Tag: CERN

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Cosmology Creation/evolution Science

Antimatter matters for the big bang origin of the Universe

In what physicists have called a “technical tour-de-force”, scientists have for the first time made measurements of how antimatter atoms absorb light.1

The ALPHA antimatter experiment at CERN has measured an energy transition in anti-hydrogen.
The ALPHA antimatter experiment at CERN has measured an energy transition in anti-hydrogen. Credit: CERN

Researchers from the ALPHA collaboration team at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, collected cold antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic “bottle” and irradiated them with an ultraviolet laser to test what frequency of light is needed to excite the antimatter atoms into an excited state. This was done to test to see if antimatter atoms behave the same way as their normal matter counterparts. No discrepancy (a null result) was found with standard theory, which predicts that antihydrogen should have the same energy levels as normal hydrogen.

The null result is still a thrill for researchers who have been working for decades towards antimatter spectroscopy, the study of how light is absorbed and emitted by antimatter. The hope is that this field could provide a new test of a fundamental symmetry of the known laws of physics, called CPT (charge-parity-time) symmetry.

CPT symmetry predicts that energy levels in antimatter and matter should be the same. Even the tiniest violation of this rule would require a serious rethink of the standard model of particle physics.

Cosmological implications

So what? you might ask!

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Categories
Aliens Creation/evolution Physics

Is the LHC opening a door to Hell? I am not conCERNed!

The CERN1 Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the biggest particle accelerator on the planet. It is implemented in a 17 mile storage ring located on the French/Swiss border and was restarted in June 2015. It is common to hear that one of the goals is to create, in the particles that are smashed together, conditions similar to those in the alleged big bang.

Since the LHC was brought back online, I have had several people contact me asking my opinion of the astounding claims of some preachers and Bible commentators in regards to this facility “opening a portal to Hell” or even destroying the Universe. As result I recently watched the YouTube video “C E R N the Opening of the Abyss?”2 The following is my assessment.

lhc_tunnel_smaller
LHC beamline tunnel at CERN

The preacher, Charles Lawson, is a church pastor and he speaks very strongly about his concern that Lucifer will be unleashed on the planet through a portal created by the LHC. For the record, I do not share his concern. But like any commentary on world events and on their connection to Bible prophesy there will always be undeniable truths. I do find that I agree with some things he says, but largely I find the claims without foundation and more based on emotional hype than solid scientific facts.

Continue reading “Is the LHC opening a door to Hell? I am not conCERNed!”
Categories
astronomy Cosmology Physics

Dark energy and the elusive chameleon—more darkness from the dark side

If you thought Dark Matter was strange enough—the new ‘god of the gaps’ in cosmology—the ‘unknown god’ used to force the ‘square peg’ of observational evidence into the ‘round hole’ of the standard big bang theory, then I say you have good reason to think again.

Dark energy is even stranger still. It is allegedly some form of ‘anti-gravity’ energy forcing the Universe apart at an ever faster rate as the Universe gets older. It has arisen from the need to fit theory to observational data that purportedly gives the distance to very distant galaxies as a function of their redshifts.1 Those redshifts are believed to mean that the Universe is expanding, a claim I believe there is sufficient reason to doubt.2-5

NGC4526
Figure 1: Type Ia supernova 1994D in Galaxy NGC 4526 (bottom left bright spot) Credit: NASA/ESA, The Hubble Key Project Team and The High-Z Supernova Search Team

However when two independent teams of astronomers used the Type Ia supernovae as a means of determining the distances of galaxies independently of their redshifts, they both discovered the same thing, that you had to add something else—Dark Energy—to make the big bang theory fit the observational data. I have previously pointed out the implicit circular reasoning in their methods, that is, assume the cosmology you want to prove, use that to select the supernovae you will use in your analysis, then use those supernovae to test your cosmology.4

Dark Energy, I say is just another fudge factor, because the theory is wrong and should have been rejected a long time ago. You might ask, what evidence do I have for such a claim? The actual non-existence of Dark Energy in laboratory physics is evidence for its fudge factor status. As it currently stands it is stuff stranger than fiction—it needs to have physical properties unknown to physics, as we’ll see below. Though that in itself is not necessarily grounds for its rejection, we must remember the origin of the idea—it has only been proposed because of the a priori assumption that the big bang cosmology and history of the Universe is true.6

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