Will science find the "God particle?"
This image is called "The Dance of Creation." It's by withrow.
Scientists last week announced plans to build a 20–mile–long machine in Beijing, China with the goal of finding what’s been dubbed as the “God particle.”
Nobel prize–winning physics guru Leon Lederman helped coin the term “God particle” in a book by that name.
The book describes one of the most mysterious “what–ifs” in physics. What if an as–yet–unseen “something” provides the universe with the physical property called mass? That “something” is associated with the God particle.
Why do we need a God particle? According to scientists, mass is the amount of matter contained within a physical object. Yet scientists do not really understand what causes objects to have mass. Why, they ask, is there a physical reality to atoms and molecules? In principle, these physical objects could just as well exist as pure energy, in accordance with Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2.
A possible explanation of the reason mass exists arose in the 1960s, when physicist Peter Higgs first asserted that all of space – throughout the entire universe – is permeated with an invisible lattice work. It would be a “field” similar to the more familiar field created by electricity. Interactions within this so–called “Higgs’ field” may be what produce mass.
What’s more, the reigning scientific model of physics today – quantum theory – predicts that if there is a field, then particles should exist which associate with it. These particles would be the missing God particles, which scientists are seeking.
Think of it this way. If you skip a stone on a lake, you see the ripples on the water as a sign that the stone has been there. Likewise, scientists hope to find the ripples of the God particle in the aftermath of the most violent collisions humans are capable of creating, in which the building blocks of atoms are pushed to near light speed and smashed together.
In what’s been described as a multi–billion–dollar race, scientific institutions from the United States, Europe, and Asia are vying to be the first to find evidence of what gives the universe its mass. The U.S. top contenders are Fermi National Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois and Stanford University in California. The European Centre for Nuclear Research hopes to smash the right stuff with its new Large Hadron Collider, scheduled to go operational later in 2007.
And plans to build the International Linear Collider in China were announced last week by a collaboration of over 1,000 scientists from 100 countries and led by Shin–ichi Kurokawa, of Japan’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization. The Asian atom smasher is expected to be completed by 2020.
It’s through these atom smashers that the God particle – whose presence would reveal the field that is the source of all physical reality – might ultimately be found.
soalad air is heumet and terns in to ice
Something to ponder….
I read an article a few years ago that described the experiments conducted at an American University in the late 30’s or early 40’s. These experiments were the precursor to what would later become the U.S. Governments Atomic Weapons program…the specific names of the programs escape my memory.
The researchers were trying to start a chain reaction of the release of atomic energy. They didn’t know what to expect and so they created a contingency plan to halt the chain reaction if it were to become unstable or speed out of their control. Their plan was to have a Graduate Student dump a bucket of water on the process.
This sounds quite silly since we now know that, had they succeeded in their efforts, the graduate student would have become part of the mushroom cloud before his brain realized what happened.
Do scientists really understand what they are attempting to do with these types of experiments?
Will scientists be able to stop any unexpected or undesirable reactions if they need to?
If these “god paricles” seem to be holding everything together do they really know what to expect if they start trying to break them apart?
Stupid Questions?
I hope so…
S.
Preparations for commissioning the “International Linear Collider” which will smash together electrons and positrons at very high energies to produce fire ball of annihilation energy, in search of higgs boson will be a wild goose chase again. Higgs boson which scientists at present are searching is not a material particle at all. It is basically an antiparticle of photon. Probability is, that antiparticle of photon will not be detected even after it surfaces at the time of collisions of hundreds of electrons and positrons. We at present are not sure what observational effects of anti particle of photons we are looking for. We have no theoretical predictions what effects anti particle of photons will have on emergence in an atmosphere of collider. We have no technology for detecting somthing like anti photons. Although scientist can make many of the other pending discoveries, but finding higgs boson, which imparts mass to the matter will not be fulfilled. Higgs bosons are basically anti photons. Anti photones are actually responsible for imparting mass to the matter particles. The search which is on for the higgs bosons will probably end when we detect antiphoton. To find the anti photons we will need searching mechanism similar to the one needed for detecting photons or may be just opposite to it.
I have read with interest about the “God particle.” I am wondering if this might be connected in any way with the so-called “unifying” force that Einstein (I believe it was he) posited was a yet as unfound or unidentified force that governed the other forces, including gravity and electro-magnetism ( I seem to recall there’s one more traditionally recognized force, but I cannot remember what it is)?
Gary Jon
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. Psalm 46:1
Dear Gary Jon,
I’d like to point you to an article at Astronomycafe.net called, What is Grand Unification Theory? Sten Odenwald sums it up pretty nicely to say that Grand Unification Theory was more or less replaced by scientists with string theory, the model of the physical universe which reduces the most basic, indivisible unit of existence to a one dimensional string whose vibrations and interactions produce our physical universe.
The discovery of the “God particle,” known to science as the Higgs boson, is crucial to scientifically pinning down whether the universe obeys the property called supersymmetry, which would help confirm string theory. Hope that helps.
Is this final? I mean the International Linear Collider will be build in China? What will happen to US leadership in particle physics?
#0.@We just have to wait and see how things turn-out;scientific evidences can be full of mysteries as against scientific hypothesis.
Ricca,
The US leadership was lost when we killed the SCSC 15 years ago. It would take another 15 years and a billion dollars (out of, for example, the 100 billion we are about to spend in Iraq) to get it back. Good luck.