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21st Oct 2007

Particle Physics - The Secrets of the Universe


Kat Arney

Chris Smith

This week on the Naked Scientists, we delve into the secrets of the universe to find out what we’re really made of.  Ben Allanach explains how a particle accelerator actually works and what it can tell us about the Big Bang.  Naked Scientist Meera Senthilingam puts on her sunglasses to visit a light source 10 billion times brighter than the sun.  And finally, we’re joined by Cristina Lazzeroni, to discuss her “beautiful” investigations at a subatomic level.

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Particle Physics - The Secrets of the Universe - More about this podcast

This week on the Naked Scientists, we delve into the secrets of the universe to find out what we’re really made of.  Ben Allanach explains how a particle accelerator actually works and what it can tell us about the Big Bang.  Naked Scientist Meera Senthilingam puts on her sunglasses to visit a light source 10 billion times brighter than the sun.  And finally, we’re joined by Cristina Lazzeroni, to discuss her “beautiful” investigations at a subatomic level.

Probing the particle world

What are we actually made of? What’s inside and atom? And where did it all come from? Ben Allanach is at Cambridge University, and he’s trying to devise experiments to prove – or disprove – ideas about the earliest moments of our universe.  We’ll be asking Ben to strip down particle physics for our benefit, and find out what those big whizzy accelerators actually do.

He describes his work as “looking for the smoking gun”, meaning that he works out the “signature” that should appear from a collision between particles.  This is then tested by researchers working with huge particle acclerators, to find out if reality matches up with the theoretical idea.  And sometimes, if the data don’t turn out to match the theory, then it can lead to some truly exciting discoveries in particle physics.

Diamond is a scientist’s best friend

Unfortunately for Meera Senthilingam, the closest she’s getting to a diamond this week is a trip to the Diamond Light Source in Harwell – the biggest UK-funded scientific facility to be built for thirty years.   Housed in a futuristic doughnut-shaped building (mmmm… doughnuts), Diamond is a machine called a synchrotron, which generates high energy beams of X-rays that are 10 billion times brighter than the sun.

These beams can be used to peer deep inside molecules, effectively acting like a “super-microscope”.  We sent Meera along to find out what Diamond can do.  From unravelling the mysteries of ancient parchments like the Dead Sea Scrolls to analysing proteins and polymers, this Diamond is definitely priceless.

Searching for beauty in the atom

Cristina Lazzeroni is working on the new particle accelerator and collider that is currently being built at CERN in Switzerland, called the Large Hadron Collider.  She’ll be telling us about her work searching inside atoms for “beauty”  – the name originally given to the subatomic particles now known as bottom quarks.   

Cristina is now working on ALICE – A Large Ion Collider Experiment – studying the particles that are produced when two atoms of lead are smashed together.  This produces a plasma made of quarks and gluons – the building blocks of matter. She’s hoping to find out what holds the universe together, and we’re hoping she can explain it to us in words of one syllable!

So pack up your protons, collect your quarks and join us for a subatomic journey on the Naked Scientists this week.

Kat Arney



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