Big Bang Machine on the Verge of Breakthroughs
The $10 billion Big Bang machine under the Swiss-French border may be on the verge of its first scientific breakthroughs after appearing to produce a small amount of the matter that existed in the first moments of the universe, physicists said Wednesday.
Scientists say they are thrilled about a series of recent experiments with simple protons at the Large Hadron Collider, and that a wealth of new physics knowledge could be unearthed soon when the machine begins to smash more complicated nuclei into each other at nearly the speed of light.
Already, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, and outside experts are hailing the new data. They say colliding particles seem to be creating "hot dense matter" that would have existed microseconds after the Big Bang and might hold the key for understanding how the liquids, gases and solids of our universe were created.
CERN says the correlations bear similarities to studies with larger particle structures conducted at the U.S. Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, and that they reveal how some particles are "intimately linked in a way not seen before in proton collisions."
"We are very excited," said Raju Venugopalan, a senior Brookhaven scientist who wasn't involved in CERN's experiments. He told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the data showed "for the first time" that protons have quantum properties that can be enhanced in collisions.
Scientists say the effects they are observing are "obscure." But they are possibly a key piece in CERN's ultimate quest of answering the great questions of particle physics, such as the presumed existence of antimatter and the Higgs boson - sometimes referred to as the "God particle" because scientists theorize that it gives mass to other particles and thus to all objects and creatures in the universe.
The laboratory's spokesman, James Gillies, said the experiments showed the Large Hadron Collider "is starting to deliver" after a patchy start that included costly repairs and upgrades.
"Up to now, we were remeasuring old physics," he said. "Now we're moving to new and better things."
Even if the latest data fail to produce immediately useful knowledge, the tests show the collider's unprecedented capacity for discovery, said Joe Incandela, a senior CERN scientist.
Venugopalan said CERN's results show how extremely "tiny and normally short-lived quantum fluctuations of protons are frozen in place." This is because of Einstein's special relativity and generates remarkable results, he said.
Physicists have used smaller, room-temperature colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles.
The machine in the 17-mile tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva is already operating at 7 trillion electron volts, an energy level three times greater than any previous physics accelerator. The energy won't be doubled to 14 TeV until 2013, but CERN already plans to replace the simple protons with heavier lead nuclei for collisions in October.
© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Scientists say they are thrilled about a series of recent experiments with simple protons at the Large Hadron Collider, and that a wealth of new physics knowledge could be unearthed soon when the machine begins to smash more complicated nuclei into each other at nearly the speed of light.
Already, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, and outside experts are hailing the new data. They say colliding particles seem to be creating "hot dense matter" that would have existed microseconds after the Big Bang and might hold the key for understanding how the liquids, gases and solids of our universe were created.
CERN says the correlations bear similarities to studies with larger particle structures conducted at the U.S. Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, and that they reveal how some particles are "intimately linked in a way not seen before in proton collisions."
"We are very excited," said Raju Venugopalan, a senior Brookhaven scientist who wasn't involved in CERN's experiments. He told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the data showed "for the first time" that protons have quantum properties that can be enhanced in collisions.
Scientists say the effects they are observing are "obscure." But they are possibly a key piece in CERN's ultimate quest of answering the great questions of particle physics, such as the presumed existence of antimatter and the Higgs boson - sometimes referred to as the "God particle" because scientists theorize that it gives mass to other particles and thus to all objects and creatures in the universe.
The laboratory's spokesman, James Gillies, said the experiments showed the Large Hadron Collider "is starting to deliver" after a patchy start that included costly repairs and upgrades.
"Up to now, we were remeasuring old physics," he said. "Now we're moving to new and better things."
Even if the latest data fail to produce immediately useful knowledge, the tests show the collider's unprecedented capacity for discovery, said Joe Incandela, a senior CERN scientist.
Venugopalan said CERN's results show how extremely "tiny and normally short-lived quantum fluctuations of protons are frozen in place." This is because of Einstein's special relativity and generates remarkable results, he said.
Physicists have used smaller, room-temperature colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles.
The machine in the 17-mile tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva is already operating at 7 trillion electron volts, an energy level three times greater than any previous physics accelerator. The energy won't be doubled to 14 TeV until 2013, but CERN already plans to replace the simple protons with heavier lead nuclei for collisions in October.
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My verbose response is rather more considered than most here as my profession is definitive disambiguation.
God can not be proven.
We prove something with a series of logical conjectures which show that of which proof is attempted must be so by consequence of the laws of physics. Any God who is so constrained by the laws of physics as to be provable is no God.
Any such God must be intelligent and benevolent.
Anything which is not constrained by the laws of physics must be benevolent and intelligent. If it were either not benevolent or unintelligent and random, then the likelihood of interaction with the universe in some way as to affect its annihilation increases over time. If God exists, He must be unprovable and benevolent and intelligent, otherwise we would not be here to consider the following questions.
The three intractable questions...
which science has not answered, not for lack of effort nor for lack of knowledge, but because, of these three questions science is intrinsically incapable.
1)
Science is doing a better and better job of describing Matter/Energy, Space/Time and the rules which direct their interactions, but science is incapable of elucidating their origin, since the origin of the rules directing their interactions (the laws of physics) must be described with out referring back to the laws of physics which would not yet have existed before their origin. Any useful description of their origin is not possible, nor shall it ever be possible.
2)
Not a single peer reviewed scientific paper has ever been published which proposes any plausible process by which prebiotic compounds could have spontaneously arraigned themselves into the first and simplest of self replicating molecular systems. We are trying hard and each attempt only reveals greater obstacles. If you doubt this statement, then simply produce a single peer reviewed paper which documents the details of a molecular process from prebiotic compounds to any self replicating molecular system which is also subject to reproductive selective pressure.
3)
Self awareness and stream of consciousness are resolvable tasks and indistinguishable from those which computer science can theoretically reproduce given enough computing power, yet anyone who both understands the theoretical basis for artificial self awareness and stream of consciousness and who also experiences sentience claims their sentient experience can not be entirely explained thereby. Some aspects of sentience are not describable with any definitively dis-ambiguous series of imperative statements; yet, the 1937 Church Turing thesis on resolvable tasks teaches us that all information products of any complex information system, such as the brain, must be resolvable tasks. This contradiction does not arise as a result of the extreme complexity of bio-chemical processes in our brains; it arises because if sentience is entirely a product of bio-chemistry in our brains, then is must also be a resolvable task. Anyone knswledgable in the matter who claims otherwise may not experience sentience. There is no imperative that all humans must be sentient, though no one can ever tell the difference in any way for anyone. If his counter claim is valid, he should be able to produce a test for sentience which determines quantitatively if one human is sentient and not another or if humans are and animals are not. Failing that, he misspoke.
Not only is there room for some unspecified and benevolent intelligence which is not constrained by the laws of physics, but there seems to be persuasive endorsements for such.
Jerry
Science searches for the truth, and builds on previously learned information.
Religion starts with a 'truth' and tries to mold the natural universe to fit that assumption.
Those of you who are ignorant of or choose not to believe science shouldn't bother posting on science related articles.
You just make yourselves look foolish.
Nothing more then theories that they cannot prove as of yet. They want so bad to take God out of the picture...
---
As if God's existence has ever been proven in any way....
Twit.
Actually science has been the scriptures greatest witness. When geologist look at the earth they find evidence of a great flood
Is it not strange that the Chinese have no record of a great flood and they are the oldest civilization on earth.