A THEORY IN SEARCH OF EVIDENCE

Dark matter: Why we keep searching for something that may not even exist

Our understanding of the universe keeps improving. But there's a huge invisible force out there called dark matter and we're virtually clueless about it.

Astrophysicists say the James Webb Space Telescope may help them detect,

 if not see, dark matter in the universe

It has never been detected, only speculated. But scientists estimate that up to 85% of the matter in the universe could be made of what's called dark matter.

Scientists cannot define dark matter with any certainty, but that hasn't stopped the search for it. Our largest and newest space-based telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope is on the case.

It was barely moments after the first images taken by the telescope had been released on July 12, 2022, when Kai Noeske said something both mysterious and true.

Noeske, an astronomer at the European Space Observation Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, was pointing to an image of Stephan's Quintet, a group of five galaxies, as they have never been seen before.

Astronomer Kai Noeske looked at the image of Stephan's Quintet and said:

 "There is a lot out there that we do not know [...] One of those things could be dark matter."

And he said: "There is a lot out there that we do not know. And we do not know what we do not know. [But] one of those things could be dark matter." 

An accidental discovery

In the 19th century, Lord Kelvin, a Scottish-Irish physicist, wanted to estimate the mass of our galaxy, the Milkyway, using data on how fast stars moved around the galaxy's core.

But Kelvin found discrepancies or anomalies in the data, things which could not be explained and were attributed to "dark bodies" that we cannot see.

"The galaxy seems to be rotating much faster than it should, based on estimates," explained Tevong You, a theorist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's most powerful particle accelerator

The theory is that there is an "invisible matter" responsible for the speed at which our galaxy rotates, said You. And that may be true of other galaxies as well.

Stars have been observed to travel at higher-than-estimated speeds, especially at the edges of galaxies. And that is weird.

Stars should cut loose and 'fly off'

Imagine you attached a stone to a string, and you rotated it at high speed. The stone would cut loose and fly off if it reached a speed higher than a certain threshold — a point at which the string becomes too weak to hold onto the stone, as the stone picks up speed and gains more force.

But astronomers have observed stars that continue to spin around the center of the galaxy, even when the string holding them to the galaxy, as it were, should have ripped, and the stars should have "flown off".

The astronomers' only explanation is that there must be some invisible matter holding the stone in range. Perhaps it's this elusive dark matter?

That remains an unanswered question. And there are many other anomalies, such as the shape of some galaxies, including our Milkyway, that are so far unexplained.

We can't see dark matter but we may see its effects

Scientists say that the reason we are unable to see or detect this invisible matter is that it does not interact with electromagnetic forces — things like visible light, X-ray or radio waves.

They argue that we can, however, observe some of the effects of dark matter through its gravitational force.

But we still want to detect dark matter in its own right. And here's where CERN's Large Hadron Collider comes in. Tevong You and other researchers at CERN think the LHC is our best chance of detecting dark matter.

When particles collide at the LHC, the resulting debris gets caught in detectors

 such as this one. This is a illustrating one of the LHC's detectors.

A decade ago, experiments at the LHC proved the Standard Model of particle physics by detecting the Higgs boson particle — a particle which itself had long proved to be elusive.

The Standard Model is the idea that everything in the universe is made of a few fundamental particles and that those are governed by four fundamental forces — the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force.

Tevong You said that the LHC could help solve the mystery of dark matter. But even now, You suspects that dark matter will be nothing like the particles we know from the Standard Model.

"It has to interact very weakly. It can't interact with light or electromagnetism. It can't interact with the strong force, and it may interact through the weak force that causes radioactivity," said You.

If that reads like a riddle, you're not alone. Scientists are still trying to work it out themselves.

Measuring dark matter by what's missing

The Large Hadron Collider smashes particles together to create collisions. The collisions produce a debris that gets caught by particle detectors.

It's just the same as if you smashed two apples together, bits would spray in all directions and get caught on the walls and floor. Those bits of apple would still be fruit, but they would have also become somewhat different. Even so, if we then collected all the bits of apple, including the juices, we would theoretically have all the bits to reconstruct those two original apples.

And the same is true of fundamental particles. We smash them up, they split and spray against the LHC detectors, and if we piece them back together, we should be able to account for all the bits that made those original particles.  

But if after all that, we find that there is something missing... especially missing energy or mass, as energy is also known... Well, when it comes to particle physics, scientists tend to think that there would have to be some dark, or invisible, matter — elements that we can't see, but which are very much part of the whole thing.

Andre David is an experimental physicist at CERN who builds particle detectors and says that if there is missing energy after a collision, it is likely that that energy has been transferred to dark matter. 

"The Higgs boson interacts with all the other elements that have mass. And so dark matter must [also] have mass in order to fulfill the effect that we see in the galaxies," said David.

New theories about dark matter

Some scientists argue that if there were invisible forces in the universe, we would have found them already and that, given that we haven't detected those forces, they suggest we should think outside of the Standard Model.

One of those scientists is the physicist Mordehai Milgrom. Milgrom has developed an alternative theory of gravity, one that suggests that gravitational force operates differently at different distances from the core of a galaxy.

While Newton's theory of gravity explains most large-scale movements in the cosmos, Milgrom's Modified Newtonian Dynamics suggests that a force acts differently when it is weak, such as at the edge of a galaxy.

Advocates of the theory say it predicts the rotation of galaxies and the speed of the stars better than Newton's theory.

But we still don't know whether we will ever discover dark matter or prove Milgrom's Modified Newtonian Dynamics. What we do know is that our understanding of the universe is far from complete.

Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany

INSIDE THE COSMOS: JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE CONTINUES TO DAZZLE
Spinning wormholes
Webb recently peered into a wormhole in the mysterious-looking "Phantom Galaxy." Scientists believe the dust lanes spiral towards an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the galaxy.
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The 5 biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2022: Fusion energy, ‘life after death’, and more

Scientific Breakthroughs of the Year: 

From a breakthrough in nuclear fission energy technology to pigs being "revived" after their death, here are some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs that happened in 2022.

Written by Sethu Pradeep
New Delhi | Updated: December 17, 2022 

Scientific Discoveries of 2022: The year 2022 bore witness to many impressive scientific breakthroughs including the simulation of a wormhole to an artificial mouse embryo that developed a brain. 

(Image credit: Indian Express)

A major US breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology gave us a glimpse of a future where a renewable, clean and near-limitless source of energy might just be possible. This breakthrough capped off an exciting year for science, which bore witness to many scientific developments that promise to alter the course of humanity and our understanding of the universe. Here, we have put together five of the most significant scientific developments that happened this year.

Fusion energy breakthrough promises future of clean energy

Scientists announced on Tuesday (December 13) that researchers at the Lawrence National Laboratory in California conducted a nuclear fission reaction that produced more energy than what was used to ignite it. This marks a major breakthrough for the field. Nearly all the energy on the planet comes from nuclear fusion energy. Many of the energy sources that we know, from the food we eat to the fossil fuels that we burn, can be traced back to nuclear fission reactions that happen in the Sun. But we are still years, and maybe decades away, from mastering the process ourselves.

The conventional nuclear electric plants that we know and nuclear weapons derive their energy from a nuclear fission process, where the nucleus of an atom, usually Uranium, is split into two different nuclei, generating large amounts of energy.

Also read |Why fusion could be a clean-energy breakthrough

In an almost contrary process, nuclear fusion is when two nuclei fuse together to form a single heavier nucleus. When this happens, the mass of the new heavier nucleus is less than the sum of the individual nuclei combined, meaning that a little bit of mass is lost. E=MC^2, Einstein’s most famous equation, explains how this mass is converted into a large amount of energy.

While both fission and fusion reactions release large amounts of energy, the latter produces substantially more energy than the former. For example, the nuclear fusion of two nuclei of a heavier hydrogen isotope will produce four times as much energy as the fission of a uranium atom.

If nuclear fission energy were to be commercialised, it would offer a clean and renewable source of energy that will help fight climate change, while also not producing the panoply of radioactive waste products that fission energy reactors are known for. The technology still has a long way to go before becoming a viable energy alternative, as fusion reactions currently being tested barely last a few minutes, due to the difficulty in maintaining the conditions required for the reactions to happen.
Large hadron collider gets back into action, producing almost immediate results

After a hiatus of over three years for maintenance and upgrades, the world’s largest particle accelerator, the large hadron collider (LHC), got back into action in April this year. This marked the beginning of the third run of LHC, when scientists will collect data from an unparalleled number of particle collisions happening at unprecedented energy levels.

The LHC did not take long after starting up again to deliver impressive new science. In July this year, CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) announced the discovery of three new exotic particles—a new pentaquark and a pair of new tetraquarks— using the particle accelerator.

Also read |“Everyone wants to look for a signal that goes beyond the standard physics model”: Scientist at Large Hadron Collider

“The newly-discovered pentaquark is still a baryon, but with the three quarks, it has an extra pair consisting of a quark and an anti-quark. The two tetraquarks are within the family of mesons, but instead of having pairs of quarks and anti-quarks, it has two pairs of quarks. These states were predicted in the nominal quark model introduced in the sixties, but these states were not found until now,” said Nicola Neri, a senior member of the LHCb (LHC beauty) experiment, to indianexpress.com at the time.

During its third run, the unrivalled number of collisions in LHC will allow physicists from around the world to study the Higgs boson particle in great detail, while also putting the “Standard model of particle physics” through its most rigorous tests yet.

“Baby wormhole” simulated in a quantum computer

Since they were first proposed by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935, wormholes have remained in the realm of speculative science fiction. Wormholes, or Einstein-Rosen bridges, are theoretical structures that can be considered a tunnel with two ends at different points in space-time. This tunnel could be connecting two points at large or small distances, or two different points in time.

Now, scientists have brought wormholes out of the worlds of “Interstellar” and “Star Trek” and have brought it into this world that we live in. Well, sort of. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) created two simulated black holes in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them, essentially creating a tunnel in space-time.

While the researchers did not create a rupture in space and time in physical space, it appeared a traversable wormhole was formed based on quantum information “teleported” using quantum codes on the quantum computer.

“There’s a difference between something possible in principle and possible in reality. So don’t hold your breath about sending your dog through the wormhole. But you have to start somewhere. And I think it’s exciting that we can get our hands on this at all,” said Fermilab physicist and study co-author Joseph Lykken to Reuters, at the time.

While it may be a long time before we can send a person, or indeed, their dog, through a wormhole, this research still represents an important breakthrough. Scientists have long pursued a better understanding of these wormholes, and the new research will help them make progress towards that goal.

“Reversing death” by reviving pig cells

From the Greek mythological figure Achilles to the Hindu mythological figure Hiranyakashipu, who was killed by Narasimha, the quest for immortality is a tale as old as time. But new research published in the journal Nature this August by Yale scientists plays with that notion of immortality.

The New York Times reported how scientists pumped a custom-made solution called OrganEx into dead pigs’ bodies using a device similar to the heart-lung machines used in hospitals. As the machine began circulating the solution into the cadavers’ veins and arteries, its brain, heart, liver and kidney cells began functioning again. Also, the cadavers never got stiff, unlike typical dead bodies.

Even though the seemingly dead cells seemed revived, the pigs were not conscious. While this experiment was far off from immortality and actually reversing death, it opens up important questions about the scientific division between life and death.

One of the main goals of the researchers is to increase the supply of human organs for transplant in the future by letting doctors obtain viable organs long after a patient has died. They also hope this technology could be used to prevent severe damage to organs like the heart after a major heart attack or the brain after a stroke.

The OrganEx solution used by researchers consisted of nutrients, anti-inflammatory medications, drugs to prevent cell death, and interestingly, nerve blockers—substances that dampen the activity of neurons and prevent the possibility of the pigs regaining consciousness.

But what if the solution did not contain nerve blockers? Would the brains of the pigs be revived, essentially reanimating them from death? Well, these are questions that the researchers are still yet to answer. But any research in this direction will be burdened by many ethical considerations, apart from the scientific challenges.

Synthetic mouse embryo develops a beating heart

In another scientific breakthrough that will have you questioning what life means, the University of Cambridge and Caltech created an artificial embryo without using any sperm or egg cells. The embryo created using mouse stem cells developed a brain, a beating heart, and the foundations for all the other organs in the body, according to the University of Cambridge.

The stem cells are the body’s master cells and can develop into almost any of the many cell types in the body. The researchers mimicked the natural processes that happen at conception and guided three types of stem cells found in early mammalian development till they began interacting. They established a unique environment for their interactions and got the stem cells to talk to each other.

Due to this, the stem cells organised themselves into structures and progressed through developmental stages until the embryos had beating hearts and the foundations of the brain, along with the yolk sac from which embryos get nutrients in the first weeks. Unlike other synthetic embryos developed in the past, the researchers’ embryos reached the point where the entire brain began to develop.

“Our mouse embryo model develops not only a brain, but also a beating heart, all the components that make up the body. It’s unbelievable that we’ve got this far. This has been the dream of our community for years, and a major focus of our work for a decade, and finally we’ve done it,” said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, corresponding author of a research article published in the journal Nature.

This research was carried out on mice, but the researchers hope the technology can be used to develop certain human organ types. This research helps them understand the crucial organ development processes that could not be done with real human embryos. The “14-day rule” in the United Kingdom and other countries prevents scientists from studying human embryos in laboratory conditions.

But further investigating this science could potentially lead to a future where individual human organs can be grown in laboratory settings using stem cells, so that they can be transplanted to a human patient.

If the Higgs can reach the Hidden Valley, we will see new physics already in next-generation accelerators

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE HENRYK NIEWODNICZANSKI INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: THE SEARCH FOR EXOTIC HIGGS BOSON DECAYS IN FUTURE LEPTON COLLIDERS: 1) AN ELECTRON AND A POSITRON FROM OPPOSING BEAMS COLLIDE; 2) THE COLLISION PRODUCES A HIGH-ENERGY HIGGS BOSON; 3) THE BOSON DECAYS INTO TWO EXOTIC PARTICLES MOVING AWAY FROM THE AXIS OF THE BEAMS; 4) EXOTIC PARTICLES DECAY INTO PAIRS OF QUARK-ANTIQUARK, VISIBLE TO DETECTORS. view more 

CREDIT: SOURCE: IFJ PAN

It may be that the famous Higgs boson, co-responsible for the existence of masses of elementary particles, also interacts with the world of the new physics that has been sought for decades. If this were indeed to be the case, the Higgs should decay in a characteristic way, involving exotic particles. At the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, it has been shown that if such decays do indeed occur, they will be observable in successors to the LHC currently being designed.

When talking about the 'hidden valley', our first thoughts are of dragons rather than sound science. However, in high-energy physics, this picturesque name is given to certain models that extend the set of currently known elementary particles. In these so-called Hidden Valley models, the particles of our world as described by the Standard Model belong to the low-energy group, while exotic particles are hidden in the high-energy region. Theoretical considerations suggest then the exotic decay of the famous Higgs boson, something that has not been observed at the LHC accelerator despite many years of searching. However, scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow argue that Higgs decays into exotic particles should already be perfectly observable in accelerators that are successors to the Large Hadron Collider – if the Hidden Valley models turn out to be consistent with reality.

“In Hidden Valley models we have two groups of particles separated by an energy barrier. The theory is that there could then be exotic massive particles which could cross this barrier under specific circumstances. The particles like Higgs boson or hypothetic Z’ boson would act as communicators between the particles of both worlds. The Higgs boson, one of the most massive particle of the Standard Model, is a very good candidate for such a communicator,” explains Prof. Marcin Kucharczyk (IFJ PAN), lead author of an article in the Journal of High Energy Physics, which presents the latest analyses and simulations concerning the possibility of detecting Higgs boson decays in the future lepton accelerators.

The communicator, after passing into the low energy region, would decay into two rather massive exotic particles. Each of these would, in picoseconds – that is, trillionths of a second – decay into another two particles, with even smaller masses, which would then be within the Standard Model. So what signs would be expected in the detectors of future accelerators? The Higgs itself would remain unnoticed, as would the two Hidden Valley particles. However, the exotic particles would gradually diverge and eventually decay, generally into quark-antiquark beauty pairs visible in modern detectors as jets of particles shifted from the axis of the lepton beam 

“Observations of Higgs boson decays would therefore consist of searching for the jets of particles produced by quark-antiquark pairs. Their tracks would then have to be retrospectively reconstructed to find the places where exotic particles are likely to have decayed. These places, professionally called decay vertices, should appear in pairs and be characteristically shifted with respect to the axis of the colliding beams in the accelerator. The size of these shifts depends, among other things, on masses and average lifetime of exotic particles appearing during the Higgs decay”, says Mateusz Goncerz, M.Sc. (IFJ PAN), co-author of the paper in question.

The collision energy of protons at the LHC, currently the world's largest particle accelerator, is up to several teraelectronvolts and is theoretically sufficient to produce Higgs capable of crossing the energy barrier that separates our world from the Hidden Valley. Unfortunately, protons are not elementary particles – they are composed of three valence quarks bound by strong interactions, capable of generating huge numbers of constantly appearing and disappearing virtual particles, including quark-antiquark pairs. Such a dynamic and complex internal structure produces huge numbers of secondary particles in proton collisions, including many quarks and antiquarks with large masses. They form a background in which it becomes practically impossible to find the particles from the exotic Higgs boson decays that are being sought.

The detection of possible Higgs decays to these states should be radically improved by accelerators being designed as successors to the LHC: the CLIC (Compact Linear Collider) and the FCC (Future Circular Collider). In both devices it will be possible to collide electrons with their anti-material partners, the positrons (with CLIC dedicated to this type of collision, while FCC will also allow collisions of protons and heavy ions). Electrons and positrons are devoid of internal structure, so the background for exotic Higgs boson decays should be weaker than at the LHC. Only will it be sufficiently so to discern the valuable signal?

In their research, physicists from the IFJ PAN took into account the most important parameters of the CLIC and FCC accelerators and determined the probability of exotic Higgs decays with final states in the form of four beauty quarks and antiquarks. To ensure that the predictions cover a wider group of models, the masses and mean lifetimes of the exotic particles were considered over suitably wide ranges of values. The conclusions are surprisingly positive: all indications are that, in future electron-positron colliders, the background of exotic Higgs decays could be reduced even radically, by several orders of magnitude, and in some cases could even be considered negligible.

The existence of particle-communicators is not only possible in Hidden Valley models, but also in other extensions of the Standard Model. So if the detectors of future accelerators register a signature corresponding to the Higgs decays analysed by the Cracow researchers, this will only be the first step on the road to understanding new physics. The next will be to collect a sufficiently large number of events and determine the main decay parameters that can be compared with the predictions of theoretical models of the new physics.

“The main conclusion of our work is therefore purely practical. We are not sure whether the new physics particles involved in Higgs boson decays will belong to the Hidden Valley model we used. However, we have treated this model as representative of many other proposals for new physics and have shown that if, as predicted by the model, the Higgs bosons decay into exotic particles, this phenomenon should be perfectly visible in those electron and positron colliders which are planned to be launched in the near future”, concludes Prof. Kucharczyk.

The research in question was funded by an OPUS grant from the Polish National Science Centre.

The Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics (IFJ PAN) is currently one of the largest research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A wide range of research carried out at IFJ PAN covers basic and applied studies, from particle physics and astrophysics, through hadron physics, high-, medium-, and low-energy nuclear physics, condensed matter physics (including materials engineering), to various applications of nuclear physics in interdisciplinary research, covering medical physics, dosimetry, radiation and environmental biology, environmental protection, and other related disciplines. The average yearly publication output of IFJ PAN includes over 600 scientific papers in high-impact international journals. Each year the Institute hosts about 20 international and national scientific conferences. One of the most important facilities of the Institute is the Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB), which is an infrastructure unique in Central Europe, serving as a clinical and research centre in the field of medical and nuclear physics. In addition, IFJ PAN runs four accredited research and measurement laboratories. IFJ PAN is a member of the Marian Smoluchowski Kraków Research Consortium: "Matter-Energy-Future", which in the years 2012-2017 enjoyed the status of the Leading National Research Centre (KNOW) in physics. In 2017, the European Commission granted the Institute the HR Excellence in Research award. As a result of the categorization of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Institute has been classified into the A+ category (the highest scientific category in Poland) in the field of physical sciences.

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS:

“Search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson into long-lived particles with jet pairs in the final state at CLIC”

M. Kucharczyk, M. Goncerz

Journal of High Energy Physics, 131, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP03(2023)131

LINKS:

http://www.ifj.edu.pl/

The website of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

http://press.ifj.edu.pl/

Press releases of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

IMAGES:

IFJ230518b_fot01s.jpg                                 

HR: http://press.ifj.edu.pl/news/2023/05/18/IFJ230518b_fot01.jpg

The search for exotic Higgs boson decays in future lepton colliders: 1) an electron and a positron from opposing beams collide; 2) the collision produces a high-energy Higgs boson; 3) the boson decays into two exotic particles moving away from the axis of the beams; 3) exotic particles decay into pairs of quark-antiquark, visible to detectors. (Source: IFJ PAN)

---

JOURNAL

Journal of High Energy Physics

DOI

10.1007/JHEP03(2023)131 

ARTICLE TITLE

Search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson into long-lived particles with jet pairs in the final state at CLIC

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Mar-2023

Demystifying vortex rings in nuclear fusion, supernovae

A mathematical model linking these vortices with more pedestrian types, like smoke rings, could help engineers control their behavior in power generation and more

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Images

Better understanding the formation of swirling, ring-shaped disturbances—known as vortex rings—could help nuclear fusion researchers compress fuel more efficiently, bringing it closer to becoming a viable energy source. 

The model developed by researchers at the University of Michigan could aid in the design of the fuel capsule, minimizing the energy lost while trying to ignite the reaction that makes stars shine. In addition, the model could help other engineers who must manage the mixing of fluids after a shock wave passes through, such as those designing supersonic jet engines, as well as physicists trying to understand supernovae.

"These vortex rings move outward from the collapsing star, populating the universe with the materials that will eventually become nebulae, planets and even new stars—and inward during fusion implosions, disrupting the stability of the burning fusion fuel and reducing the efficiency of the reaction," said Michael Wadas, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at U-M and corresponding author of the study.

"Our research, which elucidates how such vortex rings form, can help scientists understand some of the most extreme events in the universe and bring humanity one step closer to capturing the power of nuclear fusion as an energy source," he said.

Nuclear fusion pushes atoms together until they merge. This process releases several times more energy than breaking atoms apart, or fission, which powers today's nuclear plants. Researchers can create this reaction, merging forms of hydrogen into helium, but at present, much of the energy used in the process is wasted.

Part of the problem is that the fuel can't be neatly compressed. Instabilities cause the formation of jets that penetrate into the hotspot, and the fuel spurts out between them—Wadas compared it to trying to squish an orange with your hands, how juice would leak out between your fingers. 

Vortex rings that form at the leading edge of these jets, the researchers have shown, are mathematically similar to smoke rings, the eddies behind jellyfish and the plasma rings that fly off the surface of a supernova.

Perhaps the most famous approach to fusion is a spherical array of lasers all pointing toward a spherical capsule of fuel. This is how experiments are set up at the National Ignition Facility, which has repeatedly broken records for energy output in recent years. 

The energy from the lasers vaporizes the layer of material around the fuel—a nearly perfect, lab-grown shell of diamond in the latest record-setter in December 2022. When that shell vaporizes, it drives the fuel inward as the carbon atoms fly outward. This generates a shockwave, which pushes the fuel so hard that the hydrogen fuses.

While the spherical fuel pellets are some of the most perfectly round objects humans have ever made, each has a deliberate flaw: a fill tube, where the fuel enters. Like a straw stuck in that crushed orange, this is the most likely place for a vortex-ring-led jet to form when the compression starts, the researchers explained.

"Fusion experiments happen so fast that we really only have to delay the formation of the jet for a few nanoseconds," said Eric Johnsen, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at U-M, who supervised the study.

The study brought together the fluid mechanics expertise of Wadas and Johnsen as well as the nuclear and plasma physics knowledge in the lab of Carolyn Kuranz, an associate professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences.

"In high-energy-density physics, many studies point out these structures, but haven’t clearly identified them as vortex rings," said Wadas.

Knowing about the deep body of research into the structures seen in fusion experiments and astrophysical observations, Wadas and Johnsen were able to draw on and extend that existing knowledge rather than trying to describe them as completely new features.

Johnsen is particularly interested in the possibility that vortex rings could help drive the mixing between heavy elements and lighter elements when stars explode, as some mixing process must have occurred to produce the composition of planets like Earth.

The model can also help researchers understand the limits of the energy that a vortex ring can carry, and how much fluid can be pushed before the flow becomes turbulent and harder to model as a result. In ongoing work, the team is validating the vortex ring model with experiments. 

The research is funded by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, with computational resources provided by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment through the National Science Foundation and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.

Study: Saturation of vortex rings ejected from shock-accelerated interfaces. (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.194001)

JOURNAL

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.194001 

Europe’s CERN takes first steps toward building giant particle accelerator

Nuclear research organization says goal of Future Circular Collider is to ‘push the energy and intensity frontiers’ of particle smashers ‘in the search for new physics’

By AGNÈS PEDRERO

22 April 2023, 

A radio frequency particle accelerator is displayed in an exhibition during a press tour at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the Future Circular Collider (FCC) feasibility study, in Geneva, on April 19, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

GENEVA (AFP) — Europe’s CERN laboratory has taken its first steps toward building a huge new particle accelerator that would eclipse its Large Hadron Collider — and hopes to see light at the end of the tunnel.

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) particle smasher would be more than triple the length of the LHC, already the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider, constructed in the hope of revealing secrets about how the universe works.

The FCC would form a new circular tunnel under France and Switzerland, 91 kilometers (56.5 miles) long and about five meters (16 feet) in diameter.

“The goal of the FCC is to push the energy and intensity frontiers of particle colliders, with the aim of reaching collision energies of 100 tera electron volts, in the search for new physics,” CERN says.

The tunnel would pass under the Geneva region and its namesake lake in Switzerland, and loop around to the south near the picturesque French town of Annecy.
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Eight technical and scientific sites would be built on the surface, with seven in France and one in Geneva, CERN engineer Antoine Mayoux told reporters this week.

CERN Radio-frequency head Eric Montesinos gestures next to a map of the actual Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during a press trip at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN on the Future Circular Collider (FCC) feasibility study, in Geneva, on April 19, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

After carrying out a theoretical analysis, “we are now embarking for the first time on field activities” to study potential environmental issues, he said, with seismic and geotechnical studies to follow.
Mysteries of the universe

Once the feasibility studies are completed, CERN’s member states — 22 European countries plus Israel — will decide in the next five to six years on whether to build the FCC.

The FCC would accelerate electrons and positrons until 2060, and then hadrons until 2090, as it seeks answers to many remaining questions of fundamental physics, with about 95 percent of the mass and energy of the universe still a mystery.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider — a 27-kilometer (17-mile) ring running about a hundred meters below ground — has already begun chipping away at the unknown.

Among other things, it was used to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson — dubbed the God particle — which broadened the understanding of how particles acquire mass, and earned two scientists who had theorized its existence the 2013 Nobel physics prize.

A simulated data projection of a Higgs boson collision. (Photo credit: CC BY Wikipedia)

But the LHC, which began operating in 2010, is expected to have run its course by around 2040.

“The problem with accelerators is that at some point, no matter how much data you accumulate, you hit a wall of systematic errors,” CERN physicist Patrick Janot said.

“Around 2040-2045, we will have taken away all the substance of the precision possible with the LHC,” he said.

“It will be time to move on to something much more powerful, much brighter, to better see the contours of the physics that we are trying to study.”
Opening doors to the future

Some researchers fear that this huge project will gobble up funds that could be used for other, less abstract physics research.

But others insist that pushing fundamental physics forward is vital for advances in applied physics as well.

“The benefits of our research are extremely important,” said Malika Meddahi, CERN’s deputy director for accelerators and technology, citing as examples medical imaging and the fight against tumors.

Janot agreed: “The day the electron gun was invented, it was the beginning of accelerators; we didn’t know it was going to give rise to television. The day general relativity was discovered, we didn’t know it was going to be used to run GPS.”

A projection on fundamental particles is seen during a press trip at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN on the Future Circular Collider (FCC) feasibility study, in Geneva, on April 19, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

Harry Cliff, a particle physicist at Britain’s University of Cambridge, acknowledged that the FCC was an “expensive bit of kit.”

But he noted that it would be built by “a large international collaboration of nations working together over a very long period of time.”

“Particle physics isn’t about discovering new particles — it’s about understanding the fundamental ingredients of nature and the laws that govern them.”

Competition from China

More than 600 institutes and universities around the world use CERN’s facilities, and are responsible for funding and carrying out the experiments they take part in.

However, CERN has some competition: China announced in 2015 that it intended to start work within a decade on building the world’s largest particle accelerator.

Michael Benedikt, who is heading up the FCC feasibility studies, told AFP that CERN had more than 60 years of experience in developing long-lasting research infrastructure.

And political stability in Europe helped to “minimize the development risk for such long-term projects,” he said.

Meddahi also highlighted Europe’s leading position in the field, but warned that “China displays the same ambition.”

“Let’s be vigilant and be sure that we are not on the verge of a change in this hierarchy,” she said.

 

Strongly intriguing details of collisions at extreme energies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE HENRYK NIEWODNICZANSKI INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: CHILDREN'S INTELLIGENCE MAY APPEAR TO BE STATISTICALLY RELATED TO THEIR WEIGHT BECAUSE THE RELATIONSHIP IS SENSITIVE TO AGE FLUCTUATIONS WITHIN THE STUDY GROUP. A SIMILAR PHENOMENON OCCURS IN THE CASE OF THE CORRELATION VARIABLE SIGMA AND THE CENTRALITY OF HEAVY ION COLLISIONS IN THE LHC ACCELERATOR. view more 

CREDIT: SOURCE: IFJ PAN

Cracow, 14 September 2023

 

 

Strongly intriguing details of collisions at extreme energies

 

 

The initial phases of the heavy-ion collisions occurring at the maximum energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider continue to remain an enigma of modern nuclear physics. New theoretical tools improved by physicists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow will help to unlock this mystery.

 

 

The phenomena occurring during nuclear collisions are so fast and involve particles so small that they cannot be observed directly. Guessing the course of these sorts of processes resembles the work of a detective. Just as he is unable to observe the crime being committed and has to reconstruct an image of it based on witness statements, physicists try to reconstruct the course of nuclear phenomena on the basis of “accounts” given by the secondary particles born in collisions and recorded by detectors. Sherlock Holmes’s task, however, was much easier – he could talk freely to his witnesses, whereas physicists can only observe the particles’ behaviour. In order to reconstruct the actual course of the “crime” (the collisions of atomic nuclei), they have to create a suitable language for describing events (mathematical tools) and use it to recount what took place (with the help of a theoretical model of the phenomenon), and then compare whether the “testimony” thus obtained agrees with what the recorded particles appear to “say”.

 

Particularly difficult processes to study include phenomena occurring in the early stages of heavy-ion collisions in the LHC accelerator, when a quark-gluon plasma may be formed. This is a state of matter in which quarks and gluons behave like free particles (in the world around us, quarks and gluons are always bound by the strong interactions and remain inside hadrons, i.e. protons or neutrons). The quark-gluon plasma ends extremely quickly because it cools as it expands. Quarks and gluons are then trapped again in hadrons, creating secondary particles that are registered in detectors. It can be concluded whether a quark-gluon plasma was created by analyzing the so-called forward-backward correlations between particles produced in collisions.

 

“Forward-backward correlations measure the relationship between the number of particles produced forward and backward when beams of heavy ions collide. Although these correlations concern particles very far apart, they carry information about the early stage of the collision. This is because the correlations between the particles emitted forward and backward could only have formed before the particles moved away from each other, i.e. at the beginning of the collision!” says Dr. Iwona Sputowska of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow, a physicist who is a member of the ALICE scientific collaboration at the LHC.

 

The problem with correlations, however, is that, used incompetently, they can lead to false conclusions. Suppose, for example, we conduct a study of children's intelligence in all the forms of a primary school. A correlation might then be found whereby the more intelligent a child is, the more they... weigh. However, we know that in reality intelligence and weight are correlated to another variable: the age of the child. So if we narrow down our study to children of the same age, the correlation between their intelligence and weight drops dramatically. The correlation between intelligence and weight is therefore sensitive to age fluctuations in the group of children – there are a lot of children of different ages in the whole school, but within the same form the age differences are small.

 

We encounter an analogous challenge when examining correlations in heavy ion collisions. The relationship between the number of particles produced forward and backward is sensitive to fluctuations in the way the two atomic nuclei collided with each other, such as whether they collided centrally or just brushed against each other. To deal with this problem, the concept of strongly intensive variables was introduced. These quantities are defined so that they depend neither on how the two ions collided with each other nor on how much the geometry of the collision fluctuated in the group of studied events.

 

A strongly intensive correlation variable is sigma. It was intended to provide information about the way in which the average source produces secondary particles. However, while analyzing data collected in the collisions of lead-lead and xenon-xenon nuclei as part of the ALICE experiment, Dr. Sputowska noticed that none of the most popular models used to describe these phenomena corresponds to the behavior of the sigma variable.

 

“There could only be one conclusion. Since our models do not correctly describe the experimental data for the highest-energy collisions available at the LHC, it means that we are incorrectly modelling how the average source produces secondary particles,” says Dr. Sputowska.

 

Unexpectedly, collision models proposed over 45 years ago by theoreticians from Cracow turned out to be helpful in understanding the behavior of sigma. They treated collisions of heavy atomic nuclei as multiple collisions of single nucleons of one nucleus with single nucleons of the other nucleus (in the wounded nucleon model) or as collisions not of protons and neutrons, but of quarks (in the wounded quark model). In these models, it is assumed that single, independent sources are responsible for the production of secondary particles, which are either nucleons or quarks, respectively.

 

Previous models have assumed that the average source generates secondary particles with the same forward and backward probabilities. Sigma, by definition, should then be equal to one. It turns out that its actual dependance on the geometry of collision can be reproduced if one allows for the possibility that the average source emits particles forward with a slightly different probability than backward. In the wounded nucleon model, an extra term then appears in the sigma formula, depending on the collision geometry, and sigma ceases to be a strongly intensive variable.

 

However, this situation gives rise to an intriguing contradiction, for sigma loses its status as a strongly intensive variable and yet correctly describes experimental data that do not depend on changes in collision geometry. Why? The solution to the problem turned out to be in the fact that in the wounded source model sigma always gives the values of the forward-backward correlation for the average number of wounded nucleons/quarks, i.e. for the average collision geometry in a given collision group. This situation can be compared to measuring the correlation between intelligence and weight of children in a group where the average age of the child is fixed.

 

“A detailed understanding of the nature of sigma allowed us to determine the fragmentation function, linking the number of particles produced by nucleons in the model with the number of particles measured in the detectors. For the first time, for the highest collision energies at the LHC, we have been able to construct tools that allow us to reliably falsify this highly intriguing sigma behaviour,” Dr. Sputowska concludes.

 

Dr Sputowska's achievement is presented in a paper published in the journal Physical Review C. The research was funded by the National Science Centre.

 

 

The Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics (IFJ PAN) is currently one of the largest research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A wide range of research carried out at IFJ PAN covers basic and applied studies, from particle physics and astrophysics, through hadron physics, high-, medium-, and low-energy nuclear physics, condensed matter physics (including materials engineering), to various applications of nuclear physics in interdisciplinary research, covering medical physics, dosimetry, radiation and environmental biology, environmental protection, and other related disciplines. The average yearly publication output of IFJ PAN includes over 600 scientific papers in high-impact international journals. Each year the Institute hosts about 20 international and national scientific conferences. One of the most important facilities of the Institute is the Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB), which is an infrastructure unique in Central Europe, serving as a clinical and research centre in the field of medical and nuclear physics. In addition, IFJ PAN runs four accredited research and measurement laboratories. IFJ PAN is a member of the Marian Smoluchowski Kraków Research Consortium: "Matter-Energy-Future", which in the years 2012-2017 enjoyed the status of the Leading National Research Centre (KNOW) in physics. In 2017, the European Commission granted the Institute the HR Excellence in Research award. As a result of the categorization of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Institute has been classified into the A+ category (the highest scientific category in Poland) in the field of physical sciences.

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS:

 “Forward-backward correlations with the Σ quantity in the wounded-constituent framework at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider”

I. A. Sputowska

Physical Review C 108, 1, 014903,  2023

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.108.014903

 

 

LINKS:

 

http://www.ifj.edu.pl/

The website of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

http://press.ifj.edu.pl/

Press releases of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

IMAGES:

 

IFJ230914b_fot01s.jpg

HR: http://press.ifj.edu.pl/news/2023/09/14/IFJ230914b_fot01.jpg

Children's intelligence may appear to be statistically related to their weight because the relationship is sensitive to age fluctuations within the study group. A similar phenomenon occurs in the case of the correlation variable sigma and the centrality of heavy ion collisions in the LHC accelerator. (Source: IFJ PAN)

---

JOURNAL

Physical Review C

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevC.108.014903 

ARTICLE TITLE

Forward-backward correlations with the Σ quantity in the wounded-constituent framework at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

A Month After Emergency Declaration, Trump's Promises Largely Unfulfilled
PROMISE MADE PROMISE NOT KEPT 

NPR April 13, 2020

President Trmp speaks during a news conference about the coronavirus

 pandemic in the Rose Garden of the White House on March 13, 2020.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

One month ago today, President Trump declared a national emergency.

In a Rose Garden address, flanked by leaders from giant retailers and medical testing companies, he promised a mobilization of public and private resources to attack the coronavirus.

"We've been working very hard on this. We've made tremendous progress," Trump said. "When you compare what we've done to other areas of the world, it's pretty incredible."

But few of those promises have come to pass.

NPR's Investigations Team dug into each of the claims made from the podium that day. And rather than a sweeping national campaign of screening, drive-through sample collection and lab testing, it found a smattering of small pilot projects and aborted efforts.

In some cases, no action was taken at all.


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Target did not partner with the federal government, for example.

And a lauded Google project turned out to not to be led by Google at all, and then once launched was limited to a smattering of counties in California.

The remarks in the Rose Garden highlighted the Trump administration's strategic approach: a preference for public-private partnerships. But as the White House defined what those private companies were going to do, in many cases it promised more than they could pull off.

"What became clear in the days and weeks or even in some cases the hours following that event was that they had significantly over-promised what the private sector was ready to do," said Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development.

The White House declined to comment on this story.

Drive-Through Testing Largely Nonexistent At Retail Partners

During the Rose Garden address, the president introduced a series of leaders from major retailers to suggest there would be cooperation between the federal government and private sector companies for drive-through testing.

"We've been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-through tests available in the critical locations identified by public health professionals," President Trump said.

NPR contacted the retailers who were there and found that discussions have not led to any wide-scale implementation of drive-through tests.


In the month since the announcement, Walmart has opened two testing sites — one in the Chicago area and another in Bentonville, Ark. Walgreens has opened two in Chicago; CVS has opened four sites.

Brian Cornell, board chairman and CEO of Target Corp., speaks during the March 13 news conference with President Trump at the White House. Target has so far not opened any COVID-19 testing sites.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Target has not opened any. In fact, the company said it had no formal partnership with the federal government, and suggested they were waiting for the government to take the lead.

"At this time, federal, state and local officials continue to lead the planning for additional testing sites," a Target spokesperson said. "We stand committed to offering our parking lot locations and supporting their efforts when they are ready to activate."

Home Testing Promised, But Not Implemented

The president also welcomed Bruce Greenstein, an executive vice president of the LHC Group, to the microphone.

Greenstein's organization primarily provides in-home health care, and he pledged that it would be helping with testing "for Americans that can't get to a test site or live in rural areas far away from a retail establishment."

NPR called more than 20 LHC sites in 12 states, and none of them are doing in-home testing one month following the Rose Garden address. Employees at the LHC sites said they lacked both testing kits and the training to administer kits.

In response to NPR's reporting, Greenstein said that their primary focus so far has been getting proper personal protective equipment, or PPE, for their nurses, and working with hospitals on transitioning recovered COVID patients home. He says they'll start working with one New Orleans hospital "as soon as next week" to provide in-home testing, and to expand the service later.

LHC Group Executive Vice President Bruce Greenstein bumps elbows with President Trump during the March 13 news conference.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

No Screening Website To Facilitate Drive-Through Testing

During the March 13 Rose Garden address, the president also promised that Google was working to develop a website to determine whether a COVID-19 test would be warranted, and if so, to direct individuals to nearby testing.

The president said there were 1,700 Google engineers working on it, and the vice president said that guidance on the website would be available in two days.

"Google is helping to develop a website," the president said. "It's going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location."

Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator at the White House, said that the website would screen patients, tell them where to receive drive-through testing, and provide testing results.

No such screening and testing website was ever developed by Google.

A pilot program was developed by Verily, a sister company to Google owned by the same parent company: Alphabet. Verily's program, called Project Baseline, was created to support California community-based COVID-19 testing from screening to testing to delivery of test results.

Verily has rolled out six testing sites primarily in coordination with the California state government — not the federal government — and is currently only available to residents of five counties in California.

During the March 13 news conference, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, outlined a website that would screen patients, tell them where to receive testing, and provide results. No such screening service came to exist.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
"We work in partnership with local public health agencies, the California Governor's office, and the California Department of Public Health," a spokesperson for Verily said, adding that their COVID-19 testing program was "federally supported."

There were not 1,700 engineers ever engaged in the project, as the president had claimed, according to Verily.

"As we initially ramped this program, we had nearly 1,000 volunteers from across Alphabet supporting a variety of functions," a Verily spokesperson told NPR.

Verily is in discussions with other health care organizations to support this kind of testing project outside of California, but there has been no announcement of future plans to do so.

A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson pointed out that Apple had released a screening tool in collaboration with the CDC and the White House. That screening tool does not have the functions outlined in the March 13 Rose Garden address.

The President's Federal Agency Promises

In declaring the national emergency last month, the president also proposed several policy changes that were solely within the realm of the federal government to execute. On these, the administration largely followed through.

President Trump promised to waive interest on student loans held by government agencies, for instance. That policy was implemented by the secretary of education on March 20.

And the president made good on pledges to waive regulations and laws to give medical providers flexibility to respond to the healthcare crisis.

But there were exceptions. The president said he would waive license requirements so that doctors could practice in states with the greatest needs, for example. But medical licensing is a state issue, and the president does not have the authority to waive it.


"There's no statutory authority for the federal government to take over the delivery of health care services" says Dale Van Demark, a partner advising health industries at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery. Added Iris Hentze, policy specialist at The National Conference of State Legislatures: "These occupational licenses are really more or less completely controlled and regulated by states." What the federal government was able to do is to waive in-state requirements for healthcare providers that serve people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP, so they can get reimbursed for the out-of-state care they provided.

The promises weren't limited to matters of health care. The president announced that his administration would "purchase, at a very good price, large quantities of crude oil for storage in the U.S. Strategic Reserve."

"We're going to fill it right up to the top," he said, "saving the American taxpayer billions and billions of dollars."

The Trump administration has not done so. The president made the promise without first securing the funds from Congress, and t=he Department of Energy puts the responsibility on Congress' shoulders.

"Despite strong efforts from the Administration, Congress would not provide funding for the purchase of oil for SPR in the Stimulus bill," a Department of Energy spokesperson said. "The Department continues to work with Congress to deliver on the President's directive to provide relief to the American energy industry during this tumultuous time."

A Failure In Public-Private Partnerships

Later in that March 13 press conference, when asked whether he took responsibility for the apparent lag in coronavirus testing in the United States, the president responded, "I don't take responsibility at all."

He also suggested that laboratory capacity for testing would soon greatly expand. And he singled out two companies:

"I want to thank Roche, a great company, for their incredible work. I'd also like to thank Thermo Fisher," he said.

Roche Diagnostics Corporation President and CEO Matthew Sause speaks at the March 13 news conference. Roche and Thermo Fisher Scientific said they distributed millions of tests to labs, but that didn't increase testing because the U.S. lags behind in sample collection kits.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Trump noted that the FDA was approving their processes, and then made a prediction: "It'll go very quickly," he said. "It's going very quickly — which will bring, additionally, 1.4 million tests on board next week and 5 million within a month. I doubt we'll need anywhere near that."

Roche and Thermo Fisher Scientific said they were able to get millions of tests distributed on schedule to labs in the United States, one of the rare bright spots in the coronavirus crisis. These tests are what are used at labs to check whether samples contain the coronavirus.

But those tests were not the primary reason for inadequate testing. The United States lags behind in sample collection kits — the swabs and tubes that frontline medical workers send to labs.

And those labs themselves struggled with processing capacity.

In the days before the March 13 Rose Garden address, leaders of diagnostic testing labs like LabCorp and Quest went to the White House with three core requests. And during the Rose Garden address, the CEOs of those two organizations stood with the president as the coronavirus task force pledged to wield government resources for their partnership.

More than a month later, the diagnostic testing labs — and the group that represents them in Washington, the American Clinical Laboratory Association — still have those three requests: government funds to build new testing facilities, national standards to prioritize who gets tested, and government support for the supply chain.

President Trump leaves the Rose Garden after the March 13 news conference about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Few of the promises made at the conference have been fulfilled.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Konyndyk said it was an indication that the public-private partnerships the president touted on March 13 were a one-way street.

"What you want to have is a constructive partnership between the federal government and the private sector. Instead, what we see, I think, is a game of 'not it,'" said Konyndyk, who served in the Obama administration at USAID, leading the government response to international disasters.

Although the federal government needs the help of the private sector, the federal government has only limited power over those companies. So to make things work, there needs to be close cooperation and advanced negotiation before announcing what companies will do, and that didn't happen, Konyndyk said.

Private companies did part of what was promised in the Rose Garden address — there is more testing today than a month ago.

But by over-promising what private sector companies would do — and in some cases, without adequate consultation about what they could do — the White House left other pledges that day unfulfilled.