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Topic: Proof of Extra Dimensions Possible Next Year: CERN (Read 1843 times) |
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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Proof of Extra Dimensions Possible Next Year: CERN
« on: 2010-11-16 08:43:13 » |
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[Blunderov] Perhaps after the Higgs-boson is discovered, progress can then be made with regard to the even more elusive Snark particle. The Snark particle is theorised by some (well, to be honest, only me - so far) to impart time to other fundamental particles. Vexingly, intrepid theoretical physicists involved in the quest for the Snark particle keep vanishing softly and suddenly away in an anomalous process which is not yet fully understood.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wirestory?id=12152908&page=1
Proof of Extra Dimensions Possible Next Year: CERN
By Robert Evans
November 15, 2010
GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists at the CERN research center say their "Big Bang" project is going beyond all expectations and the first proof of the existence of dimensions beyond the known four could emerge next year.
In surveys of results of nearly 8 months of experiments in their Large Hadron Collider (LHC), they also say they may be able to determine by the end of 2011 whether the mystery Higgs particle, or boson, exists.
Guido Tonelli, spokesman for one of the CERN specialist teams monitoring operations in the vast, subterranean LHC, said probing for extra dimensions -- besides length, breadth, height and time -- would become easier as the energy of the proton collisions in it is increased in 2011.
Other CERN physicists say the success so far of the world's largest scientific project suggests that some great enigmas of the universe they have in their sights could be at least partly resolved much sooner than they thought.
"One year ago, it would have been impossible for us to guess that the machine and the experiments could achieve so much so quickly," said Fabiola Gionotti, spokeswoman for another research team in the surveys, issued on CERN's website (www.cern.org).
RESULTS ALL THE TIME
"We are producing new results all the time," she added. The existence or otherwise of the Higgs, never yet spotted but believed to provide the glue giving mass to matter, should be settled one way or another by the end of next year.
The $10 billion LHC, whose operation and monitoring involves scientists and research centers in 34 countries, went into full operation on March 31, smashing protons together at near the speed of light with increasing energy.
These collisions have been creating millions of simulations of the Big Bang which 13.7 billion years ago brought into existence the primordial universe from which stars, planets and life on earth -- and perhaps elsewhere -- eventually emerged.
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Fritz
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Re:Proof of Extra Dimensions Possible Next Year: CERN
« Reply #1 on: 2010-11-21 12:52:39 » |
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and now we can travel there ..... 
Cheers
Fritz
Scientists have captured antimatter
Source: CNN
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Date:2010.11.18
 http://www.phy.bris.ac.uk/groups/particle/PUS/A-level/Pictures/antimatter_cartoon.jpg
CNN) -- Scientists have captured antimatter atoms for the first time, a breakthrough that could eventually help us to understand the nature and origins of the universe.
Researchers at CERN, the Geneva-based particle physics laboratory, have managed to confine single antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap.
This will allow them to conduct a more detailed study of antihydrogen, which will in turn allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter.
Understanding antimatter is one of the biggest challenges facing science -- most theoretical physicists and cosmologists believe that at the Big Bang, when the universe was created, matter and antimatter were produced in equal amounts.
However, as our world is made up of matter, antimatter seems to have disappeared.
Understanding antimatter could shed light on why almost everything in the known universe consists of matter.
Antimatter has been very difficult to handle because matter and antimatter don't get on, destroying each other instantly on contact in a violent flash of energy.
In a precursor to today's experiment, in 2002 scientists at CERN produced antihydrogen atoms in large quantities, but they had an incredibly short lifespan -- just several milliseconds -- because the antihydrogen came into contact with the walls of their containers and the two annihilated each other.
In this latest experiment the lifespan of the antihydrogen atoms was extended by using magnetic fields to trap them and thus prevent them from coming into contact with matter.
The researchers created 38 antihydrogen atoms and held on to them for about a tenth of a second, which is long enough to study them says Professor Jeffrey Hangst, one of the team of CERN scientists who worked on the program.
Hangst and his colleagues produced a magnet field which was strongest near the walls of the trap, falling to a minimum at the center, causing the atoms to collect there in a vacuum.
"We could have held them for much longer... I am just full of joy and relief, it's taken us five years to get here, this is a big milestone," Hangst told CNN.
To trap just 38 atoms, they had to run the experiment 335 times, says Nature which published the report findings.
Hangst added: "This was ten thousand times more difficult than creating untrapped antihydrogen atoms.
"This will help us understand the structure of space and time. For reasons that no one yet understands, nature ruled out antimatter... this inspires us to work that much harder to see if antimatter holds some secret."
Malcolm Longair, professor of natural philosophy at Cambridge University, told CNN that CERN's results were a considerable achievement.
"At the Big Bang we believe the temperatures were very very high and we understand in theory why antimatter disappeared but there is no physical theory to back it up."
Antimatter was first predicted in 1931 by the British physicist Paul Dirac, who theorized that antimatter is ordinary matter in reverse.
CERN's next ambition is to create a beam of antimatter which they hope will allow them to unpeel more of the mysteries surrounding it.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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