FresnoBee.com: Local: Local students in Europe for research

Local students in Europe for research
Collider could help scientists understand universe's origins.
By Jeff St. John / The Fresno Bee
08/05/08 23:20:29
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Outside Geneva, at the world's premiere center for physics research, five Fresno State students are lending their skills to a project expected to help scientists answer fundamental questions about the nature of the universe.

The project is the Large Hadron Collider, an $8 billion particle accelerator funded by governments and staffed by thousands of scientists from around the world.

The builder is CERN, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world's premiere center for physics research and the source of inventions ranging from the World Wide Web to fundamental advances on the cutting edge of physics.

For 22-year-old physics major and Clovis native Ben Zastovnik, it's the opportunity of a lifetime. He's one of the Fresno State students working on software that will help scientists detect and measure the results of the light-speed collisions of subatomic particles that the 27-kilometer underground accelerator will produce.

"To be here when it's about to come online is really exciting," Zastovnik said over an Internet phone line late one recent Swiss evening last week.

The Large Hadron Collider is expected to be completed as soon as this month, and Zastovnik said he and his Fresno State colleagues have been working until late at night to get their software done in time for the launch.

Scientists hope the collider will produce a Higgs boson, a particle that has never been observed but has been theorized as a way to bridge gaps in the theories upon which physicists' understanding of the universe is based.

That could help in "the most interesting question of the origin of mass," said Yong Sheng Gao, the physics professor at Fresno State who organized the students' time at CERN.

In less technical terms, the collider experiments "should take us back to the beginning of time, allow us to study what happened at the beginning of the universe," he said.

Fresno State is one of two California State University schools -- the other is Cal Poly San Luis Obispo -- involved in CERN research, Gao said. He helped Fresno State get involved through his previous work with CERN.

Fresno State supports the students with grants that cover part of the cost of travel to Switzerland and living expenses there, Gao said.

But for students like Zastovnik and 35-year-old physics and mathematics dual major Lawrence Carlson, being involved in the research at CERN is well worth the cost -- several thousand dollars out of his own pocket.

"Most of us are more than willing to put forth the remaining money, particularly me, because this is what I'm working toward after graduation," said Carlson, who plans to pursue a Ph.D. in physics.

Carlson's work programming a computer interface that monitors the collider for humidity, pressure and other variables isn't directly linked to the high-level physics experiments for which it will be used. But he's fascinated by the regular lectures he and his fellow students attend to learn about the collider's potential applications, both in pure research and for practical use.

"Just recently there was a talk about how these particles, taken in small doses, could work on cancer tissues, based on what we see in some of the detectors," he said.

But he and Zastovnik aren't paying attention to one of the more outlandish claims being made by a tiny group of opponents of starting the collider -- that it will create a mini-black hole that will destroy the world.

"It's nonsense," Zastovnik said. Some who believe the claim have gone to federal court to try to stop the collider from starting up, despite the consensus of CERN scientists that it will present no danger.

As Gao puts it: "The original concern was that as the protons travel at the speed of light, they form a radius that is smaller than the radius of a black hole."

But, he added, "It's not a stable black hole that could swallow the universe. It's unstable, so it explodes right away," leaving no trace.

Setting aside the scarier theories of what the collider might produce, Zastovnik still finds plenty to be excited about.

"Dark matter is one thing they'll be testing here," he said, referring to the theory that a large portion of the matter in the universe does not interact with electromagnetic radiation and is thus not visible to current human means of detection.

Also on the agenda is research into supersymmetries, "where every particle has a sort of shadow," Zastovnik said. That's another high-level physics concept tied in with what's known as string theory, which postulates many more space and time dimensions beyond those humans can perceive.

And then there's the excitement of being in a foreign country, surrounded by researchers and volunteers from all over the world.

"Being able to collaborate with people you don't usually get to work with in the United States, that's a great experience," Zastovnik said.

The reporter can be reached at jeffstjohn@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6637.