First Results -- Hadron Collisions!!

The Hadron Colder, although not yet at full force, has been utilized to collide some particles with some results.

The "Large Hadron Collider" readers will recall is the Swiss Particle Accelerator and Collider, near the border with France, which is designed to smash together particles and atoms circling within a 27kilometer tunnel, in an attempt to find evidence of further particles that may confirm or alter the modern scientific view in the broad field of sub-atomic particle research.
Scientists have studied early collisions utilizing an important technological advance in grid computing -- using large numbers of loosely coupled computers over a large area to share data downloading. Data they say is being produced in the range of 15 "petabytes" each year.

Papers now available, technical in detail indicate that on November 23, 2009, two counter-rotating proton bunches were circulated concurrently for the first time in the machine. A total of 284 collisions were recorded, reconstructed and analyzed. The researchers determined from these collisions the "average number of charged particles emitted perpendicular to the beam direction", known as "pseudorapidity density". The results obtained were consistent with earlier measurements of proton-antiproton interactions at the same energy.

Hadron Scientists have written that the initial operation of the collider created more particles than theory predicted; a glut of particles. The recent experiments, smashing protons together at speeds just below the speed of light, produced pions and kaons. A pion is a negatively charge sub-atomic particle that is negatively charged, and decays into an electron. A kaon is a variety of meson, another sub-atomic particle, with a quark composition. A quark is an elementary particle, a building block of matter. Quarks undergo transformations by the exchange of bosons.

the prime interest of the current experimentation is the study or perhaps the search for the Higgs Boson, which allows for the existence of matter. Simply stated, the theoretic Higgs Boson causes an attraction among the various particles, some of which we have just discussed, and bringing them together, matter occurs.

The Clustering effect in fact is known as the "Higgs mechanism", part of a theory developed by British physicist Peter Higgs in the 1960s. The theory supposes a sort of lattice, called the Higgs field, fills the universe. Similar to a magnetic field it affects the particles moving through it. In a solid, the Higgs field is a crystal lattice which can increase the mass of an electron by as much as 40 times. A particle moving through the Higgs field is subject to this distortion, and as the common comparison indicates, contributes to mass in particles in the way that a "star at a party" (the people cluster around him) leads to increased "mass" in that area of the room.

According to Professor Gunther Roland,from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a report to BBC News,
"The level (of particles produced) is somewhat higher than the most popular models had predicted, and it looks like it is going to increase with energy a little bit more steeply than we expected," ..."I think it's not going to be a problem, but it is one of the many things that we need to know as we move toward searches for the most rare particles and new physics,"
Professor Roland added that these extra particles will be "more of an issue" later this year, when the Large Hadron Collider moves to collisions involving the element lead, the smashing particles markedly heavier than those in the current early efforts, and expected to produce a larger array of particles. Roland: "We'll know much more about that in two or three months when we look at the next higher energy of 7 trillion electron volts."

Scientists in Switzerland claim that even if the Higgs Boson is not revealed, it would not mean that it did not exist. They go on to indicate that after what might be a year of downtime, the Hadron Collider will be again turned on -- at the "highest possible energy level". This may provide the intensity they claim to capture the Higgs Boson.

With no current references to "black holes" -- an earlier speculation -- scientist are still hoping to create conditions that existed a minute fraction of a second after the "Big Bang" when the universe began 13.7 billion years ago. The matter spewed out at the "Big Bang" over time produced all the universe; stars, planets, and eventually, all life on our Earth. But they are intent on proving the Higgs theory, that the Higgs Boson brought it all together, yielding the essential quality, Mass.

It would appear that concerns about the collisions bringing about a swift and complete end to our universe have not been realized. Moreover, it seems that the results thus far analyzed have been far less earth shaking than had been hoped. However the expensive experimenting will continue for several years or decades.