Hurling Earth into parallel universe?
matter swallowing microscopic black holes, strangelets, & magnetic monopoles
The biggest experiment in particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider, starts this summer in Switzerland. The goal is to find signs of the Higgs boson particle (AKA the “God particle") as it may ultimately lead to a grand theory of the universe.[1] 200 feet underground, a proton does 17-mile laps at nearly the speed of light. Guided by powerful magnets, it zooms through a narrow, circular tunnel. Then a tiny adjustment in the magnetic field throws the proton into the path of another particle beam traveling just as fast in the opposite direction which happens 10 million times a second. Massive superconducting magnets cooled to near absolute zero by liquid helium will bend 20 micron-wide beams of protons into precise trajectories and crash them into each other.
The Higgs boson, the most elusive speck of matter in the universe. It’s supposed to be the key to explaining why matter has mass. Physicists believe that Higgs particles generate a kind of soupy ether through which other particles move, picking up drag that translates into mass on the macroscopic scale. The Higgs is the cornerstone of 21st-century physics; it simply has to be there, otherwise the standard model of the universe collapses.[2]
Could black holes be portals to other universes?
Some physicists have theorised that black holes might act as spacewarp wormhole portals into alternate universes.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, the builders of the world’s largest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet. The LHC, is due for startup later this year at CERN’s headquarters on the French-Swiss border. Many new and exciting phenomena are expected to occur as a result of these very high energy collisions. It is hoped that some of them will be unpredicted and will point to new directions in our understanding of the structure of matter. At the same time it is legitimate to wonder whether any of these new phenomena may be potentially dangerous.[3]
[1] http://www.newsweek.com/id/128877
[2] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/grid.html
[3] http://doc.cern.ch/yellowrep/2003/2003-001/p1.pdf
Posted on March 30, 2008 at 01:56 PM | Comment (2 comments)
