Atom smasher back on collision course with history
DEBORAH SMITH SCIENCE EDITOR
November 21, 2009
MORE than a year after an explosion shut it down, the world's biggest and most expensive scientific experiment is set to restart today.
In an attempt to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang, beams of particles will again be sent whizzing round the giant atom smasher, deep under the Swiss and French countryside. But forget the previous scare that the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider could create a black hole that will swallow the planet.
During a troubled 12-month hiatus in which a collider scientist was arrested for suspected terrorism and a bird that dropped a piece of baguette was blamed for a serious power cut, another bizarre theory has emerged: the massive machine is being sabotaged from the future.
Two respected physicists have proposed that the elusive subatomic particle the collider is designed to produce - the Higgs boson, also known as the God particle - may be able to turn back time to prevent its own creation.
Undeterred, Australian scientists who helped design and construct one of the huge detectors that could identify the Higgs boson, if it exists, are excitedly awaiting the restart.
A University of Sydney physicist, Kevin Varvell, said it was still a case of ''fingers crossed'' for the researchers. ''It's such a big endeavour. These machines are the cutting edge of technology.''
This time round there will be no live worldwide television coverage, as with the switching on in September last year.
As well, in a cautious approach, beams of protons injected around the two 27-kilometre-long rings will initially be smashed into each other at low collision energies.
Dr Varvell said particle accelerators seemed to attract strange theories. ''People are interested in science fiction and the frontiers of science can seem a bit like science fiction.''
Most physicists would dismiss the sabotage notion as ''not completely crazy, but very, very speculative''. Sensational claims could detract from the ''fabulous science'' at the collider, he said, and the possibility it will answer fundamental questions about the universe, such as whether it has more than three dimensions and the nature of the mysterious dark matter that fills the cosmos.
Detecting Higgs bosons - which are thought to give matter its mass like hangers-on weigh down a celebrity moving in a crowd - would give scientists confidence they are on the right track for developing an elegant, unifying ''theory of everything''.
If it is not found, it would still be an important result, Dr Varvell said. ''It would tell us nature is working in a completely different way to what we believe.''
The collider could also produce the first man-made black holes, but they will be tiny ones that quickly evaporate, he said. ''It would not be dangerous.''
A bad electrical connection caused the machine's spectacular failure last year after only nine days of operation.
The sabotage theory suggested that the Higgs boson could be so abhorrent to nature that any machine that tried to produce more than a few would have bad luck and fail.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
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