Tag Archives: particle physics

“May the Force be With You”

Scientists from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN Switzerland, believe they have found the elusive Higgs Boson, or God particle. The Higgs Boson is the Holy Grail of particle physics, the missing piece of the jigsaw in the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model explains the entire sub-atomic world, and the LHC was built in a large part to try and discover the Higgs Boson.

The Higgs Boson is a tiny particle which creates a force field, which had been dubbed, “The Force”. Everything in the universe interacts with this force and derives it’s mass from the Higgs field. The National Geographic described it like, “sort of the way a Jedi knight in Star Wars is the carrier of the “force””, or like Obi Wan said, “the Force surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”

We need to be aware that while scientists are attempting to make sense of how our world was created, they could also be making black holes as a result of their experiments, which may endanger our planet, in their quest for knowledge of the creation of the universe, as they seek to create matter. Where these experiments will eventually lead is both mind-blowing and concerning in the hands of Man.

 

CERN Scientists see Particles Travelling Faster than the Speed of Light

Scientists at the prestigious CERN Particle Physics complex, near Geneva, Switzerland (home to the Large Hadron Collider) believe they have managed to fire the tiny sub-atomic particle, the neutrino, at a speed greater than the speed of light.

For the last three years scientists at CERN have been testing and retesting the result to ensure they have done the experiment accurately. In the experiment particles from CERN, Switzerland were fired underground to another particle physics lab, Italy’s Gran Sasso, near Rome, 454 miles away. The neutrinos arrived at the Italian lab 60 nanoseconds faster than light, (that’s sixty billionth of a second). Although that sounds tiny, in the world of particle physics it is significant, and can be measured to a high degree of accuracy. The CERN and Gran Sasso scientists have repeated the experiment at least 15,000 times, with the same result. Under normal circumstances this would be conclusive enough, however with a result of this significance further independent research will be required.

If independent research confirms the result it will re-write the fundamentals of the laws of physics as we know them. Albert Einstein first postulated that the speed of light was a universal constant, this formed the basis of his Theory of Special Relativity; and underpins much of modern physics. The consequences of his theory being wrong are unimaginable. Physicists are now postulating the neutrinos are moving in and out of other dimensions, or this may provide some tangible evidence into the world of string theory.

The scientific community are now eagerly awaiting physicists in America and Japan to confirm their results.