The Search for the God particle in Europe

Jack Dikian

December 2011

The Higgs Boson, nicknamed the God particle is the quantum of the theoretical Higgs field expected to have a non-zero vacuum expectation value thus, as the theory goes giving mass to every elementary particle that couples with the Higgs field, including the Higgs boson itself.

Experiments attempting to find the particle are currently being performed using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Now, CERN may have confirmed this theory. Scientists hunting for Higgs boson say they've found "intriguing hints" but not definitive proof that it exists, narrowing down the search and hope to reach a conclusion on whether the particle exists by next year. So if it does exist, it can help explain why there is mass in the universe.

It seems the data indicates the particle itself may have a mass of between roughly 114 and 130 billion electron volts. One billion electron volts is roughly the mass of a proton. The most likely mass of the Higgs boson is around 124 to 126 billion electron volts.

Many universe theory explains a lot of things

Jack Dikian

September 2011

Inflation theory is the theorized extremely rapid expansion of the early universe by a factor of at least 10^78 in volume. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10^36 seconds after the Big Bang to approximately 10^33 seconds. This is a mind-boggling small period of time. It’s 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000 of a second after the big bang.

There are a number of variants to inflation theory or inflation models. An interesting model is the eternal inflation, which says (roughly speaking) that shortly after the Big Bang space-time expanded at different rates in different regions of the early universe, giving rise to bubble universes (that may function with their own separate laws of physics.

Our universe might just be one of many. While the concept is bizarre, it's a possibility, according to scientists who have devised the first test to investigate the idea at Imperial College London. The basic premise of the study is to look for collisions between universes by examining tell tale signs left behind in the cosmic microwave background radiation. This is the diffuse (thermal radiation) light left over from the Big Bang and pervades our universe.

Researchers used data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) identifying four regions in the universe as promising candidates. However, statistical analyses suggested these patterns were likely to be random, resembling the circular shapes of collisions simply by coincidence. The European Space Agency's Planck satellite data set to be released in 2013, and the researchers plan to look again, surveying in particular the four areas of interest from this study.

A researcher from the University of British Columbia in Canada, agrees that the present data from WMAP is not likely to be precise enough to make a definitive statement, also excited by what the more detailed data from the Planck satellite might revel.

The obvious benefit that a multi-verse theory provides is an explanation for the strange coincidences in our own universe. Many of the fundamental constants such as the strength of gravity and the speed of light, seem perfectly calibrated to produce a universe in which galaxies, stars, planets and even life can form.

The scientists detailed their study in two research papers published recently in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D.

We are living but on a spec of dust looking out into the darkness

Jack Dikian

September 2011

The more I think about just how much we have been able to infer about the universe we live in the more amazing it all seems. I mean, here we are living on an unassuming rock orbiting a star near the outskirts of a galaxy. Our galaxy is estimated to contain 200 to 400 billion stars. Current estimates guess that there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the Universe. The universe is vast and we are living but on a spec of dust looking out into the darkness, looking back in time, and trying to make sense of it all.

The WMAP Explorer mission that launched June 2001 to make fundamental measurements of cosmology is analogies to a trapdoor spider coming out of its silk-lined burrow to examine the perimeter surrounding its burrow before it goes back inside to think about how might other terrains be like, what kind of soils, how small puddles of water be compared to vast oceans, and so on and so forth.

But, that’s exactly what the WMAP has been able to achieve. It has been able to study the properties of our universe as a whole. WMAP has been stunningly successful too, producing our new Standard Model of Cosmology. The 7-year data provide compelling evidence that the large-scale fluctuations are slightly more intense than the small-scale ones, a subtle prediction of many inflation models.

One of the problems the Big Bang theory was not able to explain is the horizon problem. Distant regions of space in opposite directions of the sky are so far apart that, assuming standard Big Bang expansion, they could never have been in causal contact with each other. This light travel time between them exceeds the age of the universe. Yet the uniformity of the cosmic microwave background temperature tells us that these regions must have been in contact with each other in the past.

The Inflation Theory, developed by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Paul Steinhardt, and Andy Albrecht, offer a solution to this and several other open questions in cosmology. Inflation supposes a burst of exponential expansion in the early universe, assuming distant regions of the universe were actually much closer together prior to Inflation than they would have been with only standard Big Bang expansion. Thus, such regions could have been in causal contact prior to Inflation and could have attained a uniform temperature.

Other reading

Alan H. Guth & Paul J.Steinhardt, "The Inflationary Universe", Scientific American, May 1984.

Andrei Linde, "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe", Scientific American, November 1994.

Scott Watson, "An Exposition on Inflationary Cosmology", WWWarticle, 2000.

Alan H. Guth, "The Inflationary Universe : The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins", 1998.

First Light, God's handiwork in Creation and the Big Bang

Jack Dikian

July 2011

Ever since I was a young boy I’ve been fascinated by the biblical statement "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3). I still remember the curiosity and what must have been a child's wide eye - learning the scripture at school and church.

Much later I became interested in cosmology theory, Big Bangs, string landscapes and all the time holding on to my earlier notions of a first dawn, a first light.

Much has been written (speculated rather) about how the universe might have unfolded a few seconds after the big bang. Consider the Planck epoch (up to 10–43 seconds after the Big Bang) dealing with an unimaginably small period of time after the big bang where, perhaps, forces as we know them today might have been indistinguishable (viz a viz unification). Or consider the Inflationary epoch, a period between 10–36 seconds and 10–32 seconds after the Big Bang where it’s thought the universe went through rapid expansion and provided for the early seeds of structure to be laid down.

It isn’t until the Photon epoch however (between 10 seconds and 380,000 years after the Big Bang) when neutral atoms begin to form and the universe begins to became transparent to visible light.

First Light

So the early universe was dense, hot, and shared little resemblance to what we have today. Photons would be reflected and scattered randomly in a largely "opaque" universe. As the universe continues to cool over the first 380,000 years or so, electrons and nuclei began to form atoms and photons are no longer strongly interacting with stable atoms. At this point photons begin to travel through the universe more freely as the universe became transparent to light, and so there is light.

Interestingly, these photons are still traveling today and can be detected as the "cosmic microwave background radiation”. Almost 1% of the static we notice on our television screens when we are switching between channels (all those in-between channels) is remarkably the noise of the early universe - the after glow.

Black Holes Older Than The Universe

Jack Dikian

May 2011

According to the work by Professor Bernard Carr from Queen Mary University in London and Professor Alan Coley from Canada's Dalhousie University published on the pre-press website arXiv.org, some black holes may be primordial. That is some black holes bounce between a contracting and expanding universes.

Coley and Carr speculate that primordial black holes could survive as separate entities and from a previous epoch (assuming of course that a bounce occurs at all and survives singularities).

According to general relativity, the initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, was a singularity - a point in space-time at which the space-time curvature becomes infinite and much of the physics we know breaks down.

Even with the success of quantum mechanics we don't have a good theory of quantum gravity.

Still, such a speculation, as well as pushing the boundaries of our current theories, bounces in the universe may also allow for differences in the fundamental constants of nature such as (say) the speed of light.

Are we smart enough

Jack Dikian

February 2011

Last night I was invited to dinner at my close friends and neighbors – towards the end of the night we got onto a conversation topic that’s always near to my heart; the lofty subject concerning the universe. Its size, structure, complexity, age, origin and not least what seems like the insignificance of our lives in the vastness of even the known universe.

Not only is the universe vast, there are billions and billions of stars and planets with the almost infinite of mysteries that may lie within each star system waiting to be uncovered. Our knowledge, of course, is still in its primordial stages. In an infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities and the idea of god might not be so unlikely.

We may be seeing the universe as it is because otherwise we wouldn't be here to see it, we wouldn't exist. Some claim there are many universes and because their sub-atomic particles are slightly different than ours they do not support life.

Some theories propose that the universe is best explained in 11 dimensions, and there could be another entire universe less than a millimeter away from us….and us being oblivious to it. But it may be more than that, it’s entirely possible that we, living in the restricted dimensions of space and time are beyond understanding the workings of the universe.

In the same way fish may be barely be aware of the medium in which they live and swim, so the microstructure of empty space could be far too complex for our unaided human brains." It's as if a fish is swimming in one pond, completely unaware that thousands of other ponds exist mere meters away from it.

Understanding that those ponds even exist, let alone understanding their connection to the original pond, is understandably beyond the comprehension of a single fish.

We similarly, attempt to make meaning and develop constructs such a unifying theory to describe how the universe works, idea of multiple parallel universes, human consciousness and the very idea of reality – we as fish may well find that the universe be simply beyond our understanding.

A second universe

Jack Dikian

January 2011

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (whilst not a household name) is considered by many to be the greatest British theorist since Sir Isaac Newton. All the great minds that pioneered atomic physics were left trailing by Dirac. When Einstein read a paper by the young Dirac, he said, I have trouble with Dirac – "this balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful..".

In 1925, for reasons only known to himself, he set out to unite the two most difficult and counter-initiative ideas in history – Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity (where as a fall out, objects behave differently as they travel at speeds approaching the speed of light). It must be remembered that by the late 1920’s quantum mechanics was consistently producing erroneous results for calculations describing electrons as they traveled at high speed.

As well as this, Dirac had an additional aim. Dirac had a much more esoteric motivation. He was once quoted of saying “a physical theory must have mathematical beauty”. For him, the fact that quantum mechanics and relativity weren’t reconciled was more that just an inconvenience – it was ugly.

Around 1925 he put his extra ordinary mind on the problem of bringing together the two new ideas of twentieth century physics. It is said that he worked on this problem alone for some three years before in 1928 he honed in on one mathematical formulation – an entirely new description of what goes on within the atom. Dirac knew it was right partly because it had mathematical beauty (see equation above).

As far as human achievements go it up there with Shakespeare's greatest works (something which by the way a very dear friend constantly reminds me of) and the Origin of the Species. Dirac’s equation describes how reality works at the fundamental level.

But, incredibly when Dirac looked at his own equation he noticed something that can only be said to be shocking. He later said, his equation [knew] more than he did.

In essence his equation was telling him that there is another universe that we had never noticed before. That’s because instead of his equation having one answer, it has two. The first describes the universe we know…the second describes a kind of mirror image to our universe made of atoms whose properties are reversed. As well as matter, Dirac’s equation predicts the existence of antimatter.

Dirac seems to be saying that for every piece of matter in our known universe, there can exist a corresponding piece of antimatter. Just like a world in a mirror a universe made of antimatter would look and work just like ours.

Atoms In The Known Universe

Jack Dikian

March 2010

The universe as we know it is made up of 91 naturally occurring elements. As of October 2006, we know of 117 elements in total. Some, like silver, gold, and iron have been known for thousands of years. Others, such as darmstadtium and ununquadium have only recently been created synthetically.

Also, we can know approximate the number of atoms in the known universe. This number is:

1,

000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000

Download full article here