dontalkdo: Looking for Goddo..

In my last blog I enthused about the coming full power testing of the CERN Large Hadron Accelerator. I described why this represents such an important moment in our journey of seeking the Truth about Life and Existance. I had not expected my 'predictions' to bear fruit so soon. Today (the 18th Feb 2010) an announcement was made that at another accelerator, the Brookhaven Collider on Long Island, USA, temperatures and conditions that had only existed in the first microsecond of the existence of the universe were recreated. By observing and recording events that lasted only a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second something appeared to have occurred which defies a fundamental law of physics.

It is precisely this that physicists have been hoping to find. But what does this mean practically?
In ordinary speak, when the universe began it is calculated that an equal amount of matter and anti-matter was created. What is anti-matter? It is the opposite of matter, and like any true opposites in physics when they come together they destroy each other in a flash of energy, leaving nothing behind. Clearly however, there is a residue of matter in the universe. Something must have happened to create an imbalance when the matter and anti-matter combined.

A lot of what happens in nature and especially in the subatomic world is ruled by the laws of symmetry. This means that the mirror image of an event is identical to the original. However, this week's announcement comes with an experimental demonstration that at the extremely high temperatures of creation, these symmetries can break down, resulting in the imbalances necessary to give matter the edge over anti-matter.
The Brookhaven experiment measured temperatures of 4 trillion degrees celsius, 250,000 times hotter than the core of the sun, but still not hot enough to turn the liquid-like cauldron into a free flowing gas. For this to be achieved, the LHA at CERN must be used.