Rutgers University Physics/Astronomy Colloquium - 2008 Irons Lecture

The Irons Lectures are talks intended for the general public: high school students and teachers, college students and teachers, friends, neighbors, and anyone interested in science and science education. Abstract: With the anticipated turn-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) next summer, fundamental physics is on the verge of entering its most exciting era in a generation. The LHC is the biggest experiment in history, in all senses of the word. The machine is a circular ring with a 28 km circumference, in which two beams of protons are accelerated in opposite directions, to speeds approaching 0.99999999 times the speed of light. They are then made to collide with each other, allowing us to probe the laws of Nature down to distances of 10^(-17) cm, 1000 times smaller than the atomic nucleus, 10 times smaller the tiniest distances we have probed to date. There are strong arguments that dramatic new physical principles await us at these distances. The LHC could extend our usual notions of spacetime by detecting supersymmetry or extra dimensions of space, and could directly produce the particles that constitute the Dark Matter of the Universe. In this talk I will describe these ideas, and discuss the solid things we will have learned to by the early years of the next decade. More information: * Directions and more info, visit http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/irons. Please park in lot 53A if possible. * For further information, contact Larry Zamick (lzamickphysics.rutgers.edu, phone 732-445-3874) or Scott Thomas (scthomasphysics.rutgers.edu, phone 732-445-3984).