Dwarfing the people in the lower corners of this photo, a single piece of the Large Hadron Collider is lowered into place by sturdy cables. U physicists are helping build the apparatus, which will search for the elusive subatomic particle called the Higgs boson.
Boson buddies
U physicists are in for a smashing time as they stalk the Higgs boson, a highly creative subatomic particle
By Deane Morrison
April 24, 2007
It has been called the "God particle," and not without reason. Like Michelangelo's God bringing Adam to life with a touch, so the mysterious speck of matter known as the Higgs boson bestows tangible existence on the tiny constituents of all atoms and molecules. Or so the theory goes. Though its handiwork is everywhere, the Higgs boson itself has never been detected by physicists. Not yet, that is. The hunt for "the Higgs" is taking shape in a tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border, and four University physicists are in on it. It's the biggest project ever to probe the ultimate nature of the Universe. If the Higgs is found, physicists will have detected all the pieces of the "standard model" of the particles and forces that form our Universe. They'll also get a glimpse of how the Higgs endows particles with a quality called mass. A particle or object is said to have mass if it resists any force trying to move it or bring it to a stop. This is as true of atoms and molecules as it is of baseballs, speeding cars, or stubborn mules. Objects with mass can have weight, which is a measure of how much the object is attracted by gravity. All matter in the Universe is either mass or energy; without mass, the Universe, if it existed, would have neither form nor substance. Energy can be envisioned as a form of currency. Just as money allows us to do things, so energy, when transferred to an object with mass such as a baseball, allows it to do something--like sailing through the air or your neighbor's window. The hottest thing in physics University physicists Roger Rusack, Priscilla Cushman, Yuichi Kubota and Jeremiah Mans are part of an international team of about 2,350 scientists from more than 30 countries trying to detect the Higgs--and, they hope, other exotic particles. They're assembling one of two mammoth detectors at a new accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in a tunnel more than 300 feet underground between Lake Geneva and the Jura Mountains. The behemoth will whip two needle-thin beams of subatomic particles called protons through a 16.7-mile circular vacuum pipe in opposite directions; that is, on a collision course.
"Each beam has the stored energy of a Subaru going at more than 1,000 miles per hour," says Rusack. "It would cut a hole right through a person."
Moving at nearly the speed of light, the protons will release tremendous energy when they collide. That energy should be enough to materialize Higgs bosons and allow them to be detected. "Each beam has the stored energy of a Subaru going at more than 1,000 miles per hour," says Rusack, who has been part of the project since 1993. "It would cut a hole right through a person." In fact, the collider is quite capable of self-destruction. If the proton beams ever veered off course, they would eat right through the wall of the vacuum pipe and destroy whatever piece of equipment they hit. To prevent this, sophisticated containment measures have been designed to keep them on track and harmlessly dispose of the beams should they stray.A taste of space
In the tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider, physicists and
engineers have recreated a little bit of outer space. They have
captured the emptiness of space in the vacuum pipe housing the
speeding protons, and the cold of space in the liquid helium that
cools some very powerful magnets. At only three degrees Kelvin, the
liquid helium is terrific at conducting heat away from the magnets.
The magnets, wielding 100,000 times the strength of Earth's
magnetic field, are used to steer the protons around their circular
path.