Why Physicists Need the Large Hadron Collider

Google Tech Talks
October 17, 2008

ABSTRACT

The LHC is the biggest (27 kilometers around) scientific instrument ever built and it is now ramping up to start taking data. It smashes together protons at enormous energy in order to create new forms of matter. Physicists hope to find the Higgs Boson which is the missing link in our current theory. Hopefully unanticipated discoveries will be made. I will explain why physicists need this expensive tool in order to understand nature at the smallest distance scales.

Speaker: Edward Farhi
Edward Farhi was trained as a theoretical particle physicist but has also worked on astrophysics, general relativity, and the foundations of quantum mechanics. His present interest is the theory of quantum computation.

As a graduate student, Farhi invented the jet variable "Thrust," which is used to describe how particles in high energy accelerator collisions come out in collimated streams. He then worked with Leonard Susskind on grand unified theories with electro-weak dynamical symmetry breaking. He and Larry Abbott proposed an (almost viable) model in which quarks, leptons, and massive gauge bosons are composite. With Robert Jaffe, he worked out many of the properties of a possibly stable super dense form of matter called "Strange Matter" and with Charles Alcock and Angela Olinto he studied the properties of "Strange Stars." His interest then shifted to general relativity and he and Alan Guth studied the classical and quantum prospects of making a new inflationary universe in the laboratory today. He, Guth and others also studied obstacles to constructing a time machine.

More recently, Farhi has been studying how to use quantum mechanics to gain algorithmic speedup in solving problems that are difficult for conventional computers. He and Sam Gutmann proposed the idea of designing algorithms based on quantum walks, which has been used to demonstrate the power of quantum computation over classical. They, along with Jeffrey Goldstone and Michael Sipser, introduced the idea of quantum computation by adiabatic evolution, which has generated much interest in the quantum computing community. This group was tied for first in showing that there is a problem that cannot be sped up by a quantum computer. In 2007, Farhi, Goldstone and Gutmann showed that a quantum computer can determine who wins a game faster than a classical computer.

Edward Farhi continues to work on quantum computing but keeps a close eye on particle physics and recent developments in cosmology.

Edward (Eddie) Farhi went to the Bronx High School of Science and Brandeis University before getting his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1978. He was then on the staff at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and at CERN in Geneva Switzerland before coming to MIT, where he joined the faculty in 1982. Farhi has given lectures on his own research at many of the major physics research centers in the world. At MIT, he has taught undergraduate courses in quantum mechanics and special relativity. At the graduate level he has taught quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, particle physics and general relativity. Farhi won three teaching awards at MIT and in 2000, 2001, and 2002 he lectured the big freshman physics course, "8.01." In July 2005, he was appointed the Director of MIT's Center for Theoretical Physics.

Professor Farhi's publications are available online from the SPIRES HEP Literature Database (particle physics) and arXiv.org e-Print archive (quantum computing).

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[perydwyn]

@mdma24

Dont sell yourself short. A bit of time and effort and you can be as smart as the guy giving this lecture.

[Samgurney88]

@yaerav Don't know the context of what you're saying is, but if you are going to be derisive, get your facts right. Gravity is not a theory, it is a phenomena explained by theories. So yes, General Relativity is 'just a theory'. But if you insist strictly upon direct sensory phenomena to falsify it, then there is already such 'proof' it is wrong, but most Physicists fudge it with 'Dark Matter'. 'Just a theory' IS what all science is- some theories require insanity to deny, others intelligence.

[sandustanBrasov]

• SandustanBrasov

The dust of subatomic particles resulted after the collisions in LHC are particles of ethereal matter, even that the physicists give not them permission of existence! The electrical discharge to one Tesla coil was made and in a basin with water. Great was the surprise that the electrical discharge of the particles of electrical ether in water has the same ARBORESCENT SHAPE - proving the existence, and in water of the primary ethereal gravitational field.

[sandustanBrasov]

• SandustanBrasov

Now, were collided particles in LHC and you seen that is nothimg: none Higgs boson, none Big-Bang, neither black holes, but only thousands of shards of ethereal particles.Therefore, now -return you physicists from your distraction at Isaac Newton with his universal attraction law= THE UNIFIED LAW OF THE MATTERS AND FORCES, at the eliminated ETHER by Einstein, at the unseen world of the ethereal and spiritual matters which fill up the Cosmos, and return you at the Lord- at God!

[sandustanBrasov]

• SandustanBrasov

The physicists show that about the discovery the Higgs boson it desire and the discovery the origins of the bodies'mass; the discovery the dark matter, the discovery the superior dimensions and the demonstration of the superposition. But as a result to the collisions of particles- the black holes had appeared not, the Big-Bang had appeared not demonstrating that the Large Hadron Collider bring not about us the Apocalipse.

[sandustanBrasov]

• SandustanBrasov

In 1964 physicist Peter Higgs has thinked existence to one energetic field which penetrate whole Universe, and named it "Higgs field" and his particles named "Higgs boson"and that these can give mass the subatomic particles.Thus appear the necessity as in the CERN-frame let it construct an accelerator more big: the LARGE HADRON COLLIDER, which made the first collisions of particles in 14 December 2009, afterwards in 2010, in 2011 nd they uncovered not the Higgs boson particles

[sandustanBrasov]

• SandustanBrasov

The materials seem to be complicated and irregular at the sight with the free eye. But at microscope they it show simple and orderly. All the material shapes: animal. vegetal and mineral are made from atoms and these only from three constituents: protons, neutrons and electrons. The photon of light we see it and the photon of heat we feel it, but the ethereal particles are more small, of a few thousands time; we see not them now, but the our spirits see them.