It’s not easy to have a rational discussion on new technologies these days. Half the time the conversation may be boiled down into the question, “Where can I get it and how much will it cost?” Inevitably debate arises over whose thing is bigger. Or smaller. Or faster, more convenient to use, or just cooler.
Here is a gadget that is bigger, faster, more complicated, and infinitely cooler (or hotter) than nearly anything. You can’t buy it unless you have eight billion dollars and your basement can accommodate a 27-kilometer circular tunnel. It is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the humongous atom-smasher at the Cern laboratory in Geneva. The LHC was built to try and answer the question: What is the universe made of, and how did it begin?
We know that the world is made of atoms, but what are atoms made of?
Yes, we are in the realm of Quantum Physics, the study of the tiniest particles, which paradoxically causes the biggest headaches among intelligent people with many academic degrees.
At this point I must mention that everything you’re about to read has been filtered through my limited understanding, and could be completely wrong. By limited understanding I mean four years of high school physics that passed like an out-of-body experience, mediocre grades in science classes, a lifetime of watching Star Trek, and a shelf full of popular science books begun and abandoned round the halfway point.
I think I caught some kind of bug from the late Carl Sagan, host of the TV show Cosmos. When he said, “We are made of star stuff,” then went on about there being billions and billions of stars, I was one of the many young geeks who were instantly galvanized. Think of the apes in 2001 gathered around the monolith. I thought, “Universe huge. Me tiny. Me came from out there. Why am I?” An interest in science always begins with a sense of wonder. (Galvanize your children: show them Cosmos. It’s available on iTunes.)
I take a romantic view of quantum physics. I don’t understand it, but I love it. Maybe I’ll never understand it, but I want to.
This is what I read about the LHC. The Cern laboratory was built in Geneva in 1955. Physicists loomed large in the public imagination at that time; people still remembered their role in World War II and the race to make the atomic bomb.
Cern, by the way, is where Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the Internet.
With the LHC, particle physicists will cause beams of protons to collide head-on at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light, producing enough energy to recreate in microcosm the conditions that existed one-trillionth of a second after the Big Bang (the explosion at the beginning of the universe). They hope to create a Higgs boson, a basic building block of the universe, which hasn’t existed since that nanosecond after the Big Bang.
As the LHC speeds up, physicists hope to see the conditions that existed even earlier in the Big Bang. They hope to see dark matter, the mysterious substance left over from the fiery birth of the universe. Dark matter is thought to make up a quarter of the universe and is believed to hold galaxies together.
The LHC might enlighten us on the nature of space itself. We tend to regard space as nothing. What if it’s actually something? What if it contains more dimensions than the three that we’re used to? These extra dimensions can only be perceived at a minuscule scale, a trillionth of a trillionth the size of atoms. In other words, the biggest machine ever built will look for the smallest things in existence.
Why are they doing this? Because there has been no major discovery in physics since the 1970s. Scientists have been theorizing and theorizing about particles for years, but have not been able to prove or disprove these theories. They hope that the LHC will generate the energy needed to create the blasted particles. Then they will know if they are right — hooray — or wrong, in which case they can start building new theories.
Why are they doing this? There seem to be more pressing problems in the world, and more useful ways to spend those eight billion dollars.
Why, then? Because we need to know. It is our responsibility as civilized beings to keep on looking until we find the answers. We are obligated to boldly go where no human has gone before.
Of course, no experiment is free of risk. A chemistry professor filed a human rights suit in the European court to stop the LHC from being switched on. He argued that when the collider is turned on, it could generate a black hole that will swallow up the Earth. It could bring about the end of the world.
In defense of the LHC, other scientists have noted that the probability of the collider opening up a black hole is about the same as the probability that while you’re driving, a quantum fluctuation will spontaneously change your car into a horse.
Scientists hope the LHC will capture the imagination of kids and inspire them to go into the sciences. Maybe one of them will be the next Albert Einstein.
The Large Hadron Collider was turned on at about 8 a.m. last Wednesday, Sept. 10. We’re still here, so I figure the world hasn’t ended.
This is a good time in history to be a geek.
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Visit http://www.jessicarulestheuniverse.com.
Twisted by Jessica Zafra: Pumping irony since 1994.