The theories of a ‘kafir’ and an ‘infidel’ are at the forefront of Higgs boson ”Grand Unified theory” Dr Abdus Salam and Jogesh Pati!! Tomorrow CERN announcement on God particle (physics), the theoretical Higgs boson can be as big a discovery as that of ‘Laws of Gravitation’ and ‘Theory of Relativity,’ when they were initially announced the events was not fêted. It is an irony it is the future that fetes the event.
Historically, the first true GUT which was based on the simple Lie group SU(5), was proposed by Howard Georgi and Sheldon Glashow in 1974. The Georgi–Glashow model was preceded by the Semi simple Lie algebra Pati–Salam model by Abdus Salam and Jogesh Pati, who pioneered the idea to unify gauge interactions. The battles of minds continue; we are just at the beginning of our long journey and stay on this planet. The Higgs boson is the final undiscovered particle of the Standard Model of particle physics and is a crucial ingredient in our understanding of the mass of many elementary particles.
Unfortunately, the first target of religious persecution has always been the scientist or cosmologist. What a credit, a ‘kafir’ and an ‘infidel’ is given the credit for the first true GUT. Dr Abdus Salam and Jogesh Pati role got me very interested in Grand Unified theory. There is still until Wednesday 4th July, 2012 that we will have hard evidence that nature can be described by a Grand Unified Theory. Since the Higgs particle has not yet been observed, the smaller electroweak unification remains pending. Sir Martin Rees said in 2001 “I would bet reasonable odds that by the year 2010 we will be very confident of what the dominant dark matter is, the value of lambda, and the properties of the dark energy in the vacuum.”
Our whole Universe is governed by just six numbers, set at the time of the Big Bang. Alter any one of them at your peril, for stars, planets and humans would then not exist. These six numbers constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: if any one of them were to be ‘untuned’, there would be no stars and no life. Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence? Or is it the providence of a benign Creator? I take the view that it is neither. An infinity of other universes may well exist where the numbers are different. Most would be stillborn or sterile.
In ”Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe,” Rees states that he does not interpret the fine tuning of universal constants to an intelligent designer but rather supports the notion of a “multiuniverse”. Just Six Numbers is a well-written introduction into the forces that shape our existence. The book focuses on 6 fundamental constants in the universe and how key the values of these numbers are towards the universe and life ever coming into being.
If we discover God particle (physics), the theoretical Higgs boson and the elusive unified grand theory may combine all the 6 numbers into one equation encompassing bigger and smaller numbers. We are ‘nobody’ but once we know that we are insignificant conscious creatures in a vast infinite universe, we become ‘someone,’ i.e., seekers of knowledge to unravel our greatest mystery – the Universe itself. This Universe has created us to resolve the enigma of its own creation. We may not ever comprehend the finer details of our origins or demise, yet our ability to unearth missing links of the Grand Unified Theory that unites the minuscule Planks (10 raise to-35 m) to incomprehensible Ym (93 billion light years) makes us the most intelligent beings within the known universe so far. Lord Rees says that In ”Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe.”
Our known history of 10,000 years and unknown of 100,000 is still less than fraction of a nano- second in terms of nearly infinite time of universe. Rest assured our generation for millions of years to come will rest in peace very nicely on this abode of ours. May be you are right, that one electron and one proton to create the first atom needs electromagnetic forces to keep the electron in the orbit, may be all that you call dead end evolution is creating the unseen, after all gravity and Grand Unification, grand unified theory, may all need other elementary particles (mesons, muons, bosons, taus, all their girlfriends – antiparticles, all quarks and antiquarks etc., don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Rumi Reincarnation is a reality, death is actually beginning of a ‘new life’ in different life forms for 4,600 trillions of our linear nuclear chromosomes (a human body contains nearly 100 trillion cells). Physicists say they have all but proven that the “God particle” exists. They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape. They don’t plan to use the word “discovery.”
CERN say they will come as close as possible to a “eureka” announcement without overstating their findings. The signal is likely to be below the 5 sigma threshold that is the threshold to constitute a discovery. The findings are based on more than 300 trillion high-speed particle collisions over the past year. Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smasher plan to announce this Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could restructure the understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight. Higgs boson is so elusive though so common in nature it decays really fast into other particles (much like quarks which don’t stay quarks for a very long time)
“The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible” is one of Albert Einstein’s best-known aphorisms. It expresses his amazement that the laws of physics, which our minds are somehow attuned to understand, apply not just here on Earth but also in the remotest galaxy. Newton taught us that the same force that makes apples fall holds the Moon and planets in their courses. We now know that this same force binds the galaxies, makes some stars collapse into black holes, and may eventually cause the Andromeda galaxy to collapse on top of us. Atoms in the most distant galaxies are identical to those we can study in our laboratories. All parts of the universe seem to be evolving in a similar way, as though they shared a common origin. Without this uniformity, cosmology would have got nowhere.
Rees comments on ”Mathematical laws underpin the fabric of our Universe – not just atoms, but galaxies, stars and people. The properties of atoms – their sizes and masses, how many different kinds there are, and the forces linking them together – determine the chemistry of our everyday world. The very existence of atoms depends on forces and particles deep inside them. The objects that astronomers study – planets, stars and galaxies – are controlled by the force of gravity. And everything takes place in the arena of an expanding Universe, whose properties were imprinted into it at the time of the initial Big Bang.”
Space can’t be indefinitely divided. The details are still mysterious, but most physicists suspect that there is some kind of granularity on a scale of 10-33 centimetres. This is twenty powers of ten smaller than an atomic nucleus: as big a decrease as the increase in scale from an atomic nucleus to a major city. We then encounter a barrier: even if there were still tinier structures, they would transcend our concepts of space and time.
Since research started at the LHC nearly two years ago, scientists have been working to determine whether the Higgs boson particle exists. The LHC works by accelerating two beams of protons to almost the speed of light. The protons collide together 40 million times a second, recreating the conditions of the universe immediately after the Big Bang, and enabling scientists to reconstruct fundamental particles produced at that time. Tevatron scientists announced today ahead of CERN that the observed Higgs signal in the combined CDF and DZero data in the bottom-quark decay mode has a statistical significance of 2.9 sigma. This means there is only a 1-in-550 chance that the signal is due to a statistical fluctuation.
Humans live in the slow lane, our time zone dictates that, unlike the ‘light years’ of universe, earth revolves around the sun in 365 days and spins on its axis in 24 hours; our life and time scale is determined by the speed of earth revolution and spinning. Universe works on a different time scale that of light years, at the speed of light the change or distance we move is 0.00000000&&.1 of universe movements. *1/186,000miles/sec*60 sec*24 hour*365= 1/1.74096*10 raise to power 10 AU (Astronomical Unit) is the average distance of the Earth from the Sun (1 AU < 150 million km). Light Year is the distance that light can travel in a year, which is 9.46 trillion km. We are insignificant small players within a humongous jigsaw puzzle, nature and natural selection forces are working on their own humongous scale, let’s know our size and stop checking birds for flu and cows for burps and farts.
Imagine our conscious stay is only few million years old; we are fresh out of caves, as our written history does not extend beyond 100,000 years even if we include the drawing on walls as part of our heritage. The ideas of mathematics and physics as expounded by the masters are beginning of coherent thought. We have millions of years of conscious life ahead of us even by most pessimist projections. Since post renaissance free minds have achieved so much there is no reason to believe that free mind will not exponentially continue to explore new ideas with equal new enthusiasm and challenge. Pure souls, didn’t I tell you not to be seduced by this colourful world For I am the Ultimate Painter. Rumi
We have transcended into a new creed. I think that we all 7 billion should follow the same credo, that of ‘unique human kind,’ we have the same inherited coding, same love; same hatreds; we got to go beyond parochial ideological fixations and reach a universal solution where we should identify ourselves as citizens of this big blue planet, we should all call it ‘mother earth.’ Simple and plain it helps me eradicate the middle man who tells me through his agents provocateurs how to love each other, love is born within me, I don’t need an agent provocateur to tell me how to love each other or that true love is attainable through ‘his’ way. Everyone’s way is so different and so complex; we humans can have only one way and that is the ‘human way’ and love should be our main objective. Let’s go beyond our self made delusions and avatars.
Fiction and possibility frontier:
This is a very special moment for Sci-Fi writer/physicist/chemist/mathematician/engineer’s who thinks that:
”A kind of ‘super-higgs’ field would be similar to the control grid in an old fashioned vacuum tube i.e. a small force controlling a very large force. It is implied that one could fashion a force field, perhaps an inter quantum electro dynamic one that could defeat inertia or at least oppose it in a working star ship. And at the same time help or outright create a small pocket quasi-universe around it that can be arbitrarily moved whilst the ship is stationary within it, a bubble in space-time impervious to collision to collisions from matter in the trajectory of the bubble universe. Such would be a true star ship, and as long as it did not go too near, maybe, a black hole of size.
A sceptic answers:” If a bubble around a spacecraft could be made that makes it mass-less, one could travel between stars much faster than we could otherwise. Again, sci-fi hopes, not physics…..yet!!!”
@ On why LHC is not a luxury..
Mankind misery is rooted in its inability to tap energy from a universally available complimentary source. If we are able to smash fundamental particle physics better, a sustainable source from the core of atom without radioactive residue will make gloom a fry cry.
Humanity is at the cusp of overcoming the hurdle soon towards a new trajectory of growth, this is our new tryst with fate. Malthusian predictions through harnessing sources of fossil fuel and mastering internal combustion engine saved mankind; now with LHC we are upping the ante. Free water, air and energy is our innate vocation. Cheap Energy is the missing link that ensures prosperity over scarcity, peace over war.
Collective benefit of mankind to feed 9 billion in next few decades will require LHC study. Poverty, famine and hunger may be replaced by munificence that every new era of scientific discovery has ensured. The resource/ population bottleneck that man is ensnared with can be busted with LHC research. Whatever news comes out of CERN in the wee hours of the morning on July 4, hints and indications so far are just the beginning of the search to pin down the Higgs and learn its characteristics. The Higgs search commences a long voyage of discovery into a realm of unexplored physics, of super symmetry, dark matter, miniature black holes, extra dimensions of space – and other, unanticipated wonders that defy prediction.
Question: So what will it do for us if they find it? other then the whole it gives other things mass, what are its uses besides that?
Leandro Palazzo:
OK…I give you an example…in the 50′ some scientists discovered the LASER effect…the LASER effect was on the time just an theoric issue of the theory of particles …this scientists wanted prove in the “real life” that this effect was real…obviously, on the time, nobody could imagine for what uses could be that “effect” used in the future…well, you know…in modern times the LASER is used en surgery, audio music (compact disc)…laser telemetry…communications…etc etc etc…indeed, thanks to the LASER effect (and the optic fibre)…we can have a really fast internet…that allowed us to participate in the space.com forums for example…meanwhile we are in different continents right now…amazing huh???…(let us dream…if the higgs field exist and we learn how it works…may be in the future we could build a space ship build with a “special compound” that have no “interference” with the higgs field…and make our travel around the universe much more faster than now…it is just a dream…
