Exploring Space: a Big Leap for Humankind

On July 20, 1969, the United States’ Apollo carrying 3 astronauts landed on the moon. Armstrong who is the first man to ever put foot on a mass outside the earth famously stated that his first step was a huge leap for mankind. While history will forever celebrate this day (and talk has advanced of shipping man to Mars despite astronomical costs and risks), much more progress to human knowledge has been achieved by satellite missions (Hubble Space Telescope, Viking, Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cassini-Huygens, Mars rovers, WMAP, Voyager). Basically these machines, perhaps not as popular as Mr. Armstrong, have provided so much insights about our universe to revolutionize our understanding of it and its origins. While politicians may want to capture the public’s imagination of landing on Mars, it will be useful to remember that dollars spent on (man-less) missions have yielded much more return on investment than any huge spending on a single landing mission ever will. However just like basic economics, politicians seem unable to grasp the basics of how science progress is made: usually in small patient steps rather than with big splashing leaps.

Flaring snapshots from the sun

While on earth the economic crisis is all the talk, the Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm (may the repercussions of the subprime mess be felt all the over out Milky way galaxy?). It is easy to forget, when dealing with our petty earthly problems, how amazing are the natural forces that shape our life and make our existence possible. Without that beautiful shining star burning at a safe distance, we would not be here. In this times of high anxiety, we also hesitate to state that it is highly doubtful that any government program will save life on earth once the sun will finish burning energy (in about 5 billion years), shining upon our blissful existance. (Learn more about the sun at wikipedia )

Collisions to Unveil the Laws of Nature

Today at Geneva’s CERN the world largest physics machine became operational. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a gigantic scientific instrument, is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding of the Universe. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding two beams of subatomic particles (called ‘hadrons’ – either protons or lead ions)  head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions to create new theories to improve the Standard Model of particle physics that it is the basis of our understanding the fundamental laws of Nature. Key questions that the LHC may help to answer:

1) What is the origin of mass? Could it be the Higgs boson particle?

2) What is 96% of the universe made of? Everything we see in the Universe, from an ant to a galaxy, is made up of ordinary particles. These are collectively referred to as matter, forming 4% of the Universe. Is the remaining 96% made up of Dark matter and dark energy ?

3) Everything in the Universe, including ourselves, is made of matter. Antimatter is like a twin version of matter, but with opposite electric charge. At the birth of the Universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced in the Big Bang. But when matter and antimatter particles meet, they annihilate each other, transforming into energy. Somehow, a tiny fraction of matter must have survived to form the Universe we live in today, with hardly any antimatter left. Why does Nature appear to have this bias for matter over antimatter?

4)  What was matter like within the first second of the Universe’s life? Today, the ordinary matter of the Universe is made of atoms but in the very early Universe conditions would have been too hot and energetic for the gluons to hold the quarks together. Could during the first microseconds after the Big Bang the Universe contain a very hot and dense mixture of quarks and gluons called quark–gluon plasma?

5) Do extra dimensions of space really exist? Einstein showed that the three dimensions of space are related to time. Subsequent theories propose that further hidden dimensions of space may exist; for example, string theory implies that there are additional spatial dimensions yet to be observed. These may become detectable at very high energies, so data from all the detectors will be carefully analysed to look for signs of extra dimensions.