Dark secrets of the Universe

Its perhaps natural that we dont know much about how the Universe was created after all, we were never there ourselves. But its surprising to realise that when it comes to the Universe today, we dont necessarily have a much better knowledge of what is out there. In fact, astronomers and physicists have found that all we see in the Universe planets, stars, galaxies accounts for only a tiny 4% of it! In a way, it is not so much the visible things that define the Universe, but rather the void around them. Cosmological and astrophysical observations indicate that most of the Universe is made up of invisible substances that do not emit electromagnetic radiation that is, we cannot detect them directly through telescopes or similar instruments. We detect them only through their gravitational effects, which makes them very difficult to study. These mysterious substances are known as dark matter and dark energy. What they are and what role they played in the evolution of the Universe are a mystery, but within this darkness lie intriguing possibilities of hitherto undiscovered physics beyond the established Standard Model.

Dark matter
Dark matter makes up about 23% of the Universe. The first hint of its existence came in 1933, when astronomical observations and calculations of gravitational effects revealed that there must be more 'stuff' present in the Universe than telescopes could see. Researchers now believe that the gravitational effect of dark matter makes galaxies spin faster than expected, and that its gravitational field deviates the light of objects behind it. Measurements of these effects show that dark matter exists, and they can be used to estimate the density of dark matter even though we cannot directly observe it. But what is dark matter? One idea is that it could contain supersymmetric particles hypothesized particles that are partners to those already known in the Standard Model. Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider may be able to find them.

Dark energy
Dark energy makes up approximately 73% of the Universe and appears to be associated with the vacuum in space. It is homogenously distributed throughout the Universe, not only in space but also in time - in other words, its effect is not diluted as the Universe expands. The even distribution means that dark energy does not have any local gravitational effects, but rather a global effect on the Universe as a whole. This leads to a repulsive force, which tends to accelerate the expansion of the Universe. The rate of expansion and its acceleration can be measured by observations based on the Hubble law. These measurements, together with other scientific data, have confirmed the existence of dark energy and provide an estimate of just how much of this mysterious substance exists

KAMIS, 02 SEPTEMBER 2010 | 14:30 WIB

Stephen Hawking: Tuhan Bukan Pencipta Alam Semesta

Besar Kecil Normal

TEMPO Interaktif, Fisikawan Inggris Stephen Hawking yakin bahwa keberadaan manusia dan alam semesta bukan hasil ciptaan Tuhan, melainkan muncul dengan sendirinya. Sebab ada hukum gravitasi, alam semesta bisa menciptakan dirinya sendiri. Dia mengklaim tidak ada kekuatan ilahiyah yang dapat menjelaskan mengapa alam semesta ini terbentuk. Dalam buku terakhirnta, The Grand Design, dikutip oleh The Times, Hawking menjelaskan "Sebab di sana ada hukum gravitasi, alam semesta dapat dan akan menciptakan dirinya sendiri." Di buku A Brief History of Time, Prof Hawking tidak menafikkan kemungkinan turut campurnya Tuhan dalam penciptan dunia. Dia menulis di bukunya tahun 1988, "Jika kita menemukan sebuah teori yang lengkap, maka hal tersebut menjadi kemenangan nalar manusia. Oleh sebab itu, kita akan mengenal Tuhan." Hawking, dalam buku terbarunya, menolak teori Isaac Newton yang menyatakan bahwa terciptanya alam semesta terbentuk tidak secara spontan namun digerakkan oleh Tuhan. Stephen William Hawking lahir di Oxford, 8 Januari 1942 adalah seorang ahli teori fisika. Ia putra dari seorang guru besar matematika di Universitas Cambridge. Dalam kiprah keilmuannya, Hawking terkenal karena sumbangannya di bidang fisika kuantum. Di bidang agama, menurut bekas istrinya, Jane, Hawking adalah seorang atheis. Namu Hawking mengaku bahwa ia "tidak religius secara akal sehat" dan ia percaya bahwa "alam semesta diatur oleh hukum ilmu pengetahuan. Hukum tersebut mungkin dibuat oleh Tuhan, tetapi Tuhan tidak melakukan intervensi untuk melanggar hukum."

Recipe for a Universe

Take a massive explosion to create plenty of stardust and a raging heat. Simmer for an eternity in a background of cosmic microwaves. Let the ingredients congeal and leave to cool and serve cold with cultures of tiny organisms 13.7 billion years later. To understand the basic ingredients and the cooking conditions of the cosmos, from the beginning of time to the present day, particle physicists have to try and reverse-engineer the dish of the Universe. Within the complex concoction, cryptic clues hide the instructions for the cosmic recipe.

Slowly simmer
Space, time, matter... everything originated in the Big Bang, an incommensurably huge explosion that happened 13.7 billion years ago. The Universe was then incredibly hot and dense but only a few moments after, as it started to cool down, the conditions were just right to give rise to the building blocks of matter in particular, the quarks and electrons of which we are all made. A few millionths of a second later, quarks aggregated to produce protons and neutrons, which in turn were bundled into nuclei three minutes later. Then, as the Universe continued to expand and cool, things began to happen more slowly. It took 380,000 years for the electrons to be trapped in orbits around nuclei, forming the first atoms. These were mainly helium and hydrogen, which are still by far the most abundant elements in the Universe. Another 1.6 million years later, gravity began to take control as clouds of gas began to form stars and galaxies. Since then heavier atoms, such as carbon, oxygen and iron, of which we are all made, have been continuously cooked in the hearts of the stars and stirred in with the rest of the Universe each time a star comes to a spectacular end as a supernova.

The mystery ingredient

So far so good but there is one small detail left out: cosmological and astrophysical observations have now shown that all of the above accounts for only a tiny 4% of the entire Universe. In a way, it is not so much the visible things, such as planets and galaxies, that define the Universe, but rather the void around them! Most of the Universe is made up of invisible substances known as 'dark matter' (26%) and 'dark energy' (70%). These do not emit electromagnetic radiation, and we detect them only through their gravitational effects. What they are and what role they played in the evolution of the Universe are a mystery, but within this darkness lie intriguing possibilities of hitherto undiscovered physics beyond the established Standard Model.

Antimatter detectives
The antimatter is missing not from CERN, but from the Universe! At least that is what we can deduce so far from careful examination of the evidence. Matter and antimatter have the same mass, but opposite electric charge. For each basic particle of matter, there exists an antiparticle; for example, the negatively charged electron has a positively charged antiparticle called the positron. When a particle and its antiparticle come together, at the blink of an eye they both disappear in a flash as the annihilation process transforms their mass into energy.

The evidence spoke for itself

The case file of antimatter was opened in 1928 by physicist Paul Dirac. He developed a theory that combined quantum mechanics and Einsteins special relativity to provide a more full description of electron interactions. The basic equation he derived turned out to have two solutions, one for the electron and one that seemed to describe something with positive charge (in fact, it was the positron). Then in 1932 the evidence was found to prove these ideas correct, when the positron was discovered occurring naturally in cosmic rays. For the past 50 years and more, laboratories like CERN have routinely produced antiparticles, and in 1995 CERN became the first laboratory to create anti-atoms artificially. But no one has ever produced antimatter without obtaining the corresponding matter particles also. The scenario must have been the same during the birth of the Universe, when equal amounts of matter and antimatter must have been produced in the Big Bang.

Just one more thing

So if matter and antimatter annihilate, and we and everything else are made of matter, why do we still exist? This mystery arises because we find ourselves living in a Universe made exclusively of matter. Didn't matter and antimatter completely annihilate at the time of the Big Bang? Perhaps this antimatter still exists somewhere else? Otherwise where did it go and what happened to it in the first place? Such questions have led to speculative theories, from a break in the rules to the existence of an entire anti-Universe somewhere else! The way to solve the baffling disappearance of antimatter, and to learn more about this substance in general, is by studying both particles and antiparticles to find and decipher the subtle clues. The mystery demands teams of scientific Sherlock Holmeses to conduct thorough detective work, to uncover a logic that is ultimately elementary.

The true story of antimatter

The debut of antihydrogen
An atom of antihydrogen consists of an antiproton and a positron (an antielectron), which makes it the simplest antiatom. Unfortunately, this does not make it any easier to produce in the lab. Persuading the antiprotons and positrons to combine together was a challenge that no one had managed to solve until the PS210 at CERN created the first atoms of antihydrogen in 1995. It was a difficult task both for the physicists and for the operation team at CERNs Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) the main machine used for the experiment. The researchers allowed antiprotons circulating inside LEAR to collide with atoms of a heavy element. Any antiprotons passing close enough to a heavy atomic nucleus could create an electron-positron pair; in a tiny fraction of cases, the antiproton would bind with the positron to make an atom of antihydrogen. The process was complicated, time-consuming and required a lot of effort but it led to a groundbreaking achievement. When the announcement of the production of 9 antiatoms at CERN was made early in 1996, the news travelled around the world to be reported in newspapers, on radio and on television. However, the fleeting existence of the antiatoms meant that they could not be used for further studies. Each one existed for only about 40 billionths of a second, travelling at nearly the speed of light over a path of 10 m before it annihilated with ordinary matter.

Antihydrogen en masse
Soon after the PS210 experiment, the study of antimatter at CERN was interrupted. LEAR's operation came to an end in 1996 when the machine had to be converted for use with a future accelerator the Large Hadron Collider. Another machine called the Antiproton Decelerator was built at CERN to produce and slow down antiparticles. Using this new facility, which came into operation in 2000, two experiments called ATHENA and ATRAP succeeded in producing antihydrogen atoms for the first time in large quantities in 2002. ATHENA and ATRAP were set up in the late 1990s to produce low-energy antihydrogen atoms for comparison with hydrogen atoms. In PS210 the antiatoms had been formed in motion close to the speed of light and were too energetic to study. What was needed was a technique to tame the constituents of the antiatoms by trapping, storing and slowing them down. ATHENA and ATRAP achieved this using a novel method that overcame the limitations of the previous techniques. In September 2002, ATHENA announced the first controlled production of a large number of antihydrogen atoms at low energies and the direct observation of their annihilation. A month later ATRAP announced the first glimpse inside the antiatom. The ATHENA experiment ended in November 2004 and an experiment called ALPHA has since been set up to continue the research begun by its predecessor.

Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the cosmologist shares his thoughts on death, Mtheory, human purpose and our chance existence

Ian Sample, science correspondent guardian.co.uk, Sunday 15 May 2011 22.00 BST Article history

Stephen Hawking dismisses belief in God in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. Photograph: Solar & Heliospheric Observatory/Discovery Channel

A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said. In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain's most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time. Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, shares his thoughts on death, human purpose and our chance existence in an exclusive interview with the Guardian today. The incurable illness was expected to kill Hawking within a few years of its symptoms arising, an outlook that turned the young scientist to Wagner, but ultimately led him to enjoy life more, he has said, despite the cloud hanging over his future. "I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he said.

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," he added. Hawking's latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserted that there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe. The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an "elementary fallacy" of logic. The 69-year-old physicist fell seriously ill after a lecture tour in the US in 2009 and was taken to Addenbrookes hospital in an episode that sparked grave concerns for his health. He has since returned to his Cambridge department as director of research. The physicist's remarks draw a stark line between the use of God as a metaphor and the belief in an omniscient creator whose hands guide the workings of the cosmos. In his bestselling 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking drew on the device so beloved of Einstein, when he described what it would mean for scientists to develop a "theory of everything" a set of equations that described every particle and force in the entire universe. "It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason for then we should know the mind of God," he wrote. The book sold a reported 9 million copies and propelled the physicist to instant stardom. His fame has led to guest roles in The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Red Dwarf. One of his greatest achievements in physics is a theory that describes how black holes emit radiation. In the interview, Hawking rejected the notion of life beyond death and emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives. In answer to a question on how we should live, he said, simply: "We should seek the greatest value of our action." In answering another, he wrote of the beauty of science, such as the exquisite double helix of DNA in biology, or the fundamental equations of physics. Hawking responded to questions posed by the Guardian and a reader in advance of a lecture tomorrow at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question: "Why are we here?" In the talk, he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life emerged. "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in," he said. Hawking suggests that with modern space-based instruments, such as the European Space Agency's Planck mission, it may be possible to spot ancient fingerprints in the light left over from the earliest moments of the universe and work out how our own place in space came to be.

His talk will focus on M-theory, a broad mathematical framework that encompasses string theory, which is regarded by many physicists as the best hope yet of developing a theory of everything. M-theory demands a universe with 11 dimensions, including a dimension of time and the three familiar spatial dimensions. The rest are curled up too small for us to see. Evidence in support of M-theory might also come from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva. One possibility predicted by M-theory is supersymmetry, an idea that says fundamental particles have heavy and as yet undiscovered twins, with curious names such as selectrons and squarks. Confirmation of supersymmetry would be a shot in the arm for M-theory and help physicists explain how each force at work in the universe arose from one super-force at the dawn of time. Another potential discovery at the LHC, that of the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to give mass to elementary particles, might be less welcome to Hawking, who has a long-standing bet that the long-sought entity will never be found at the laboratory. Hawking will join other speakers at the London event, including the chancellor, George Osborne, and the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Science, truth and beauty: Hawking's answers

What is the value in knowing "Why are we here?" The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve the equations, directly in the abstract. We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those societies most likely to survive. We assign them higher value. You've said there is no reason to invoke God to light the blue touchpaper. Is our existence all down to luck? Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in. So here we are. What should we do? We should seek the greatest value of our action. You had a health scare and spent time in hospital in 2009. What, if anything, do you fear about death?

I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. What are the things you find most beautiful in science? Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology, and the fundamental equations of physics."