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The race for inner space |
Inside the CERN tunnels |
Some scientists call it the "God particle."
It's never been seen, and no one's sure if it even exists, but everyone in the world of particle physics is looking for it, says Dr. Jim Pinfold, director of the U of A's Centre for Subatomic Research. And should some lucky few find it, the discovery will likely mean a Nobel Prize.
What they're looking for is called the Higgs boson. "It's like smoke from a fire," says Pinfold. When you see the smoke, you know there's fire." When you see the Higgs, you know you're on to the force that brings all matter into being.
The Higgs boson is perhaps the greatest of the grails waiting to be discovered when the $5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) switches on in 2005, says Pinfold. He's one of thousands of scientists around the globe working on the world's highest energy accelerator, located at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) near Geneva.
At the U of A, physicists are working on a small part of a $500 million detector called ATLAS that will help scientists see the Higgs. They're constructing 150 tons of parts for the detector, which is similar in some ways to a microscope, says Pinfold, "enabling us to peer deep into matter to discern particles as small as quarks that comprise the protons and neutrons that make up everyday matter."
The goal of the massive underground accelerator at CERN, 26 km in circumference, is to simulate in miniature the Big Bang scientists believe created the universe. With temperatures reaching a sweltering 1016 (10 million billion) degrees, scientists are hoping particles such as the Higgs will reveal themselves.
To collect the information generated by the mini-big bang, the U of A is developing a supercomputer called THOR, a prototype of the computer that will eventually run ATLAS. Pending approval, the U of A is also set to lead an experiment involving scientists from the U.S., Italy, Switzerland and Britain to find exotic particles with unusual magnetic charges.
While $5 billion may seem like a high price to pay for a particle playground, what we can learn from "the race for inner space" is immeasurable, says Pinfold, who is leading the U of A team working on a piece of the ATLAS detector.
"This curiosity-driven research takes you to places you cannot imagine you'd ever be. When you've got all these huge detectors working at incredible speeds, you start to push the envelope on technology."
Pinfold says Canadian representation in general at CERN may look small on the ledger sheet, with total contributions in the range of $30 million, but the impact of Canadian scientists is in fact much greater.
"Canadians always punch harder than their weight, and seem to be more concentrated on the task. And they seem to work in critical masses so you don't have everybody wandering off in every direction. It's a small community but a very good community, and very well respected."
So the race for inner space is on, and particle aficionados like Pinfold can hardly wait to get there. "ATLAS is a no-lose situation," he says. "No matter what it finds, you've made a discovery." If the Higgs turns out to be a red herring, scientists will know there's "something highly wrong with our standard theory."
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