Post subject: "The Totally Unthinkable" --In 2016 CERNs LHC Coul
Posted: Mon May 09, 2016 4:09 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
"The Totally Unthinkable" --In 2016 CERNs LHC Could Unveil Unknown Dimensions of the Universe
Going beyond the Standard Model would "mean that there is yet another unbelievable idea out there. Something that is totally unthinkable," said CERN senior physicist Paris Sphicas. In 2016, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could unveil whole new dimensions, help explain dark matter and dark energy, of which we have no understanding but which together make up 95 percent of the universe.
Late last year, before CERN shut down its LHC for a technical break, two separate teams of scientists said they had discovered anomalies that could possibly hint at the existence of a mysterious new particle that could prove the existence of extra space-time dimensions, or explain the enigma of dark matter, scientists say.
The high-energy frontier has traditionally had one primary perfection, to probe directly any uncharted physics waters. This has translated into the gigantic effort to complete the unoberved elements of the Standard Model of particle physics as well as to search for for signs of physics beyond.These measurements form a solid base from which searches for physics beyond the standard model have been launched. Since the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, searches for supersymmetry and several signatures of possible new exotic physics phenomena have been developed, and new parameter space is being explored.
In 2016, the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds most powerful proton smasher, is preparing for its biggest run yet which scientists hope will uncover new particles that could dramatically change our understanding of the Universe. "We are exploring truly basic issues, and thats why this run is so exciting," Sphicas told AFP at Europes physics lab, CERN, last week. "Who knows what we will find," he added, with CERN saying preliminary results from the run could be available in the next few months.
Scientists had been gearing up to resume experiments at the LHC this week, but the plans were delayed after a weasel wandered onto a high-voltage electrical transformer last Friday, causing a brief-circuit. CERN told AFP that experiments were now expected to get underway next week.
The LHC, housed in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border, has shaken up physics before. In 2012 it was used to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson -- the long-sought maker of mass -- by crashing high-energy proton beams at velocities near the speed of light. (A proton-direct ion collision, shown below as observed by the LHCb detector during the 2013 data-taking period LHCb/CERN).
A year later, two of the scientists who had in 1964 theorised the existence of the Higgs, also known as the God particle, earned the Nobel physics prize for the discovery. The Higgs fits in with the so-called Standard Model -- the mainstream theory of all the basic particles that make up matter and the forces that govern them. But the anomalies, or "bumps", seen in the data last December could indicate something completely new.
The giant lab might prove the exotic theory of supersymmetry, SUSY for brief, which suggests the existence of a heavier "sibling" for every particle in the universe.
The unexpected excess pair of photons spotted last year could be a larger cousin of the Higgs, according to one theory."Who knows, maybe theres a whole Higgs family out there," Sphicas said.
But to determine whether the observed data "bump" is merely a statistical fluctuation or could actually be the first cracks in the Standard Model, much more data is needed.
When the massive machine comes back online, it is expected to quickly pile up astounding amounts of data for scientists to pick through for clues. After the Higgs discovery, the LHC underwent a two-year upgrade, reopening last year with double energy levels which will vastly expand the potential for groundbreaking discoveries.
The LHC ran for six months last year at the new energy level of 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV), but since the machine was just getting started again, it was not pushed to create the maximum number of collisions. The machine at its peak should see two beams each containing around 273,600 billion protons shoot through the massive collider in opposite directions, slamming into each other with a joint energy level of 13 TeV to produce two billion collisions a second.
"What we are looking for are very rare phenomena, (and) when you are looking for very rare phenomena you need a very large number of collisions," Frederick Bordry, CERN director for accelerators and technology, told AFP. "We are really at an energy level that enables discoveries," he said, adding that he expected the lab to have clarity by the end of summer on whether the data "bump" was more than "statistical noise".
Bordry added that the proton smasher is due to run until 2019. "If we have mood on our side, I ponder we will discover new particles and open a new road for physics beyond the Standard Model," he said.
The Daily Galaxy via Nina Larson/AFP, Paris
Image credit top of page: The image at the top of the page shows Hubbles belief of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717that shows the location of dark matter in the mass in the cluster and surrounding region. NASA, ESA, Harald Ebeling (University of Hawaii at Manoa) & Jean-Paul Kneib (LAM)
Post subject: "We Live in an Unstable Universe" --Physicists Ope
Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 8:31 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
"We Live in an Unstable Universe" --Physicists Open Door to Deepest Mysteries of the Cosmos (Tuesdays Most Popular)
The ability to measure the top quark mass precisely is fortuitous because it, together with the Higgs boson mass, tells us whether the universe is stable or not, said Robert Kehoe, a physicist at Southern Methodist University. That has emerged as one of todays most distinctive questions.
We want a theory Standard Model or otherwise that can predict physical processes at all energies, Kehoe added. But the measurements now are such that it looks like we may be over the border of a stable universe. Were metastable, meaning theres a gray area, that its stable in some energies, but not in others.
In the post-Big Bang world, natures top quark a key component of matter is a highly sensitive probe that physicists use to evaluate competing theories about quantum interactions. Physicists at Southern Methodist University have achieved a new precise measurement of a key subatomic particle, opening the door to better understanding some of the deepest mysteries of our universe.
A stable universe is one in a low energy state where particles and forces interact and behave according to theoretical predictions forever. Thats in contrast to metastable, or unstable, meaning a higher energy state in which things eventually change, or change suddenly and unpredictably, and that could result in the universe collapsing. The Higgs and top quark are the two most distinctive parameters for determining an answer to that question. Recent measurements of the Higgs and top quark indicate they describe a universe that is not necessarily stable at all energies.
The researchers calculated the new measurement for a critical characteristic mass of the top quark. Quarks make up the protons and neutrons that comprise almost all visible matter. Physicists have known the top quarks mass was large, but encountered great difficulty trying to clearly determine it.
The newly calculated measurement of the top quark will help guide physicists in formulating new theories, said Kehoe, who direct the SMU group that performed the measurement.
Top quarks mass matters ultimately because the particle is a highly sensitive probe and key tool to evaluate competing theories about the mood of matter and the fate of the universe. Physicists for two decades have worked to improve measurement of the top quarks mass and narrow its value.
Top bears on newest basic particle, the Higgs boson. The new value from SMU confirms the validity of recent measurements by other physicists, said Kehoe. But it also adds growing uncertainty about aspects of physics Standard Model.
The Standard Model is the collection of theories physicists have derived and continually revise to explain the universe and how the tiniest building blocks of our universe interact with one another. Problems with the Standard Model remain to be solved. For example, gravity has not yet been successfully integrated into the framework.
The Standard Model holds that the top quark known familiarly as top is central in two of the four basic forces in our universe the electroweak force, by which particles gain mass, and the strong force, which governs how quarks interact. The electroweak force governs common phenomena like light, electricity and magnetism. The strong force governs atomic nuclei and their structure, in addition to the particles that quarks comprise, like protons and neutrons in the nucleus.
The top plays a role with the newest basic particle in physics, the Higgs boson, in seeing if the electroweak theory holds water. Some scientists ponder the top quark may be special because its mass can substantiate or jeopardize the electroweak theory. If jeopardized, that opens the door to what physicists mention as new physics theories about particles and our universe that go beyond the Standard Model. Other scientists theorize the top quark might also be key to the unification of the electromagnetic and weak interactions of protons, neutrons and quarks. In addition, as the only quark that can be observed directly, the top quark tests the Standard Models strong force theory.
So the top quark is really pushing both theories, Kehoe said. The top mass is particularly interesting because its measurement is getting to the point now where we are pushing even beyond the level that the theorists understand. Our experimental errors, or uncertainties, are so small, that it really forces theorists to try harsh to understand the impact of the quarks mass. We need to notice the Higgs interacting with the top directly and we need to measure both particles more precisely.
The new measurement results were presented at the Third Annual Conference on Large Hadron Collider Physics, St. Petersburg, Russia, and at the 8th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics, Ischia, Italy.
The public perception, with discovery of the Higgs, is Ok, its done, Kehoe said. But its not done. This is really just the beginning and the top quark is a key tool for figuring out the missing pieces of the puzzle.
The results were made public by DZero, a collaborative experiment of more than 500 physicists from around the world. The measurement is described in Precise measurement of the top quark mass in dilepton decays with optimized neutrino weighting and is available online at arxiv.org/abs/1508.03322.
To narrow the top quark measurement, SMU doctoral researcher Huanzhao Liu took a standard methodology for measuring the top quark and improved the accuracy of some parameters. He also improved calibration of an analysis of top quark data.
Liu achieved a surprising level of precision, Kehoe said. And his new method for optimizing analysis is also applicable to analyses of other particle data besides the top quark, making the methodology useful within the field of particle physics as a whole.
The SMU optimization could be used to more precisely understand the Higgs boson, which explains why matter has mass, said Liu. The Higgs was oberved for the first time in 2012, and physicists keenly want to understand its mood.
This methodology has its advantages including understanding Higgs interactions with other particles and we hope that others use it, said Liu. With it we achieved 20-percent improvement in the measurement. Heres how I ponder of it myself everybody likes a $199 iPhone with contract. If someday Apple tells us they will reduce the price by 20 percent, how would we all feel to get the lower price?
Another optimization employed by Liu improved the calibration precision by four times, Kehoe said.
Top quarks, which rarely occur now, were much more common right after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. However, top is the only quark, of six different kinds, that can be observed directly. For that excuse, experimental physicists focus on the characteristics of top quarks to better understand the quarks in everyday matter.
To study the top, physicists generate them in particle accelerators, such as the Tevatron, a powerful U.S. Department of Energy particle accelerator operated by Fermi National Laboratory in Illinois, or the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, a project of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN.
SMUs measurement draws on top quark data gathered by DZero that was produced from proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron, which Fermilab shut down in 2011.
The new measurement is the most precise of its kind from the Tevatron, and is competitive with comparable measurements from the Large Hadron Collider. The top quark mass has been precisely measured more recently, but there is some divergence of the measurements. The SMU result favors the current world average value more than the current world record holder measurement, also from Fermilab. The apparent discrepancy must be addressed, Kehoe said.
Are we facing imminent doom? Will the universe collapse? That disparity between theory and observation indicates the Standard Model theory has been outpaced by new measurements of the Higgs and top quark. The diagram below shows a potential "Higgs event" - a particle collision that leads to a release of energy that causes the creation of a Higgs boson - within ATLAS, one of the experiments that makes up the Large Hadron Collider (ATLAS Experiment 2012 CERN)
Its going to take some labor for theorists to explain this, Kehoe said, adding its a challenge physicists relish, as evidenced by their preoccupation with new physics and the possibilities the Higgs and Top quark create. I attended two conferences recently and theres argument about exactly what it means, so that could be interesting.
So are we in trouble? Not immediately, Kehoe said. The energies at which metastability would kick in are so high that particle interactions in our universe almost never reach that level. In any case, a metastable universe would likely not change for many billions of years.
As the only quark that can be observed, the top quark pops in and out of existence fleetingly in protons, making it possible for physicists to test and define its properties directly.
To me its like fireworks, Liu said. They shoot into the sky and explode into smaller pieces, and those smaller pieces continue exploding. That sort of describes how the top quark decays into other particles.
By measuring the particles to which the top quark decays, scientists capture a measure of the top quark, Liu explained. But study of the top is still an exotic field, Kehoe said. For years top quarks were treated as a construct and not a real thing. Now they are real and still fairly new and its really distinctive we understand their properties fully. Margaret Allen.
The image at the top of the page shows the collision of two black holes, a tremendously powerful event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO. LIGO detected gravitational waves, or ripples in space and time generated as the black holes spiraled in toward each other, collided, and merged. The two merging black holes are each roughly 30 times the mass of the sun, with one slightly larger than the other. The event took place 1.3 billion years ago.
The Daily Galaxy via Southern Methodist University
Post subject: Europes Large Hadron Collider --"May Unveil Something T
Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2016 10:27 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Europes Large Hadron Collider --"May Unveil Something Totally Unthinkable" In Months Ahead (Weekend Feature)
Going beyond the Standard Model of physics would "mean that there is yet another unbelievable idea out there. Something that is totally unthinkable," says CERN senior physicist Paris Sphicas. In 2016, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could unveil whole new dimensions, help explain dark matter and dark energy, of which we have no understanding but which together make up 95 percent of the universe. Late last year, before CERN shut down its LHC for a technical break, two separate teams of scientists said they had discovered anomalies that could possibly hint at the existence of a mysterious new particle that could prove the existence of extra space-time dimensions, or explain the enigma of dark matter, scientists say.
The high-energy frontier has traditionally had one primary perfection, to probe directly any uncharted physics waters. This has translated into the gigantic effort to complete the unobserved elements of the Standard Model of particle physics as well as to search for for signs of physics beyond.These measurements form a solid base from which searches for physics beyond the standard model have been launched. Since the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, searches for supersymmetry and several signatures of possible new exotic physics phenomena have been developed, and new parameter space is being explored.
In 2016, the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds most powerful proton smasher, is preparing for its biggest run yet which scientists hope will uncover new particles that could dramatically change our understanding of the Universe. "We are exploring truly basic issues, and thats why this run is so exciting," Sphicas told AFP at Europes physics lab, CERN, last week. "Who knows what we will find," he added, with CERN saying preliminary results from the run could be available in the next few months.
Scientists had been gearing up to resume experiments at the LHC earlier this year, but the plans were delayed after a weasel wandered onto a high-voltage electrical transformer, causing a brief-circuit.
The LHC, housed in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border, has shaken up physics before. In 2012 it was used to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson -- the long-sought maker of mass -- by crashing high-energy proton beams at velocities near the speed of light. (A proton-direct ion collision, shown below as oberved by the LHCb detector during the 2013 data-taking period LHCb/CERN).
A year later, two of the scientists who had in 1964 theorised the existence of the Higgs, also known as the God particle, earned the Nobel physics prize for the discovery. The Higgs fits in with the so-called Standard Model -- the mainstream theory of all the basic particles that make up matter and the forces that govern them. But the anomalies, or "bumps", seen in the data last December could indicate something completely new.
The giant lab might prove the exotic theory of supersymmetry, SUSY for brief, which suggests the existence of a heavier "sibling" for every particle in the universe.
The unexpected excess pair of photons spotted last year could be a larger cousin of the Higgs, according to one theory. "Who knows, maybe theres a whole Higgs family out there," Sphicas said.
But to determine whether the observed data "bump" is merely a statistical fluctuation or could actually be the first cracks in the Standard Model, much more data is needed.
When the massive machine comes back online, it is expected to quickly pile up astounding amounts of data for scientists to pick through for clues. After the Higgs discovery, the LHC underwent a two-year upgrade, reopening last year with double energy levels which will vastly expand the potential for groundbreaking discoveries.
The LHC ran for six months last year at the new energy level of 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV), but since the machine was just getting started again, it was not pushed to create the maximum number of collisions. The machine at its peak should see two beams each containing around 273,600 billion protons shoot through the massive collider in opposite directions, slamming into each other with a joint energy level of 13 TeV to produce two billion collisions a second.
"What we are looking for are very rare phenomena, (and) when you are looking for very rare phenomena you need a very large number of collisions," Frederick Bordry, CERN director for accelerators and technology, told AFP. "We are really at an energy level that enables discoveries," he said, adding that he expected the lab to have clarity by the end of summer on whether the data "bump" was more than "statistical noise".
Bordry added that the proton smasher is due to run until 2019. "If we have mood on our side, I ponder we will discover new particles and open a new road for physics beyond the Standard Model," he said.
Post subject: CERNs Large-Hadron-Collider Discovery of the Higgs Boson --&
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2016 2:59 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
CERNs Large-Hadron-Collider Discovery of the Higgs Boson --"Points to an Unstable, Collapsing Universe"
Are we facing imminent doom? Will the universe collapse? That disparity between theory and observation indicates the Standard Model theory of a constantly expanding universe has been outpaced by new measurements of the Higgs and top quark. A stable universe is one in a low energy state where particles and forces interact and behave according to theoretical predictions forever. Thats in contrast to metastable, or unstable, meaning a higher energy state in which things eventually change, or change suddenly and unpredictably, and that could result in the universe collapsing. The Higgs and top quark are the two most distinctive parameters for determining an answer to that question. Recent measurements of the Higgs and top quark indicate they describe a universe that is not stable at all energies.
Its going to take some labor for theorists to explain this, Kehoe said, adding its a challenge physicists relish, as evidenced by their preoccupation with new physics and the possibilities the Higgs and Top quark create. I attended two conferences recently and theres argument about exactly what it means, so that could be interesting.
So are we in trouble? Not immediately, Kehoe said. The energies at which metastability would kick in are so high that particle interactions in our universe almost never reach that level. In any case, a metastable universe would likely not change for many billions of years.
The ability to measure the top quark mass precisely is fortuitous because it, together with the Higgs boson mass, tells us whether the universe is stable or not, said Robert Kehoe, a physicist at Southern Methodist University. That has emerged as one of todays most distinctive questions.
We want a theory Standard Model or otherwise that can predict physical processes at all energies, Kehoe added. But the measurements now are such that it looks like we may be over the border of a stable universe. Were metastable, meaning theres a gray area, that its stable in some energies, but not in others.
In the post-Big Bang world, natures top quark a key component of matter is a highly sensitive probe that physicists use to evaluate competing theories about quantum interactions. Physicists at Southern Methodist University have achieved a new precise measurement of a key subatomic particle, opening the door to better understanding some of the deepest mysteries of our universe.
The researchers calculated the new measurement for a critical characteristic mass of the top quark. Quarks make up the protons and neutrons that comprise almost all visible matter. Physicists have known the top quarks mass was large, but encountered great difficulty trying to clearly determine it.
The newly calculated measurement of the top quark will help guide physicists in formulating new theories, said Kehoe, who direct the SMU group that performed the measurement.
Top quarks mass matters ultimately because the particle is a highly sensitive probe and key tool to evaluate competing theories about the mood of matter and the fate of the universe. Physicists for two decades have worked to improve measurement of the top quarks mass and narrow its value.
Top bears on newest basic particle, the Higgs boson. The new value from SMU confirms the validity of recent measurements by other physicists, said Kehoe. But it also adds growing uncertainty about aspects of physics Standard Model.
The Standard Model is the collection of theories physicists have derived and continually revise to explain the universe and how the tiniest building blocks of our universe interact with one another. Problems with the Standard Model remain to be solved. For example, gravity has not yet been successfully integrated into the framework.
The Standard Model holds that the top quark known familiarly as top is central in two of the four basic forces in our universe the electroweak force, by which particles gain mass, and the strong force, which governs how quarks interact. The electroweak force governs common phenomena like light, electricity and magnetism. The strong force governs atomic nuclei and their structure, in addition to the particles that quarks comprise, like protons and neutrons in the nucleus.
The top plays a role with the newest basic particle in physics, the Higgs boson, in seeing if the electroweak theory holds water. Some scientists ponder the top quark may be special because its mass can substantiate or jeopardize the electroweak theory. If jeopardized, that opens the door to what physicists mention as new physics theories about particles and our universe that go beyond the Standard Model. Other scientists theorize the top quark might also be key to the unification of the electromagnetic and weak interactions of protons, neutrons and quarks. In addition, as the only quark that can be observed directly, the top quark tests the Standard Models strong force theory.
So the top quark is really pushing both theories, Kehoe said. The top mass is particularly interesting because its measurement is getting to the point now where we are pushing even beyond the level that the theorists understand. Our experimental errors, or uncertainties, are so small, that it really forces theorists to try harsh to understand the impact of the quarks mass. We need to notice the Higgs interacting with the top directly and we need to measure both particles more precisely.
The new measurement results were presented at the Third Annual Conference on Large Hadron Collider Physics, St. Petersburg, Russia, and at the 8th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics, Ischia, Italy.
The public perception, with discovery of the Higgs, is Ok, its done, Kehoe said. But its not done. This is really just the beginning and the top quark is a key tool for figuring out the missing pieces of the puzzle.
The results were made public by DZero, a collaborative experiment of more than 500 physicists from around the world. The measurement is described in Precise measurement of the top quark mass in dilepton decays with optimized neutrino weighting and is available online at arxiv.org/abs/1508.03322.
To narrow the top quark measurement, SMU doctoral researcher Huanzhao Liu took a standard methodology for measuring the top quark and improved the accuracy of some parameters. He also improved calibration of an analysis of top quark data.
Liu achieved a surprising level of precision, Kehoe said. And his new method for optimizing analysis is also applicable to analyses of other particle data besides the top quark, making the methodology useful within the field of particle physics as a whole.
The SMU optimization could be used to more precisely understand the Higgs boson, which explains why matter has mass, said Liu. The Higgs was observed for the first time in 2012, and physicists keenly want to understand its mood.
This methodology has its advantages including understanding Higgs interactions with other particles and we hope that others use it, said Liu. With it we achieved 20-percent improvement in the measurement. Heres how I ponder of it myself everybody likes a $199 iPhone with contract. If someday Apple tells us they will reduce the price by 20 percent, how would we all feel to get the lower price?
Another optimization employed by Liu improved the calibration precision by four times, Kehoe said.
Top quarks, which rarely occur now, were much more common right after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. However, top is the only quark, of six different kinds, that can be observed directly. For that excuse, experimental physicists focus on the characteristics of top quarks to better understand the quarks in everyday matter.
To study the top, physicists generate them in particle accelerators, such as the Tevatron, a powerful U.S. Department of Energy particle accelerator operated by Fermi National Laboratory in Illinois, or the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, a project of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN.
SMUs measurement draws on top quark data gathered by DZero that was produced from proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron, which Fermilab shut down in 2011.
The new measurement is the most precise of its kind from the Tevatron, and is competitive with comparable measurements from the Large Hadron Collider. The top quark mass has been precisely measured more recently, but there is some divergence of the measurements. The SMU result favors the current world average value more than the current world record holder measurement, also from Fermilab. The apparent discrepancy must be addressed, Kehoe said.
As the only quark that can be oberved, the top quark pops in and out of existence fleetingly in protons, making it possible for physicists to test and define its properties directly.
To me its like fireworks, Liu said. They shoot into the sky and explode into smaller pieces, and those smaller pieces continue exploding. That sort of describes how the top quark decays into other particles.
By measuring the particles to which the top quark decays, scientists capture a measure of the top quark, Liu explained. But study of the top is still an exotic field, Kehoe said. For years top quarks were treated as a construct and not a real thing. Now they are real and still fairly new and its really distinctive we understand their properties fully. Margaret Allen.
Todays Most Popular
The Daily Galaxy via Southern Methodist University
Post subject: "Beyond the God Particle" --China to Trump CERNs L
Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2016 2:08 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
"Beyond the God Particle" --China to Trump CERNs LHC: Twice the Size and Seven Times as Powerful
China is planning to build an enormous particle accelerator twice the size and seven times as powerful as CERNs Large Hadron Collider, according to state media reports. According to China Daily, the new facility will be capable of producing millions of Higgs boson particles - a great bargain more than the Large Hadron Collider which originally discovered the God particle back in 2012.
"We have completed the initial conceptual plan and organized international peer review recently, and the final conceptual plan will be completed by the end of 2016," Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily in an exclusive interview.
The institute has been operating major high-energy physics projects in China, such as the Beijing Electron Positron Collider and the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino experiment. Now scientists are proposing a more ambitious new accelerator with seven times the energy level of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. The first phase of the projects construction is scheduled to begin between 2020 and 2025.
So far the Standard Model seems to explain matter, but we know there has to be something beyond the Standard Model, said Denise Caldwell, director of the Physics Category of the National Science Foundation. This potential new physics can only be uncovered with more data that will come with the next LHC run.
The Standard Model contains no explanation of gravity, which is one of the four basic forces in the universe. It also does not explain astronomical obervations of dark matter, a type of matter that interacts with our visible universe only through gravity, nor does it explain why matter prevailed over antimatter during the formation of the early universe. The small mass of the Higgs boson also suggests that matter is fundamentally unstable.
Gerald Hooft, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, said in an interview to Doha-based broadcaster Al Jazeera that Chinas proposed collider, if built, "will bring hundreds, probably thousands, of top class scientists with different specializations, from decent theory to experimental physics and engineering, from abroad to China". Chinese scientists have completed an initial conceptual plan of a super giant particle collider which will be bigger and more powerful than any particle accelerator on Earth.
In July 2012, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, announced that it had discovered the long sought-after Higgs bosonthe "God particle", regarded as the crucial link that could explain why other elementary particles have masson LHC. The discovery was believed to be one of the most distinctive in physics for decades. Scientists are hopeful that it will further explain mood and the universe we live in.
The high-energy frontier has traditionally had one primary perfection, to probe directly any uncharted physics waters. This has translated into the gigantic effort to complete the unobserved elements of the Standard Model of particle physics as well as to search for for signs of physics beyond.These measurements form a solid base from which searches for physics beyond the standard model have been launched. Since the discovery of the Higgs in 2012, searches for supersymmetry and several signatures of possible new exotic physics phenomena have been developed, and new parameter space is being explored.
In 2016, the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds most powerful proton smasher, is preparing for its biggest run yet which scientists hope will uncover new particles that could dramatically change our understanding of the Universe. Scientists had been gearing up to resume experiments at the LHC this week, but the plans were delayed after a weasel wandered onto a high-voltage electrical transformer last Friday, causing a brief-circuit. CERN told AFP that experiments were now expected to get underway next week.
The LHC, housed in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border, has shaken up physics before. In 2012 it was used to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson -- the long-sought maker of mass -- by crashing high-energy proton beams at velocities near the speed of light. (A proton-direct ion collision, shown below as observed by the LHCb detector during the 2013 data-taking period LHCb/CERN). The giant lab might prove the exotic theory of supersymmetry, SUSY for brief, which suggests the existence of a heavier "sibling" for every particle in the universe. The unexpected excess pair of photons spotted last year could be a larger cousin of the Higgs, according to one theory.
While LHC is composed of 27-kilometer-long accelerator chains and detectors buried 100 meters underground at the border of Switzerland and France, scientists only managed to spot hundreds of Higgs boson particles, not enough to learn the structure and other features of the particle.
With a circumference of 50 to 100 km, however, the proposed Chinese accelerator Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) will generate millions of Higgs boson particles, allowing a more precise understanding.
"The technical route we chose is different from LHC. While LHC smashes together protons, it generates Higgs particles together with many other particles," Wang said. "The proposed CEPC, however, collides electrons and positrons to create an extremely clean environment that only produces Higgs particles," he added.
The Higgs boson factory is only the first step of the ambitious allot. A second-phase project named SPPC (Super Proton-Proton Collider) is also included in the designa fully upgraded version of LHC.
LHC shut down for upgrading in early 2013 and restarted in June with an almost doubled energy level of 13 TeV, a measurement of electron volts.
"LHC is hitting its limits of energy level, it seems not possible to escalate the energy dramatically at the existing facility," Wang said. The proposed SPPC will be a 100 TeV proton-proton collider.
If everything moves forward as proposed, the construction of the first phase project CEPC will start between 2020 and 2025, followed by the second phase in 2040.
"China brings to this entire discussion a certain level of newness. They are going to need help, but they have financial muscle and they have ambition," said Nima Arkani Hamed from the Institute for Advanced Study in the United States, who joined the force to promote CEPC in the world.
David J. Gross, a US particle physicist and 2004 Nobel Prize winner, wrote in a commentary co-signed by US theoretical physicist Edward Witten that although the cost of the project would be great, the benefits would also be great. "China would leap to a leadership position in an distinctive frontier area of basic science," he wrote.
Post subject: New CERN LHC Experiments --"Predict a Boson Beyond the
Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2016 3:43 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
New CERN LHC Experiments --"Predict a Boson Beyond the Higgs That Could Unlock Clues to Existence of Dark Matter"
Two separate experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, on the French-Swiss border, appear to confirm the existence of a subatomic particle, the Madala boson, that for the first time could shed light on one of the great mysteries of the universe - dark matter.
The Madala boson follows the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 "but the particles differ remarkably," said the team leader Bruce Mellado of South Africas Witwatersrand University School of Physics. The Madala boson is heavier and disintegrates into the Higgs boson. "The Higgs boson in the Standard Model of physics is not capable to explain several things, such as dark matter," Mellado added.
"The Madala boson is distinctive for our understanding of the universe. Through this we can communicate with dark matter - we dont have an object that can do that. This could be the first," said Mellado. The boson appears to interact with energy that cannot be explained.
Mellado will summarize the reappearance of these features in the features in the proton-proton collision data collected during Run I by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider that were used to formulate the Madala hypothesis, and its implications.
These features in the data were interpreted as being due to the existence of a new scalar, the Madala boson, with a mass around 270 GeV. A conservative statistical combination yielded a three sigma effect. The ATLAS and CMS collaboration have just released new data at the international conference ICHEP2016.
In exacting, Mellado will discuss a prediction, namely of the production of anomalously large 4 W bosons, paramount to a striking and unequivocal signature.
Dark matter is the new frontier in physics, Mellado said, and scientists were racing to labor out what it is. The Chinese and Japanese had declared intentions of building colliders that could be used to search for the identity of dark matter and dark energy. A team of 35 University of the Witwatersrand scientists today hosts a series of seminars about the Madala boson (Zulu for "old"), followed by other seminars in the US, UK, China and India.
Post subject: Hubble Reveals Ghostly Core of the Supernova Seen by Chinese
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 11:06 pm
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:08 am Posts: 1804
Hubble Reveals Ghostly Core of the Supernova Seen by Chinese Astronomers in 1054
Though its only 10 miles across, the amount of energy the pulsar at its core releases is enormous, lighting up the Crab Nebula until it shines 75,000 times more brightly than the sun. The nebula, one of our best-known and most stable neighbors in the winter sky, is shocking scientists with a propensity for fireworksgamma-ray flares set off by the most energetic particles ever traced to a obvious astronomical object. The discovery is leading researchers to rethink their ideas of how cosmic particles are accelerated.
"We were dumbfounded," said Roger Blandford, who directs the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, jointly located at the Department of Energys SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. "Its an emblematic object," he said; also known as M1, the Crab Nebula was the first astronomical object catalogued in 1771 by Charles Messier. "Its a big bargain historically, and were making an amazing discovery about it."
Blandford was part of a KIPAC team led by scientists Rolf Buehler and Stefan Funk that used observations from the Large Area Telescope, one of two primary instruments aboard NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, to confirm one flare and discover another.
This new Hubble Heritage image of the supernova remnant shown above combines images taken in different wavelengths and at different times to give an impression of the evolution of this pulsar system. This image used data from the Hubble Space Telescopes Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera, and show in red the structure of the shell of ionized gas expanding around the central neutron star. Blue colours indicate the glow of radiation from electrons in the intense magnetic field; they are shown in different colours at different times of observation, giving the rainbow effect as the pulsar spins.
The Crab Nebula, and the rapidly spinning neutron star that powers it, are the remnants of a supernova explosion documented by Chinese and Middle Eastern astronomers in 1054. After shedding much of its outer gases and dust, the dying star collapsed into a pulsar, a super-filled, rapidly spinning ball of neutrons that emits a pulse of radiation every 33 milliseconds, like clockwork.
Most of the Crab Nebulas energy is contained in a particle wind of energetic electrons and positrons traveling close to the speed of light. These electrons and positrons interact with magnetic fields and low-energy photons to produce the famous glowing tendrils of dust and gas Messier mistook for a comet over 300 years ago.
The particles are even forceful enough to produce the gamma rays the LAT normally observes during its regular surveys of the sky. But those particles did not cause the dramatic flares.
Each of the two flares the LAT oberved lasted mere days before the Crab Nebulas gamma-ray output returned to more normal levels. According to Funk, the brief term of the flares points to synchrotron radiation, or radiation emitted by electrons accelerating in the magnetic field of the nebula, as the cause. The flares were caused by super-charged electrons of up to 10 peta-electron volts, or 10 trillion electron volts, 1,000 times more energetic than anything the worlds most powerful man-made particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, can produce, and more than 15 orders of magnitude more energetic than photons of visible light.
"The strength of the gamma-ray flares shows us they were emitted by the highest-energy particles we can associate with any discrete astrophysical object," Funk said.
"The fact that the passion is varying so rapidly means the acceleration has to happen extremely swift," added Buehler. This challenges current theories about the way cosmic particles are accelerated, which cannot easily account for the extreme energies of the electrons or the speed with which theyre accelerated.
The KIPAC scientists need a closer look at higher resolutions and in a assortment of wavelengths before they can make any definitive statements about the mechanisms behind the Crab Nebulas gamma-ray flares. "We thought we knew the learned ingredients of the Crab Nebula," Funk said, "but thats no longer true. Its still surprising us."
The Chandra images in the collage above were made over a span of several months (ordered left to right, except for the close-up). They provide a stunning dogma of the activity in the inner region around the Crab Nebula pulsar, the rapidly rotating neutron star seen as a bright white dot near the center of the images.
A wisp can be seen moving outward at half the speed of light from the upper right of the inner ring around the pulsar. The wisp appears to blend with a larger outer ring that is visible in both X-ray and optical images.
The inner X-ray ring consists of about two dozen knots that form, brighten and fade. As a high-speed wind of matter and antimatter particles from the pulsar plows into the surrounding nebula, it creates a shock wave and forms the inner ring. Energetic shocked particles move outward to brighten the outer ring and produce an extended X-ray glow.
Enormous electrical voltages generated by the rotating, highly magnetized neutron star accelerate particles outward along its equator to produce the pulsar wind. These pulsar voltages also produce the polar jets seen spewing X-ray emitting matter and antimatter particles perpendicular to the rings.
The Daily Galaxy via Hubble Space Telescope, RAS, and the lSLAC National Accelerator
Post subject: Todays Galaxy Insight --Weirdness of the Higgs Boson: "
Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2021 10:29 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Todays Galaxy Insight --Weirdness of the Higgs Boson: "A Dead End or Gateway to Another Universe"
Whatever we find out, that is what mood chose, Kyle Cranmer, a physics professor at New York University, told Brian Resnick at VOX. "Its a good attitude to have when your field yields great disappointments."
For most of 2015, evidence was suggesting that CERNs Large Hadron Collider had found a new subatomic particle, which would be a discovery surpassing even the LHCs discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, and perhaps the most distinctive advance since Einsteins theory of relativity. The Large Hadron Colliders 750 GeV diphoton bump registered at least one unambiguous conclusion the LHC physicists believed: theyd found something new. In the showers of proton collision byproducts that occurred during the 2015 run of CERNs ATLAS and CMS experiments, it seemed there was a new particle.
But, mood had other plans, in August, CERN reported that the evidence for the new particle, what at first looked like a promising bump in the data, indicating the presence of a particle with a unique mass, was just noise, that the 2016 data failed to replicate the bump, indicating that the earlier observations were just statistical fluctuations. This has resulted in a general let down shared by many researchers in high-energy physics: The LHC managed to bag the Higgs boson, but as for bagging supersymmetry, a New Physics, the presence of a particle or interaction so-far unknown it appears mood wasnt co-operating.
It would be a profound discovery to find that were not going to see anything else, Cranmer says, suggesting that supersymmetry isnt the answer, and theoretical physicists will have to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to solve the mysteries left open by the standard model.
If were all coming up exhaust, we would have to question our basic assumptions, Sarah Demers, a Yale physicist, tells me. Which is something were trying to do all the time, but that would really force us.
An alternative possibility is that the the answers do exist, but they exist in a different universe. If the LHC cant find answers to questions like why is the Higgs so light? scientists might grow to accept a more speculative out-of-the-box idea where there are tons of universes all existing parallel to one another. It could be that in most of [the universes], the Higgs boson is really heavy, and in only in very unusual universes [like our own] is the Higgs boson so light that life can form, Cranmer says.
Basically: On the scale of our single universe, it might not make sense for the Higgs to be light. But if you put it together with all the other possible universes, the math might check out.
The problem with this theory is that if heavier Higgs bosons exist in different universes, theres no possible way to notice them. Which is why a lot of people hate it, because they consider it to be anti-science, Cranmer says. It might be impossible to test.
Way back in 2012, scientists hailed the doscovery of the Higgs, speculating that it could one day make light speed travel possible by "un-massing" objects or allow huge items to be launched into space by "switching off" the Higgs. CERN physicist Albert de Roeck likened it to the discovery of electricity, when he said humanity could never have imagined its future applications.
"Whats really distinctive for the Higgs is that it explains how the world could be the way that it is in the first millionth of a second in the Big Bang," de Roeck told AFP. "Can we apply it to something? At this moment my imagination is too small to do that."
Physicist Ray Volkas said "almost everybody" was hoping that, rather than fitting the so-called Standard Model of physics -- a theory explaining how particles fit together in the Universe -- the Higgs boson would prove to be "something a bit different".
"If that was the case that would point to all sorts of new physics, physics that might have something to do with dark matter," he said, referring to the hypothetical invisible matter thought to make up much of the universe.
Maybe the secret is hiding in Mood, awaiting its discovery.
The image at the top of the page shows -rays emitted from the Galactic Center, giving the LHC a firm target in its hunt for dark matter. (A. Mellinger, CMU; T. Linden, Univ. of Chicago/NASA Goddard)
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