BACK WITH A BANG----- The Large Hadron Collider could change cosmology Business Standard / New Delhi April 04, 2010, 0:05 IST Physics, to borrow a phrase from Rumsfeld has “known unknowns” as well as “unknown unknowns”. Established theories like the Standard Model predict the existence of undiscovered particles like the Higgs Boson. There is also the dark matter problem — a major discrepancy between the amount of matter that should be in the universe and what has been observed. Many unknowns originate at the instant of creation itself. The Big Bang itself is shrouded in mystery. Before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was up and running, it was impossible to recreate the initial conditions at the time of, and immediately, after the Big Bang. The LHC can recreate some of those conditions. The 28-km sized artefact smashes particles together at 99 per cent of light speeds in temperatures near absolute zero. These collisions release titanic energies. Some of that energy is transformed into particles, which are rapidly transformed back into energy again. By observing those collisions through six specialised detectors, scientists can test existing theories and develop new insights. After being out of commission for more than a year, the LHC relaunched operations last Tuesday. It is scheduled to run continuously for the next 18-24 months. The restart was at half-power but it has already set new records by generating collision energies of 7 Tera Electron-Volts. At full power, the LHC will generate 14 TEV or more, with hundreds of millions of collisions per second. The energy released could create particles that have not existed since instants after the Big Bang. It may be possible to detect the Higgs Boson, an elusive creature postulated to impart mass to everything. The theory of super-symmetry suggests that an entire class of new super-symmetric particles (“sparticles”) could be found, thus explaining the paradox of dark matter. Even more speculatively, string theory suggests the existence of spatial dimensions beyond the familiar three. The LHC may be powerful enough to kick matter into those, if they exist. Also, microscopic black holes may be formed but these would only last moments before being dissipated. One good thing about the long hiatus was that it allowed time for doomsday theories of black holes swallowing the earth to be raised, digested and dismissed. A German court threw out an appeal for a stay order against the LHC. Oddly, for pure science, it has captured popular imagination. A TV serial, several science fiction stories, a Dan Brown thriller and a popular rap number (composed by a CERN employee) are centred on the LHC. CERN has even contributed with regular chatty updates about the science and the fiction. In the first three and a half hours after its relaunch, the LHC generated enough data to keep academics busy for a month. Assuming it stays functional, it will stretch the boundaries of global computing power as it churns out 30 petabytes of data in the next two years. (1 petabyte =1.024 million gigabytes). The challenges of keeping it functional are almost as large as the engineering effort required to build the facility. The LHC will certainly make a large contribution to the sum of knowledge about known unknowns. But everyone of the 10,000-odd scientists collaborating in the experiment must be hoping fervently for a breakthrough into the realm of unknown unknowns. Some completely new unanticipated results could arise from the collisions and those could change current cosmology. =============================================================
WATER...WATER EVERWHERE ON MOON & MARS------------------- WASHINGTON: Ice deposits at least 6 feet thick can be found in some small craters on the Moon, researchers reported on Monday in one of two studies showing more evidence of water on the Moon and Mars. The second study suggested that ice has recently melted and re-frozen on Mars, widening some of the characteristic gullies on its surface. The studies add to the debate about how best to explore our solar system and the universe — with missions that include human crews, or experiments using robots and remote surveys. In one of the two studies released on Monday, Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and colleagues analyzed measurements from India's Chandrayaan spacecraft to find evidence of thick ice deposits in some permanently shaded craters on the Moon. "As the Moon has been bombarded with water-bearing objects such as comets and meteorites and implanted with solar wind hydrogen over geological time, some of this material must have made its way into these cold, dark areas," they wrote in Geophysical Research Letters. They measure something called circular polarization ratio to show either the surface there is unusually rough, or there are between 6 and 10 feet of ice there. The second study showed that 6-foot wide gully on Mars had become nearly 400 feet longer over two years. Dennis Reiss of the Institute for Planetology at Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat in Munster, Germany, and colleagues said the best explanation is the melting of small amounts of water ice. Photographs show dark patches in the gully, as well as some smaller, new channels, they reported in the same journal. It may get warm enough at the surface to melt water on Mars, they added. In September, several teams reported clear evidence of water, likely frozen, on the desert surfaces of both the Moon and Mars and researchers have also seen it snow on Mars. =============================================================
PLANETS' ODD MOVEMENT CHALLANGES SPACE THEORY----------------- AFP, Apr 14, 2010, 12.20is IST LONDON: A dominant theory about planets has been challenged by the discovery of nine worlds transiting distant stars, astronomers reported. The belief that planets always orbit their sun in the same direction, imitating the rotation of the star itself, has been turned upside down, they said. "This is a real bomb we are dropping into the field of exoplanets," said Geneva Observatory astronomer Amaury Triaud, referring to planets outside the Solar System. Their revolutionary notion is based on the discovery of nine exoplanets, which bring the tally of these phenomena to a grand 452. The big hypothesis about planets is that they coalesce from a disc of dust and gas orbiting a young star and move in the same direction of the star's own rotation. However, the team found that six of 27 exoplanets they sampled orbited in the opposite direction of their host star. ============================================================ Researchers shed light on birth of the first stars The formation of a star hinges on hydrogen atoms coming together to form hydrogen molecules. Provided by National Science Foundation, Arlington A computer-generated model showing what the first star looked like. Ralf Kaehler and Tom Abel [View Larger Image]July 8, 2010 Created in the first 3 minutes after the Big Bang, hydrogen and helium gave rise to all other elements in the universe; stars made this possible. Through nuclear fusion, stars generated elements such as carbon, oxygen, magnesium, and all the other raw materials necessary for making planets and, ultimately, life. But how did the first stars come to be? It all hinges on hydrogen atoms c ============================================================