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What’s a Nice Field Like Particle
Physics Doing in a Universe Like This?
By Judy Jackson
The quarks. The leptons. The bosons, the mesons, the hadrons, the
so-forth-and-so-ons.
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| The committee unveiled the
report ‘Quantum Universe’ at the April HEPAP meeting in
Washington D.C. (Image Courtesy of Judy
Jackson) |
Particle physicists spent the 20th century
discovering, in incredible depth and with amazing precision, the
particles that make up the world and the forces that determine how it
works. The result was the Standard Model, the theory that answered the
question “What is the Universe made of?”
Then they went and changed the Universe.
Recent astrophysical and cosmological discoveries have revealed the
astonishing fact that the Universe we thought we knew is only about five
percent of what’s out there. The rest is....well, we don’t know what it
is. We call it dark matter and dark energy, for lack of better
terminology. Dark matter is what’s holding the Universe together. Dark
energy is some unknown force that is driving it farther and farther
apart.
Some have compared this revolution to Copernicus’ 16th century
recognition that we aren’t at the center of the solar system. We have
realized that we do not really know what our Universe is made of.
“Nothing’s bigger than the Universe,” wrote Science Editor-in-Chief
Donald Kennedy. “The question is what it’s made of.” Science magazine
called the confirmation of a dark Universe the Breakthrough of the Year
for 2003.
Where Particle Physics Comes In
A High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) committee, appointed by
Chair Fred Gilman and led by Persis Drell (RD), spent the past five
months working on a report that explains what the field that brought you
the Standard Model is doing in a Universe of matter and energy unlike
any we have ever seen before.
“Recent scientific discoveries at the energy frontier and in the far
reaches of the Universe have redefined the scientific landscape for
cosmology, astrophysics and high energy physics, and revealed new and
compelling mysteries,” wrote the DOE and NSF officials responsible for
U.S. particle physics research. “We are writing to ask the High Energy
Physics Advisory Panel to take the lead in producing a report which will
illuminate the issues, and provide the funding and science policy
agencies with a clear picture of the connected, complementary
experimental approaches to the truly exciting scientific questions of
this century.”
Drell said the report articulates a set of questions that define the
science of 21st century particle physics and discusses how both current
and future particle physics experiments can address those questions.
“This has been a great committee,” Drell said. “The opportunity to
collaborate with people from many different branches of physics has been
a privilege. We have worked hard but also had a lot of fun. It is an
exciting time in particle physics, and we hope that our report will help
serve as a guide to where the search for understanding has taken us so
far, and to where it is going.”
“It’s been an interesting process,” said theorist Joe Lykken, one of
four Fermilab members of the committee. “We wanted to make clear that
the questions particle physics has always asked have not changed, but
that they have a revolutionary new meaning in the context of these
recent discoveries about the nature of the Universe.”
The Quantum Universe report is available on-line at:
http://www.interactions.org/pdf/Quantum_Universe.pdf
Article excerpted from FermiNews, Vol. 27, April 2004, No 4.
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