Colorado State University Researchers Part Of International Effort Studying Birth Of Universe
Monday, March 31, 1997
FORT COLLINS--Three Colorado State University researchers
hope 70,000 electronic and plastic precision parts will help
unravel one of the most compelling mysteries surrounding the
birth of the universe.
The parts--now in production at Colorado State and at
several regional businesses--are part of a major international
research effort to replicate the conditions present when the
universe was less than a millionth of a second old.
The inch-long precision pieces, produced by physics
professors Robert Wilson, Walter Toki and John Harton, will
measure the distance and movement of certain particles of matter
and anti-matter as they collide with each other. The collisions
produce a very concentrated amount of pure energy, which in turn
creates different types of matter and anti-matter. The project,
housed at Stanford University, was designated a top scientific
priority by President Bill Clinton.
Researchers hope this experiment, known as BaBar, explains
why the universe is presently known to be composed primarily of
matter, when matter and anti-matter were supposedly present in
equal quantities at the moment of the Big Bang between 10 billion
and 20 billion years ago.
This question has plagued scientists for years because it
contradicts the fundamental laws that govern the way particles
behave over time.
Wilson explained that after the Big Bang, particles and
anti-particles should have interacted and annihilated each other
as the universe cooled, leaving nothing but radiation. Instead,
this very small violation of particle behavior is believed to be
the reason more matter than anti-matter developed as the universe
aged, leading to everything we see today.
"This is a hot area of high-energy physics, a frontier of
the unknown," Wilson said. "It is daunting to think our
experiments are probing the birth of the universe so closely."
The project's name, BaBar, refers to the B/B-bar system of
particles, or mesons, that seem occasionally to violate the
seemingly inviolable laws of particle behavior. Mesons are
subatomic particles made up of pairs of quarks--thought to be the
elementary particles of normal matter--and their anti-matter
counterparts known as anti-quarks. Mesons play a role as the
"glue" that keeps atomic nuclei from flying apart.
Most particles and anti-particles decay at similar rates.
However, particles in the B/B-bar system occasionally decay at
different rates over time, resulting in anti-particles that are
slightly different.
"Should this violation be observed in the decay rates of
these particular particles, there is reason to hope for a
breakthrough in understanding how the universe was created,"
Wilson said. "If there is such a violation, as we think there
is, we must then ask ourselves if our current Standard Model
outlining the behavior of particles correctly describes the
effect--or is there something missing from this theory?"
The parts produced by the Colorado State team will be
installed in an experimental detector used to precisely measure
the decay rates of these particles. The detector then will become
part of a circular collider under construction at
Stanford.
The collisions produce pairs of B-mesons that decay quickly
into long-lived particles that can be seen by the detector. High
voltage wires precisely held by Colorado State's components
inside the detector will collect the electrical signals these
particles leave behind, while other apparatus will record
individual flashes of light with intensities less than 1
trillionth that of sunlight.
"We hope to be the scientists who have the first glimpse of
these rare particle decays, which may explain in part the birth
of the universe and how matter and anti-matter evolved," Toki
said.
BaBar scientists--including those from Colorado State--
already are simulating the experiment to prepare for the
onslaught of data produced by the collisions, Toki said.
The physicists, with the aid of project engineer David
Warner and a team including research assistants, graduate
students and undergraduates at Colorado State, spent three years
designing the parts. Some electronic components were designed in
partnership with a group of scientists in France and tested in a
particle beam in operation in Switzerland, Wilson said.
Colorado State's portion of the research operates on a
$250,000 annual grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and an
additional $350,000 from the agency over the last two years to
fund design work, produce equipment necessary to test the parts,
and assemble the components.
The BaBar experiment represents one of the largest
international undertakings in science history, including more
than 530 physicists and engineers from 10 countries. Wilson is
chairman of the governing council for the $85 million project,
scheduled to begin experiments in 1999.
A consortium of Japanese universities, laboratories and
private industry is building a similar particle collider that
also is scheduled to begin experiments in 1999, which gives the
BaBar project a special urgency for the scientists involved.
"It's become a race against time," Wilson said. "Only
recently was the computer technology developed to make this kind
of an experiment possible. Now, the rush is on to find out if our
theories about the birth of the universe are correct."
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