Physicists will soon shed light on dark matter

The largest particle accelerator in history is scheduled for completion in August at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland.\nThe accelerator caused a lot of buzz last weekend at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and it should answer many questions scientists have about dark matter.\nScientists recently discovered that the matter we can see , which makes up physical objects such as people, accounts for only 4 percent of the universe. The rest is made of mysterious substances known as dark matter and dark energy.\nThese substances are called dark because nothing is really known about them, except that they must exist for certain observed phenomena to occur. Though scientists have not yet directly detected dark matter, David Gross, director of theoretical physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is sure it exists. \n“The only thing we ever see is photons (light),” Gross said. “Everything else is inferred.”\nThe Large Hadron Collider will accelerate protons around a ring that is about 16.8 miles around, buried in 330 feet of solid rock and frozen at negative 456.25 degrees Fahrenheit. Using Einstein’s famous theory of relativity, the collision of the protons will produce an explosion of energy not seen since the Big Bang, allowing for the creation of dark matter.\nScientists hope this machine will build on theories generated by a scientific community that has been “starved for experimental results,” Gross said.\nOnce running, the LHC will accumulate one terabyte of data per second. In 10 to 20 years, it will amass data equivalent to all the words spoken by mankind since its appearance on earth, said Albert De Roeck, a senior research scientist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research.\nScientists feel confident the new machine will be conducting experiments by the summer of 2008. Other topics that scientists hope the LHC will shed light on include the existence of the Higgs particle, evidence of extra dimensions and proof of Einstein’s theory of one universal unifying force.