Smash! The Search for 'Sparticles'

[TechBear_Seattle]

Smash! The Search for 'Sparticles'

Squarks, photinos, selectrons, neutralinos. These are just a few types of supersymmetric particles, a special brand of particle that may be created when the world's most powerful atom smasher goes online this spring.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at a particle physics lab called the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, will very likely change our understanding of the universe forever. The 17-mile-long underground particle accelerator will send protons flying around its circular track until they smash into each other going faster than 99 percent of the speed of light. When the particles impact, they will unleash energies similar to those in the universe shortly after the Big Bang, the theoretical beginning of time.

Scientists don't know exactly what to expect from the LHC, but they anticipate its energetic collisions will create exotic particles that physicists have so far only dreamed of.

Many researchers are hoping to see supersymmetric particles, called sparticles for short. Sparticles are predicted by supersymmetry theory, which posits that for every particle we know of, there is a sister particle that we have not yet discovered. For example, the superpartner to the electron is the selectron, the partner to the quark is the squark and the partner to the photon is the photino.

The article continues at http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080128/sc_space/smashthesearchforsparticles

[Ken Burch]

1. Oh....for a second therer I thought you said "The Search for Spartacus"

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. That was my first thought, too

But as usual, truth is stranger than fiction. :hi:

[MikeNearMcChord]

3. Dr. Leonidas upon photographing the articles

yelled excitedly to the press
THIS IS SPARTICLES!!!


forgive me, but I jus had to.:evilgrin:

[mainegreen]

9. We were all thinking it.

:rofl:

[Botany]

4. Once again this "high end" science is being done over seas.

I wonder how American Idol will do this year?

[TechBear_Seattle]

5. The United States has had its share of successes

Until LHC is fully operational, Fermilab's Tevatron near Chicago is the largest high-energy accelerator in the world. In 1995, the Tevatron proved the existence of the top quark. Of course, Fermilab has always been underbudgeted (and it has gotten far worse under Bush.)

[MikeNearMcChord]

6. Then there is SLAC outside of Palo Alto, Ca

Operated by Stanford, and the Department of Energy, IIRC.

[TechBear_Seattle]

8. My grandfather helped to build SLAC

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

He was one of the engineers who designed the cooling system, and got me in for a "behind the scenes" tour many years ago. I actually got to touch the magnets used to speed up the particles and marvel in person at the target chambers. Did you know that the accelerator is so straight that the builders had to account for the curvature of the earth over the accelerator's two mile length?

My grandfather is why I'm such a science geek today. :hi:

[Botany]

7. Failure to see how pure science makes any country better is a crime.

My SIL works for NASA and W's "trip to mars," really has screwed up
that organization.

bush idea

fly to the moon and build a base there

build a space ship @ our moon base

fly the space ship from the moon to mars

land on mars

blast off of mars and fly back to the moon

from the moon go back to the earth

******************************

I once asked a group of NASA people what would we use as fuel for our space ship
and how do we get it to the moon .... they all started laughing and poured me some
more wine and said "that is a problem."