God particle or the end of the world? You decided

[anjel]

Haven't done the public posting of an interesting bit of science news in a while, so here ya go:


Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon

GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago.
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Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson," which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.



The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.

The 78-year-old's original efforts in the early 1960s to explain why the force, dubbed the Higgs field, must exist were dismissed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Today, the existence of the invisible field is widely accepted by scientists, who believe it came into being milliseconds after the Big Bang created the universe some 15 billion years ago.

Finding the Higgs boson would prove this theory right.

CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aims to simulate conditions at the time of that primeval inferno by smashing particles together at near light-speed and so unlock many secrets of the universe.

Higgs was in Geneva to visit CERN for the first time in 13 years in advance of the launch.

Scientists at the centre hope the process will produce clear signs of the boson, dubbed the "God particle" by some, to the displeasure of Higgs, an atheist.

He came up with his theory to explain why mass disappears as matter is broken down to its smallest constituent parts -- molecules, atoms and quarks.

BIG BANG

The normally media-shy physicist, who has spent most of his career at Scotland's Edinburgh University, postulated that matter was weightless at the exact moment of the Big Bang and then much of it promptly gained mass.

This, he argued, must be due to a field which stuck to particles as they passed through it and made them heavy. If this had not happened, matter would have floated free in space and stars and planets would never have formed.

Higgs said he hoped the elusive boson -- which an earlier but less powerful collider at CERN and another at the U.S. Fermilab had failed to detect -- would be identified before his 80th birthday in 2009.

"If it doesn't," he said, "I shall be very, very puzzled."

But there may be no immediate visible proof -- despite some fanciful portrayals of what it might look like -- of the boson's appearance on the ultra-sophisticated computers used by CERN scientists to track the billions of collisions in the LHC.

"It all happens so fast that the appearance of the boson may be hidden in the data collected, and it could take a long time for the analysis to find it," said Higgs.

"I may have to keep the champagne on ice for a while yet."


Perhaps it is lofty to postulate this might hold the key to unlocking long distance faster than light space travel.....? Hmmmmm time will tell

Comments

[banrai.livejournal.com]

Personally anything that tries to 'play God' leaves a very, very sour taste in my mouth. I can't help but feel that this is the usherance of the end of times, and not just in the Biblical sense. Who knows what will happen when they start smashin that shit together.

I hope Geneva is eaten by a black hole. Serves them right.

[campybear.livejournal.com]

Aaahhh the hadron collider. I can't wait to see everything continue as normal after they switch that on. I'm curious as to just what the result of their findings will be, but I'm more looking forward to no more crap about the thing destroying the planet with it's use...

Besides, every time I hear the name my brain changes it to hardon collider and I wince.

[dasseulanglii.livejournal.com]

"God particle"

The first thing I thought of was if we could accelerate the particle into a beam, and make a killer "God beam" to blow stuff up with/or turn it into cute kittens and rainbows.

Like a switch on it with a skull and cross bones at the top and a little pink heart at the bottom, Death mode and Kitten mode.

I need coffee...

/Is very excited about CERN
//Either it'll revolutionize Physics and technology, or suck the planet into a black hole. Win~win?

[brodycatsmouth.livejournal.com]

[tagancalera.livejournal.com]

I've been following the CERN development since early 2002. That was when I first learned of a man, probably fictional, by the name of John Titor. John claimed to be a time traveler from the future (specifically the year 2038). He had made several appearances on science-based forums where people were discussing the possibilities of time travel. He also made several predictions about the future (all of which would eventually lead to a third World War sparked by an American Civil War that all ends in a few carefully placed Tactical Nuclear Weapons and the death of 1/2 the world's population). The summary of all of his statements, schematic diagrams of his "time machine", stories of his travels for the U.S. Army, his descriptions on how time travel "works", etc where all an awesome read - but had enough holes in it to be obviously fake to most anyone. But one thing he did predict in 2001 (which was when he did all this) was that in 2008 CERN would activate a particle accelerator that will allow for the creation of microsingularities and that within 2 years they'll have enough control over it to create two simultaniously and bring their event horizons close enough to create the first "Temporal Bubble" that would be the steps towards eventual time travel. He claims in 2038 his was the second in three series of time travel devices and that they'd been travelling time for 3 years at that point. He stated that you can't affect your own time line because the farter you go back the more different the timeline because of it simply creating new pathways in time. This prevents paradox. The only way to go back to your time is to go backward again to before you interfered, keep yourself in a state "shift" so you don't interact with the time you've gone back to, and then go forward again along the path you're from.

Anyways, if you want to read it, its great science-fiction IMO. You can find it all collated at www.johntitor.com (the guy there is convinced he was real - and may BE the guy for all I know).

I do know also that there have been some concerns by very unqualified "scientists" that the successful creation of a microsingularity would prove to be devestating to the world and that the mini-black whole wouldn't be able to be turned off and it would only grow and grow as it inevetibly began to suck in matter.

[regieeuronymous.livejournal.com]

HAY you look like the kind of person that would know. do you know when theyre supposed to start up the LHC? ive looked for dates but theyre all a vague 'may 2008'

[anjel-kitty.livejournal.com]

LHC?

[regieeuronymous.livejournal.com]

large hadron collider

[citrusbastard.livejournal.com]

I've always wandered what it's like to be spaghetti. I'll bet it sucks.

[loki-mk2.livejournal.com]

You infidels! It is called the Allah particle!

(Neat article, kinda funny that they call it the God particle when Higgs is atheist)

[anjel-kitty.livejournal.com]

And you know me from?