Known and unknown unknowns

The world’s largest machine is about to open for business. It will, however, only scratch the surface of the universe

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WELL, it is about to happen. After more than a decade, SFr10 billion ($10 billion) and a lot of nail-biting, the first protons should spin their way into the Large Hadron Collider on August 8th. These protons will only be tests. But in a couple of months’ time, when the tests are complete, the particle-smashing will begin in earnest. At that moment the LHC, as the giant machine near Geneva is known to its friends, will take the first big step into the unknown reaches of particle physics for a quarter of a century. For, although physicists have been trying to keep themselves busy on marginal projects during this period, the truth is that the last truly fundamental subatomic particles, the W and Z bosons, were found in 1983.

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The next one, unless everyone’s theories are wrong, will be the Higgs boson, a theoretical construct required to give mass to the other particles of which matter is composed. That should come quite quickly. Only if it does not will people start scratching their heads.

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But even physicists do not spend SFr10 billion in the search for a single particle. What they are hoping is that the LHC will take them way beyond the universe described by the equations which predicted the W and Z bosons and predict the Higgs, and into terra that is truly incognita. Like the creatures drawn on the edge of a medieval map, the shapes of the denizens of this land are a mixture of observation and guesswork. The existence of some is confidently predicted, and their portraits will probably prove quite accurate. Others, though, are little more than names attached to things that can, at the moment, barely be perceived.

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Related previous post (with book recommendations at end):

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At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star

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