Collision course creates microscopic 'black holes'

Physics At The End Of The Galactic Cosmic Ray Spectrum will take place in Aspen, Colorado at the Aspen Center for Physics from April 26 to 30, 2005.

Sean Carroll:

Among other responses to the post about fundamental physics in the U.S., there was a position that one occasionally hears: "Who cares about particle physics, we can just do astrophysics instead, it's cheaper and more fun." I've heard this claim even (especially?) from people who have been experimental particle physicists themselves, and have decided to move into astrophysics. This is actually quite an established career path, although not always the easiest one.

This is ole news with leading ideas to consider. Sean's post also directs some reasoning behind this move to astrophyiscs and the relevance it can play where reductionistic understanding having now, related common bonds for consideration with GR. Have we thus found a way to bring together perspectives that help us realized that we are ever more direct in our pursuate?

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

On top of that, spotting many black holes would bolster fashionable theories that explain gravity by suggesting that other dimensions — beyond familiar ones such as height, depth and time — exist "curled up" and hidden in the universe.

Measurements of the black holes and their energies would suggest exactly how many hidden dimensions exist. Even if no black holes turn up, the pair suggest science will benefit from results that poke holes in the extra- dimensions theory.

Many physicists find extra dimensions a distasteful notion. In remarks to an American Physical Society newsletter, physicist Frank Wilczek of MIT called the black hole study a sound way to test an unattractive idea.

"There's no question that the Auger observatory will be sensitive to this signal, if it exists," says Penn State's Stéphane Coutu, a member of the international Auger Observatory team. "We'll definitely look."

Frank Wilczek

Asymptotic Freedom: From Paradox to Paradigm

Figure 1: A photograph from the L3 collaboration, showing three jets emerging from electron-positron annihilation at high energy [9]. These jets are the materialization of a quark, antiquark, and gluon.

Figure 7: A picture of particle tracks emerging from the collision of two gold ions at high energy. The resulting fireball and its subsequent expansion recreate, on a small scale and briefly, physical conditions that last occurred during the Big Bang [1.

This simulation shows a single event, the collision of two gold ions with a center-of-mass energy of 200 AGeV. The color code indicates hits in the various subdetector components as well as indicating the momentum of particles. The image on the top is a perspective view near one end of the detector, looking roughly along the beam axis. The bottom image is a side view of the same event

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