There's a possibility that the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS detector might be able to reveal extra dimensions. But for now the only thing it is able to unveil is the fact that it's facing a lawsuit right now. Fermilab and CERN's project has been put to a halt due to worries and fears by critics. Read more on this in the full article.

In the physical universe, we have time and space. These make up the four dimensions that we experience in our everyday lives. However, just because we can't experience it with the five sense we have doesn't mean they don't exist. String theory in theoretical physics suggests that there are as much as seven more dimensions in addition to timespace that we can't detect. Now, with the largest particle accelerator gearing up for operations later this year, scientists hope to detect these dimensions. Details in the full article.

It's the stuff that science fiction is made of, one of the most ambitious science projects of all time, and is possibly also the most expensive. However, with this experiment, scientists may just finally achieve the Holy Grail of physics: The God particle.

At the Cern particle physics lab in Switzerland, more than 600 physicists are working on the Large Hadron Collider, a machine that they hope will finally reveal details on how the universe began. The Collider will be large enough to house the nave of Westminster Abbey and will be monitored by computers that were built to easily handle information and data that is the equivalent of 150 times of what's on the internet each year.

As side-effects of the machine, "dark energy" which is believed to drive the expansion of the universe, may be revealed. On top of this, as some scientists think that the universe is composed of various dimensions, the machine may momentarily create wedges to other dimensions from which enormous amounts of gravity can seep through. This influx of gravity may then result in the creation of baby black holes.

And all this just so they could hunt down the so-called God particle which is properly known as the Higgs boson particle, which is supposed to make other particles heavier by clinging to them, thus later on resulting into mass, and in turn answering the question of why objects have mass in the first place. "It's probably the closest to God that we'll get," says Cern's chief scientist, Jos Engelen.

Well, either we've found the Higgs boson, or Fred's just put the kettle on

The Barrel Toroid, the world's largest superconducting electromagnet, has been set to full power last November 9. The magnet is built from eight 5 meter by 25 meter rectangular coils cooled to -269 degrees Celsius, and carries a current of 20,000 amps. The energy in its coils is equivalent to around 10,000 cars traveling at 70 kilometers per hour.

As part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the magnet will be used to bend the paths of particles formed from the collision of protons or lead ions accelerated to near light speeds.

The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and will be used to investigate why particles have mass. It will also be used to look into the nature of the as-yet undetected dark mass that's thought to make up all but four percent of the universe.

Researchers also hope to detect the Higgs Boson, a predicted subatomic particle that's supposed to have answers to life, the universe, and everything within three years. Ready your pan-galactic gargleblasters folks, we've got a whole lot of controlled sub-atomic collisions scheduled.

Well, the normal product of mixing significant quantities of matter and antimatter together is that the two annihilate each other in a big explosion of energy. Or warp speed (beam us up, Scotty!). Yet scientists in CERN have actually combined the two to produce an unstable "hybrid" matter called protonium, as reported in the Physical Review Letters journal and NewScientist.com.

The the funny thing is, they did this back in 2002, but they didn't realize it until recently.

Protonium is composed of protons and anti-protons (protons which have a negative charge as opposed to positive). It is also produced in particle accelerator experiments, though in amounts too small to study. The 2002 CERN experiment, on the other hand, involved a chemical reaction that was intended to create antihydrogen (the antimatter form of hydrogen). Protonium was found to be an unintended - and relatively plentiful - byproduct of the process.

The scientists believe that the formation probability of protonium using that method "is very high", and they would like to create more of it to advance the study of particle physics. On the other hand, because it is so unstable, protonium usually lasts for but a very few microseconds before disappearing in a puff of annihilation energy.

U.S. scientists may take the lead in the field of high-energy physics - or lose that position to Europe. Right now, with the U.S. Congress and Administration held hostage to oil industry executives and a small, but influential group of religious fanatics who reject science for a narrow and literal interpretation of the Bible, the future of important new research related to anti-matter is very much in doubt.

Scientists at Fermilab have discovered a "bizarre particle" that whips back and forth between the states of matter and anti-matter at the incredible rate of 3 trillion times a second. This discovery could lead to further discoveries of fundamental particles and potential new forces that may be harnessed for new technology.

Unfortunately, the Fermilab may have to close down by 2010 if Congress does not approve funding for a new linear collider. Given the multi-billion price tag, and the fact that current Congressional priorities focus more on tax breaks for wealthy corporations and the finance of wars to secure oil supplies, it is probable that the U.S. will lose this opportunity to Europe, where a new, even more powerful particle collider is scheduled to go on-line within two years.

The most recent findings shows that the thirty-nine-year-old Fermilab can still make  "breakthrough discoveries. "This remarkable tour de force details with exquisite precision how the antiworld is tied to our everyday realm," said Raymond Orbach of the U.S. Department of Energy. "It is a beautiful example of how, using increasingly sophisticated analysis, one can extract discovery from data from which much less was expected."

These experiments, while promising great advances in technology that could have immeasurable benefits for society and the world, are very expensive. The recent study in which the new particle - known as the B sub s meson - was discovered required a team of 700 physicists from over 60 countries.

Given the priorities of the current U.S. Administration and Congress, chances are that, barring major changes,  the study will not go much further. One can only hope that an increasingly discontented American citizenry will get out to the polls for the mid-term elections in November and demand a more accountable, responsive, and science-supporting government.

"We became so powerful, we dared think of ourselves as gods!" - Sargon, in the Star Trek TOS Episode "Return To Tomorrow"

Andre Linde of UC Stanford thinks that at least one god-like ability may be within physicists' reach. So far, particle accelerators have  created antimatter and exotic particles never seen in nature. The next generation of these "supercolliders" will provide the hunting ground for the elusive Higgs boson, thought to be the source of all mass. These machines might even create mini black holes.

These feats are insignificant compared to what Nobuyuki Sakai and his colleagues at Yamagata University in Japan are doing.  They have discovered how to use a particle accelerator to create a whole new universe.

The idea of creating another cosmos has a long history. "The story really begins with the question of the origin of our own universe," says Eduardo Guendelman, a physicist at Ben Gurion University in Israel.  The big bang model suggests that the idea of space-time bursting forth in an explosion of energy concentrated in a tiny space opens up a new set of tantalising possibilities.

"People immediately started to wonder what would happen if you put lots of energy in one space in the lab - shot lots of cannons together," Andre Linde, a UC Stanford physicist  says. "Could you concentrate enough energy to set off a mini big bang?"

Sakai believes so. The vital part of his new universe-creation tool kit is a "magnetic monopole" - an odd,  spherical particle that encapsulates an isolated north or south magnetic field. Rather like a black hole, it has a huge mass concentrated into a tiny no more than a nudge to start it inflating. Increasing the monopole's energy density by hurling mass onto it  will give it the needed nudge leading to runaway inflation - in essence, a "big bang." Our calculations show that, given enough energy, the monopole will inflate eternally," Sakai says.

This process could occur naturally. According to Sakai, if a monopole floating through space collided with another massive object it would gain the mass needed to trigger inflation. Sakai suggests that such inflation could be created - and (hopefully) controlled - by hurling particles onto an artificial monopole in an accelerator. This would add mass, and thus energy, to the monopole, creating an entirely new universe.

Then what?  It's one thing to create a universe, but quite another to know where to keep it. Not a problem, Sakai says. First, the process warps space-time enormously, so that it is no longer the Euclidean space we are familiar with. This distorted kind of space doesn't have the same geometry as normal space, so it's not as if the universe would blow up and engulf us.

As these forces compete, the growing baby universe is forced to bubble out from our space-time until its only connection to us is through a narrow space-time tunnel called a wormhole (see the image above, right - click to view full size).

Eventually, however, space-time becomes so distorted that even the "worm-hole" umbilical cord is severed. The baby universe's space-time becomes entirely separate from our own. If a person were sitting inside the monopole, s/he would see space expanding, rushing out in every direction - just as it did after the big bang in our universe. The view from our universe - outside the monopole looking in - would not be nearly as interesting, however.