Saturday, September 13, 2008 Libre: Alice experiment and doubting Thomases By Mel Libre Seriously Now
SUSAN Parker, a colleague in the High Court of New Zealand, wore a black dress on Sept. 11, 2008. For me, it was just a typical work day. Little did I realize that Susan was actually preparing herself in case the world ended on that day.
There were four people left in the office past 5 p.m. That time, the fiftyish lady said that she was relieved that everything seemed okay after the world’s largest particle collider fired off a beam of protons around a 27-kilometer deep tunnel in the boundary of Switzerland and France.
A Large Ion Collider Experiment or Alice is the biggest physics experiment in history with the aim of detecting evidence of extra dimensions, invisible “dark matter” and an elusive particle called the Higgs boson.
In layman’s term, the scientists want to unravel the truth on how the universe came about, based on the Big Bang theory.
The first major test on Sept. 11 was the result of two decades of work with a staggering bill of US $10 billion. Some 9,000 physicists around the world wired themselves to a massive network of 60,000 computers with the intent of gathering and analyzing the data generated from the series of tests.
Cases have been filed in the US District Court in Hawaii and in the European Court of Human Rights to prevent the project from proceeding.
But with the first beams of protons already fired to test the controlling strength of the world’s largest superconducting magnets, there is no more stopping the experiment that critics fear would create micro “black holes,” or subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they could suck off life in planet Earth.
Responding to the charge, James Gillies, chief spokesman of Cern, the institution at the lead of the experiment, says “It’s nonsense.” One of the leading scientists today-–Stephen Hawking--has declared the experiments to be safe.
With the backing of 20 European countries and the United States and Japan as major contributors, the chance of closing down Alice is slim.
Man’s insatiable thirst for the understanding of his being and of his creation has led to many discoveries that have improved humanity. But the increase in human intelligence has gone to a point that there are those who tinker with what is exclusively in the realm of God.
In fact, we are made in God’s own likeness. But that seems not enough. Very much like the Apostle Thomas, there are amongst us who want to see, to touch, to smell – to accept the truth.
So long as there are people whose doubts can only be quenched if they have gone through the process of experimenting to find the truth, many peoples’ lives will be put at a risk. People like Susan Parker. People like you and me.
