Urantia Book Commentary and Articles

By Eben Harrell
Monday, Sep. 22, 2008

Anyone who has struggled to change a fuse in their home should pity the scientists at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. Last Friday, just nine days after celebrating the successful test run of the largest particle accelerator ever constructed, a tiny electrical connection between two magnets overheated and caused a minor meltdown.

Although a final evaluation is yet to be completed, scientists believe the fault caused the machine to lose the near absolute-zero temperature it must maintain to operate. For now, however, repair work can't begin because the machine is still too cold; it will take about a month to warm up the area to a temperature at which replacement parts can be inserted. It will take another month to cool it back down, and given that CERN has pledged not to run its giant machine â€” which requires as much power as the entire city of Geneva â€” during winter months when Europe's energy needs are highest, Friday's breakdown could delay the actual smashing of atoms until early next year.

CERN spokesman James Gillies called the fault a "teething problem" and said that previous accelerators that used superconductivity â€” i.e., low temperatures that allow metals to conduct electricity without resistance â€” also faced early problems before "running pretty smoothly after they were sorted out." Even so, "it's certainly a disappointment," he added.

When it is fully operational, the $6 billion LHC will send beams of protons careening around a 17-mile underground ring, crash them into one another to re-create the immediate aftereffects of the Big Bang, and then monitor the debris in the hopes of learning more about the origins and workings of the universe.

Scientists are relying on the experiment to unlock several of the universe's mysteries (for example, how matter in the universe acquires mass) by providing hard data on subatomic matter from which cosmologists and theoretical physicists can extrapolate. But they have less exalted reasons to hope for the LHC's success: After a glut of funding for particle physics in the '80s promised the building of several particle accelerators of equivalent power to the LHC, recent funding cuts mean the CERN experiment is now the only game in town. If it fails to provide results, physicists worry they will have to struggle to justify new, even more powerful machines, not to mention the salaries of thousands of scientists needed to build and operate them. Already, the LHC has been delayed several years and is significantly over budget.

Gillies says last week's functional hiccup was not surprising. A massive machine designed to study miniscule particles will inevitably face problems. The LHC's intricacy is indeed breathtaking: One of the particle detectors on the 17-mile ring (there are four) is connected to enough cable and wiring to wrap around the earth nearly seven times. Scientists had to take into account the gravitational pull of the tides when constructing it.

The sheer size of the LHC â€” watching scientists work on its gargantuan components brings to mind a colony of frantic Lilliputians â€” and the complexity of the science behind it have resulted in bouts of eschatological fear of its destructive potential, with websites and even two lawsuits claiming the LHC will create black holes that will swallow up the earth. (The cover images of this week's issues of the Economist and TIME would suggest that black-hole anxiety has in fact bubbled up into the public consciousness.) But while such scenarios have been ruled out, the machine does pose a small threat to the scientists overseeing it: There's a constant risk of a helium leak, high concentrations of which quickly depletes the tunnels of oxygen.

Gillies says that Friday's breakdown released a "large amount" of helium into the tunnel but that CERN's safety protocols ensured there was no risk to staff. Scientists are not allowed into the tunnel when the machine is running, he says, and first responders after the fault all wore respiratory equipment. All scientists working in the underground ring also carry portable respirators, which they are instructed to use within seconds of a helium leak.

CERN's clerisy of PhDs and Nobel Prizeâ€“winners tire pretty quickly of the public's near-erotic obsession with the destructive power of a machine they consider a harmless tool. But, there's no underestimating the thrill of the risk. Earlier this year, when I visited CERN, my tour group included a father and his slouching, intensely apathetic teenage son. It wasn't until the tour guide mentioned that a helium leak could fell a man on the spot that the youngster's eyes lit up, practically dancing with visions of white-coated scientists crumpling to the floor like unstrung marionettes. "So, this thing could just kill us all," he said. "So, it's a death ray!" The father murmured, "Well, I'm not sure that's correctâ€”" Too late. The son said, "Cool!"

Labels: Eben Harrell, Large Hadron Collider, matter, science, the universe

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Monday, September 08, 2008

Atom-smasher may prove 'God particle'

Deborah Smith Science Editor
September 9, 2008

IT HAS been heralded as a monumental creation that will reveal the fundamental nature of the universe, but also as a doomsday machine that could destroy the planet.

The world's biggest instrument - a $9 billion atom-smasher that will recreate conditions not seen since a split second after the big bang 14 billion years ago - will be switched on tomorrow.

Holding their breath will be Australian scientists who have helped design and construct one of the huge detectors in the device that will search for an elusive subatomic particle, dubbed the "God particle".

A physicist from the University of Sydney, Kevin Varvell, said he was excited that after 20years of planning, the instrument - called the large hadron collider - would begin operation to expore the nature of matter.

"At last we can test some of our ideas about what we are made of. It will help answer some big and deep questions," he said.

Built 100 metres below the Swiss countryside by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, the collider will fire two beams of particles in opposite directions around a 27-kilometre ring at almost the speed of light.

When the beams collide head on, they will create fireballs and showers of subatomic debris never witnessed before.

Dr Varvell said the impacts could produce man-made mini black holes, reveal that the universe has extra dimensions that are normally curled up, and throw light on the nature of the mysterious dark matter which makes up most of the cosmos.

It should also reveal whether the Higgs boson, or God particle, exists or not.

According to the standard theory of matter, the boson gives everything its mass, and the Australian team helped design the 7000-tonne ATLAS detector in one of the cathedral-sized caverns that will look for it.

Dr Varvell said if the boson was not spotted,"that would tell us something very profound as well".

New theories about the underlying physics of the universe would have to be developed, he said.

Dr Varvell will give a lecture on the collider with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki at the University of Sydney on Wednesday.

Labels: Deborah Smith, God particle, Higgs boson, Large Hadron Collider, matter

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