Scientists at the University of Massachusetts and around the world this summer will probe the mysteries of the universe 300 feet underground in a 16-and-1/2 mile long tunnel.
That’s because in Geneva, Switzerland, the world’s largest particle collider, called the Large Hadron Collider, will come online-run by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The project has been coming together for 25 years, with the hope that by smashing protons and other molecules into each other at high energies, discoveries can be made about the nature of the universe.
Carlo Dallapiccola is one of the associate physics professors at UMass working on the project.
“We’ve gotten to the point already where we have a pretty good idea of what’s the most fundamental, what is all matter potentially made of, and what are the basic most fundamental laws of physics,” said Dallapiccola. “That just a few pieces essentially explains the entire universe. You have to put it together in a very complicated way to explain the entire universe, but nevertheless it’s from a few basic rules. But there’s some holes, you can explain a lot, but not everything, and we have some very compelling reasons to think with this machine produce enough energy, [to create particles] that would fill in some of those holes.”
Scientists have been smashing tiny particles into each other for years, but never at the energies possible with the LHC.
Particles will fly around a giant ring the length of 300 W.E.B. DuBois Libraries stacked end to end at almost the speed of light and 271.3 degrees Celsius, almost absolute zero.
Associate professor of physics Stephane Willocq explains why bigger is better in particle accelerators.
“It’s an application of the famous E=MC2, we’re looking for new particles that are very heavy, that have large mass, and previous experiments have not been able to produce collisions at sufficiently high energies,” said Willocq. “The potential discovery of these particles will answer a lot of puzzles in our current understanding of these constituents of matter. It’s not the only way, but it’s certainly the best way, to get sufficiently high energy to produces these particles directly.”
Willocq also said that while other particle accelerators haven’t been designed with a specific goal in mind, the LHC has been created specifically with the goal of finding new particles needed to explain current theories.
Willocq and Dallapiccola said the many people and teams doing research at CERN are often in contact with each other. There are weekly phone conferences, meetings are held in Geneva five times a year. There is a Ph.D. student from UMass at the LHC, and two other at UMass, as well at three other post-doctoral students work on the project with Willocq and Dallapiccola.
“We’re motivated overall by interest in knowing exactly how nature works at the most fundamental level,” Dallapiccola said. “Anyone who was curious as a kid, by how a television works, you want to break it apart, you’re probably left unsatisfied, maybe you know how some of the pieces work but you want to go further than that. We want to go all the way, as far as you can go in that endeavor.”
Willocq and Dallapiccola noted that while the LHC may be able to fill in some of the holes in current theories, it will most likely create some new ones as well.
“Like astronomers who look out at the universe and see a splotch of light and wonder ‘What’s that?’ and they get a more powerful telescope and realize it’s a galaxy made of stars just like ours and then they want to look past that, [it’s] the desire to find out what it’s all about,” Dallapiccola said.
Ben Williams can be reached at [email protected].
