Large Hadron Collider may discover new dimensions

Washington, September 4 : The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which goes into operation on September 10, might lead to the discovery of new dimensions.

Located on the border of France and Switzerland, the LHC is the world's largest particle accelerator complex.

According to Professor Etzion, an experimental physicist in high-energy research, "It is hard to grasp the dimensions of the practical benefits from this project, but we're expecting to explore the basic forces that hold the world together."

If all goes according to plan, the superconducting magnets in the collider will zap atomic particles around the 17-mile tunnel at roughly the speed of light.

Then, the scientists will smash the particles together; replicating what happened mere nanoseconds after the first big bang.

While invisible particles are expected to leave a trace like a watermark after they collide, Professor Etzion believes that some particles will escape detection, possibly traveling to other dimensions.

According to Etzion, this is an exotic theory, but one which may explain why the force of gravity appears to be so weak.

"It could be that while all the matter we know is trapped in three space dimensions, a gravity carrier can move into additional dimensions, resulting in a diluted gravitational force", he said, noting he and his colleagues will be looking for particles delivered by a force carrier called the "Z*" or "zee star."

The physicists hypothesize that the Z* may be able to move between our own three-dimensional world and other hidden dimensions.

The notion of new dimensions is stranger than science fiction, though the possibility of their existence is quite real.

Etzion believes that other dimensions may exist in parallel to ours, but that, until now, they were too small for us to experimentally detect.

"For the first time we will reach a new energy scale in our lab, the Tera electron volt regime, and we expect to discover new phenomena there," he said.

"At such high energies, we may be able to stimulate particles to jump through dimensions and can measure this by the disappearance of mass or energy, or the appearance of new excited state towers of particles," he added.

Etzion's research falls within a branch of theoretical physics known as string theory. The theory posits that all matter is made up of vibrating strings of energy, suggesting six or more dimensions we cannot see affect everything we do and see.

The first high-energy collisions are expected to take place in October 2008.

ANI