"The November Revolution": A Tie for the Nobel Prize

"The November Revolution"
A Tie for the Nobel Prize

Samuel Ting's cautiousness in announcing his discovery of the J/Psi particle nearly cost him a share of a Nobel Prize. Ting, heading a research group at Brookhaven Labs on Long Island, discovered the particle in the summer of 1974, but kept the result quiet while he carefully reviewed the data.

However, a team he 252t1915c aded by Burton Richter at Stanford University discovered the same particle in the fall. On November 10, Richter's team began telephoning physicists the world over about their discovery, prompting a mad scramble at Brookhaven to reach Ting-who, incredibly, was on a plane on his way to a physics meeting at Stanford.

Both scientists eventually shared the Nobel for the discovery-now remembered as "The November Revolution"-a momentous event that finally convinced physicists that quarks did, in fact, exist.

The Future of Particle Physics: Finding the Higgs and a "Theory of Everything"

Most of Particle Physics for Non-Physicists: A Tour of the Microcosmos focuses on what particle physicists have accomplished, and what they believe they know with a high degree of certainty. The last four lectures turn toward unresolved issues, and new theories and experiments still to come. These include:

The latest ultra-high-energy particle accelerators. The newest in the U.S., the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) is studying the conditions that existed only a fraction of a second after the birth of the universe.

Particle physics' role in cosmology, or the study of the universe as a whole. Issues here include the nature of dark matter and dark energy, both of which have been measured but not identified, and inflation theory, an extension of the big bang theory of the origin of the universe.

Efforts to build upon the Standard Model to create an ultimate particle theory, or "theory of everything" (TOE). Perhaps the most exciting development here is string theory, a highly mathematical concept that dispenses with particles in favor of fundamental "strings" of matter.

A year to look forward to is 2007, when the Large Hadron Collider at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) will reopen. It is currently shut down for an upgrade that will enable it to produce unprecedented energies of 14 trillion electron volts.

At that level, physicists are certain they will finally determine whether the Higgs particle-the last predicted but yet-to-be-captured specimen for the particle zoo-exists or not. Either result will have spectacular implications for particle physics, Professor Pollock notes.

This course offers you an unprecedented opportunity to tour the particle subuniverse underlying the universe that is visible to us, and to grasp the latest, cutting-edge developments in this exciting and incredibly important field.