Anyone who has read 'Angels and Demons' authored by Dan Brown must remember how a canister containing antimatter is stolen from CERN (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire) and how a world renowned symbologist Robert Langdon helps to recover it and saves Vatican from grave danger.
When I read the book, I thought it might be fictional. However, when I spent a little time and googled for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that supposedly created the antimatter, I found that such a devil of a device actually existed. The reason I am writing this blog is because this monster is going to be unleashed tomorrow. Yes, this monster of a particle accelerator is going to be unveiled.
The LHC is the biggest particle accelerator ever built on the face of the earth and is located on the French-Swiss border. It is buried deep underground and it has a 27 km long circular tube around which subatomic particles will travel in opposite directions at almost the speed of light and collide with each other at an astronomical rate of 600 million collisions per second.
Searching for the 'God particle'
Through the experiments, scientists hope to recreate the conditions that existed just after the big bang, almost ~13.7 billion years ago and search for a mysterious dark particle called the Higgs boson, also dubbed the 'God particle'. It is believed, though not proven that Higgs boson could be responsible for giving mass to all particles and being an indispensable constituent of all materials that exist today including you and me.
The subatomic particles accelerated around the circular tube will be guided by 1000s of ring shaped magnets to keep them from colliding against the walls of the tube and to keep them on course. The result will be a minuscule black hole that generates 1,00,000 times the heat at the surface of the sun.
When the particles collide tomorrow, the vast amount of data generated will be studied by as many as 60,000 computers across the earth, all connected in one huge grid.
If everything goes well and as expected, the world's perspective on Physics and the evolution of matter/material/life will forever change and maybe, mark a new chapter in the everlasting debate/war between Science and Religion.
However, according to some doomsday advocates, this experiment won't revolutionalize and change our understanding of nature and origin. Infact, they feel if gone wrong, the huge amounts of energy fizzed out from these experiments could lead to irreparable damages and may even swallow up the earth.
On the contrary, the proponents and obviously, the sponsors of the experiment strongly believe that this is the turning point in the history of mankind and assure that the amount of energy released from these infinitesimally small black holes, though very high cannot sustain for more than a few billionths of a second, leave alone living long enough to destroy the earth (which maybe a few seconds).
The magnets that guide the particles are very important in that they ensure the particles travel long the curvature of the tube. If they fail, the particles would move tangentially from their path and strike against the circular tube causing chaos. It is necessary to maintain the magnets at a temperature of - 270C or -460F or roughly the temperature that prevails on the unseen face of Pluto. This is achieved by using liquid Helium. However, care must be taken to make sure that the temperature of the liq. Helium does not change by more than a few degrees or it might prove disastrous.
When the testing begin tomorrow, this will be the largest and the most ambitious experiment ever conducted in the field of particle physics. The total cost is about 10 billion and about 9000 scientists are working on this.
With so much time and money invested and risk involved, the outcome of the experiments will be crucial. It has the power to change lives forever. A lot of scientists, for a long time have believed in the God particle and if it is not to be, then years of work would go waste, i.e. if the experiment went well and no mystery particle was found.
The situation we would be facing if the experiments don't go well would be in a whole new dimension, an entirely different scenario and something unthinkable. Will we live to see another day?? That cannot be answered just yet. But it will be appropriate to ask,
Is it Science or Religion?
Is it just the beginning or is it the end??
-U-
Update: Guess, after all, we survived. All's well that ends well and for sure the experiments went fine. Let us all embrace such exciting, nail biting experiments in future with open arms. Mars landing, robots controlling the earth and wars against extraterrestrials; all awaits us.
Long live mankind!!
When I read the book, I thought it might be fictional. However, when I spent a little time and googled for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that supposedly created the antimatter, I found that such a devil of a device actually existed. The reason I am writing this blog is because this monster is going to be unleashed tomorrow. Yes, this monster of a particle accelerator is going to be unveiled.
The LHC is the biggest particle accelerator ever built on the face of the earth and is located on the French-Swiss border. It is buried deep underground and it has a 27 km long circular tube around which subatomic particles will travel in opposite directions at almost the speed of light and collide with each other at an astronomical rate of 600 million collisions per second.
Searching for the 'God particle'
Through the experiments, scientists hope to recreate the conditions that existed just after the big bang, almost ~13.7 billion years ago and search for a mysterious dark particle called the Higgs boson, also dubbed the 'God particle'. It is believed, though not proven that Higgs boson could be responsible for giving mass to all particles and being an indispensable constituent of all materials that exist today including you and me.
The subatomic particles accelerated around the circular tube will be guided by 1000s of ring shaped magnets to keep them from colliding against the walls of the tube and to keep them on course. The result will be a minuscule black hole that generates 1,00,000 times the heat at the surface of the sun.
When the particles collide tomorrow, the vast amount of data generated will be studied by as many as 60,000 computers across the earth, all connected in one huge grid.
If everything goes well and as expected, the world's perspective on Physics and the evolution of matter/material/life will forever change and maybe, mark a new chapter in the everlasting debate/war between Science and Religion.
However, according to some doomsday advocates, this experiment won't revolutionalize and change our understanding of nature and origin. Infact, they feel if gone wrong, the huge amounts of energy fizzed out from these experiments could lead to irreparable damages and may even swallow up the earth.
On the contrary, the proponents and obviously, the sponsors of the experiment strongly believe that this is the turning point in the history of mankind and assure that the amount of energy released from these infinitesimally small black holes, though very high cannot sustain for more than a few billionths of a second, leave alone living long enough to destroy the earth (which maybe a few seconds).
The magnets that guide the particles are very important in that they ensure the particles travel long the curvature of the tube. If they fail, the particles would move tangentially from their path and strike against the circular tube causing chaos. It is necessary to maintain the magnets at a temperature of - 270C or -460F or roughly the temperature that prevails on the unseen face of Pluto. This is achieved by using liquid Helium. However, care must be taken to make sure that the temperature of the liq. Helium does not change by more than a few degrees or it might prove disastrous.
When the testing begin tomorrow, this will be the largest and the most ambitious experiment ever conducted in the field of particle physics. The total cost is about 10 billion and about 9000 scientists are working on this.
With so much time and money invested and risk involved, the outcome of the experiments will be crucial. It has the power to change lives forever. A lot of scientists, for a long time have believed in the God particle and if it is not to be, then years of work would go waste, i.e. if the experiment went well and no mystery particle was found.
The situation we would be facing if the experiments don't go well would be in a whole new dimension, an entirely different scenario and something unthinkable. Will we live to see another day?? That cannot be answered just yet. But it will be appropriate to ask,
Is it Science or Religion?
Is it just the beginning or is it the end??
-U-
Update: Guess, after all, we survived. All's well that ends well and for sure the experiments went fine. Let us all embrace such exciting, nail biting experiments in future with open arms. Mars landing, robots controlling the earth and wars against extraterrestrials; all awaits us.
Long live mankind!!
2 comments:
That’s pretty interesting and at the same time scary.. Good to known that experiment went on well. Also you have done good amount of research on this.. hats off.
By the way are you aware of what these scientists have concluded from this experiment..???
I think we as humans must support such exciting experiments (the least you & me can do) for advancements in science.
As far as Science or Religion goes.. that’s a tough question for me to answer cause am not an atheist nor do I brush aside scientifically proven facts in the name of God.
interesting post. I would love to follow you on twitter. By the way, did any one hear that some chinese hacker had hacked twitter yesterday again.
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