Tiny Particles and CERN

 In the past, Red Baron blogged a couple of times about particle physics and his former place of work, CERN (here and here).

Recently, Karl Jakobs, professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Freiburg, gave a talk at the Museumsgesellschaft titled CERN and the Search for the Tiniest Building Blocks of Matter.

In the run-up to this lecture, some friends told me that the topic was too difficult for them and they would not come.

There are many reasons for their attitude. In my generation, many still boast that they didn't understand anything about physics at school. Others of my age are more knowledgeable. They had just gotten in physics class as far as Bohr's atomic model but hadn't been interested in the advances in physics since then.

So, the auditorium was less packed than at other lectures. Red Baron, on the other hand, got his fill. Leaning back in my chair, I let the slides of the standard model - Professor Jakobs said standard theory - pass in review.

In addition to particle physics, the lecturer presented the big CERN accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, and the four experimental facilities at the LHC. For many years, Professor Jakobs was the spokesperson for ATLAS, the largest experiment at the LHC.

Here are my thoughts instead of a lecture report (View Professor Jakob's slides): I love the Standard Theory and the Higgs Boson. I've blogged about those topics before (here and here). 

Following the discovery of the Higgs, physicists working at the big experiments at CERN are desperately searching beyond the Standard Theory for a "New Physics," which the theorists call for in ever-new mathematical approaches. 

Professor Jakobs confirmed: So far, nothing "beyond" has been found in the experiments at CERN, which, in my opinion, must lead to great frustrations among the experimental physicists. 

Professor Jacobs disagreed and said that the precise measurement of the Higgs particle could reveal discrepancies. Is there more than one Higgs particle? He showed the following graphics:

Over the last ten years, the precision of the Higgs particle mass (blue) has increased dramatically.

As one would expect, the strength of the interaction of the Higg is proportional
 to the mass of the particles from μ, the light muon, to t, the heavy top quark.
Click the graphic to enlarge.

Einstein's general theory of relativity encounters inconsistencies when applied in space.

The discrepancy between observed and measured rotation velocities of galaxies points to big masses beyond the optical limit. In addition to this dark matter, there must be dark energy to reconcile Einstein's theory with the measurements.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrass Tyson introduced me to dark matter and wrote about dark energy in his books. 

In the discussion following Prof. Jakobs' lecture, the wish arose to listen to an astrophysicist on the "dark topic." My spontaneous suggestion to fly in Neil deGrasse Tyson from New York to explain the subject was not very helpful. 

Not all young physicists working at CERN may stay in high-energy physics. Professor Jakobs gave an interesting breakdown of this.

According to the graphic, only 8% of physicists remain in high-energy physics. Still, 35% end up in Information Technology, although, in the meantime, IT established itself as an independent field of science. Employers prefer people with practical experience to those who have just graduated.

Red Baron remembers a discussion at CERN in the 1970s when the academic job market was somewhat limited. Regarding job opportunities, Director Mervin Hine emphasized that CERN physicists had no problem finding a job. He backed up his statement by saying, "A physicist can do anything," but added to his reassuring statement with fine British humor, "Almost." 

 Stephen Hawkins once wrote, "The great advances in physics have come from experiments that gave results we didn't expect." How true. These are the great moments in physics. 

Red Baron remembers it like yesterday, when in 1974, two physicists in the States, Burton Richter at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Samuel Chao Chung Ting at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, simultaneously discovered the J/ψ particle, a quark compound of charm and anti-charm nobody had been waiting for. 

The discovery was one of those magic moments in physics. It made theoretical physicists sweat in their attempts to explain the new particle. To make a long story short, The experimental discovery of the intermediate boson J/ψ opened up a whole new physics that eventually ended in today's Standard Theory.

Experimental physicists at CERN are looking forward to the coming upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider to higher intensities. At 13.7 GeV, the magnetic field of the LHC is pushed to its limit, having almost reached its design energy of 14 GeV. So, higher energies can only be achieved with a more giant accelerator.

Planning the Future Circular Collider (FCC) ©CERN
All other slides ©Prof. Jakobs

A machine with a circumference of up to 100 km is under study at CERN. Where to find the money?

China is going ahead with another project. Scientists at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing plan to build a "Higgs factory" by 2028 - a 52-kilometre underground ring that would smash electrons and positrons together.

Collisions of these fundamental particles would allow the Higgs boson to be studied with great precision. More Higgs are to come.

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