The experiment boasts a cast of about 2,000 scientists representing 40 countries and involves an underground atom smasher 16 miles in circumference. However, since antimatter is not readily available in bulk, the scientists at CERN will smash protons against protons, which contain small amounts of matter and antimatter, and keep track of the energies and particles released. The machine itself is still under construction, and should take about seven more years to complete, the two NU physics professors said. All 40 of the countries involved will construct a piece of the atom smasher, and assemble it by 2005, Reucroft said. Essentially, two separate streams of protons are accelerated at nearly the speed of light inside a circular 16-mile long tube.
Scientists disrupt the streams and force the particles to crash into one another.
Reucroft estimated that about 40 million collisions will occur per second. Data collection will take about 20 years, Swain and Reucroft said. But answers to some of the simpler questions may come as early as during the first few years of data collection. Reucroft and Swain are trying to determine, among other things, what causes matter to have mass, the scientific term for the property of matter which makes it hard to accelerate. The rest will be divided among seven other colleges and universities around the country who will also help in construction.