Showing posts with label Origin of mass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Origin of mass. Show all posts

Mysteries which Large Hadron Collider - LHC may unravel.

You may ask me, why am I discussing about LHC here on my Yoga - Pranayama, Meditation blog.

The reason is, that what we learn, come to know and achieve doing Yoga - Pranayama, Meditation is being proved by a machine scientifically.

Scientists are going further in their studies about dark matter, the existence of extra dimensions and the fundamental nature of matter, energy, space and time, and eventually about ourselves.

Human does not know

1. Origin of mass

2. Are there more than 3 dimensions?

3. Are there supersymmetric particles ( sparticles ) for every Standard Model particle?

4. What are dark matter?

5. What are black holes? How are they formed?

Above 5 points are still mysteries for human.

There is much more to what we see with our naked eyes. I think everybody believes this.

Our body functions when we have energy within us. Our body is a dead body when there is no energy in it. What is this energy?

The Large Hadron Collider - LHC, when fully operational will inject trillions of protons, set racing in opposite directions at speeds exceeding 99.999999 percent of the speed of light. At this speed in every second the protons will cycle the entire track more than 11,000 times and engage in more than half a billion head-on collisions.

The reason for creating Large Hadron Collider - LHC has arrived from Einstein's formula, E = mc2, which expressed that that matter and energy are really different forms of the same thing, energy ("E") and matter or mass ("m") are convertible with "c" - the speed of light. By accelerating the protons nearing the speed of light and smashing them, their collisions will provide a momentary reservoir of tremendous energy, which can then convert to a broad spectrum of other particles.

Physicists hope to create particles through such energy-matter conversion, that would have been common place just after the big bang, but which for the most part have long since disintegrated.

Mysteries that may help unravel by this experiment.

1. Origin of mass - Higgs Particles

One of the mysteries that continue to mystify physicists is the origin of mass. Mass of an electron, a quark and most every other particle can be measured with accuracy, but where does mass itself come from?

Number of researchers, including Peter Higgs, an English physicist, suggested that perhaps space is pervaded by a field, much like the electromagnetic fields generated by cell-phones and radio broadcasts, that acts like invisible molasses.

When we push something in the effort to make it move faster, the Higgs molasses would exert a drag force - and it's this resistance, as the Higgs theory goes, that we commonly call the object's mass. Scientists have incorporated this idea as a centerpiece of the so-called standard model - a refined mathematical structure, viewed by many as the crowning achievement of particle physics, that since the 1970s has described the behavior of nature's basic constituents with unprecedented accuracy. The one component of the standard model that remains unconfirmed is the very notion of the Higgs' "molasses" field. Collisions at the Large Hadron Collider should be able to chip off little chunks of the ever-present Higgs field (if it exists), creating what are known as Higgs bosons or Higgs particles.

2. Are there more than 3 dimensions?

In addition to the familiar length, width and height or left / right, back / forth and up / down, physicists have contemplated additional directions that are curled up to such a small size that they've so far eluded discovery.

String theory strongly suggests that space-time has eleven dimensions, as opposed to the usual three space and one time.

There's a chance - though a small one - that the collider may find evidence for the extra dimensions. Calculations show that some of the debris produced by the proton collisions may be ejected out of our familiar spatial dimensions and crammed into the others, a process we'd detect by an apparent loss of the energy the debris would carry.

3. Are there supersymmetric particles ( sparticles ) for every Standard Model particle?

Supersymmetry postulates that for every Standard Model particle there is a corresponding supersymmetric particle (or ``sparticle'') which has a spin that is different by 1/2 unit.

For every known species of particle (electrons, quarks, neutrinos, etc.), supersymmetry implies the existence of a partner species (called, selectrons, squarks, sneutrinos, etc.) that to date has never been observed.

Physicists believe these "sparticles" have so far evaded detection because they're a good deal more massive than their known counterparts, thus requiring more powerful collisions for their copious production. A wealth of calculations strongly suggests that the collider will have that power.

4. What are dark matter?

The discovery of sparticles would be a monumental achievement, taking us far beyond Einstein by establishing a deep link between nature's forces and the particles of matter. Such a discovery also has the potential to advance our understanding of dark matter - the abundant matter that permeates space but does not give off light and hence is known only through its gravitational influence. Many researchers suspect that dark matter is composed of sparticles.


5. What are black holes? How are they formed?

Recent work in string theory has suggested that the collider might produce black holes, providing physicists with a spectacular opportunity to study them in a laboratory. Physicists have realized that the collider's proton-proton collisions might momentarily pack so much energy into such a small volume that exceedingly tiny black holes may form.

Stephen Hawking establishes that tiny black holes would disintegrate in a minuscule fraction of a second, long enough for physicists to reap the benefits of having produced them, but short enough to avoid their causing any havoc. Some worry that Dr. Hawking may be wrong and such black holes may not disintegrate. Cosmic rays - particles wafting through space - constantly rain down on the earth, the other planets and the wealth of stars scattered throughout the galaxy, with energies far in excess of those attainable by the Large Hadron Collider. And since these more powerful collisions haven't resulted in astrophysical calamities, the collider's comparatively tame collisions most assuredly won't either.

The Large Hadron Collider - LHC experiments may reveal something completely unanticipated, something that may force us to rethink our most cherished explanations.