661 lines
33 KiB
Plaintext
661 lines
33 KiB
Plaintext
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(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2)
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Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501
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Sponsored by Vangard Sciences
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There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS
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on duplicating, publishing or distributing the
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files on KeelyNet except where noted!
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October 6, 1991
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GRAV6.ASC
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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This file shared with KeelyNet courtesy of Tom Albion.
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Tom operates the THC Online System in Canada at 604-361-4549.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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The Higgs Field
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Title-> Armies of physicists struggle to discover proof of a
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Scot's brainchild.. (Peter Higgs; Higgs boson) (study of
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mass and the cause of heaviness)
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Authors-> Mann, Charles C.
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Twenty men in boots and hard hats pick their way through a
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construction site a few hundred yards from the border between
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Switzerland and France.
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The morning is hot and dry for May, but the ground is nonetheless
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muddy from the continued movement of bulldozers and trucks. The
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center of activity is a vast hangarlike structure or, more
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precisely, the pit at its center, more than 30 yards deep and almost
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as wide, cut into the soft French soil.
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A tall, stoop-shouldered man named Samuel C. C. Ting leads the
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group. He is a physicist from the Massachusetts Institute of
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Technology, a Nobel Prize winner. He wears dark suits, immaculately
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clean, of no particular style, and dark ties, perfectly knotted, of
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no particular hue. Authority rests lightly on his shoulders. He
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and the people walking behind him are working on a colossal physics
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experiment; they come from China, the United States and a dozen
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other countries.
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Known unromantically as L3, the experiment is designed to answer
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what would appear to be a fundamental question:
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Why are things heavy?
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Why, in a gravitational field, do they have weight?
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Or, as physicists would phrase the question: What is mass?
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We think mass is created by the actions of a type of subatomic
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particle known as the Higgs boson, named for Peter Higgs, the
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Scottish physicist who was one of the first to predict its
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existence. Yet scientists have never seen it, and are not certain
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where to look.
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Page 1
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Ting thinks his experiment can find the Higgs, if it exists. He may
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discover it, which could ultimately prove as significant an
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achievement as splitting the atom. Then, too, the discovery might
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just as well have no practical consequences. Or, the Higgs may not
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exist, after all.
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The wind, keening in the open struts of the elevator, follows the
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scientists into the hole. Because nearby residents objected to the
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ugliness of the construction, an earthen berm stands between the
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hangar and the surrounding farms.
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As the car descends, the berm sweeps out of view; then the Jura
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Mountains, too, are hidden. By the end of the elevator ride, the
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scientists have journeyed into a world of their own making. It is a
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world some of them have never seen, despite having worked on the
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experiment for years. Then, when the elevator finally stops, jaws
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drop and a silence falls over the group.
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Standing in the center of the pit is an octagon the size of an
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office building, its huge side doors yawning open. It is an
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electromagnet, made of more metal than the Eiffel Tower, wound with
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hundreds of miles of cable.
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Some of the scientists are startled, even dismayed, by what is not
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there: the thousands of tons of equipment that remain to be stuffed
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into the pit. The magnet and all the apparatus that goes with it
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together constitute the heart of L3 - the detector that may, just
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may, come up with the Higgs boson.
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"When we first put the plans for this experiment down on paper, I
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knew the dimensions were big," Ting says at last. Usually his voice
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is toneless, careful, without edge even when administering the
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sharpest rebuke; you keep thinking you have missed bits of
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sentences. Now, however, he hesitates"But it isn't til you see it
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that you get a feeling for how . . . big . . . it really is. I
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went down here a couple of days ago and I thought, 'This is crazy.'
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I thought, 'It can't be this size."'
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Seeking an answer better than Aristotle's "Why are things heavy?"
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Artistotle thought objects are pulled to earth because they wish to
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return to it, and for much of Western history nobody came up with a
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better explanation.
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It was left for Kepler, Newton and their fellows to realize that
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heaviness came from the interaction of gravity with some other
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quality, which we today call "mass." It is the quality of an object
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that causes it to have inertia: that means you have to use force to
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get it moving if it is standing still, and you have to use force to
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stop it if it is already moving.
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You must use force whether you are on the surface of a planet or
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floating weightless between the stars. Mass is a quality an object
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always has; it is different from weight, which changes, or even
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disappears, with changing circumstances.
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Take an astronaut who, when he is on Earth, weighs 180 pounds. The
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moon's gravitational field is only one-sixth as strong as Earth's,
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so when that same astronaut is standing on the moon, he will feel he
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only weighs one-sixth as much.
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Page 2
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When he is in free-fall in a spacecraft, we say he is "weightless."
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His mass, however, is always the same 180 pounds.
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Well into this century, physicists knew a lot about how mass behaved
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but did not know whence it derived or, more simply, what it was.
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"Mass is the great question of physics," says Abdus Salam, a Nobel
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Prize-winning physicist who is director of the International Centre
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for Theoretical Physics at Trieste. "We have fruitlessly banged our
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heads against it for centuries."
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Today the search for the origins of mass has become, to the dismay
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of some researchers, one of the largest and most costly undertakings
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in the history of science. On both sides of the Atlantic, thousands
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of scientists and support staff are working to build the enormous
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machines that will be used in the quest. The L3 group, led by 450
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physicists from 39 institutions, is but one of six groups of
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experimenters hoping to solve the mystery of mass.
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The quest began, at least indirectly, during the 1950s, when
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physicists first began to work out their grand unified theories,
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schemes in which the four fundamental forces in nature are only
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different manifestations of one and the same thing (SMITHSONIAN, May
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1983).
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Part of the idea is that each force has an agent, a subatomic
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particle, that produces the effects we see. They are known
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collectively as GAUGE BOSONS.
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Photons, for example, "carry" the electromagnetic force, whether in
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the form of light waves, radio waves, x rays or gamma rays, among
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others. Mesons carry the strong force that holds the nucleus of an
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atom together.
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Scientists still have not seen gravitons, the particles postulated
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to carry gravity; and until recently, physicists had not even seen
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the particlcs, known as intermediate vector bosons or the W and Z
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particles, that carry the weak force, an obscure force central to
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the process of radioactive decay.
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It was in the atmosphere of looking for unification theories that
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physicists such as Salam and Sheldon Glashow, now of Harvard,
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working independently, were toying with the idea that
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electromagnetism and the weak force could be brought together and
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seen as different manifestations of the same thing-the electroweak
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force.
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In the late 1950s, Glashow and Salam developed similar theories, but
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hit the same stumbling block: while much of the mathematics in each
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theory worked, there were major discrepancies between the particles
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that carried the forces.
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Photons have no mass at all; but even before they were actually
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seen, W and Z particles were predicted to be heavy - very heavy.
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(Many physicists had calculated their mass and had eventually come
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up with a similar ballpark figure. Each W or Z weighs more than 80
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times what an entire hydrogen atom does.)
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Yet the equations of Glashow and Salam said that on some deeper
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Page 3
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level, the Ws and Zs should have no mass, like their sibling the
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photon. "It was a problem," Glashow has admitted. "It was a bit
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like saying a Ping-Pong ball and a bowling ball are somehow the
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same thing."
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By the early 1960s, Glashow had begun to look into other areas of
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physics, but his childhood friend Steven Weinberg, now at the
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University of Texas, and Salam each continued looking for a way to
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describe the two forces as one.
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At the same time, a Scottish theorist, Peter Higgs, was at the
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University of Edinburgh working on a somewhat related problem. For
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several years the shy, soft-spoken, excessively modest Higgs had
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been investigating various aspects of field theory, which is the
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notion that all of space is saturated by a field, much as the field
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of a magnet saturates the region near it.
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Like the field of a magnet, the hypothetical field Higgs created had
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ephemeral particles that acted as its agents: these eventually came
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to be known as "Higgs bosons."
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Higgs had been engaged in intense doodling, fiddling with equations,
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adding in one variable and taking out another to learn more about
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the nature of his hypothetical field. It was at this point, around
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1964, that he noticed something extraordinary.
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If he added in his own field equations (and thus the Higgs bosons)
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to equations somewhat analogous to those of Salam or Glashow, he
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found that certain particles in the original equation behaved in an
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astonishing fashion.
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They began with zero mass and then mathematically "ate up"
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other, unwanted particles in the field (ones that had made a mess of
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the mathematics in the theory he was investigating) emerging with
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mass.' (The unknown particles turned out to be the W and Z
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particles, but Higgs did not know that at the time.)
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Higgs published his findings - described by Glashow as a
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"terrifically loony idea: an idea that nobody would ever have paid
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attention to" - with little fanfare. Eventually, Salam and Weinberg
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independently heard about his work and realized it might solve their
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problem.
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Each added Higgs' equations into the ones they had been working on
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and - to their great delight - found that the particles that
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acquired mass in Higgs equations corresponded to the W and Z
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particles in their own. Higgs' hypothetical boson provided the
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mechanism by which the electromagnetic and weak forces could finally
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be seen as one.
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Higgs bosons might have been entirely forgotten if a groundswell of
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theoretical and experimental work in the 1970s had not led to the
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acceptance of the electroweak theory - and to Nobel Prizes for
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Glashow, Salam and Weinberg in 1979.
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Four years later the W and Z were discovered by a team led by Carlo
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Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, who quickly received Nobels for their
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efforts. Today the electroweak theory is inscribed in the
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Page 4
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textbooks, except for one not-so-little worry: nobody has seen even
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the slightest trace of the Higgs.
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"And without the Higgs," jokes Paul Lecoq, a French member of the L3
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collaboration, "Messrs. Glashow, Weinberg and Salam may eventually
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have to give back those little prizes they got in Sweden."
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In a long, high laboratory, Ulrich Becker wedges his way through a
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forest of electronic equipment and the cables and welding equipment
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necessary to hook it together. A big man with the square face and
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wiry, stand-up hair of a friendly monster, Becker has been one of
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Ting's chief collaborators for two decades.
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Born and raised in the Federal Republic of Germany, he is now a
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member of the international fraternity of science: citizen of West
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Germany, resident of France, worker in Switzerland, taxpayer of the
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United States. Like Ting, he is officially on the faculty of MIT
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but, like Ting, he has spent the past decade traveling the globe in
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quest of the Higgs.
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"Put naively," Becker says "most of the progress in particle physics
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for the past 20 years, this electroweak theory and everything else,
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depends on the supposition - the guess - that there is this field,
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the Higgs field, that saturates the whole Universe, and that
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particles get their mass from interacting with it.
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You might say it's a little like a magnet, with some kinds of metal
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being more attracted than others. Particles that are more
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'attracted' to the Higgs have more mass. The picture is very nice,
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theoretically speaking - yet there 'is not one shred of evidence for
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it."
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Ting's L3 group is based at the European Organization for Nuclear
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Research, still known to physicists around the world by its old
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acronym, CERN. The main campus is in a suburb of Geneva, but the
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laboratory has grown with physics itself: the L3 assembly area is in
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France, a few miles from the Swiss border. (Customs is a constant
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problem; recently, Becker recalls, he had to cross the frontier 12
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times in a single afternoon; the border guard threatened to seize
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his car if he came through again that day.)
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A great circular tunnel connects the campus and the L3 pit; it
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houses an almost completed particle accelerator called the LEP, the
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Large Electron-Positron collider.
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Accelerators are devices that smash subatomic particles into a
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target or into one another with enormous energy; in the resultant
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collisions, matter changes into energy and energy into matter, and
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the flying fragments provide clues to the laws of nature.
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They are usually built in the shape of a wheel; as particles move
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around the circumference, they are boosted to higher and higher
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speeds by powerful electric fields.
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Electrons, which at rest are very light, can be pushed to within a
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whisker of the speed of light. At such relativistic speeds,
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however, the electron becomes heavy and difficult to turn in the
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necessary continuous circle.
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Page 5
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It takes huge amounts of electrical power to keep bending the beam
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of electrons, which keep losing energy in the form of x rays as they
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are forced to turn. To smooth out the turns, accelerators have
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become bigger and bigger around, not to mention more and more
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costly. The old proton accelerator at Brookhaven National
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Laboratory on New York's Long Island is just half a mile around, the
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main accelerator ring at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
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in Batavia, Illinois, is nearly 4 miles around.
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The LEP in Geneva, when it is commissioned in July, will be 17 miles
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around; the largest in the world. Someday it may be eclipsed in its
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turn by the planned Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in West
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Texas, which will have a circumference of about 53 miles - and which
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some investigators think may ultimately have the best chance of
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finding the Higgs.
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The LEP will achieve extraordinary energy levels in two ways. First,
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instead of having the beam smash into stationary targets, the LEP
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will have two beams moving in opposite directions.
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It will be the difference between a car running into a tree and one
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car colliding head-on with another. Second, the electrons will
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collide with their antimatter counterpart, positrons, producing
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total annihilation.
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Some collisions will produce Zs, the neutral agents of the weak
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force. A few of these, theory predicts, will fall apart into Higgs
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bosons, which in turn will decay into a spray of other particles.
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The Zs and Higgses will live so briefly - trillionths of a
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trillionth of a second - that they will be impossible to see
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directly. But the end product, the spray of other particles, can be
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seen by complex detectors, and from it the researchers hope to infer
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the existence and properties of the Higgs (pp. 106-07).
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When the accelerator cranks up this summer, four experiments, all
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multimillion-dollar collaborations, will begin work. L3 is the
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biggest, the most expensive and the most directly aimed at the
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Higgs.
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The project began in 1979, when Ting, Becker and a small number of
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other physicists started designing an ambitious machine, a detector,
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that they hoped would trap the Higgs if, indeed, it exists.
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"We asked CERN for the biggest hole they would give us," coleader
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Hans Hofer of Zurich says. "It turned out that we could fill it up
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completely with a detector the size of a four-story building." This
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is the octagon in the pit, a massive tube stuffed with electronics.
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Electrons and positrons will collide at its center; different
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detector parts will measure different particles flying outward from
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the violence.
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"I hope," Becker says drily, "that Mr. Higgs is pleased by how much
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trouble we have gone to in trying to find his little particle." His
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train of thought is interrupted by the screech of a million
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fingernails being dragged across a million blackboards as CERN
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workers drag a 20-foot-high metal rack across the concrete floor.
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"You know," Becker shouts over the noise "nobody sees Higgs! He
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Page 6
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just sits up there in Edinburgh! My graduate students come to me
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all the time, asking me 'Who is this man Higgs?' Does he really
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exist?"'
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On the wall behind Becker is a painting of an object vaguely
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resembling a Ferris wheel, It is the section of the detector to
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which Becker has devoted nearly ten years of his life; the completed
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structure is more than 30 feet in diameter, yet measures the
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trajectories of particles called muons to within a thousandth of a
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millimeter. Within the wheel is a lacework of laser lights, each
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centered on a photosensitive cell.
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Like an onion, Becker explains, the detector consists of layers of
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instruments, each intended to measure a specific type of particle.
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Each layer takes years of work, costs millions of dollars and
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requires delicate negotiations among the dozens of institutions and
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nations involved. Each brings unexpected benefits to industry: by
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giving one order to a company that made plastic whiskers for teddy
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bears, for example, L3 launched the firm into the fiber-optics
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business.
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As Becker speaks, fatigue informs his voice; he has accumulated a
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quarter of a million miles in air travel. There are shadows under
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his eyes and he often finds he needs to vent his frustrations by
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working on his car.
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"Nobody would choose to work this way, on projects so big," he says
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"But we have to, if we're going to chase after something like the
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Higgs. And, obviously, we have to hope the people at Stanford don't
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get there ahead of us."
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Frustration and fury in a California lab
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A group of men and women gather, shirtsleeved and disheveled, early
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one June morning at a laboratory just south of San Francisco.
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Outside, the California sky is as blue as heaven; inside, the light
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is dim and migraine green. In a chair against the wall slumps a
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round-faced man with bags beneath his tired eyes: the Nobel
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Prizewinning physicist and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
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director, Burton Richter, who has designed the project on which they
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are working. He has staked the rest of his career, and those of
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everyone else in the room, on its completion.
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Richter, as it happens, shared his Nobel with Sam Ting in 1976 for
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their separate but simultaneous discovery of yet another subatomic
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particle, the J or Psi (SMITHSONIAN, July' 1975).
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Silent as stone, Richter watches as, one after another, his
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colleagues recount the small, infuriating problems of the day
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before. Blown electronics. Inappropriate settings. Cooling
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difficulties. Human error. The list goes on and on. The project
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is more than a year behind schedule, and Richter's fury is as
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palpable in the room as a heavy fog.
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"We're getting close," says Andrew Hutton, the tall, bearded
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Englishman acting as program deputy. "Close enough to proceed as if
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we were going to start for real."
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Page 7
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"Not as if," Richter says. His voice is quiet, but his vehemence is
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unmistakable. "We are starting. It is real. We can't wait anymore
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on this. From now on, if something goes wrong, work around it. You
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can't do science waiting for everything to work right. I want us to
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start taking data at 4 Em."
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Hutton smiles. "You heard the man," he says. "In eight hours,
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we'll try to make history."
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Like their rivals at CERN, the scientists at Stanford are working on
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a particle accelerator. Known as the SLAC Linear Collider (SLC),
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the device is as intricate and baffling as an Escher drawing.
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Richter, its designer, had a hand in the original design of the LEP
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When he discovered that the United States would not pay for such a
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gigantic machine, he tried to come up with a smaller device that
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would do the same work, and at a fraction of the cost of a circular
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collider. The linear collider is the result.
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Shaped somewhat like a two-mile-long tennis racket, it sends two
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pulses of particles - electrons and positrons - racing down the
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handle and around opposite sides of the head until they meet with
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soundless violence at the top.
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For most of the Journey, the particles move in a straight line and
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do not lose energy by giving off x rays as they are forced to turn.
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That means the machine can be much smaller, and hence more quickly
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and inexpensively built, than a conventional accelerator. Many
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physicists believe that the SLAC Linear Collider is a prototype for
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future machines.
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On the other hand, the two bunches of particles must collide on the
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first pass, instead of having many chances as they spin millions of
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times around a ring. The challenge is enormous: make two particle
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aggregations, each the thickness of a human hair, each traveling at
|
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a fraction less than the speed of light, smash together at the
|
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precise center of a detector.
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Although construction began after the LEP, the hope was to finish
|
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the Stanford accelerator more than a year sooner, giving physicists
|
|
there the first chance to find a Higgs. If all goes well, the
|
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machine's design will have been one of the most daring and
|
|
successful gambles in recent science, and physicists in the United
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|
States will have leapfrogged their friends and competitors in
|
|
Europe. If, that is, all goes well.
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"There is a bare chance we can find the Higgs first," says Patricia
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Burchat, a young experimentalist at Stanford. "Like them, we will
|
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make Zs, some of which will decay into Higgses. The question is
|
|
whether our machine will make enough Zs, and that, I'm afraid, is
|
|
not at all clear."
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"To get this project approved by the government," Richter says, "we
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cut the budget to the point where there was some doubt we would be
|
|
able to build the machine. It was a risk, but with the U.S. budget
|
|
deficit, it was the only way we could get the money."
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The result is a bricolage, new equipment attached to another
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accelerator that was built in the 1960s. The jumble of old and new
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Page 8
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systems is an engineer's nightmare: like an exotic sports car, it
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works fine on blocks in the garage, but develops new problems on the
|
|
road. The linear collider is now months behind, and every moment of
|
|
additional delay further cuts the Americans' chances of getting
|
|
there first.
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|
At 4 that afternoon, Richter appears at the main control center for
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|
the first test run. Ninety minutes later, he is forced to leave in
|
|
frustration: the machine is not working. With Richter gone, the
|
|
staff continues to work before the computer screens lining one end
|
|
of the long, dimly lighted room.
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|
The only sounds are the peeping of computer signals, the hush of air
|
|
conditioning and the occasional murmur of a dismayed voice. At a
|
|
chair in the center, Hutton marks the log. A Briton, he is one of
|
|
the relatively few scientists to work both in California and in
|
|
Switzerland.
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|
"We've done enough to show that the principle works," he says. "You
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|
can make the bunches collide, and the next generation of
|
|
accelerators will be based on this one. But the curious thing is
|
|
that a future triumph will not be enough to make the lab look good
|
|
today. For that, we need to get this machine functioning ahead of
|
|
our friends in Europe, and to get some physics done."
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Hutton laughs tiredly; he has been working for a long time without
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|
much sleep. "I must say that right now it would be really nice-
|
|
truly nice-if a Z turned up on the screen."
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|
|
They broke their hearts in San Francisco
|
|
|
|
A punishing heat wave blankets San Francisco Bay at the end of July,
|
|
forcing the region to ration water. Faced with record 100-degree
|
|
temperatures, the Stanford accelerator's components begin to
|
|
malfunction. Water pumps break down. Flow switches give up the
|
|
ghost. Microprocessors burn out. The 8 A.M. meetings become
|
|
sweaty litanies of disaster.
|
|
|
|
Five weeks after Richter ordered the machine to be turned on for
|
|
real, the laboratory has managed to accumulate a bare 21 hours of
|
|
data, Not a single Z has been seen. To make it worse, the Europeans
|
|
are ahead of schedule; in an initial test, their accelerator has
|
|
taken seven minutes to reach the goals scheduled to be achieved in
|
|
seven days.
|
|
|
|
Richter has taken to haunting the control room. His face looks, says
|
|
one friend, as if he were barely restraining himself from biting his
|
|
fingernails. More and more, it is apparent that the jury-rigged
|
|
machine was built too quickly and too cheaply. Richter is spending
|
|
much time huddling with scientists like Martin Breidenbach, the
|
|
wiry, intense leader of the principal experiment.
|
|
|
|
Weeks before, Breidenbach had been happily splayed on his back,
|
|
wrench in hand, beneath the team's detector; now he is being drawn
|
|
to the accelerator itself, for without the machine there will be no
|
|
particles to detect, no discoveries to make.
|
|
|
|
Back in his office at CERN, Sam Ting tells the delegation from the
|
|
Soviet Union "I don't know what your rules are. I don't even care.
|
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|
Page 9
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What I am saying is this: when the announcement of a discovery is
|
|
made, the people on the podium are the ones who get the credit. If
|
|
you want your scientists to get the credit they deserve, you will
|
|
have to change your policies about not letting them work outside the
|
|
Soviet Union. Obviously, the choice is up to you, not me." He
|
|
smiles. "I am just a scientist, a lone professor at MIT".
|
|
|
|
For the first time in the meeting, the Soviets laugh. Whatever they
|
|
think of their rules, experience has taught them that they are not
|
|
dealing with lone professors at MIT. The face of physics has
|
|
changed and research is now performed by huge collaborations, run by
|
|
men with fierce and powerful wills. Richter, at Stanford, is one;
|
|
Ting, at CERN, is another.
|
|
|
|
A moment later Ting says, "Nobody has spent all this time and money
|
|
on these projects to do ordinary physics. I will consider this
|
|
experiment to be an utter failure if someone finds the Higgs before
|
|
we do or if we make a technical mistake that prevents us from making
|
|
a major discovery." Tapping the symbol for the Higgs boson that he
|
|
has written on the blackboard, Ting repeats the words slowly. "A .
|
|
. . major discovery."
|
|
|
|
As the new year begins, tensions are running high at both CERN and
|
|
Stanford. The California team is still testing, but hoped to have
|
|
the machine on-line as early as March.
|
|
|
|
In Geneva, physicists have finished installing the components of
|
|
their massive detector, are hoping to begin testing in late winter
|
|
or early spring, and plan to have the machine up and running by
|
|
fall.
|
|
|
|
In Scotland, serenity reigns. Sitting in his small office at the
|
|
University of Edinburgh, Peter Higgs listens to the details of the
|
|
gargantuan effort to find the particle whose existence he
|
|
hypothesized so many years ago. "Of course I'm flattered by it
|
|
all," he says. Afternoon light comes in the window, the same light
|
|
that is filling the rolling hills outside with the colors of
|
|
sunset"Of course I like it when they give seminars on the search for
|
|
the Higgs and so on. And of course I think it's important to look
|
|
for. But-you want to know the truth -, When I consider the huge
|
|
sums going for this, the lifetimes spent on the search, I can't help
|
|
but think: 'Good heavens, what have I done?"'
|
|
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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If you have comments or other information relating to such topics
|
|
as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the
|
|
Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page.
|
|
Thank you for your consideration, interest and support.
|
|
|
|
Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
|
|
Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
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If we can be of service, you may contact
|
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Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346
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