CERN as Galileo, the maximum power into the secrets of matter – The Republic

IN 1993, despite the fact that in Texas the underground tunnel had already been dug, the Senate cut funding for the construction of the largest particle accelerator that physicists asked. The American project is stopped and the torch of extreme experimental research in fundamental physics goes into the hands of Europe. The construction of the great machine of Geneva, which is the spearhead of this research was long and painful, but it worked. Already at the first power, half-power, the “Large hadron collider”, ie the “Great scontratore of subatomic particles” – LHC for friends – gave a great result: the revelation of the “Higgs boson”, which confirms a prediction thirty years before. Today finally the LHC at full power, ready to explore something new: aspects of nature that we have never seen before.

The expectation among physicists is strong. It’s the same thrill of those evenings of Padua four centuries ago, when Galileo Galilei has raised one of the first rudimentary telescopes to the sky, to see things that no human eye had ever seen before. Galileo saw the phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter, the mountains of the moon, the spots on the Sun … What we see? We do not know and this is the real magic of the adventure of Geneva. Nature surprises us. It does not fit our thoughts. The LHC has already surprised. At his first start three years ago, it has produced what many physicists had expected. I remember a visit to CERN shortly before ignition and a long chat with a colleague of the theoretical division, one of the best. He said: “You’ll see, Charles, just start with the LHC are supersymmetric particles”. But no, the supersymmetric particles are not blown out. The LHC has confirmed with spectacular punctuality what we already knew of Nature: the so-called “standard model of elementary particles”, but for now it has stubbornly refused to confirm even one of the attempts by theoretical physicists to guess what happens further.

The great publicity that was given to the detection of the Higgs particle is served physicists to tell the world that the money spent were not useless (after all, compared with an aircraft carrier, a ‘motorway or the Olympics, the LHC cost pennies), but perhaps even more to cover the disappointment of not finding what many expected: the supersymmetric particles. Entire theoretical constructions, life research of many scientists, is hanging the existence of these particles: if now the LHC finds, many will say “see, we were right.” If we do not find the arguments to take seriously many theories will weaken. It is this uncertainty that makes a living science.

The official statements of CERN sound sometimes a bit ‘triumphant and bombastic: “We study the dark side of the universe! We explore the beginning of the Cosmos. ” The reality, close up view, is more sober. For many, the real question is: “These equations on which I have spent my life, have something to do with reality, or anything?” We will find them today, the supersymmetric particles? Will we see something new, perhaps unexpected, in addition to what already is well described by the standard model? We do not know, we are waiting. Let’s see. It asks for confirmation because the responses of Nature, that the knowledge of science is so reliable. It is precisely because we do not know what we will see that all this is interesting.

Arguments:

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accelerator

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large hadron collider

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