October 7, 2001

Isolating "God Particles"

The Fifth Saturday Anomalists - a local think tank held to just 12 men and women of diverse backgrounds - tackled God last week and lost.

Failure was expected. Anomalies are mysteries of things seemingly unsolvable. Heretofore, the group has explored such topics as the nature of time, origin of the universe, earth feedback systems and population explosions. Happily they reached no conclusions.

The names of topic presenters and responders are confidential lest their uninhibited statements be held to public scorn. Nonetheless, the topics are widely discussed and debated by people everywhere infected with curiosity.  

The recent subject was "Mu Li Dancing Masters" - an update of a 1979 overview by Gary Zukav of physics up to that time. It was presented by a member distinguished for his contributions to development of jet engines.

Zukav is a science writer. Mu Li is a Chinese ideograph variously translated as

1. patterns of energy
2. my way
3. nonsense
4. I clutch my ideas
5. enlightenment.

Take your pick. Dancing Masters alludes to a method of teaching by leading students, versus lecturing.

Nub of Zukav's treatise was a famous, anomalous "double-slit" experiment first conducted in 1803 by Thomas Young, an English physicist.

He focused a beam of light through two razor slits in a sheet of cardboard. Instead of two slits of light he got a wavey band of light with alternating dark lines. Essentially he demonstrated that light was a wave of particles.

From this evolved "quantum mechanics" regarding the behavior of sub-atomic particles making up atoms -- building blocks of all things.

Albert Einstein spent a lifetime pooh-poohing quantum mechanics as failing to account for the constant "speed of light" relative to the mass of atoms. He was entranced by the passage of "spooky" time and its effect on the universe.

He deduced there were four forces at work:

1. strong nuclear
2. weak
3. electro-magnetic
4. gravity.

Neither Einstein nor any one else has explained the weak force or discovered all the energy particles theory predicts.

Einstein died while still trying to fit "relativity" into a "unified field" of elemental energy forces. Zukav boldly declares that Einstein is wrong about light.

Of course, Einstein has gone to the Great Laboratory In The Sky where scientists go to dispute God. Nonetheless, a new generation of physicists has refined the double-slit experiment, using highly sensitive electronic measuring devices.

Light consists of particles (photons) that travel with a twin of one negative and one positive electric charge. Raymond Chiao of the University of California, Berkeley, projects a beam of light through two slits. When a magnet in one slit reverses the charge in that beam, the beam in the other slit instantly reverses its charge!

Anomaly: How does one light particle affect its twin, faster than the speed of light? It appears that magnetic fields can radiate "super-luminal" -- faster than Einstein's 185,000 miles per second.  

Radio waves from outer space detected by Borge Nodland at the University of Rochester suggest that the universe is not globular -- as the "Big Bang" theory would indicate. Rather, it appears to be egg-shaped, with light traveling faster on one axis and slower on another.

The Hubble satellite is receiving light from the edge of the universe that seems to travel faster than Einstein's constant.

Dr. Lene Vestergaard Hau at the Rowland Institute For Science, Cambridge, Mass., has slowed light to 120 feet per hour through a super-cold vacuum -- about the speed of a turtle.  

In short, Einstein was a genius for his time, but he did not have all the answers.

* * *

"Particles" in physics are not like grains of sand, but invisible points of energy. They can be detected only by tracks they leave in a chamber of fog or a pack of camera films. To do this, high- energy charges are whirled in opposite directions around a 16-mile circle of magnets called a collider. We laymen term it an "atom smasher."

At maximum speed, the charges are guided to a head-on collision. The debris leaves trails in a film pack. Length and width of the trail indicates the kind of particle knocked loose. It is believed there are 12 elementary particles. Eleven have been identified with such names as proton, tachyon, meson, and quarks.

Always, however, the bits don't add up to the original charge. A large particle flies off somewhere undetected. What is its function?

British Physicist Peter Higgs theorized in 1964 that the large, missing bit he called a "boson" permeates the universe. It gathers up smaller bits to create mass - stars, planets, water, grass, fish and air-breathing creatures. Physical matter, as we know it, eventually morphs back to pure energy, to unite again with bosons for a new cycle.

What we detect as a variety of energy particles may be the same force evolving in various stages. Eureka! The unified field.

In theory, if the energy field were to be turned off, our bodies, the world, stars, everything would turn instantly to pure energy from which all was formed by the boson and will be reformed again.

No wonder Nobel physicist laureate Leon Lederman dubbed it the "God Particle."

We may be on the verge of isolating the God particle.

The largest atom smasher in operation last year was the Large Electron-Positron Collider operated at Geneva, Switzerland, by the European Laboratory For Particle Physics. In its final run -- preparatory to dismantling for a larger unit -- the giant collider was turned up beyond its rated power.

In the resulting collision of energy, a track larger than usual appeared in the film pack.  Preliminary indications are that this may be the long-sought God Particle.

However, proof must await completion of the new Geneva collider -- or the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory collider that also is being upgraded near Chicago. Both are expected to be completed and calibrated in 2005.

Until then, continue praying.

Author: Lindsey Williams

Cutline - 3 col. Chinese ideograph

Illustration from "Wu Li Dancing Masters"

[ Wu Li ideograph illustrating an overview of physics by leading, versus lecturing. It translates variously to (1) patterns of organic energy, (2) my way, (3) nonsense, (4) I clutch my idea, or (5) enlightenment. ]

 oooooo end oooooo