A super-particle accelerator?

[BlackHole]

Do you think it is possible, in principle at least, to build a particle accelerator which will collide protons at super-high energies of up to 10 PeV?

 

In order to test superstring theory we'll probably need to 're-create the creation'. This is not possible with current technology because the energies required are trillions of trillions of times larger than the hydrogen bomb.

 

Although such a complex design will probably not be finished in my lifetime (and probably not before 2100), i believe this is achievable. Also the problem is that the structure might take the size of half the solar system.

 

The greatest mystery is what really happenes at temperatures of up to 100 quadrillion kelvins.

 

Maybe the problem is not practical but theoretical. In other words, although the string equations are perfectly well-defined, no one can solve them yet. Maybe Quantum computers and new numerical algorithms will solve the problem. What we need is new math to solve it...

 

PS: See also the final theory with a heated discussion on physics.com.

[Chatha]

I think the lab at CERN may have such equipment but I am not sure. You can check at their web site http://public.web.cern.ch/public/

According to Godels theory we may never find the answer through mere equations.

[bascule]

We'll get there, especially once we have rapid prototyping machines approaching the functionality of the Von Neumann Universal Constructor. Imagine, for example, a particle accelerator encompassing the entire circumference of the moon (~10,000km), powered by a massive solar array. That'd likely do the trick.

 

Give it 100 years

[Severian]

I think the lab at CERN may have such equipment but I am not sure. You can check at their web site http://public.web.cern.ch/public/

According to Godels theory we may never find the answer through mere equations.

 

The state of the art collider being built at CERN is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which will collide protons together at an energy of about 14TeV. It should turn on (if there is no delay) in 2007. However, since prtons are not funtamental particles, it is really the collisions of gluons inside the proton which are important, and these collisions are at about 1TeV.

 

A 10PeV collider would need radically different technology. First of all, it would need to be straight since bending a particle round in a circle is an acceleration, realeasing breaking-radiation, which reduces the enrgy of the particle and places a cap on how energetic you can make it. But if it is straight, you can't pass it round and round to gather energy - you only have one shot through the accelerator to achive the 10PeV. So we would have to think of some radically new way of accelerating the particles since we couldn't just 'scale-up' the ones we have.

[BlackHole]

I'm not sure to which extent we'll be able to increase the particles' momentum. All types of accelerators accelerate particles by pushing them with an electric-field wave.

 

Reaching 10 PeV will require something more powerful than electromagnetic fields. I'm not sure whether that is possible.

[5614]

Please don't take this stupidly; but what kind of energies are generated by a nuclear explosion?

 

Just people seem somewhat doubtful of current EM field propulsion systems reaching 10PeV, nuclear has obvious initial problems, but just thinking, what kind of energy is generated?

 

(I don't really need an exact figure, could it potentialy reach 10PeV ?)

[Klaynos]

Nuclear energies are relativly small, if memory seves me right a fusion decay is normally in the region of 10MeV

 

On the particle accelerator note, my thoughts about one "half the size of the solar system" is, where are we going to get the resources from to build it?

[BlackHole]

Nuclear energies are relativly small' date=' if memory seves me right a fusion decay is normally in the region of 10MeV

 

On the particle accelerator note, my thoughts about one "half the size of the solar system" is, where are we going to get the resources from to build it?[/quote']

 

That's what bothers me. There are no resources to reach 10 PeV. Something must be wrong with our interpretation because the results lead to infinities.

 

It could be that we don't need to go to higher energies, just to figure out what quantum mechanics is talking about. I think that something with Bohr's model of the hyperfine structure transition is not completely understood..