The Oh-My-God Particle

www.fourmilab.ch...

It is interesting to observe that a real particle, in our universe, subject to all the laws of physics we understand, is a rather better interstellar voyager than the best fielded in the 24th century by the United Federation of Planets. Their much-vaunted Galaxy Class starships are capable of speeds slightly in excess of Warp Factor 9, an apparent velocity of 1516 cochranes (or 1516 times the speed of light).[4] At a velocity of 1516 c, traveling to the centre of the galaxy would take, as perceived by the life forms on board, a little more than 21 years. By contrast, an observer on board the Oh-My-God particle would arrive at the nucleus of the Milky Way, according to his clock, just about 3 seconds after leaving Starbase Terra. That's more than 9,700,000 times faster than the starship. In the time the starship spends vacuum-whooshing and rumbling its way to the nearby star Aldebaran, the particle could travel to the edge of the visible universe

[edit on 10/23/2004 by Simulacra]

[edit on 10/23/2004 by Simulacra]

There is a very good book that you might be intrested in reading. It is the God Particle by Leon Lederman. Very well written, humorous book on the history of particle colliders and the various particles discovered over the years.

Originally posted by Valhall
There is a very good book that you might be intrested in reading. It is the God Particle by Leon Lederman. Very well written, humorous book on the history of particle colliders and the various particles discovered over the years.

There is a good chance that I'm not going to read it. But can you give me a brief overview of it?

I will quote Lederman's bio and the summary of the book. All in all it is a history lesson in quantum and particle physics.

Bio of Leon Lederman:

Leon Lederman discovered several pieces of the subatomic puzzle, and in 1988 he shared the Nobel Prize for physics. He was director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from 1979 to 1989 and architect of the plan to construct the Superconducting Super collider. A longtime educator, he is past chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and coauthor with David Schramm of From Quarks to the Cosmos. Now a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology...

The book covers

...the fascinating search for the "God particle," the mysterious building block of all nature...Leon Lederman is described as "a cross between Albert Einstein and Mel Brooks,". Since an inquiring Greek named Democritus of Abdera sniffed baking bread and deduced the existence of the a-tom, the pursuit of the infinitesimal has become science's longest quest...moving thorugh the long string of Eureka moments that have brought us tantalizingly close to unlocking the last secrets of the universe. Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Rutherford, and Einstein are just a few of the heroes in Lederman's tale...

To give you an idea of how enjoyable this book is, the title page is as follows:

THE GOD PARTICLE

If the Universe is the Answer,
What is the Question?

Weirdest thing. I was walking in the bookstore today trying to kill some time and I found Lederman's book! I plan on picking it up on monday and skimming through it.

The quote you cited only makes sense in Star Trek physics, though:

in star trek's physics, relativity applies at sublight speeds, but not at speeds over light speed (ie, warp speed); this makes it a lot easier to write a tv show because you don't have to worry about time travel paradoxes, time going slower/faster, etc. The math the quote's citing is like this:

Milkway Galaxy = 50-60k lightyears across, and warp 9 = about 15 times light speed means it'll take 21 years or so AS MEASURED FROM HERE to get from here to the center of the galaxy.

Fast-moving-particle = close to speed of light, it'll take 30k years AS MEASURED FROM HERE to get to the center of the galaxy.

Now, when you apply relativity to an imaginary observer riding the fast-moving-particle, you wind up getting some time dilation that means to the observer on the particle, it's only taken about 3 seconds to get to the center of the galaxy; as measured from earth, though, it's still taken 21k years. In Star Trek physics you wouldn't apply the time dilation at all to the Enterprise or some other starship, but as measured from earth the starship's definitely beating the particle.

What's really interesting is that a particle travelling that fast was detected at all; I'm not sure what a likely source, or how common that is (it seems to be uncommon, but how so?).

Vallhall
After all these months, I finally purchased Lederman's book. Whenever I'm done I'lll give ATS a quick breakdown of it.

So could we in theory incase these particles? Could we even maintain a particule that fast in a "workarea"? Could we create energy off of them? (you would think to be going that fast, the particule would generate an outrageous amount of energy) And what powers the particule? Another particule? Where does it's energy come from?


For visual folks out there, here is a another quote from the article

"How Fast?
How fast was it going? Pretty fast. The total mass-energy of a particle is given in special relativity by the equation:

M_0
M = ------------ [1]
v²
Sqrt[1 - --]
c²

where M_0 is the particle's rest mass, 0, v is the particle's velocity, and c is the speed of light. Okay, we know that the Oh My God proton has a rest mass of about 1 GeV, and a total kinetic energy of 3×10^20 eV, so let's solve equation [1] for v, setting c to 1 to obtain velocity as a fraction of the speed of light:

v = Sqrt[m² - M_0²] / m

And thus, approximately:

v = 0.9999999999999999999999951 c

So taking 3×10^8 metres per second as the speed of light, we find that the particle was traveling 2.9999999999999999999999853×10^8 metres per second, thus 1.467×10^-15 metres per second slower than light--one and a half femtometres per second slower than light. If God's radar gun is slightly out of calibration, this puppy's gonna be doin' hard time for speeding. After traveling one light year, the particle would be only 0.15 femtoseconds--46 nanometres--behind a photon that left at the same time.




whoossshhhhhhhhhhhhh fast man....fast

We can't 'encase' them, this was a SINGLE proton, and it was by far the most powerful ever recorded.

So, to encase them, we'd need to create them, which would mean one huge hell of a particle accelerator - perhaps the size of earth's orbit, but that still likely wouldn't do it.

And on a side note, it's interesting that people always connect these two works. "The God Particle" and the "Oh My God Particle" - the God Particle is actually about the search for the elusive Higgs-boson, and was originally "The God Damn Particle!" - changed for political correctness.

Is the quest for the God particle the last frontier for science? The last thing they want total control over. If scientist do not believe in God, then why are they trying to find out how God works? Do they plan to rip the souls of God’s children out of their bodies, via DNA manipulation? I think their, DNA research, collider research, and their space exploration has more to do with finding out how God works rather than any other scientific motive.

'God Particle' Expected to Be Found Soon
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
Associated Press Writer

GENEVA (AP) -- The father of a theoretical subatomic particle dubbed "the God particle" says he's almost sure it will be confirmed in the next year in a race between powerful research equipment in the United States and Europe

The massive new CERN collider, which has been installed in a 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border, will be more powerful still and will be better able to show what particles are created in the collisions of beams of protons traveling at the speed of light.

hosted.ap.org...

Originally posted by Siren
Is the quest for the God particle the last frontier for science?

the main property of science is that there cant be an end since there is more knowlege out there than there can exist people looking for them

Originally posted by SirenIf scientist do not believe in God, then why are they trying to find out how God works?

they dont? its just a "god damned" word for something which is very fundamental and hard to discover

Originally posted by SirenDo they plan to rip the souls of God’s children out of their bodies, via DNA manipulation?

"they" (we?) are no homogeneus group of people.. every individual has its own motivation for its actions.. so the question it self is an unaskable

(and for the most scientists i know: they dont wont to do anything with souls, since they think its highly impropable that there is a "soul" in the most strict meaning of it.. )

Originally posted by SirenI think their, DNA research, collider research, and their space exploration has more to do with finding out how God works rather than any other scientific motive.

which is of no importance since you speculate about a motivation considering an assumption not applicable to the ones you speculate about:
if somebody does not believe in a scientific measurable/answerable nature of god such somebody won't look after such phenomena

and if you still consider the phenomena they examine as aspects of god, then this is just an opinion, without any legitimation against all other ways to look at the "true motivations" of science

the main property of science is that there cant be an end since there is more knowlege out there than there can exist people looking for them

To what purpose, their mind can not contain it.

if somebody does not believe in a scientific measurable/answerable nature of god such somebody won't look after such phenomena

Dress it up and it still smells. They have enough problems staring them in the face that they can not solve and do not want to solve, yet, DNA splicing and slicing and dicing is at the top of their list, and now, they plan to take it a step further.

Think it's off the wall, be sure, you may end up on their plate.

[edit on 8-4-2008 by Siren]

I have listed some info for the “New World” of Nano Tech, or Who Did You Used To Be Before You Were Spliced or Where Did My Memory Go or Come From? Or, Collider Diced DNA Good As Apple Pie buyers:

Chief of gene structure at the National Cancer Institute, Hamer not only claims that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, but he also says he has located one of the genes responsible, a gene that just happens to also code for production of the neurotransmitters that regulate our moods. Our most profound feelings of spirituality, according to a literal reading of Hamer's work, may be due to little more than an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our DNA.

If there's a God, there's a God. Just knowing what brain chemicals are involved in acknowledging that is not going to change the fact."

www.time.com...

"Nanotechnology is already starting to affect our lives, and it's anticipated that over the next 20 years it's going to have major impact on everything around us," Crone tells DBIS.

Crone says it's going to be everywhere, and you probably won't even know that it's inside the products that you're using

www.sciencedaily.com...

The goal of these experiments as well as particle physics in general, is to find the building blocks of this universe. A fundamental particle would be something that has no substructure - it is made up of no other particles. We have not yet found such a particle, but if we do, it would be the fundamental building block of this universe.

samescaredworld.wordpress.com...

In their work, the researchers were able to decode the electronic structure of DNA and to understand how the electrons distribute into the various parts of the double helix, a result that has been pursued by scientists for many years, but was previously hindered by technical problems.

www.news-medical.net...

Somewhere in Kansas, a crop of rice is growing whose DNA includes a couple of genes borrowed from the human genome.

stepsmagazine.ca...

I sure hope they didn’t use any of “Jeffrey Dahmers” genes.

Also in searching I found this:

EPAC 2004 - List of Keywords
Linear colliders require sources delivering particle intensities much higher
...... The splice constitutes a ?composite? structure with the interchanging ...
accelconf.web.cern.ch... -

[edit on 9-4-2008 by Siren]

Originally posted by Siren

the main property of science is that there cant be an end since there is more knowlege out there than there can exist people looking for them

To what purpose, their mind can not contain it.

their (there is still no "they" since every scientist is an individual with own targets, possibilities and "brain size") minds can store more knowlegde the more they have, scientific knowlegde is structural and constitutive, such that you express new knowledge in terms of the old

Originally posted by Siren

if somebody does not believe in a scientific measurable/answerable nature of god such somebody won't look after such phenomena

Dress it up and it still smells. They have enough problems staring them in the face that they can not solve and do not want to solve, yet, DNA splicing and slicing and dicing is at the top of their list, and now, they plan to take it a step further.
Think it's off the wall, be sure, you may end up on their plate.

your post as an reply to mine reads really bogus since i stressed manly the fact that there is no conspirative like "they" wanting to kill, change your dna and so on

first of all this topic is about cosmic ray protons incident to earth:
how do you connect this to dna? how can you constantly call particle and highenergy physicists dna manipulators?

how can you address unsolved problems in one science to all science and conclude from that that science at all is flawed?

where are you arguments.. you only bash on connections you arbitraryly think up