Large Hadron Collider

In the 1990’s, there was an aborted experiment under the name Super Conducting Super Collider, essentially it was a particle accelerator where the cost of making a working model is around 1 Billion US Dollars.

To cut a long story short, nothing happened out of that attempt because the US Administration at that time withdrew the funding for some political reasons and that is that. Somewhere in Nevada, there is a 30 mile radius tunnel that is just a useless hole.

This year, another project was also put in place, and this time around it is called “Large Hadron Collider”. This is now based in Geneva, with the same concept and with the same purpose.
To prove the empirical existence of Higgs particle and to re-create the first Big-bang explosion which created matter and started everything.

The Higgs particle is also known as the “god’s particle” since with the empirical proof that such exist, theoretical physics could now chase the very manipulation of matter, which in turn could open a lot of possibilities. This could even produce the Unified Field Theory (or Theory of Everything) which eluded Albert Einstein.

The particle accelerator could also finally settle empirically the creation of the universe. The Big-bang theory might even become a fact after this generation.

Surprisingly, there are a number of people opposed to this scientific endeavor. Some even went to court to stop the experiment legally. They contend that such an undertaing might produce the anti-matter, the very opposite of matter, and it might serve as a catalyst for the destruction of everything.

The flipside of their contention is that such experiment might accidentally create a mini-blackhole which in turn will destroy this planet and the solar system as we know it.
All the world ending scenarios were thrown out of the court and the project was given a green light to proceed.

About a month ago, the Large Hadron Collider powered up, and fired particles approximating the speed of light clockwise and counter-clockwise. Unfortunately, a part of the system broke down, and reading from their press releases, it would take another month just to repair the particle accelerator.

There are so many possibilities and so many answers to explore and chase. Now why would anyone prevent such a historical undertaking?

The following questions hopefully will be answered by the experiments that will be conducted using the particle accelerator.

1. What is mass? What is the origin of mass? Why do some particles weight the amount they do? Why do some particles have no mass at all? At present there are no standard answers to these basic queries.

2. What is the 96% of the universe made off? Everything is collectively known and called as matter and that is just the 4% of the what we know. The remaining percentage is still unknown. This is what the physicist called the “dark matter” and “dark energy”. Investigating their existence and relationships with matter is one of the greatest riddle of science and cosmology.

3. Why is there no more anti-matter? Theoritically, after the Big-bang, there was a battle for supremacy, a battle between matter and anti-matter. Nature however favored matter, hence there is no more anti-matter or is there?

4. What was matter like during the first seconds of the universe? This is where the Higgs particle or God’s particle comes in. Which is which?

5. Do extra dimensions exist? Is there another plane that we are not aware of. Whatever biases one have, concrete answers to this basic questions need some scientific answers. Einstein hinted that this, unfortunately, he died before investigating the subject.

Suddenly, the world as we know it, is not the same anymore. Science as we know it will never be the same again. We will have to re-write everything and unlearn a lot of pre-conceived notions.

Reference:
1. www.public.web.cern.ch