Mass | ||||
The mystery of matter | Automatic translation | Updated June 01, 2011 | ||
It is the cosmic dark age, that the matter has appeared. Before the Big Bang, there is 13.7 billion years there was nothing, no space, time either, it was nothing. The WMAP telescope shows us here against an image of the universe, some 380 000 years after the Big Bang, but we're still not able to attend the birth. Between 0 and 400 million years, the Universe is so dense that light can not escape. This period will always remain invisible. To get closer to the birth of the universe, we are forced to go across time and space on the side of the infinitely small. It is in the Large Hadron Collider (CERN) scientists that want to see what nature hides from us. This machine to reproduce the Big Bang, centralizes all hopes of particle physicists. In this machine, protons are accelerated to the speed of light to 800 million collisions per second are generated to analyze the interactions. The LHC could lead to unexpected phenomena such as generation of parallel dimensions. String theory predicts the existence of extra dimensions beyond the three spatial dimensions we know. Physicists hope with this machine, find the explanation at all. The world today is too complex to be understood but by going back to the origins of the universe, everything found there is a simple structure consisting of few particles and few strengths. From here you can understand how the universe has reached up to more complex matter. | Since the discovery of the first particles of matter by Leon Lederman, physicists have classified the material through a multitude of particles. The energy and mass are related in the matter. | Image: Analyzes images of the WMAP telescope on the observable Universe, indicate that old of 13.7 billion years (with an accuracy of 1%). It is composed of 73% dark energy, 23% of cold dark matter, and only 4% of atoms, i.e. of material. Our universe is currently expanding at a rate of 71 km/s / Mpc (with an accuracy of 5%), it rose by episodes of rapid expansion called inflation and grow forever. Credit: WMAP Science Team, NASA | ||
What is mass? | ||||
Without mass particles moving at the speed of light and the universe would be only radiation, there would be nothing solid. If the material can agglomerate is due to the mass. Why is this substance that constitutes us, is it matter, why is it strong, why has it mass? | The hypothetical Higgs field is currently the missing piece of the standard model, it explains the existence of a world of solid objects, consisting of massive particles. The discovery of the electroweak Higgs fields, will explain the workings of the universe. But to prove the existence of the Higgs fields, scientists must first find the Higgs boson, i.e. the particle which is related to this field. But since the 1960s, no particle physicist has found the Higgs. The scientific world has focused on the LHC to get there. The LHC will approach the Big Bang and see if this particle exists or not. The LHC will enable us perhaps to discover the origin of mass and first moments of time. By cons if you can not find the Higgs boson is that science is at an impasse and it went wrong. Every advance in science at least allows us to measure the size of our ignorance. Image: The giant particle detector Atlas could, discovering new elementary particles like the Higgs boson The Higgs boson is a particle predicted by the famous "Standard Model" of particle physics. It is the missing link in this model. Indeed, this particle is supposed to explain the origin of mass of all particles in the Universe (including itself), but despite this fundamental role, it remains to be discovered since no experiment has currently observed conclusively., a particle vainly sought to date, find super symmetric particles or access to extra dimensions of space. Credit: CERN | |||
Standard model |
Today the Standard Model successfully describes three of the four fundamental interactions: strong, weak and electromagnetic. Image: The table of elementary particles of the Standard Model, Class fermions, constituents of matter and bosons. |