News that a group of Greek hackers had managed to “momentary” access to computer systems of CERN has been making rounds. As one insider put it – “it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it” – I totally sympathize the “poor” scientists – they take years to build a system which is hard enough to get up and running and there are people who want to bring it down – just for the kicks?
The whole idea goes way back. The first key experiment was conducted in 1909, under the direction of Ernest Rutherford. When Rutherford shot alpha particles at a wafer-thin sheet of gold foil, a small proportion of the particles bounced right back, a phenomenon that he described as “almost as incredible as if you fired a fifteen-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back to hit you.” Rutherford’s work led to the realization that most of an atom’s mass was concentrated in a tiny area, the nucleus. “All science is either physics or stamp-collecting,” he is supposed to have said.
Since Rutherford’s discovery, particle physics has provided one extraordinary—if increasingly implausible-sounding—revelation after another: first protons and neutrons, then antimatter, gluons, neutrinos, and quarks. In 1967, the existence of particles to mediate the weak force, which is responsible for radioactive decay, was theorized; in 1983, at CERN, these particles—the W and the Z—were observed and their properties measured. In 1977, the existence of what became known as the “top” quark was predicted; in 1995, at Fermilab, in Illinois, it, too, was found.
And yet, for all its triumphs, the field has been haunted by failure. The more physicists have learned about the way matter behaves at its most fundamental level, the more acutely they have become aware that something—a big something—is missing from their accounts. Among the many possibilities proposed for what’s often called “new physics” is that the universe actually consists of tiny strands (or strings) of energy; that it contains several dimensions beyond those that we perceive; that it is full of mysterious particles—“sparticles”—that have yet to be detected; that it is not a universe at all but a multiverse; and that it began not with a bang but with a splat.
LHC is considered the best hope for finding some answers. Sean has a take on what the LHC will find and some percentages of probability to back it up… take a look!
And just in case you are the home enthusiast – here is the site for DO-IT-AT-HOME and contribute your computer’s idle time (which must be really huge since you are reading this stuff :-)) – on a similar note as that of the hugely successful SETI@Home project…
2 comments:
Hey Rinoo..
I really dun know much abt this but, I had read somthing abt the LHC expt on the net...and it said that though the expt is complete...initially the black holes are very small and do not have much of gravity to absorb heavy particles..but as the time passes...there is a possibility that the gravity of the blk holes might increase.. and then u already know what will happen..any thoughts on this one.. ?
Well, the experiments are definitely not complete since the primary experiments were supposed to start in Oct, 2008! What was done during test run was to put a beam in one direction only...
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