Mystery of Matter

Call it extraterrestrial or terrestrial, Life within every nucleus of matter, Hadron collider will confirm
India Daily Technology Team
May 24, 2009

The Hadron Collider, when it finally works, will reveal information that will startle the world. The biggest unknown in particle physics is about to reveal something that will fundamentally change the way we live, the ways we think and the ways we perceive science, especially related to life and biology.

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) predicts how quarks interact with each other by means of a color charge. All particles other than photons are composed of Hadrons and Leptons. Hadrons comprises of Mesons and Baryons. Mesons consist of one quark and one antiquark. Baryons consist of three quarks and can be protons, or neutrons.

The strong force between quarks are called color force. The force is carried on by massless particles called Gluons (analogous to photons for the electromagnetic force).

According to QCD, when a quark absorbs or emits a gluon, its color changes. In traditional biological science, it is similar to breathing in and out or the exchange of ions though the plasma membranes of the cells.

Each quark within the neutron and proton is continually emitting and absorbing virtual gluons and creating and annihilating quark and anti-quark pairs. When the neutron and proton approach within 1femtometer (10 to the power –15 meter, very, very, very small distance) of each other, these virtual gluons and quarks can be exchanged between the two nucleons, and such exchanges produce the strong nuclear force.

Soon we will find these neutrons and protons are also building blocks of life just like amino acids in biological forms of matter.

David Gross (UC Santa Barbara), David Politzer (caltech) and Frank Wilczek (MIT) discovered the property of the strong interaction which explains why quarks may behave almost as free particles only at high energies. The discovery laid the foundation for the theory for the colour interaction (QCD). The theory has been tested in great detail, in particular during recent years at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, in Geneva.