10.06.08
Large Hadron Collider Begins Operation in Geneva
In today’s show, adapted from an article written by Fariss Samarrai, Senior News Officer for the Office of Public Affairs, we will discuss the work of Brad Cox, professor of physics and a principal investigator with the University of Virginia’s High Energy Physics Group and his teams involvement with the new Large Hadron Collider near Geneva Switzerland.
In a recent show we discussed UVa researcher team’s attempt to verify or refute the existence of the Higgs Boson. On September 10, 2008, an international team of scientists circulated the first beam of protons at nearly the speed of light around the 17-mile Large Hadron Collider on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. The $3.2 billion LHC, under construction for 15 years, is now the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.
Brad Cox, professor of physics and a principal investigator with the University of Virginia’s High Energy Physics Group said, “Soon we may shed light on dark matter and many other mysteries of the universe, such as the Higgs particle, which we believe gives mass to every other particle in nature.” Physicists have been trying to find it for more than three decades, and Cox has been involved with the planning and instrument design for the LHC since its inception in 1993.
Cox likens the LHC to the first use of microscopes, with the right tools, things that are there but not visible may suddenly be revealed. The researchers are looking for physical evidence of supersymmetric particles, (possibly the mysterious “dark matter” that may make up 80 percent of the universe), extra dimensions beyond space-time-gravity, and micro-black holes.
Beginning with a series of tests over the past few weeks, scientists have begun sending opposing beams of protons around the accelerator, causing extreme high-energy collisions that shatter protons and produce new particles. This, in effect, replicates the conditions of the infant universe, the time before particles formed into atoms and molecules, and before elements coalesced to make the stars and planets.
The basic structure of matter evolved from the first seconds after the Big Bang, the explosion of energy that is believed to have created the universe. A better understanding of the basic makings of everything could provide insight into how the universe took shape.
Using a huge international computer grid, UVa physicists and colleagues at dozens of institutions worldwide will gain access to massive amounts of data. The collider produces 1 billion “interactions” per second. Cox said, “The electromagnetic particle detectors in the collider must sort through all these interactions and find the one event in 10 trillion that has new physics.”
In spite of equipment failure that shut down the collider on September 19th, the basic knowledge that will be gained from the LHC experiments likely will result in new technologies such as superconductivity links for power grids, advanced forms of software, and currently “unimagined” breakthroughs.
Cox went on to say, “We will see great theories of physics affirmed, and others refuted. The LHC will help us unravel the next layer of the onion of nature by moving us to the next frontier of our understanding of matter and energy. We are essentially looking for the grand unified theory of everything, and now we have the technology to do the science.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will we will look at a team of UVa researchers who have discovered a switching mechanism in the eye that plays a key role in regulating the sleep/wake cycles in mammals.