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The Big Question (post-16)
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A view along a section of the 27km long LHC tunnel and collider
A Massive problem
Who's Hidden All The Antimatter?
A Weighty Question
Most Of The Universe Is Missing.
Medical Application

WHAT HAS PARTICLE PHYSICS RESEARCH DONE FOR HEALTH?
Read this introductory article about nuclear medicine then answer the questions below. You will need to dig a bit deeper to answer some questions fully…

When you’re done, your teacher may ask you to use what you have learned to prepare a short presentation.

Particles for medicine: cancer therapy and much more . . .
DOWNLOAD: IS PARTICLE RESEARCH USEFUL.PDF

What is gravity?

Easy. After the thing with the apple, Isaac Newton came up with the idea of universal gravitation. Everything pulls on everything else. The strength of the pull is proportional to the mass of the objects and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Albert Einstein then refined the whole idea by seeing gravity as a deformation in spacetime. His theory of general relativity has withstood every test so far without even a dent. So what's the problem?

Everything apart from gravity. That's the problem.

Three of the four interactions between particles - the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces - all slot neatly into the standard model. It's a theoretical framework that accounts for all the particles we know about and the interactions between them. It holds up amazingly well as a theory, and has even predicted the existence of particles (like the W and Z bosons) which have then kindly turned up in experiments at CERN. In science, when a theory predicts something that nobody has seen and it actually appears when you look for it, that's a good sign that you're on the right track.

The fourth interaction, gravity, stubbornly refuses to fit into the equations of the standard model. Something is horribly wrong…

For this assignment, you will research the latest scientific thinking about gravity and how the experiments at the LHC might or might not help crack this mystery. Your teacher will tell you how they would like you to present your findings.

Key things to find out:

  • The standard model hints at the existence of a force-mediating particle for gravity - what is it?
  • How does the strength of gravity compare with the other three interactions?
  • Does gravity work in the same way over sub-atomic distances as it does over cosmic distances?
  • What are gravitational waves? What might cause them?
  • Can you find any experiments to look for gravitational waves?

Useful online references:

CERN website homepage
NASA homepage, link to LISA experiment slated for 2012
LHC UK website, search for gravitons
Take 5 (on this website)
New Scientist magazine

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