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| SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY |
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Big Bang experiment Will it succeed?
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Big Bang experiment The multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment, which began on September 10, is expected to create on earth at the end of an year, the conditions that existed billionth of a second after the Big Bang. When fully operational LHC experiment will deliver 600 million “mini” Big Bangs every second. Massive detectors will monitor these. LHC experiment may answer some of the most fundamental questions in physics. The Standard Model of matter predicted the existence of an array of fundamental particles. Scientists have detected all except the Higgs bosons. If LHC detects Higgs boson, Peter Higgs, 79, an emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh will win Nobel Prize for a theory he expounded 44 years ago. He may also receive a hundred dollar bet from his archrival, Stephen Hawking! Scientists may never find Higgs boson. John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN believes that additional dimensions of space could somehow do the job that Higgs boson does in the Standard Model. String theorists had such expectations of extra dimensions. Alan Boyle, science writer, quotes Lisa Randall, the Harvard physicist as saying that the LHC will nail down the evidence of extra dimensions in five years. At a more mundane level, do we gain anything from this indecently expensive experiment? Can’t we do something more useful with that kind of money? “Let me answer with an emphatic NO. Finding out how our universe works has never been a bad idea”, Brian Cox, a professor at the University of Manchester and a participant in the LHC experiment, has been unapologetic about the venture. “In fact, it is the quest for a deeper understanding of nature that has given us everything we now take for granted in modern life”. He unabashedly declared that curiosity-driven research led to virtually all of the great discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries. “The transistor emerged from quantum theory of solids, not from a desire to build computers and television”, he argued. Great discoveries seldom came out of pragmatic process of innovation. Some physicists claim that the atom smasher may help scientists treat diseases, improve the internet and open the door to travel through extra dimensions. Earlier atom smashers led to the development of technologies such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans which help to pinpoint cancer cells. Andy Parker, a professor of high energy physics at Cambridge University, UK believes that you can send a beam of protons into a cancer patient, which does essentially no damage at all to the tissues on the way in; all the damage is done at the point where the protons stop. By tuning the energy of the protons you can make them stop inside the tumours located deep inside the bodies and blast them away. Physicians may be able to carry out more widely proton therapy which now has limited applications. As scientists working with the LHC learn to better focus and control proton beams, the refinements may trickle down to medical profession. A less certain but more exotic benefit as spinoff from this mega project is that it could open the door to technologies that allow people to travel faster than the speed of light Sci-Fi boffins will have their imagination running riot! The six experiments at the LHC will produce, after due filtering, 15 petabytes (10 to the 15th power) of data annually to be stored at CERN. A worldwide LHC grid, a global network of 60,000 computers made accessible to a few thousand scientists globally will analyse the data. “We are doing things that are at the boundaries of science…But the technologies, the methods and the results will be picked up by industry”, Ruth Pordes, executive director of the Open Science Grid at Fermilab in Chicago, told Associated Press. “Scientists expect grid computing to become more widely used in future, for research ranging from new drugs to more effective nuclear power. Eventually, consumers will start seeing it used in daily life to regulated traffic, predict the weather and even boost a flagging economy”, AP columnist, Frank Jordan believes. “It would not be the first time that happened in CERN. In 1990, a young British researcher there created a computer based system for sharing information with colleagues around the world”, Jordan noted the birth of World Wide Web. What is India’s role in this high-tech experiment? The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the cradle of high-energy physics and cosmic ray research in India from late 40s, has been fruitfully collaborating with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) since the 70s. This helped in inking a cooperation agreement for a 10-year period between the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and CERN in 1991. DAE’s motivation was the desire to increase the pace of accelerator development in India and to give a thrust to experimental high-energy research programme. In March 1996, DAE and CERN signed a protocol under which India joined the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment and agreed to make “in-kind” contributions in the form of skilled manpower, software and hardware to the tune of $25 million. CERN set apart half the contribution as an “India fund” to cover the expenses of Indian scientists at CERN and to meet foreign exchange required for some of the contributions. In LHC project, India like USA has “observer” status. India’s first contribution to the LHC complex was two large capacity liquid nitrogen tanks (3.4 metre diameter and 10.6 metre tall, double walled, vacuum and perlite insulated) each of 50,000 litre with a liquid withdrawal rate of 2kg/s. The tanks worked well with less than 100 l/day evaporation rate, much below the specified value. Cryogenic experts from RRCAT, participated in analysis of performance data generated during commissioning of LHC cryo- systems to help debug the Deficiencies. As “in-kind” contribution, India provided 7080 precision magnet positioning stands jacks, nearly 1800 SC corrector magnets, 5500 quench heater protection supplies, 1435 local protection units, 70 circuit breakers etc; scientists and engineers from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited etc. spent 125 man-years towards magnetic tests and measurements and help in commissioning LHC sub systems. Universities of Delhi, Punjab, Aligarh, Rajasthan, Jammu, Viswa Bharati and Indian Institute of Technology are participating in the LHC experiment. Indian scientists participated in building, installation, software analysis, Monte Carlo studies, physics simulation and analysis of Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and A Large Colloider Experiment (ALICE), two of the four detector systems of LHC. The writer is former
Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board
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Will it succeed? The theories of physics and cosmology follow a Standard Model comprising the basic physical concepts, which serve as mandatory guidelines. The validity or otherwise of any theory depends on that of its Standard Model. The currently “mainstream” theories have their Modern Standard Model or MSM for short. The MSM contains or rests on some conceptual pillars, whose doubtful strength or even existence is to be tested by the LHC. To test the MSM the LHC will primarily investigate the Higgs boson, the superpartners of the elementary particles and the wrapped up extra dimensions of space. In this author’s Unified Theory, however, mass of a particle is its innate property and not acquired by eating any Higgs or other particle. Earlier, the Geneva based Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), specifically designed for the purpose, could not find the Higgs boson and in all likelihood the present Large Hadron Collider will also not find it because the massless and mass-generating particles do not actually exist in real Nature. The wrapped up extra dimensions of space also do not exist. The Superpartners of elementary particles. The “mainstream” quark-lepton theory was formulated to bring order in the diversity of elementary particles, but it has itself led to over hundred of them, making the term “element” meaningless. The Supersymmetry doubles this number by adding “superpartners” to all of the over hundred elements, which LHC plans to discover. But the more than 200 number of elements in the Modern Standard Model is far too large to be realistic, reasonable and acceptable. The LHC experiment is not very sure to achieve its objectives. The colossal amount of scarce institutional funds ($4bn) and human intelligence-years (8-10 thousand global scientists’ 30 years) going into its planning, assembly and execution are fraught with disappointment. The grand edifice of the currently “mainstream” theories of physics & cosmology developed during the past over a century might be shattered into smithereens. The Nobel Prizes awarded to a number of brilliant scientists might attract question marks. The writer is former
Professor & Head, Dept of Biophysics and Nuclear Medicine, PGI,
Chandigarh.
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THIS UNIVERSE When we exhale air slowly it gives us a sensation of warmth while if we exhale forcefully it gives us a sensation of cold air. Why does this happen as air is coming from the lungs? When we slowly exhale air the temperature is essentially the same as that of our lungs. That is likely to be a little higher than the temperature of the back of our hand we normally use to sense temperature. This is partly because of the fact that our skin is cooled a little because of the evaporation of
perspiration. On the other hand the situation is radically different when we compress our lips and blow air in a fast-moving stream. The air compressed in our mouth is quickly brought to the same temperature as the inside of the windpipe. But when we blow this compressed air it expands. Expansion leads to a drop in temperature. This is what happens when gases expand. You can confirm this by releasing air from an inflated car or bicycle tire by pressing on the valve pin. I might point out the reason for this is the fact that in moving away from each other molecules of the gas have to work against the attractive force between them and therefore lose energy. Temperature is nothing but a measure of the random energy of molecules. We all know that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. While oxygen assists in combustion, hydrogen itself is combustible .Would it be possible to design an automobile engine in which water may first be split into its constituents, namely hydrogen and oxygen. Then this engine could utilise hydrogen for combustion while oxygen helps
in combustion. The normal means of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen (such as electrolysis) are no use because you will use more energy than what you might recover through burning the produced hydrogen. Should some methods using appropriate catalysts and solar energy become viable then we would be on our way. Hydrogen and oxygen in water need lot of energy for being freed from their mutual embrace.
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First the God particle or Higgs boson. The currently “mainstream” gauge theories first encountered the conceptual “problem” of massless elementary particles, then to solve it another conceptual “problem” of mass generating Higgs boson was created. Accordingly, a bare massless elementary particle acquires mass by, so to speak eating the Higgs boson. This is anti-intuitive and against