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The Big Bang strikes again By Ofri Ilani Trillions of protons are being readied to start their near-light speed circular trip through the world's largest particle accelerator - one of the most ambitious and most expensive scientific projects in history. Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) below-ground facility straddling the border between Switzerland and France, the accelerator ring has a circumference of about 27 kilometers. The sub-atomic particles will travel 11,000 times around the accelerator each second, causing 600 million collisions between the particles, at a temperature 100,000 times that of the sun's core. These collisions, the first of which should take place in October, will create conditions similar to those that prevailed in the universe less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. Tens of thousands of computers will process the data in order to identify and describe the physical phenomena taking place inside the accelerator. The accelerator, a Large Hadron Collidor, is the largest and most complex structure ever built by humankind. It is made of 9,300 magnets, designed to cool the air to minus 271.3 degrees Celsius. The accelerator, built deep underground, cost $2.8 billion to construct; it consumes as much electricity as the entire city of Geneva. This tremendous mechanism, which is operated by thousands of physicists and engineers from around the world, was designed mainly to search for one tiny, elusive particle that has never been observed - the Higgs boson. Scientists hypothesize that this particle is what gives matter in the universe one of its most important properties - mass. Physicists have been predicting the existence of the Higgs boson for several decades already, but since its production requires such high energy levels, which cannot be achieved in the particle accelerators from previous generations, no one has ever "seen" one. Prof. Eilam Gross, of the Weizmann Institute of Science, has been involved in the search for the Higgs boson for over 20 years. Gross is part of a team of Israeli scientists, headed by Weizmann Prof. Giora Mikenberg, that is in charge of processing the statistical data in a particle detector called ATLAS, and which will be used in one of the accelerator's main experiments. Gross has been commuting between Geneva and Israel every month lately, making the final preparations for the experiment. Advertisement "This accelerator will bring us closer than ever to Big Bang conditions," says Gross. "This is energy that will enable us to penetrate deeper into matter and see the building blocks better. At the very least, we will be able to discover the only particle that is missing from the Standard Model - the theory that describes the most basic particles of matter. It will open a completely new era for science, like at the beginning of the 20th century, when scientists discovered quantum physics." Gross is convinced that the accelerator will help reveal the Higgs boson. "There is no way we will not find it," he says. "The energy will be such that if the Higgs exists, we will have to find it. If we don't find it, the theoreticians will have to sit down and build a different model. "There are critical questions we cannot answer without the accelerator," continues Gross. "We have a puzzle with a missing piece. Science has reached the end of what it can explain, but there is still more. Only the accelerator can fill in those blanks." The problem is that the Higgs boson decomposes a fraction of a second after it is created. That being the case, how can it be observed? Gross explains that the ATLAS is an electronic detector that can identify the traces left behind by particles. "A particle passes through a microchip and leaves a trail of electronic signals," says Gross. "Even though the Higgs decomposes immediately, we can see traces of the particles into which it disintegrates." The researchers are hoping to identify more than just the Higgs. A few of the physicists predict that microscopic black holes will form inside the accelerator. If that happens, it will be the first time in history that black holes have been artificially created. Prof. Ehud Duchovni, also of the Weizmann Institute, has been searching for black holes, and other dimensions, in addition to the four we already know of. "According to one of the predictions," says Duchovni, "the energy produced inside the accelerator is sufficient to create black holes. We hope to see those black holes. What we will see in this experiment is a tremendous burst of energy, but since it is happening on a scale with the protons, the energy will not be enough to even boil a teaspoon of water." The forecasts for the formation of black holes in the accelerator have recently sparked anxious speculation about the creation of a black hole that will rapidly swallow all the matter around it, eventually sucking in Switzerland, as well as the rest of the planet. Duchovni, like other physicists, quells such fears. "Everyone is starting to tremble, because a black hole is not something friendly. Our black holes, however, are very tiny - about the size of a proton. They are therefore very hot, and they explode. We have proof that tiny black holes cannot be stable, and will immediately disappear." Even so, if black holes do form inside the accelerator, they will provide the answer to an important question: What is the smallest size in the universe? "Those holes will be much smaller than the nucleus of an atom," says Duchovni. "It will be impossible to see them. Still, they can reveal to us just how small the smallest thing can be." 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