of His particles. The intention is to answer the unanswerable question: how does matter have mass, and thus exist in a form that results in the creation of the universe and all that comprises it?
This is no less than the quest to prove how the world was created, and has been the Holy Grail of physics for over 40 years, ever since Peter Higgs proposed in 1964 that the universe is pervaded by an invisible field of tiny things called bosons which consist of mass but not much else. As particles move through this field, the bosons stick to them, thus increasing their mass whilst leaving others, such as photons (light particles which have no mass), unaffected.
This mysterious boson has become so fundamental to physics that it is known as The God Particle. But no-one has been able to prove it is real. Until now. Later this year, a mysterious device in Cern, Geneva called an atom-smasher (or Large Hadron Collider or LHC to give it its proper name) is apparently virtually guaranteed to find these bosons. Scientists have glimpsed them from experiments using smaller particle accelerators, but they’ve never been able to categorically prove their existence.
Bosons are elusive little buggers by all accounts. They are supposed to exist only at very high energies, which last existed in the moments after the Big Bang, and thus the only way of finding them is using the homogenously large atom-smasher. And big it certainly is. It will fire beams of protons around seventeen miles of underground tunnels before they eventually reach the speed of light and collide, thus releasing vast bursts of energy. The boson particles will then be found by specially developed detectors which are situated in cathedral-sized caverns under the ground. Then of course begins the mammoth task of sifting through and analysing the vast amounts of data before scientists can categorically prove that the God Particle exists. The final results should be ready some time in 2009.
So this is the story so far. If they scientists pull this off, one of the most fundamental questions of physics will be answered, namely why matter has mass. Make no mistake people, this is BIG. Does the God Particle exist, or is it just a figment of imagination? Can we finally find a small piece of the most important puzzle in the history of the universe: the mystery of how our world was created?
Are you getting excited yet? Because I certainly am.
Amy, searching for her own bosons.
posted by Lin at 2:19 PM
6 Comments:
Physics and nude women, in one blog!
Anyway, you're right it will be a momentus occasion if the Higg's boson is discovered. As a physicist myself, I'm aware of the achievements of first postulating the existence of something and then having it proven to be.
However, if the LHC in Cern cannot find it, then there will be serious head scratching because this machine is the one to find it, on paper at least.
I read an article that said that the LHC will generate 10-20 petabytes of data per year so I imagine any announcements will some time away after sifting through the huge amounts of data.
Lovely photo as always.
Peter B
If they can't find it, then I will cry. A lot.
I want answers dammit! (in my lifetime preferably!)
I think you're talking Quantum physics. The sexiest word in your post was BIG. I thought the boson-ova was a Latin dance. Shows you what I know, Ph.D.
Not to make light of your passion. I poured over news of The Shroud of Turin for years. Never did get a definitive answer. Do you think it's possible there are no definitive answers? No, you don't want to hear that!
I saw the Shroud of Turin when I was sixteen (on my knees - you're only allowed to enter the chamber on your knees.)So I understand the fascination. The Holy Grail was my obsession. I researched it for years.
As for BIG. Size is unimportant - any nekkid physicist works for me :-)
"Amy, searching for her own bosons."
Isn't that spelled "bosoms"?
"I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion."
Stephen Hawking
Wow. I thought I was the only one with a Stephen Hawking poster on my bedroom wall.
I do have to say though that my favorite physics equation is - The mass of the ass is equal to the angle of the dangle.
LHC in Cern - the cost: $3 billion and change, all in search of the one in 10 trillion anomalies that could mark the passage of a Higgs.
Makes buying lottery tickets look like a good deal.
You'd think anything that weighed 115 gigaelectronvolts should be easier to find.
Now that you made me go out and expand my horizon again with this post. I found this, which is an excerpt of an excerpt.
Interview with theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg at the University of Texas in Austin. Excerpts:
After this experiment, will we have a final theory of how the universe was created?
It is possible that this experiment will give theoretical physicists a brilliant new idea that will explain all the particles and all the forces that we know and bring everything together in a beautiful mathematically consistent theory. But it is very unlikely that a final theory will come just from this experiment. If had to bet, I would bet it won't be that easy.
As we come closer to developing an ultimate theory of the universe, how will this impact religion?
As science explains more and more, there is less and less need for religious explanations. Originally, in the history of human beings, everything was mysterious. Fire, rain, birth, death, all seemed to require the action of some kind of divine being. As time has passed, we have explained more and more in a purely naturalistic way. This doesn't contradict religion, but it does takes away one of the original motivations for religion.
You've said that Darwin's theory of natural selection was the biggest step in this direction. What about the possible findings in particle physics?
I don't think that discoveries in elementary particle physics in themselves are likely to have anything like the impact of Darwin's theory. After all, I don't know of any religious people who say that the breaking of the symmetry between the weak and the electromagnetic interactions requires divine intervention. Discovering the Higgs boson, confirming the theory of electroweak symmetry breaking, is not going to upset people's religion.
What about possible contributions toward finding a final theory? Would that upset religious believers?
If we put together something like a final theory in which all the forces and the particles are explained and that theory also throws light on the origin of the Big Bang and gives us a consistent picture of cosmology, there will be a little less for religion to explain. But religion has evolved along with science. It is something created by human beings, and as human beings learn more and more their religion changes. Today, especially in the more established religious sects in the West, they've learned to stop trying to explain nature religiously and leave that to science.
But won't some people expect to find the presence of a grand designer in that final theory?
That's what was thought at the beginning, but we see less and less possibility of that. The more we learn about the universe the less sign we see of an intelligent designer. Isaac Newton thought that it would require an explanation in terms of the action of God to explain how the sun shone. Now we know that it shines because of the heat produced by the conversion of hydrogen into helium in its core. People who expect to find evidence of divine action in nature, in the origin of the universe or in the laws that govern matter, are probably going to be disappointed
Are they also going to be disappointed about our position in nature, our purpose?
We don't see any purpose dictated to human beings in nature. Human life does have a purpose, but it is a purpose that we invent for ourselves. It takes a certain act of courage to look at nature, not see any plan for human beings in there and yet go on and live good lives, love each other, create beautiful things, explore the universe. All these take more courage without having some divine plan that we discover, but one that we rather create for ourselves.
Do you think most people have that kind of courage?
I don't know. People have to have a lot of courage just to get on with their lives. And if there is no … Well, I don't know the answer to that question.
You once said that even if we find that final theory, it will still be possible to ask why this one and not another.
Yes, it is true. What will be completely satisfying will be to show that there was only one kind of nature that was logically possible and derive the laws of nature in the same way that we derived the principles of arithmetic. I don't think that will be possible, because we can already imagine logically consistent laws of nature that don't quite describe the world we see. We will always be somewhat disappointed. But people who believe in God have the same problem. They will never be able to understand why the God that they believe in is that way and not some other way. All human beings, whether religious or not, are caught in a tragic situation of never fully being able to understand the world we are in.
The one thing that got me in this dialog is the point of humans position in nature. That we have no purpose in nature other than the one we invent for ourselves. I hate being hit between my uneducated eyes with realizations like this. Thanks.
It also seems funny to me that the religious zealots get up in arms about books like Harry Potter or His Dark Materials yet seem to say little about this quest in real science. But I don't pay any attention to the religious press so they might have.
My head is starting to hurt.
Tata For Now
D.L. Wood
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