• Question: whats most interesting about particle physics

    Asked by Garmaddon1 to Philip, Kerry, Alex on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Kerry O'Shea

      Kerry O'Shea answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Phil is definitely the best person to answer this question! Particle physics is the study of subatomic particles, which are the smallest particles in the universe. You can then say that all physics can be explained from the study of particle physics, which is pretty amazing.
      I think the particle physics laboratories are incredible due to the amount of technology and engineering that goes into them. Although their main use is to allow us to better understand fundamental particles, the technology developed has been used in lots of other applications. For example, touch screen technology was initially developed at CERN (where the Large Hadron Collider is).

    • Photo: Philip Ratcliffe

      Philip Ratcliffe answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      Physicists (or some of them) right now are searching for what they (rather pompously) call “The Theory of Everything”. And in a sense that’s what particle physics is. If we understand everything about the smallest bits (quarks, electrons and so on), then we can understand how to put them together to make protons and neutrons. If we understand these, then we can make nuclei and atoms. Then we can work out how molecules behave and all of chemistry. Once we completely understand chemistry, we can work out how the various molecules make up DNA, cells and therefore living organisms and so we understand biology and medicine.
      Of course, it’s not really like that because putting the bits together is often very complex and hard to understand. But that’s the general idea.
      On the other hand, there is the amazing link between understanding the very smallest bits of matter (the quarks, electrons, …) and understanding the universe, how the galaxies formed, how the Sun works, what happened immediately after the Big Bang – so we find links between the infinitesimally small and the infinitely huge – mind boggling!

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