[Emeriti-faculty] REMINDER: PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM TODAY, FRIDAY 2/26/10 AT 2:30 PM

[Gayle Grant <gayle grant tufts edu>]

Good morning:

Friday, February 26, 2010
2:30 pm
Nelson Auditorium, Anderson Hall
Lunch served at 1:30 PM in Knipp Library, Robinson 251

Tufts University
Physics and Astronomy Colloquium
“The Coming Revolutions in Particle Physics”
Chris Quigg
Theoretical Physics Department
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Soon, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will advance the experimental 
frontier of particle physics to the heart of the Fermi scale, reaching 
energies around one trillion electron volts for collisions among the 
basic constituents of matter. We do not know what the new wave of 
exploration will find, but the discoveries we make and the new puzzles 
we encounter are certain to change the face of particle physics and echo 
through neighboring sciences.

In this new world, we confidently expect to learn what sets 
electromagnetism apart from the weak interactions, with profound 
implications for our conception of the everyday world. We will gain a 
new understanding of simple and profound questions: Why are there atoms? 
Why chemistry? What makes stable structures possible? A pivotal step 
will be finding the Higgs boson and exploring its properties. But there 
may be much more: we have hints of other new phenomena, including some 
that may clarify why gravity is so much weaker than the other 
fundamental forces. We also have reason to believe that candidates for 
the dark matter of the Universe could be lurking on the Fermi scale.

Beyond the Fermi scale lies the prospect of other new insights: into the 
different forms of matter, the unity of quarks and leptons, and the 
nature of spacetime. The questions in play all seem linked to one 
another—and to the relationship of the weak and electromagnetic 
interactions. Where will the revolutions end?