A peep into the moment when things began
Friday, 12 September 2008
Syed Fattahul Alim
What is happening at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) some 300 meters beneath the Swiss-French border that has sent the whole world speculating about the future of our beloved Earth? If the experiment being done within the huge particle accelerator called Large Hadron Collider (LHC), that is supposed to create the conditions of the nascent universe one trillionth of a second after its birth through the Big Bang, is dangerous for our very existence, why are the scientists taking such risks?
In fact, the kind of research now underway within the LHC or the Big Bang Machine along its 27 kilometres long tunnel is nothing totally new to scientists. They have been doing this kind of research since the third decade of the last century. In these machines, swarms of elementary particles are navigated through a tunnel where changing magnetic fields accelerate the particles at very high speeds. At a stage, when the fundamental particles have gained sufficient speed, they are made to crash on the atoms of the material kept in the way of the speeding particles. In consequence, the atoms of the targeted piece of material break up releasing energy and more particles from its broken up parts. This is how the first Atom Bomb was developed. However, the physics of elementary particles has progressed further since then. Meanwhile, more powerful machines to propel more energetic 'bullet particles' and bombard other atoms or even beams of particles with them have been developed. The objective of this kind of research is to know the secret of matter through breaking it up into smaller parts. The machine now operative at CERN, called the LHC, will propel two beams of very high speed protons (the positively charged heavy particles that make the nucleus of the atom) from opposite directions, navigate them with the help of powerful electromagnets through the 27-kilometer tunnel towards each other.
In the process, the beams of protons will gather speed until they approach the speed of light (however, they will never be able to reach the exact speed of light, because that will violate a basic law of nature discovered by the great twentieth century physicist Albert Einstein that the speed of light is the ultimate speed). So, it is easily understandable that the longer the beams of charged particles are made to fly through the tunnel shoved hard from time to time by the powerful magnets, the greater will be their speed at the end. To achieve it, the scientists will have to create larger machines with longer tunnels and very powerful magnets to drive the particles faster. The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) built under the Swiss-French border aims to achieve exactly that end. After switching on the machine at around 07.30 GMT on Wednesday, the beams of protons have been passed through the tunnel. As they will propagate through the long circuitous path of the tunnel, they will be from time to time given further push in their flight by the powerful magnets. However, the target of reaching the near-light speed of travel will not be achieved in an instant. It will take some more weeks. It may have to run until next fall to achieve that speed. At that speed the protons will gain around 7 trillion electron volts of energy. And the moment the two streams of near-light-speed protons crash into each other, it is hoped, the conditions that existed a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang will be created. What are the scientists expecting to witness at such artificially created condition of the early universe?
They hope to find things that existed even before matter and the fundamental forces in their present form were born! It is even before space and time in its present form were created! At that moment of creation, the three dimensions and time we are so familiar with might still be uncoiling from the grand knot of singularity that was in the beginning. The mysterious, hypothetical quarks that are known to be the ultimate building blocks of matter may show up in that state when protons colliding with one another start to break up. The experiment may shed light on the 'dark matter' that makes up 25 per cent of the mass of the known universe as well as 70 per cent of its energy called the 'dark energy'. And the rest 5 per cent of the mass of universe is what makes the stellar systems, the galaxies, the planets and so on science is so concerned with! The mystery of mass which is attached to the hypothetical particle called 'Higgs boson' may after all be created out of the artificial Big Bang in the LHC! Anti-matter, the mirror reflection of matter, and which was, in theory, created in equal amount along with matter in the beginning, has vanished from the view since! The grand experiment may finally bring out that hiding form of matter. These are among some of the items in the wish list of findings the physicists are hoping to stumble upon during the 'cosmic experiment' at the LHC of CERN.
But what is then so terrifying about the emergence of such particles, forces, or dimensions that the doomsayers have been foretelling? Well, scientists also hypothesised that in the process, the gravitational force in its earliest form, which might have been far stronger than we know of it today, may be recreated. Such extremely powerful form of gravity might lead to the creation of (as very powerful gravitational forces are supposed to do) black holes! And what these back holes are apt at doing? Gobbling up whatever they find around. Might not such black holes, if created, devour the machine that generated them along with the planet earth on which it is situated! In fact, these are fears born of the unknown. Such fears were there when the first nuclear fission was planned at the Manhattan Project to make the A-bomb. Such fears were always with humans whenever they tried to break new grounds in their attempt at knowing the unknown. And as we know, most of those were unfounded. Hopefully, the doomsday hype going the rounds with the ongoing research at the CERN will also meet with a similar fate.
Now, what are the scientists in charge of the grand happenings at the LHC are doing at the moment?
The director general of CERN Robert Aymar hailed the day of switching the LHC as a historic one. Calling the new collider 'a discovery machine,' 'a why machine', he added saying that humans have a quest for (knowing) where they came from and where they should go, whether the Universe will end, and where the Universe will go in the future.
Lyn Evans, the project director of the LHC or collider, in short, said, 'It's a fantastic moment. We can now look forward to a new era of understanding the origins and evolution of the universe'.
So, it is a great moment of excitement not just for the scientists at the CERN or others equally interested and watching the developments there keenly. What will come out of this latest experiment at the CERN will enrich human knowledge in general and the physics of elementary particles, in particular.
There is another aspect of the CERN's cosmic research that lovers of science and knowledge must celebrate. In fact, it is an instance of success by the scientists at CERN to launch this project after two decades of effort. The fund for this project has been contributed by 20 nations of the European Union. What should be further celebrated is that the project has been launched at a time when fund for fundamental research like the one being carried out at the LHC has been dwindling fast. One might recall here the Superconducting Supercollider project proposed to be built at US$11 billion in the USA some twenty years back. Had the project not been killed by the US Congress in 1993, the Superconducting Supercollider would be the first and the biggest particle smasher ever built on earth. So, in that sense, the CERN scientists are luckier compared to their American rivals.
But how might we in Bangladesh be benefited from the groundbreaking scientific researches being carried out at CERN in remote Switzerland? Whatever is being done out there will enrich human knowledge. We, too, have a share in that common repository of knowledge. And who knows we may also have our turn in the course of time!
What is happening at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) some 300 meters beneath the Swiss-French border that has sent the whole world speculating about the future of our beloved Earth? If the experiment being done within the huge particle accelerator called Large Hadron Collider (LHC), that is supposed to create the conditions of the nascent universe one trillionth of a second after its birth through the Big Bang, is dangerous for our very existence, why are the scientists taking such risks?
In fact, the kind of research now underway within the LHC or the Big Bang Machine along its 27 kilometres long tunnel is nothing totally new to scientists. They have been doing this kind of research since the third decade of the last century. In these machines, swarms of elementary particles are navigated through a tunnel where changing magnetic fields accelerate the particles at very high speeds. At a stage, when the fundamental particles have gained sufficient speed, they are made to crash on the atoms of the material kept in the way of the speeding particles. In consequence, the atoms of the targeted piece of material break up releasing energy and more particles from its broken up parts. This is how the first Atom Bomb was developed. However, the physics of elementary particles has progressed further since then. Meanwhile, more powerful machines to propel more energetic 'bullet particles' and bombard other atoms or even beams of particles with them have been developed. The objective of this kind of research is to know the secret of matter through breaking it up into smaller parts. The machine now operative at CERN, called the LHC, will propel two beams of very high speed protons (the positively charged heavy particles that make the nucleus of the atom) from opposite directions, navigate them with the help of powerful electromagnets through the 27-kilometer tunnel towards each other.
In the process, the beams of protons will gather speed until they approach the speed of light (however, they will never be able to reach the exact speed of light, because that will violate a basic law of nature discovered by the great twentieth century physicist Albert Einstein that the speed of light is the ultimate speed). So, it is easily understandable that the longer the beams of charged particles are made to fly through the tunnel shoved hard from time to time by the powerful magnets, the greater will be their speed at the end. To achieve it, the scientists will have to create larger machines with longer tunnels and very powerful magnets to drive the particles faster. The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) built under the Swiss-French border aims to achieve exactly that end. After switching on the machine at around 07.30 GMT on Wednesday, the beams of protons have been passed through the tunnel. As they will propagate through the long circuitous path of the tunnel, they will be from time to time given further push in their flight by the powerful magnets. However, the target of reaching the near-light speed of travel will not be achieved in an instant. It will take some more weeks. It may have to run until next fall to achieve that speed. At that speed the protons will gain around 7 trillion electron volts of energy. And the moment the two streams of near-light-speed protons crash into each other, it is hoped, the conditions that existed a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang will be created. What are the scientists expecting to witness at such artificially created condition of the early universe?
They hope to find things that existed even before matter and the fundamental forces in their present form were born! It is even before space and time in its present form were created! At that moment of creation, the three dimensions and time we are so familiar with might still be uncoiling from the grand knot of singularity that was in the beginning. The mysterious, hypothetical quarks that are known to be the ultimate building blocks of matter may show up in that state when protons colliding with one another start to break up. The experiment may shed light on the 'dark matter' that makes up 25 per cent of the mass of the known universe as well as 70 per cent of its energy called the 'dark energy'. And the rest 5 per cent of the mass of universe is what makes the stellar systems, the galaxies, the planets and so on science is so concerned with! The mystery of mass which is attached to the hypothetical particle called 'Higgs boson' may after all be created out of the artificial Big Bang in the LHC! Anti-matter, the mirror reflection of matter, and which was, in theory, created in equal amount along with matter in the beginning, has vanished from the view since! The grand experiment may finally bring out that hiding form of matter. These are among some of the items in the wish list of findings the physicists are hoping to stumble upon during the 'cosmic experiment' at the LHC of CERN.
But what is then so terrifying about the emergence of such particles, forces, or dimensions that the doomsayers have been foretelling? Well, scientists also hypothesised that in the process, the gravitational force in its earliest form, which might have been far stronger than we know of it today, may be recreated. Such extremely powerful form of gravity might lead to the creation of (as very powerful gravitational forces are supposed to do) black holes! And what these back holes are apt at doing? Gobbling up whatever they find around. Might not such black holes, if created, devour the machine that generated them along with the planet earth on which it is situated! In fact, these are fears born of the unknown. Such fears were there when the first nuclear fission was planned at the Manhattan Project to make the A-bomb. Such fears were always with humans whenever they tried to break new grounds in their attempt at knowing the unknown. And as we know, most of those were unfounded. Hopefully, the doomsday hype going the rounds with the ongoing research at the CERN will also meet with a similar fate.
Now, what are the scientists in charge of the grand happenings at the LHC are doing at the moment?
The director general of CERN Robert Aymar hailed the day of switching the LHC as a historic one. Calling the new collider 'a discovery machine,' 'a why machine', he added saying that humans have a quest for (knowing) where they came from and where they should go, whether the Universe will end, and where the Universe will go in the future.
Lyn Evans, the project director of the LHC or collider, in short, said, 'It's a fantastic moment. We can now look forward to a new era of understanding the origins and evolution of the universe'.
So, it is a great moment of excitement not just for the scientists at the CERN or others equally interested and watching the developments there keenly. What will come out of this latest experiment at the CERN will enrich human knowledge in general and the physics of elementary particles, in particular.
There is another aspect of the CERN's cosmic research that lovers of science and knowledge must celebrate. In fact, it is an instance of success by the scientists at CERN to launch this project after two decades of effort. The fund for this project has been contributed by 20 nations of the European Union. What should be further celebrated is that the project has been launched at a time when fund for fundamental research like the one being carried out at the LHC has been dwindling fast. One might recall here the Superconducting Supercollider project proposed to be built at US$11 billion in the USA some twenty years back. Had the project not been killed by the US Congress in 1993, the Superconducting Supercollider would be the first and the biggest particle smasher ever built on earth. So, in that sense, the CERN scientists are luckier compared to their American rivals.
But how might we in Bangladesh be benefited from the groundbreaking scientific researches being carried out at CERN in remote Switzerland? Whatever is being done out there will enrich human knowledge. We, too, have a share in that common repository of knowledge. And who knows we may also have our turn in the course of time!