reply to post by phishyblankwaters
No clue if you can even get them, I've only ever seen them in documentaries showing Fermilab but CERN has the same stuff on a larger scale. Here's
one from google image search, but some of the ones I've seen in TV shows are much nicer. Each one of those colored lines would be a particle and it's
trajectory, I believe. here's one closer to what i was talking about
Thanks for the images. Pretty much what I expected being they make no sense to me.
I have always felt that in searching for the smallest thing, we will come to realize that size goes on in both directions to infinity. No Smallest
thing or largest thing will ever be discovered as it probably a perpetual loop.
i wouldn't be too worried about the end of the world.... Now, the scientists do have an understanding of what they are dealing with, the mystery
revolves around why, quantum mechanics is strange and things just don't make sense. Like entanglement. With quantum entanglement you have 2
particles that are "entangled" meaning if you interact with particle A, particle B responds (I think it's the anti particle so it would be an opposite
response?) And here's where it gets weird. time and space have no effect on this, the particles can be lightyears away, yet react INSTANTLY, as if
they are sending information to the other particle faster than light. This is a real thing and is completely confusing, but they can still make
predictions and test them based on their limited understanding. Take gravity. We know it's real, we can measure it's effects, and do all sorts of
things, letting us understand that mass distorts space time which creates the gravity effect. But we actually have zero understanding of WHY things
have mass, and also the mechanics of how gravity works. On earth, if you hold a ball out and release it, it drops because of gravity. But WHY? What
mechanical process allows this to happen? Isn't that the kicker? With LHC looking for the Higgs, we might finally understand how gravity actually
works, one of the first physical laws discovered, yet we know little about it. Way back when, the atom was the smallest particle. Then we split it
and low and behold, you've got a nucleus, protons, electrons, etc. So then electrons became the smallest. until we built a machine to smash them
together, and once we did, we found tons of new particles. I'm honestly hoping the search for the Higgs reveals a new layer, more things to discover,
more physics! finding the last piece in the puzzle means there's not much left to learn.
Thanks for the physics lesson. No one still has ever seen an atom not to mention the theoretical much smaller particles. We can only measure
properties of these and gravity is not giving up it's secret. It's simple:
Gravity is consciousness, an awareness of self. Now how do you measure or explain that?
edit on 23-12-2011 by kbriggss because: poly want a cracker