Thursday, July 17, 2008
Unification
Well, the dream of unification is about to be tested. Nope, I'm not talking Obama. The LHC, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is about to go online and the world is at stake. At least that is the irrational fear: a black hole wiil be created that will swallow the universe. If a teeny black hole is created it would confirm String Theory but it wouldn't of itself cause a disturbing suction. All the dissing of the String Theorists would be at an end as they celebrated — no longer cultists masquerading as scientists.
First they will test the Standard Model. They will see if the collider can replicate the already proven and add a few decimal places of precision. Then they will get into the real stuff. They will start looking for particles never before seen and if they find such then String Theorists will rejoice. The idea is that the forces of Nature appear to converge at 10 to the minus 34 and so maybe all the forces of nature come from one simple force and condensed out into the reality we now live within, upon and along side of.
This was all taken from a SciAm podcast. And the odds from common sense? Not that common sense has much to do with it — just that maybe a little more confusion will be added to the mix as unexpected outcomes occur; along with some ambiguities that will require theorizing for another two decades. Just a guess.