CERN Will Power Up the Antimatter Matter Hunt in May 2008

CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will soon be set to perform experiments that will, it is hoped, answer questions related to the nature of matter and antimatter, as stated in a CERN press release.

This is after successfully powering-up various worldwide exciting experiments confirming the mass and oscillatory nature of neutrinos, in which CERN's CNGS played an important role.

The quest is to find the Higgs boson and the related Higgs field. The mystery is that at the beginning of the material universe that we now know there was an equal distribution of matter and antimatter that differed solely by positive versus negative charge: matter has a positive charge and antimatter a negative. Equal amounts of positive and negative charge cancel each other out: They annihilate each other.

Yet, somehow a material universe of positively charged matter came to be. The theory, which is part of what is called the Standard Model, is that the invisible and as yet undetectable Higgs boson (named for UK Physicist Peter Higgs) spontaneously generates an energy field that attracts positively charged matter, hence aiding in creating an asymmetry between matter and antimatter -- so some matter isn't annihilated -- permitting the formation of a universe of matter.

So where is the Higgs boson? Does it spontaneously generate a charged field? These are two of the questions that LHC is going to attempt to answer beginning in May 2008 when it is powered-up. Furthermore, does the oscillation of neutrinos help to explain the asymmetry? Since neutrinos oscillate (convert) from one of their three forms to another, the rather unusual question is posed of whether neutrinos, which are matter, are also their own antimatter. LHC aims to shed light on all these questions.

CERN had hoped to partially power-up LHC in the fall of this year ahead of schedule but due to difficulties and delays the originally projected date of May 2008 will be held to, according to CERN press releases. The massive 27-kilometer circumference LHC experiment is supercooled with liquid helium and is at temperatures colder than outer space.

LHC will collide supercharged particles at four points. These particles will be moving at speeds near the speed of light, which faster than ever before attained by any experiment. Each of the four point houses a separate experiment designed to measure specific results. The four are LHCb, Alice, Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and ATLAS. CMS and ATLAS will look for the signature of the Higgs particle while somewhat competing with one another. They are also both designed to look for previously unknown particle signatures and perhaps capture the revelation of other dimensions. LHCb is designed to investigate the subtle differences between matter and antimatter in particles containing b (beauty) quarks and Alice records heavy ion events, according to CERN.

The new science being done on neutrinos in various places around the world, like CERN and Japan, and the new science about to be begun with LHC may cause an upheaval to the way we view our universe; to the Standard Model describing how all the known parts of the universe fit together; to the elusive and much courted unified theory of everything.

Note: CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

CERN Press Office, "CERN announces new start-up schedule for world's most powerful particle accelerator." URL: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2007/PR06.07E.html