Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Comments: Veritas 25

Thanks, Shayne, for another excellent part, and thanks, Debbie, for an excellent review!

So this could all have to do with the Large Hadron Collider? This new super-large particle collider, which will be used to accelerate protons and neutrons to speeds very very near the speed of light, and then have them collide with something at those incredible speeds?

I don't need to tell you that I'm such a huge astronomy fan. I think space is beautiful and awesome, and I love to learn about the beauty and majesty of it. But particle physics, which is what they will be doing with the Large Hadron Collider, just doesn't fascinate me. The particle physicists are literally trying to smash up protons and neutrons to see what is locked up inside. And they are trying to create enormous energies on a subatomic level to see if new, so far unknown particles will suddenly appear. I just can't get interested. Oh, so now particle physicists found the long sought-after W particle? Imagine. Oh, and they found its negative twin, W-minus, too? Wow.

The idea behind particle physics is that we are all ultimately made up of these subatomic particles, and it is only through learning about these tiniest building blocks of nature that we can learn about the macro-universe that we interact with through our senses. Well, maybe that is true. Then again, what have we really learnt about the macro-universe if we find out that the subatomic W particle exists?

Well, there is a new kid on the block of particle physics these days, string theory. String theory claims that all these myriad subatomic particles are all manifestations of the same thing - strings. String theory says that everything is made up of strings.













Sorry, couldn't resist!

No, these images don't show "strings" in the string theory sense. Strings, the way I understand them, would be the smallest building blocks of matter, incredibly much smaller than an atom and incredibly much smaller than an electron, which is in itself pretty tiny, I can assure you. Strings would be truly one-dimensional objects, as they would have a specific length, but no width or thickness. These strings can take on various shapes and interconnect in various ways:



Because of the way they interact, strings would build up everything in nature. They would build up protons and neutrons and electrons, and therefore they would build up all atoms, and therefore they would build up everything in the macroscopic world, including ourselves.

Of course, no one knows if strings exist in the first place, because they would have to be so tiny that scientists don't know how to see them if they looked for them.

This is an in-joke - I couldn't resist:



Those who don't believe in strings, but think that all subatomic particles are entities of their own, have chosen fanciful words to describe certain properties of these particles. One such property is "charm". Those who believe in strings don't want to talk about these specific subatomic particles at all. They want to describe what the strings can do. One thing strings are believed to do is form membranes, or "branes". The lady physicist prefers the brainy new string theorist over the old particle physicist dinosaur, despite his old-fashioned charm.

Anyway, let's return to the Large Hadron Collider. I believe that those who want to use the LHC to smash up protons and neutrons are people who generally don't believe in strings. Instead, these people want to recreate, as much as possible, conditions in the very early universe, where the entire universe is believed to have been incredibly condensed and dense and also incredibly hot, much hotter than the interior of the Sun. During these conditions, many subatomic particles are believed to have existed "on their own", instead of being locked up inside atoms, for example. By recreating conditions of the early universe, particle physicists hope to see the weird denizens of the universe's fiery start.

Ah, but there are those who object and say that we shouldn't try to imitiate the horrible conditions of the early universe here on Earth, because who knows what that may unleash?

Is that what has happened here, Shayne? The Large Hadron Collider has created structural stress in the universe itself and opened portals between this universe and others?

Wow again, Shayne! Fantastic!

Ann