A Waiting Blog

So, here I am. Last day at Three Rivers, just sitting in the computer lab because I finished an essay and the professor won't be there to pick it up for another 25 minutes. What better to do, I thought, than type up an entry?

I remembering arriving here. First day, had Professor Maynard, the supernuke, and right there was where the trend started. I slowly learned, from that day forward, that I was not going to meet many people at Three Rivers. I met characters. I have always felt that while I am here, I am in a staged setting, full of faces and names that don't really have much to them (at least to me) and that I would probably never talk to. Along with the few "people" that I actually met, there were an endless amount of these characters, the people that stand out in the show, while everyone else forms the backdrop and the ensemble. And though I only made maybe one lasting friendship, some of the most memorable people I have come across are these characters that I have met at this school and at Millstone, including the professor above. Call him weird, look down on him for what he wears or the way he goes about doing things, but that guy knows exactly what he wants in life and he's not going to go by anyone else's standards in doing it. You've got the security lady who doesn't know what happiness is, who can crush even a simple, awkward tall kid riding half a bike with policies that stop him from having fun (much to his short friend's amusement). You've got the "Glass House Man," who didn't even bother to learn the context of the conversation before butting in with his advice: "Hey man, if you want to smash a window in a house, don't bring a rock --- use a gun!" You've got Lantz, the sensei of all things related to flow and heat. You've got sexual freaks, a confrontational fat man, a professor who has a firetruck in his garage with the knowledge of how to deform a baby by hand, and an advisor who reigns with a Neutron Fist. Millstone, too, was a goldmine for these people. There's just something about engineers that gives them personalities unparalleled by all other professions, excluding physics teachers. I can sum up the entire summer in one quote: "Sssssssssschhhhhhh. Holy shit...that's fuckin' hot."

This is not a bad school. I know that I joke all the time about it being "high school" and simply a waiting basin for those who don't know where their life is going to take them after high school, but that's really not the case. I was done with everything when I first graduated, and I had burnt myself out on work in general. I know that if I had gone to a university away from home in the state I was in, I wouldn't have succeeded by any means. Three Rivers gave me a place to learn to focus again, to figure out why I was living, and to change my path before I had gotten past a point where I couldn't return. I am so glad that I took the time to learn how to set goals for myself again, and that I took advantage of the resources provided, at least for this last semester. Believe me, first semester I got by every test with the help of my incredible short-term memory. I'd take the review pack twenty minutes before, without having paid attention to a tidbit of information throughout each lecture, and got the image into my head. I got A's on all the quizzes, but if you asked a thing about what I was learning back then, I really couldn't tell you. If I didn't leave here at the top of my program in terms of knowledge of nuclear technology, I have certainly left a more developed person and all the better for it. It's cliche, but the education is definitely what you make it. I'm taking that with me to school next year.

So, I've reached the point where I can go turn my paper in. I'll miss the school for some of the characters that roam the halls, but memories will serve their purpose in that regard. I've made it, and it's time to move on to the next beginning. So thanks, Three Rivers. You've been swell.

Four exams is too much.

So the other day, my professor tells me that he wants to know everything I know about particle physics. So I'm like,

Introduction

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this research paper is to provide the reader with information concerning the major ideas in particle physics today. These include the theory and history behind particle accelerators, subatomic particles, and antimatter. The report is concluded with a brief description of the focus of particle physics today, and the importance of continuing studies and experiments in the realms of subatomic particles and the quantum world is emphasized throughout the paper.

Definitions

Cosmic Rays: Particles from outer space that constantly enter the Earth’s atmosphere and interact with matter in the air.

Electron Volt: The amount of kinetic energy necessary to accelerate an electron across a potential difference of one volt.

Emulsion Plate: A plate covered in a photographic emulsion designed to allow observation of individual tracks created by ionizing particles.

Methods of Investigation

In researching this report, the following sources were used:

Books

Encyclopedias

Online Articles

Scope

This report covers:

Particle Accelerators and their history

Subatomic Particles

Antimatter

The focus of particle physics today

Discussion

Particle Accelerators

Particle accelerators are machines that take a normal, subatomic particle and give it high energy by accelerating it. Accelerators were developed in order to study the particles concerned in any useful quantity, as it is unreliable and inefficient to simply wait for them to come along of their own accord. Two major types of accelerators exist: those that accelerate particles down an extensive, straight tube (linear accelerators); and those that push particles in a circular path, boosting their energy with an applied magnetic field each time they circumnavigate the tube (cyclotron or synchrotron).

The Machine

At the moment, the most powerful accelerator in operation, used to bring the particles that are used within it to energies as high as 1 tera electronvolt (TeV), is the Tevatron. This massive machine is a testament to the true power and grandiose ideas of science, and is housed within the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab. Located fifty kilometers west of Chicago, the Tevatron is a ring with a circumference of 6.3 km. A service road runs aboveground along its perimeter, and the machine is located beneath in an underground tunnel containing 1000 electromagnets. These magnets are used to steer the protons within the tunnel along the course, allowing them to reach the incredibly high energies needed to probe the depths of quantum physics and the subatomic world. 

These electromagnets are called “superconducting” magnets, and are able to create a much stronger magnetic field than an ordinary electromagnet. While average magnets have a current sent through them and increase the strength of their magnetic field as the current grows, they can only be strengthened up to a certain point at which the excess energy will simply heat up the magnet. Because of the control needed in steering particles at the TeV range, the magnets are wired with superconducting material, allowing current to flow through it with an extremely low resistance. To attain this property, the magnets must be maintained at around 4.7 Kelvin, or –268.3 degrees Celsius. Though the maintenance of these magnets is not easily accomplishable, the benefits outweigh the costs: an electromagnet that requires a smaller amount of electrical energy to achieve stronger magnetic fields. 

In order to boost the protons within it to the speed of light, the Tevatron must accelerate the protons in multiple stages. After being extracted from the nuclei of atoms in a compressed hydrogen gas, protons are ready to enter the first of five gears in the accelerator. These “gears” are called the Cockcroft-Walton generator, the ‘linac’, the Booster, the Main Injector, and the Tevatron. In the Cockcroft-Walton generator (the first stage), the protons are accelerated to about 4% the speed of light, and contain an energy of about 705 keV. In the ‘linac’, the protons pass through a series of copper cylinders and an electric field that boosts them to 70% of the speed of light --- 400 MeV. This step is 150 meters long and works using linear acceleration principles. The Booster comes next, accelerating the protons to 99% of the speed of light and causing them to lose any electrons they may still be carrying from the hydrogen gas they originated from. They run through this 150-meter diameter loop a total of 20000 times, after which they are ready for the Main Injector. 

The Main Injector, or “fourth gear,” is 3 km around in total and is capable of accelerating the protons up to 150 GeV, and accommodate up to 30 trillion protons at a time. The Main Injector also directs 120 GeV protons into a carbon or beryllium target, causing a powerful collision and secondary beams of subatomic particles for experimental use. In the case of a nickel target, antiprotons are produced for later acceleration. When the protons reach the Tevatron, they are at the final step in the process. Here, they are accelerated to one thousand giga electron volts or 1 tera electron volt, an energy that indicates a speed of 99.99995% the speed of light. Antiprotons produced in the Main Injector stage are also directed into the Tevatron when their energy has been boosted enough, allowing them to travel in a beam around the ring at the same speed and the opposite direction of the protons. These two beams, maintained in their course by the superconducting magnets that make the entire feat possible, are allowed to collide head on, producing annihilations of incredible energy and results that continually rock the world of science with new particles, their compositions, and their properties.

The accelerators of today are gargantuan in comparison to their humble beginning. It has been 80 years since the conception of the idea of creating “particle beams”, and since that day, the grounds of modern science have been shaken. Colliders reveal tiny pieces of our giant puzzle of a universe, and everyday we unlock doors to labyrinths of knowledge waiting to be purged. It is truly incredible to see the possibilities that can be unlocked, from particles to entire universes, from such humble beginnings as a man, a few pocketsize magnets, and an idea.

History

Up until 1929, only studies of the interactions of cosmic rays with particles in the atmosphere had been done to observe the properties of the fundamental constituents of matter. Though this is valuable to see the effects of certain energies in collisions and allows different types of fundamental particles to be produced and studied, the rays are not predictable and the given amount of energy within a ray is always unknown at the time of the detection. A different way of seeing these collisions in a controlled experiment would be necessary if any serious study was to be done.

Ernest O. Lawrence, in 1929, was the first to put thought into how the particles under speculation could be created by dependable means. He realized that a magnetic field, because it is able to deflect charged particles, could move them in a complete circular orbit if applied across a large enough area. A magnetic force that keeps the particle in this same orbit needs to balance the centrifugal force involved. The circular path is called a “cyclotron orbit,” and the velocity of a particle is directly proportional to the radius of its complete path. Lawrence realized that this meant velocity had no bearing on the amount of time it took for a particle to complete an orbit. He proposed that in this case, a device could give the particle a boost each time it reached a certain point in the orbit, and if it were programmed to give this energy at intervals equal to the amount of time necessary for completion of the circle, the particle would be accelerated by small amounts consistently over a set period. 

This train of thought was the basis for the first “accelerator,” developed at Berkeley, and used to accelerate a proton in an orbit between two, D-shaped magnets across which a voltage was applied. The proton began its acceleration at the center of the two magnets and spiraled out into higher orbits as it was consistently boosted across the voltage by the change in its polarity with each half-cycle. As the proton came out of its highest orbit at the edge of the machine, a beam of high energy particles was produced that could be used to conduct experiments as a replacement for cosmic rays. In 1931, a 4-inch machine of this fashion produced protons up to 80 KeV in energy, and in early 1932, 1 MeV protons were output by an accelerator 11 inches in diameter. When the machine was running, a Geiger Counter in the same circuit would monitor radiation at the target of the beam, and would turn off after the final beam had been produced. This caused the group at Berkeley to miss an important discovery that lied waiting at the target of the beam: the collision of the protons with the target broke apart its nucleus, and new elements that did not exist in nature were created in the process. They only realized this fact when an English group of physicists proclaimed their discovery of it using a similar machine.

After exploiting this discovery and moving forward to use the beams produced in the field of medicine, Lawrence was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1933 and received the Nobel Prize in 1939. Using his cyclotron design, the field of nuclear physics took off. Neptunium and plutonium were identified in targets of cyclotron beams, and were the first artificial elements produced that do not occur in nature. The beams were also used for treatment of tumors, and to this day accelerating particles still exists as a form of direct cancer therapy. The problem with cyclotrons, however, lied in their inability to break through the cap of 25 MeV possible according to the laws of relativity. As particles begin to near the speed of light, they become more massive. This directly affects their speed, making it impossible to continue toward higher energies using the cyclotron principle. 

The synchrotron was developed in order to break through this barrier. A series of magnets is placed inside a hollow tube, and the orbit of the particles involved is confined to the ring-shape of the tube. Instead of using a fixed magnetic field, this machine uses a field that changes as the energy of the particle is stepped up. In this way, the increasing radius of the particle’s orbit caused by the acceleration is cancelled out by the increasing magnetic field, and the radius of orbit stays the same as the energy of the particle involved increases. This process of simultaneously stepping up the the magnetic field in conjunction with the speed of the particle is called “ramping.” Though it does not produce a continuous beam of particles, and the energized particles are produced in short bursts, the opportunity of GeV range protons compensates for this. Today, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside of Chicago, the Tevatron produces particles in the TeV range. 

Because electrons that are being accelerated emit radiation, energy that is added to them by a synchrotron is being lost in the form of photons. The reason that this is much more of a problem for electrons rather than protons is due to the fact that protons are much heavier particles and do not radiate as much absorbed energy. Attaining high-energy electrons from a circular accelerator is therefore very difficult, due to the forces associated with the magnetic field causing the electrons to radiate. In order to push electrons to high energies, linear accelerators were developed. These consist of a long hollow tube and rings connected at intervals to create separate compartments, both made of a conducting material. An independent power supply and electric field is created in each compartment, and the electromagnetic field within each travels from one compartment to the other. Electrons are guided down the tube by the “wave” formed, and as they speed up, the velocity of the wave follows. This keeps electrons on the point of the wave that permits the most acceleration and therefore the highest energy.  

The machines discussed up until this point deliver a collision of a particle with a fixed target. This limits the amount of energy that can be used to the particle that is being accelerated. For this reason, machines have been developed that take two beams of particles and bring them together in a head-on collision: colliders. As mentioned earlier, these machines accelerate a particle such as a proton and, instead of shooting it into a target, store it at its full energy in a ring that contains magnets to keep it moving in a circle. A second proton (or group of protons) is sent through the machine and stored in another ring, moving in the opposite direction of the previous particle. When the command is given, the two beams are directed against one another to have a head-on collision. Using this technique with a particle and its antiparticle produces the energy of the collision as well as annihilation. Antiprotons, for example, are created by accelerating protons through a machine and causing a collision with a material such as copper, which produces ten billion antiprotons in an average beam collision. The process of creating, storing, and accelerating the antiprotons in this case is called a “shot.” 

Subatomic Particles

It is relatively easy to produce certain types of subatomic particles. Electrons can be released from a piece of metal with only heat, and a lit match emits millions of photons. The need for accelerators and colliders stems from the fact that a vast amount of energy needs to be focused at a specific point in order to study even smaller fundamental particles that exist in matter. Even the accelerators, while incredibly precise, face serious challenges when trying to study fundamental particles on the level of quarks. According to Stephen Webb, author and physicist, “Certain experiments at CERN have been so sensitive that physicists had to take note of the position of the Moon. (The varying gravitational pull of the Moon as it orbited the Earth had a measurable effect on the energy of the particle beam.) They even had to take note of the train timetable.” When even a single train traveling nearby can throw off experimental results, it is easy to see that the amount precision required in this type of study is immense. Though the painstaking preparation required for the experiments above seems a daunting task, to obtain a recordable image of a particle that serves as a building block to the subject of study above proves to be nearly impossible. 

Nevertheless, there is now a classification system of fundamental particles due to the amount that have been successfully produced in particle accelerators and observed in cosmic ray collisions. These fall under the categories of fermions and bosons, depending on whether a multiple of the particle could occupy the same space at the same time. Fermions include protons, neutrons, and electrons, and bosons include the photon. These, however, are only a tiny fraction of the multitude of particles that have been produced in experiments utilizing the machines that give us insight into the world of fundamental building blocks. Gaining an understanding of the quantum world that these manmade marvels of science allow us to look into is essential in order to fully appreciate their potential.

Fermions

Fermions are what make up all of the matter that we see, feel, and breath everyday. The word “fermion” is derived from the name of Enrico Fermi, the man who, in 1926, first worked out the mathematics behind their interactions. Fermions can be broken down into two groups: leptons and hadrons. Leptons, such as the electron, exist under the influence of the electromagnetic force and cannot be broken down further into other particles (as of yet), such as the quarks that compose hadrons. Hadrons, usually found within the nucleus, undergo interactions with the strong nuclear force. In addition, hadrons fall into two other subtypes: baryons and mesons. The difference between these is their “spin,” with baryons having half-integer spins and mesons having integer spins. In addition, it should be noted that hadrons are not exclusive to the fermion family, as mesons are technically a subset of bosons. The link between these two classes of particles and the quality that gives a hadron its identity is the quarks.

The Quarks

Quarks form the basis of hadrons such as the proton and neutron. Though they are slightly larger than leptons (such as the electron), they can never exist in nature by themselves---they are always found as constituents of other particles. Even experiments with collisions of protons and antiprotons yield energy and, about 10^-23 seconds later, new particles are formed from the quarks and antiquarks present in the collision. No individual quarks have been seen emerging. Individual quarks, each with their own “flavor”, can be divided into three different pairs: up and down, strange and charm, and top and bottom.

The reason for the initial hypothesis and “invention” of quarks lied in the resonances (excited states) of particles such as the proton. The excited states of the atom led physicists to believe that it was not the fundamental building block, and this theory proved correct on those grounds. For the same reason, quarks were hypothesized when hadrons exhibited this same trait. In 1964, Murray Gell-Mann proposed the existence of quarks, and believed that three types must exist: the up, the down, and the strange. Because there was no firm evidence of their existence, the idea was not quickly accepted in the science community. Part of the hypothesis was that, in order for a trio of quarks to make up an atom, they would need to have non-integer charges. A proton, which is composed of a down quark and two up quarks, has a charge of +1 in basic energy units. In order for the quarks to make up the charge at hand, physicists of the period denoted their charges as either 1/3 or 2/3 and either positive or negative. Therefore, the proton would have to be composed of a cluster of two up quarks (+2/3 charge) and a down quark (-1/3 charge). Such a system of charges was not deemed logical at first, as up until that point, charges had only been described as integers. Perhaps if quarks had been discovered before numbers were assigned, our system would have been radically altered. 

Toward the end of the 1960’s, solid evidence of quarks arrived as the result of a linear accelerator experiment. Electrons were brought to high enough energies to penetrate a particle as small as a proton, if indeed it could be penetrated. Because of the proton’s size in comparison to the electron, the electron would simply bounce right off instead of transferring its energy when it collided if the proton was truly elementary. The energy of the electrons that bounced off, if changed, would indicate the energy level of a smaller component within the proton. This is exactly what happened. All of the energies varied, and the angles that the electrons bounced from indicated that they were hitting more than just a single solid piece of matter. From this result, quarks were truly “born” into the world of modern science. 

Another notable phenomenon that applies to the world of quarks is called “strangeness.” A particle is said to possess strangeness if the amount of time it takes to produce the particle (in a 10^-23 second collision) is much smaller than the time it takes to decay (over 10^-8 seconds). Strangeness is conserved in interactions that involve the strong force, but is not conserved in weak force interactions. A collision of two particles with zero strangeness may produce two with opposite strangeness, but if they are at the bottom of the decay chain and are the lightest of their class, they will decay by the weak force. Neither of the particles will retain this “strangeness” after they have decayed. 

Due to the fact that quarks are the building blocks that bring about such a property as charge, strangeness must also be attributable them. Therefore, the “s” or “strange” quark was developed. This quark carries charge of –1/3 and a strangeness of –1, and its corresponding antiquark has a strangeness of +1 (just as an antiparticle carries an equal and opposite charge to its matter pair). A particle with one strange quark will therefore carry a strangeness of –1. In the quark model, the strangeness of a baryon can never exceed –3, caused by a triplet of strange quarks. In comparison with its 4 MeV and 7 MeV cousins, the strange quark dwarfs the up and down quark with a mass of 100 MeV. Another quark, the “charm” quark, serves as the fourth flavor. This flavor was hypothesized after observations were made of long-lived particles that carried no strange quarks. It is the largest quark thus far, with a mass of 1200 MeV, and was observed experimentally in 1974. 

The final additions to the quark family are the bottom and top quarks. The bottom quark was observed three years after the charm at Fermilab. It was discovered as a component of the upsilon meson, where it was found paired with its antiquark. Carrying many of the same traits as the strange and charm quarks, it weighs 4.2 GeV and carries a –1/3 charge. The final quark to join the group is also similar to the charm and strange, and is the largest fundamental particle yet observed. With a mass of nearly 180 GeV, this quark was discovered as the result of collisions at the Tevatron. The three pairings of quarks (up and down, charm and strange, and top and bottom) mirror the three pairings of leptons that exist (electron and electron-neutrino, muon and muon neutrino, and tau and tau neutrino), showing a definite order to the jumble of particles released through large steps in particle physics. 

The pairings of quarks have given way to the entire world we see around us, building up the neutrons and protons that inhabit all nucleuses. In fact, the neutron and proton are the only stable baryons that exist, as all other baryons will decay to that level (as well as electrons and neutrinos) over time. One way of classifying a baryon is as a particle that will decay to leave a proton among the final particles of its chain. Notable baryons include the lambda, the sigma, the delta, and the proton itself. Each are made of a unique assortment of quarks, giving them their particular properties of mass, charge, and strangeness. Though they are not technically “fundamental,” baryons are the first rung away from a quark in the ladder of building blocks of which our world is composed.

Leptons

The other class of the fermions, not able to be broken down into quarks, is the leptons. The most commonly known lepton is the electron, and often associated with it is the electron neutrino. Originally, the neutrino was postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, for reasons associated with decay. When a nucleus decays by emitting an electron (beta decay), the energy involved cannot simply be accounted for by adding the energies of the electron and the nucleus --- another particle is carrying away part of it. For this reason Pauli created the “electron neutrino,” a particle with almost no mass and no charge but a –1/2 spin, to adhere to the laws of physics as they were known. In 1956, its existence was confirmed by Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines, using detectors below the Earth’s surface to allow for adequate shielding of all particles that could interfere from outer space. The neutrinos, with a discovered mass of under 3 eV, were the only particles that were able to penetrate through the hundreds of meters of earth or water to get to the detectors. The electron and the electron neutrino form a true “family” of fundamental particles with the other natural pairing of the up and down quark. The family stable enough to compose most of our universe is that described above. 

In 1936, a second “family” became apparent. The muon was discovered in cosmic ray experiments performed by Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer, and three American physicists observed the muon neutrino in 1962. The rest mass of a muon is much greater than that of an electron at 105.659 MeV, and the muon neutrino also exceeds the electron neutrino in mass. In 1975, this second pairing of fundamental particles was joined by a third. The tau particle was discovered in 1975 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the most massive yet at 1784 MeV. The tau neutrino was discovered as recently as the year 2000, utilizing the knowledge and skills of 54 physicists from around the globe, at the Tevatron.  At this point, we now have three “families” of fundamental particles: the up and down quarks and the electron and neutrino, the charm and strange quarks and the muon particle and neutrino, and the top and bottom quarks and the tau particle and neutrino. Though nature can only be built out of the first family, the discovery of the other two simply spawns more questions for science to answer.

Bosons

The particles that hold everything in our world together are called the bosons. They are carriers of the electromagnetic force, the weak force, the strong force, and are suspected of carrying the gravitational force. The most basic of these bosons is a common subject in science: the photon. One of the characteristics of all bosons is that they do not follow the exclusion principle, as more than one can occupy the same position in space at once. This statement is visibly true for the photon, as more than one source of light can obviously shine on a single point at one time. The photon is also one of the most common bosons in existence. For every trio of quarks forming a proton, 10 billion photons exist. 

In radioactive decay, it is possible for a fundamental particle from one family to transform into one of another. This is called changing its “flavor” and the force responsible for changing a muon into a tau particle or an up quark into a charm is the weak force. The carriers of the weak force are the W boson and the Z boson. Though the W boson is the lighter of the two, its mass is 81.8 GeV, and it carries a single unit of electrical charge (either –1 or +1). The Z boson, though a carrier of the weak force, mediates processes that do not involve the changing of “flavor” mentioned above. It is 92.6 GeV and is electrically neutral. These particles were discovered in the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN in 1983. 

In order for quarks to form into hadrons, a force is needed to pull them together. Because of this force’s ability to bind together particles that normally cannot survive for even an instant in isolation, in addition to binding the hadrons that they form through remnants of this energy, it is aptly named the “strong” force. The carrier of this force is the gluon, directly related to the way it “glues” nuclei and its building blocks. Similar to the particles they fundamentally interact with, gluons cannot be reproduced on their own without disappearing instantly. In 1979, however, jets of particles that erupted from electron-positron collisions have led to a strong belief by physicists in these force carrying particles.  

Antimatter

The positron is an example of a particle that could have very well existed all throughout nature, taking the place of the electron, if the universe had developed slightly differently. It has exactly the same characteristics as an electron, only with one major difference: it has a charge of +1. Though it was discovered in 1932 through cosmic ray experiments, a man named Paul Dirac had hypothesized their existence in 1928 as a part of a series of equations. As his theory had proved true, there was and still is reason to believe that there is an associated antiparticle for every particle that we know of. This gives way to entirely new perspectives for what exists in space --- anything from antimatter galaxies to antimatter universes. Should an antimatter universe and a universe such as ours meet, however, the only result is a catastrophic annihilation. When matter and antimatter collide, both of their masses are instantly turned into pure energy, which may then evaporate as photons or rematerialize into entirely new particles. 

Antiprotons were the second antiparticle to be discovered, after the positron in 1932. The antiproton was chosen as a test particle because it has the same traits as a proton but the opposite charge, allowing it to be counted with scintillation and Cerenkov counters. This method provided positive feedback of the existence of antiprotons to a team at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1955. To visually affirm the discovery of antiprotons, protons were sent through an accelerator and collided with a target, and negatively charged particles produced in the collision were focused by magnetic fields into bombarding stacks of emulsion. On the emulsion, antiproton annihilation “stars” could be seen; simply a series of tracks formed by particles flying out of the proton-antiproton explosion. The emulsions were analyzed to ascertain that the tracks were not simply caused by the decay of a single particle, and when the energies of each particle leaving the sight of the annihilation were added together, the result was more than the energy of the suspected antiproton. This proved that the energy had to come from more than one particle, exactly matching the anticipated scenario. 

In order to find the antineutron, physicists had to utilize the antiprotons that they had begun to use and study regularly. If a proton and antiproton are fired at one another but do not collide, and instead only come very close to one another, they will both be neutralized. The result is an antineutron born out of the antiproton. 114 antineutrons were found using a liquid scintillator that detected particles that had been through “near misses” in an accelerator in 1956. Since that time, almost all of the particles that we have observed have also had their antiparticles discovered through experiments utilizing colliders. At this point in time, some of the highest energy collisions we can produce are brought about by directing beams of protons and antiprotons, or electrons and positrons, against each other. 

Though we are yet to discover any antiplanets or antigalaxies, baby steps have been taken toward slightly more complex forms of antimatter. Antiatoms of hydrogen have been created, if only for a few moments, inside high-powered accelerators. At this point, it would be difficult to make antimatter in any reasonably sized quantity, as it is only created particle by particle now. Though it may be useful in applications such as medicine and probing the subatomic world, it is difficult at this time to conceive antimatter fuel or even a way of containing any sustainable amount. For the time being, a world run on antimatter energy will remain a world out of science fiction.

On The Horizon

At this point in the field of particle physics, there is a theoretical “field” that is the focus of Fermilab and the Tevatron, as well as the Large Hadron Collider in Europe (once it is in operation). This center of attention in the world of particle physics is the “Higgs” field, and the carrier of force that will prove its existence is the “Higgs” boson. When considering carriers of the weak force versus the carriers of the electromagnetic force, there is a fundamental difference besides the nature of the force itself. Electromagnetic interactions can occur, to varying degrees, out in infinite directions. The weak interactions, however, only have an effect up to a distance of 10^-15 centimeters. This difference in range is directly related to the carrier’s mass, as a photon is nearly massless and the W and Z bosons are the largest force carriers.

This brings to mind another question in the minds of physicists: if the property of mass has such an effect on the way a particle distributes its force, than what exactly governs a particle’s mass? This question is at the focus of particle studies of today, as particle physicists and accelerator theorists and engineers race to find proof of the particle that gives all matter its mass. Scientists speculate, based off of the ideas of a British physicist named Peter Higgs, that quarks and leptons gain their mass by interacting with this “God Particle.” Finding this “origin of mass” is the prominent goal in the world of colliders today, and theorists speculate that the first answers to this question will become available within the next fifteen years. This particle, predicted to be electrically neutral and to have a spin of zero, is suspected to be attainable at only energies of 1 TeV or higher. This puts the Tevatron on the map of the few accelerators able to accomplish this feat. As physicists work round the clock, it is only a matter of time before they begin to uncover the mystery of why mass even exists through the aid of particle acceleration.

Conclusion

There is still a lot that we don’t know about the universe, the galaxy, or even the world that we live in. In fact, with advances made in science and physics each day, it is difficult to gauge even how much we don’t know about what surrounds us and governs our physical life processes. One of the most effective ways to gain an understanding of what we face throughout all of space and time is pursuing studies in particle acceleration. These studies have opened the eyes of people all over the world to the many types of particles that exist, whether they have no consequence in our everyday lives or they give us the very mass of our bodies. In a way, attempting to reach higher and to push science to the limit is truly defined by how high we can boost the energy of the particle beams that have already revealed so much of what our eyes can’t see. A future that involves even more sophistication in particle physics is the future that will give us a greater understanding of the more fundamental questions in life. Why mass exists, why matter exists, and perhaps even the greatest question of all --- why are we here --- could be hidden in the explosions of two high-energy beams. When innovative theory meets the peaks of engineering, matter meets antimatter, and we approach another level of understanding in the quest for knowledge. 

You know?

I'm making like a tree and branching out.

So, now I have a uke repetoire. I'm going to busk this summer for money, maybe. Since I don't have a job, and I bought a new Hawaiian shirt today, this seems most appropriate. More-so than a lot of the appropriation found in the Western world today.

Take, for instance, the appropriation of the use of the bass guitar in "rock 'n' roll" music. I condone this use of instrumentation and produce the sounds of this generation through my fingers and the groove that lingers, within them.

That suffices as a warmup. Consider the concept of a "war-muppet" today. Almost as effective as the implementation of a Benjamin Franklin army, in my opinion. Another rant for another day.

I'm unapologetic if this wasted your time. The real reason I wrote it was to state to the internet that I will work tirelessly on my research paper until it's finished. This will happen before the due date. Now it has to happen, because everyone with a connection to the World Wide Web is involved. And I'm not one to let down humanity.

I refuse to post a new entry until someone glorifies the poem of my last one.

Dammit.

Another Discovery.

Man...I haven't written in this thing since...last year!!!

I have another insight that I'd like to inform the general public about. Apparently, if you are in the process of causing a person, place, or thing to take on the appearance of a certain color, you are *color*ing it. No, not "coloring". Bluing. Greying.

Yellowing.

We need to take this ability of ours to the limit. The ability being the use of our language, and limit being the stars.

In addition, if you "turn (an active alert person) into a zombie," Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary declares that you have just "zombified" them. It is the Big Y addition, but we're going to overlook that for a moment. As revolutionary as it is, this definition does not only give us a new word to play with. We have crucial information on both the nature of zombies and the condition that one must inhabit to become a zombie. If the only way to become a zombie is to be zombified, then you must be an active and alert person to be affected. TAKE YOUR LIVES DOWNHILL. Be passive-aggressive, unfocused, uninvolved, and unaware. One day, you will thank me for stopping the massive outbreak that was just about to occur. Or will you? Because if you do the things that I am telling you, to avoid every trait that makes you a target for a zombifier, what have you become?

One of them. 

Don't you see? 

Or are you blind? 

Can you pull yourself out from the bathos of mankind? 

We've been told all these lies and fed by a blog spoon

And that spoon is the doom that leads the tomb

So take your petals and take your log flumes

Cause the only man standing is Mazda

"Zoom Zoom"

I would like to own an exotic cat one day.

I didn't listen to as many Christmas songs as I usually do this year. I didn't really get in the holiday spirit, at least not to a big extent, and I didn't go crazy wrapping gifts. Still though, it was a great Christmas, and I'm glad that I have the family that I do. I am now in one of those moods where I wouldn't mind living in a big apartment complex surrounded by family members. I feel close with them, and I don't really feel like I need to go on some big independent journey to achieve some sort of fulfillment in life. I am okay with where I'm at, and I would be comfortable in a small, cozy house, with my own chair, a big dog, and weekly game nights with family and friends to keep the life going. God help me if I don't get out of this mood fast.

Opportunities are on the table. I've got a show coming up, a pit gig open, an offer at a role in a play and, hopefully, an audition for yet another. Whether it be myself or a stranger reading this, at this time in my life, the reader should know that my passion is acting. I love to perform and my biggest dream is to make it my life's work. I have no idea if that's going to happen, but I do know that I am going to put everything I have into achieving it. The "happen" part is sortof an act of fate, and I'm not a fan of witchcraft or anything, so that's still up in the air. Pretty soon, these feelings of being okay with settling down will fly out of my head, and I'll be bitten by that bug again. 

I get bit by a lot of random little ideas. I have wanted to be a lot of things, including a comedian, a musician/songwriter, a monk, an awesome bassist, an awesome banjo player, a great fisherman, a Seinfeld expert, a "car guy", an anime fan, a "comic book junkie", a director, a "computer hacker", a great hunter, a leather designer, a samurai, a master of throwing knives at trees so that they stick there, a lone traveler, a tea expert, and a ton of other things that have popped into my head along the line. Most of these ideas have come from movies, television shows, and books. However, I don't even know what some of these entail. To be honest with you, I always thought the people in the movies who knew how to "hack the system" were cool, and the gadgets they had were neat, but I don't think that, even if I was bestowed with incredible knowledge of these technical tidbits, I would know how to use them. I don't have a bomb to stop, or secret information to gain. It's an image. That's why dreams like that don't last in my mind. 

Acting, however, is a different story. I have experience in it, and I understand why I want to be involved. I just gave a speech on the whole topic, so you know I'm serious here. Word.

Destiny...here I come!!!

My time works in cycles, not days.

Usually when I write one of these entries, I have reached the end of a cycle. Like the end of a mini-chapter of my life, in a way. Major chapters are much more important. Actually, maybe my life isn't a book at all. It could be a series of books, or a set of volumes that make up my life. Maybe my life is an entire library, rather than a single set of anything. Well, if it is a library, which I have just decided it is, then I have just reached the end of another book. This one you might skip if you end up checking that library one day, but all the same, it's there.

Do you ever feel like, even though you're a person who likes people and enjoys their family, you just don't want anyone around you at all? It confuses me. Maybe it's because I've been isolating myself while combing Vice City over and over. It could also be because I've been sucked into the computer for the last couple of nights. Whatever the reason is, I've had the urge to take an adventure in my life. I would love to just sling a pack of supplies on my back and take off into the world, not knowing what would happen or where I would end up next. But that's too difficult to do. Not because I would worry about money, or getting lost, or ending up realizing that it's difficult to sleep in a different place every night. I can deal with those things. The difficult thing is finding uncharted territory to navigate. There's no challenge around here anymore. Everything that technology works to improve, to map out every road and every bike route, to create a blueprint of earth...it leads to this sense of an inability to venture into the unknown. I wish things were organic again. 

Realistically, I think that I would consider heading out to the Kodiak or one of those tiny ports in Alaska and talking my way onto a boat. To set sail and catch fish, weather freezing temperatures and drinking black coffee out of a tin cup, and generally facing nature and the elements. It would be like proving myself to the world...and it's my own life, so why not. I set sail at some point within the next few years. Now it's in the blog, so it has to be true.

I would love to venture into a place where you have to walk from village to village, to stay with kind people that you could tell your stories of your adventures, and to fight thieves and escape from those you can't fight. To have a life to speak of when you reach the end. It all leads to one thing.

I want to be in Avatar.