"Big Bang" collider may reveal mystery particle

By Robert Evans Robert Evans – Wed Feb 3, 2:06 pm ET




GENEVA (Reuters) – Scientists operating the "Big Bang" particle collider at CERN could solve the mystery of what gives mass to matter during a nearly two-year non-stop run lasting until late 2011, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

James Gillies told Reuters the long-sought but elusive Higgs Boson particle could well appear during the extended experiment after the world's biggest and most expensive scientific machine is turned on again later this month.

"If it is there, we have a reasonable chance of seeing it," said Gillies, referring to the particle which Scots physicist Peter Higgs said three decades ago would explain how matter came together and created the universe and everything in it.

Gillies said the 18-24 month operation of the machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research on the Swiss-French border near Geneva, would produce a huge amount of information.

Even if the Higgs Boson was not revealed, it would not mean that it did not exist. After the first long run and a year's break for preparations, the LHC would be turned on again at the highest possible energy level.

"It may be that we require that intensity to capture it," Gilles added.

The LHC was first turned on in September 2008 but had to be shut down after a huge explosion in the 27-kilometre (16.78 mile) circular tunnel through which it runs deep underground. The focus of the LHC is the collision of particles moving in opposite directions at high energy.

The billions of collisions, each creating conditions that existed a minute fraction of a second after the "Big Bang" when the universe began 13.7 billion years ago, will produce data that some 10,000 scientists at CERN and around the world will record and analyze.

The matter spewed out by the primeval explosion eventually produced the stars, planets and life on Earth -- but the Higgs theory says this was only possible if something like the Boson brought matter together, giving it mass.

The LHC ran for some two months at the end of last year, staging particle beam collisions in the tunnel at an energy up to 2.36 tera-electron volts (TeV), the highest ever achieved.

The next, long run with no winter break was decided at a meeting of CERN physicists, engineers and managers in Chamonix, France, last week. Gillies said the collision energy would be turned up gradually to 7 TeV when it got under way.

Toward the end of next year, the collider will be closed down again for up to 12 months, allowing engineers to prepare the tunnel and the huge amount of equipment there for collisions at 14 TeV in the following run, probably starting in 2013.

(Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Tim Pearce)

The next Stephen Hawking: string theory pioneer gets Cambridge post

Michael Green, one of the pioneers of string theory, takes prestigious role at University of Cambridge

Ian Sample, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 October 2009 13.45 BST
Article history

A Cambridge physicist who pioneered the idea that everything in the universe is made up of tiny vibrating strings of energy is to succeed Stephen Hawking in the most prestigious academic post in the world.

Professor Michael Green, a fellow of the Royal Society and co-founder of the fiendishly complex idea of string theory, was offered the position of Lucasian professor of mathematics following a meeting at the university this month.

Hawking stepped down from the position at the beginning of the month in accordance with Cambridge rules that stipulate the post must be vacated when the incumbent reaches their 67th birthday. Hawking had been in the job for 30 years. He is now director of research at the university's department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics.

The chair was created in 1664 and has been occupied by some of the greatest names in the history of science, with Sir Isaac Newton and Paul Dirac among Hawking's predecessors.

Green, who works in the same department as Hawking, played a major role in developing a form of string theory that describes all of the different types of particles in the universe and how they interact with each other.

Ahead of the official announcement, one scientist said it was an excellent appointment for a physicist who had been a driving force for string theory from the start.

Advocates of string theory believe it paves the way to understanding all of nature's forces, including electromagnetism, the strong force that holds atomic nuclei together, the weak force that governs certain forms of radiation, and gravity that keeps our feet on the ground and the Earth in orbit around the Sun.

Hawking occupied the position long before he rose to fame on the back of his bestseller, A Brief History of Time. During his time as Lucasian professor, he made appearances in The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also at the London lap dancing club, Stringfellows, a story covered by one newspaper under the headline: "Stringfellow theory".

Source:
guardian.co.uk

Photo: Michael Green: succeeds Stephen Hawking. Photograph: Cambridge University

How Quantum Effects Could Create Black Stars, Not Holes - A Preview

Quantum effects may prevent true black holes from forming and give rise instead to dense entities called black stars

By Carlos Barceló, Stefano Liberati, Sebastiano Sonego and Matt Visser




Key Concepts

* Black holes are theoretical structures in spacetime predicted by the theory of general relativity. Nothing can escape a black hole’s gravity after passing inside its event horizon.

* Approximate quantum calculations predict that black holes slowly evaporate, albeit in a paradoxical way. Physicists are still seeking a full, consistent quantum theory of gravity to describe black holes.

* Contrary to physicists’ conventional wisdom, a quantum effect called vacuum polarization may grow large enough to stop a hole forming and create a “black star” instead.

Black holes have been a part of popular culture for decades now, most recently playing a central role in the plot of this year’s Star Trek movie. No wonder. These dark remnants of collapsed stars seem almost designed to play on some of our primal fears: a black hole harbors unfathomable mystery behind the curtain that is its “event horizon,” admits of no escape for anyone or anything that falls within, and irretrievably destroys all it ingests.

To theoretical physicists, black holes are a class of solutions of the Einstein field equations, which are at the heart of his theory of general relativity . The theory describes how all matter and energy distort spacetime as if it were made of elastic and how the resulting curvature of spacetime controls the motion of the matter and energy, producing the force we know as gravity.

These equations unambiguously predict that there can be regions of spacetime from which no signal can reach distant observers. These regions—black holes—consist of a location where matter densities approach infinity (a “singularity”) surrounded by an empty zone of extreme gravitation from which nothing, not even light, can escape. A conceptual boundary, the event horizon, separates the zone of intense gravitation from the rest of spacetime. In the simplest case, the event horizon is a sphere—just six kilometers in diameter for a black hole of the sun’s mass.

You can purchase this full article at: October 2009 Scientific American Magazine

Photo Credit: European Space Agency, NASA and Felix Mirabel French Atomic Energy Commission, Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics/Conicet of Argentina