Remaking the birth of the universe

(Image retrieved from http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.htm

The Machine you see in the above picture worth about 6 billion US dollars and it is the most sophisticated experimental equipment so far. The picture show only a fraction of the whole LHC and the circumference of this huge machine is 27 km.  LHC is located near Geneva in Switzerland. It is built by CERN(European organisation for nuclear research) yet it’s the final product of more than 10000 scientists and engineers around the world. It is truly    a triumph in human history as well as science. I’m going to share some interesting facts that I found on web about this magnificent machine and at the end of the article there is a link to a BBC documentary on this machine and the links to the web sites I’ve taken these information.

LHC is a particle accelerator. The main objective of the  LHC is to discover new particles and understand the sub atomic world and it’s behaviour. One of the major achievement of LHC was the discovery of a particle called Higgs Boson that was predicted by the standard model. (Standard model is something like the periodic table of particle physics which categories and describes the elementary particles.)The discovery of the particle was announced in July 2012.It was like the holy grail of particle physics and physicist Peter Higgs theorized and predicated the existence of the particle. Some call this particle “The God particle” since physicists use this particle to explain how other particles got their mass by using something called Higgs mechanism. LHC was able to discover  this particle first and it was one of it’s main objective. Studying the structure of space and time, other elementary particles and the interrelationship of general relativity and quantum mechanics were some other objectives.

LHC Detectors

(An image of a collision, Scientists do analysis on these in order to study particles)   

 One of the main component of the LHC is it’s four main detectors. They are used to collect data from the collisions that occur by smashing two protons  almost at the speed of  light. Two of the main detectors (ATLAS and CMS) are general purpose detectors and other two detectors (ALICE and LHCb) got some specific tasks to carry on.

Detector	Tasks
ATLAS	General purpose detector. it’s being used to study the origin of mass and study of extra dimensions.
CMS	General purpose detector. It’s being used to detect Higgs and study the nature of dark matter.
ALICE	Special purpose detector. ALICE is studying a "fluid" form of matter called  quark–gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang.
LHCb	Equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the "missing" antimatter.

 Analysing Data

The detectors in LHC produce huge amount of data that needed to be analysed in order to extract what they want. So there is a huge computer grid called  The LHC computer grid consisting of 140 computer centres spread through 35 countries.LHC generally produce about 25 petabytes per year and this consume lot of computing power from this grid.LHC computing grid became the largest computing grid as in 2012.

Some interesting facts about LHC

 

• ·         The LHC has 920 magnets which are run by super conductors. Their temperature while in operation is -271.3C

• ·         The protons that are used are accelerated up to 99.999% of the speed of light.

• ·         Inside the LHC there is a vacuum as almost empty as outer space. It’s there to stop the high energy particles getting hit by air molecules and loose their energy.

• ·         The collisions of photons create temperatures 100000 times hotter than the surface of the sun for a fractions of a second.

• ·         More than 10000 scientists and engineers work on LHC who represent more than 60 countries in the world.

Does LHC really worth it’s price?

As I mentioned earlier ,this experiment’s initial cost was 6 billion US dollars. So we can have some idea about how much costs actually. So I believe that people have a right to question the feasibility of this project in return to human race. In my opinion every experiment is worthy because it never ends with a null results. it may help us to prove  some idea, hypothesis is correct ,or it may turn upside down the hypothesis we tried to check and show us something we never expected. It’s the nature of experiments and it keeps science progressing. As we all know LHC was able to discover the Higgs Boson and it proved it’s existence. In future it may be able to answer some of the fundamental questions about our nature and these discoveries will lead us to discover more useful things.

Some may ask can  we expect  something that is really useful to all humans, not just for scientists, multinational companies or military. It’s too early to tell something for sure but LHC is currently conducting experiments on anti matter and those scientists will be able to understand  and manipulate it  this discovery could revolutionize the energy sector of our civilization by providing unlimited supply of pure energy. we should not be too optimistic about these possibilities because in early 20 century if somebody said that we can  harness energy from by exploding atoms or combining them, society will consider him or her as an daydreamer. There are major problems like poverty, war and conflicts, global warming that our world facing right now and we have to solve them as quick as possible but if we are intending to overcome them by cutting funds or terminating the projects like LHC it’s not the correct way and the results could be much worse.

Future of LHC 

LHC is the biggest and the most powerful particle accelerator we have today. but it’s not strong enough to give more details about the sub atomic world. It would require much powerful machine. It’s a bit funny that we need largest and strongest apparatus to look into the smallest constituents of reality. So scientists are now getting ready to build the predecessor of LHC,VLHC(very large hadron collider).it’s just a bigger version of the LHC but scientists speculate that it would show the atomic world in much more detail. This machine would be 4 times larger than LHC and scientists are hoping to finish this giant before they retire LHC in 2035.Expected collision energy is 100 Tev and the estimated building cost is around 10 billion US dollars. VLHC is just a proposal so far but we can expect that it will become true within our life time and it will help us to understand and appreciate the universe we live in.

BBC documentary on LHC     

          

References

·         http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/176969-searching-for-supersymmetry-work-begins-on-large-hadron-colliders-60-mile-long-successor

·         http://home.web.cern.ch/topics/large-hadron-collider

Paradoxes and us(part 2)

Here are the next 3 paradoxes I have mentioned in my previous post.If you didn't read it please do it before you continue.

   4. Infinity hotel paradox

Infinity is full of paradoxes and could drive a man to madness!!Infinity is one of the most philosophical idea among  other similar ideas and it’s clearly integrated with our view of the universe. This idea is used in almost every science and philosophy yet it’s one of the hardest concept to grasp. I think mathematics(and physics) are the  only subjects that were able to surrender this mysterious entity and it has become an essential concept when we do maths or physics.

When I think about this paradox ,the only thing I have trouble to understand is that  how can a hotel with infinity  rooms can be filled? Other arguments that build upon this could be true, at least I think it has to be true but this rooms filled with infinity number of guests are really gives me a headache. but the arguments that are based on this is really mind blowing and put our imagination to it’s limits. If you are really interested in infinity try this BBC documentary(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtMwAUaftSU) about the concept of infinity.(warning: this documentary may cause you dizziness or headaches JJ.)

I believe that Infinity is a concept that never be understood by  finite minds like  us and it’s an evidence of our ignorance no matter how smart we are. If you think you are smart, just try to understand how can there  be different sizes of infinities when each one is infinite. It is really deserves to be called as the king of all paradoxes.

5.The twin paradox

The twin paradox is a good example of discovering of some useful knowledge using paradoxes. Paradoxes are normally dead ends but this has given us more clear view of the true nature time and space. Even though it’s obvious that the rate of the  time flow differs from  observer to another yet it’s very hard to starting to believe this idea because we can’t this effect in our day to day chores. It’s the cleverness of Einstein to come to such a controversial conclusion just using his theories and logics while I’m sure even himself was amazed of what he has discovered. according to Einstein ,speed is not the only one that effects the rate of time flow, gravity effects time. Scientists did experiments and proved that time slows down near to a gravitational field and they take this effect into account when they design space journeys. This time dilation concept once again arouse the potentiality of time travel but no one knows how it happens.(Einstein’s theories do not reject time travel and his theories consider time as another dimension just like other 3 and there is nothing that stopping us travelling along that dimension.)

6. Schrodinger’s Cat

This is one of the first paradox I came across when I was at school and I had no idea even after I read the article about this several times. You also shouldn’t shame of yourselves if you couldn’t understand or give an explanation to this unusual phenomena because even the pioneers of quantum physics don’t have any explanation what’s going on.Once the famous scientist and the father of quantum physics Neil Bhor said” Anyone who says that he has understood quantum mechanics has not understood it.”It shows that incomplete understanding is a part of quantum mechanics .  although scientists can use quantum mechanics in their tasks in a very good manner nobody can’t give an satisfactory interpretation why sub atomic world and it’s members behave very strangely .It’s the real mystery here. The origin of this paradox is the famous and most fascinating experiment (according to meJ) double slit experiment which demonstrates the particle-Wave duality. In very small scale the world/things we know become very weird and our language(and our way of thinking) is very inefficient to explain these phenomena. The cat experiment is also something like that although it helps to get some idea about what’s going on it’s not completely capable of illustrating the true nature of nature.

Schrodinger’s thought experiment shows us something strange .If classical entities (like cats, humans, rocks etc..) can be at superposition what does it really implies? someone like Einstein would say it’s not possible at all. A quantum physicist will say although classical objects may act like particles it’s irrelevant or negligible in our world but some scientists might say a very strange thing. This duality is caused by parallel universe. It may sound like crazy but I think it’s no more crazier than saying the cat is both dead and live same time.The interpretation for this thought experiment from that parallel universe team is the experiment creates two universes that in one the cat is dead and in the other it is alive .we only can’t observe both only the one that happens in our reality. But I think this idea is conflicting the basic idea of pure randomness in quantum physics. Anyway, If you are interested in these ideas I mentioned above try this BBC documentary BBC documentary(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ds47ozzSrU) about the nature of reality .          

         

 

Paradoxes and us

                                 

Humans don’t like paradoxes .They make us uncomfortable and doubt about the knowledge we create , but paradoxes have been among us since people began to think about and make theories about our nature and universe. Some scientist like Albert Einstein believed that it’s a misunderstanding of nature but in the other hand his colleagues like Neil Bhor believed it’s a part of the nature. I think there is no single field that doesn’t have paradoxes in its domain and actually sometimes these mysterious entities help us to think more deeply and outside of the box and discover more fascinating and useful knowledge.

I found this very interesting video on YouTube and it tells us about some of the famous paradoxes in physics, maths and computer science in very interesting manner. (I couldn’t stop laughing when I watch this video because of the way the speaker presents these ideas.)so please have a look at the following video before continuing .(I guarantee you will enjoy this very much.)

1.Zeno’s paradox

Zeno’s paradox could be one of the oldest among its kind, yet it’s still very fascinating to think about the distance problem like Zeno. I always get amazed when I realized that there are infinitely many natural numbers between just 0 and 1.although we can clearly see definite length yet that space can be divided into infinitely many constituents. It’s very hard to grasp but it is what it is!!!.there are quite number of instances that we can see where one of the property of an object becomes infinite while other one remains finite.(I know only  few  which I came across in maths and physics.)

·         In Gabriel’s horn the volume of the horn reaches to a limit  while it’s surface area became a infinite value .(if u solve the integrations below you will be able see this to your self.)

( Image retrieved from http://www.rhurrell.com/gabriel.html )

·         In mathematics there is a fractal called “Koch Snowflake” which first discovered by Helge Von Koch .The speciality of this fractal is that it has an infinite length but a finite surface area.

These are some of my favourite things in this subject and I think these concepts challenge our common sense every time we stare at them.These things make us very uncomfortable about thinking them.How can be a volume of an object is finite while it's surface area is not.The easiest answer to this would be simply they are purely mathematical objects but even still it's very hard for us to believe it.

2.The grandfather paradox

                Every time i hear this story the first thing that comes to my mind is what happens if the time traveller goes back in time and killed the very first human beings on earth.if the grandfather paradox is true, then all the human race should wipe out from earth but there is another possibility that it might be a beginning of a new history,an alternative one. still no one has no idea what might true but I would like to go with the second possibility more than 1^st one. I’m a believer in the parallel universe or rather alternative realities idea (this is my personal opinion only) and in this paradoxes are  not  mind boggling ideas but a normal phenomena. In brief, parallel universe idea says that every time we make a choice a new reality will occur that slightly different from our one.So there is no effect  from what we change in our current timeline. So no matter how much time you travel back in time and kill your ancestors, you will exist and some other reality you will not. As well as this We all have instances  in our lives that we want to change but don’t worry somewhere in this space-time some other form of yourself is going to make that choice live with that. So be happy at least someone like you had made that decision that you couldn’t .I’ll talk more about this in the last section.  

3.The Chinese room

Well this is the first instance I’ve heard of this paradox and it seems it’s rather unfair to think that machines can’t be intelligence just because they can’t speak a language besides I don’t see any reason to categorize this idea as a paradox. It’s just an opinion of some person.

Personally I believe that artificial intelligence isn’t a science fiction. even today some machines (or softwares )are able to behave like human beings ,that are similar to thinking or rather logical reasoning. But the intelligence we expecting from AI machines are much much complex and diverse than just logical reasoning. As humans we use both logical reasoning and just our instinct for our survival  and it’s obvious that logical reasoning is very helpful when the number of unknowns(or variables)are few and clearly visible but most of the time it’s our natural instinct or rather illogical approach to a problem helps us to solve our problems where the number of unknowns are very large or hidden from us.   It’s something that even humans don’t fully understand the mechanism behind it. So how can we give this gift to robots ?When we think about the intelligence  the next most important thing is conciseness that humans have about themselves as well as the world around them. I think this is the hardest part of AI engineering as we have very little knowledge it’s nature and the difficulty to model these using the knowledge we have. So even if we are long way from creating the next intelligent being on earth I hope there will be an end to this road. I have to say this topic is very interesting one and sometimes it seems more philosophical than scientific.  

I'll tell more about the other 3 paradoxes in my next post.Please feel free to let me know your ideas by comments.