"Go forth through the Earth and discover"
(29:20)
Have you heard about the Big Bang Machine?
The Big Bang is the beginning
of the Universe
according to many philosophies
throughout history
and much research and scientific theories
over the last 100 years.
In the Holy Quran, God Almighty says:
"Have not those who disbelieve known that"
"the Heavens and the Earth were one piece"
"then We parted them and We made"
"from water every living thing?"
"Will they not believe?"
This means that the Heavens and the Earth
were one entity and God separated them.
Today scientists are trying to understand
what happened immediately
after the separation
and how was the Universe formed?
Why do they need to know that?
In order to know what is the main
component of everything in life.
At first there was something called
singularity, which we did know much about,
and if there was anything before it or not,
was there time and space?
What we know about it
is that it was the starting point
and that is where the Big Bang happened.
In one trillionth of a second after
the Big Bang
a time frame that can scarcely be explained
the size of the Universe expanded
trillions of times
and became the size of an orange,
creating what is known as the Quark Soup,
a quark being the smallest particle
form of matter.
Before explaining what happened afterwards,
allow me to tell you about "time."
Let's say that this is one second
and these are parts of a second.
In this part, representing a trillionths
of trillionths a second,
another elementary particle was formed
called "Higgs Boson" .
This particle gives the other particles
its mass
and in other parts of the second
the Universe started cooling down
and quark particles started to cluster
creating the protons and neutrons
and the diameter of the Universe
became 300 million kilometers.
Finally, after 3 seconds and even
20 seconds after the Big Bang
the Universe cooled down more and the light
nuclei were formed; hydrogen and helium
which compose today 98%
of our visible Universe.
From there on the Universe kept
on expanding more and more
and after 380 thousand years the electron
started orbiting the proton
and at this moment, the most important event
in the history of the Universe took place;
the first atom was created.
From this atom everything was formed
and matter was released.
Someone would ask what is matter?
Matter is the building block
of everything around you.
This wood, this metal, my skin, your skin
your clothes, your teeth,
every single thing.
Let's fast forward the events
to 13.8 billion years
when man appeared on the face of earth.
Man kept on searching and asking
about the secret of life
and what is beyond the secrets of existence.
With the accumulation of research
and studies 
scientists came to an important realization,
that everything we see around us
is only 5% of the Universe
as for the rest, 27% is dark matter
and 68% dark energy,
it's called dark because we still
don't know what it is.
Scientists say that the Universe
we know today
is a fraction of many other
never ending Universes.
Even within this 5%, we still don't know
much about it
and so a science called
"Particle Physics" emerged
which studies the tiniest particles
of a matter.
Long ago, scientists thought that the atom
is the smallest element of matter
but then they discovered that
the nucleus is even smaller
and in the second half of the 20th century
they discovered that there are much
smaller particles than the nucleus
like the quark and meson
and so they started looking deeper
into these particles and their structures
because they believed that if they
understand the basic components of matter
then they would understand how everything
in life functions.
Some would ask, what is dark
matter and dark energy?
Until now, we know nothing about it
what's more important now is to understand
the 5% that we know a little about.
In 1954, the European Organization
for Nuclear Research, known as CERN
was established in Geneva, to research
the components of matter
specifically the tiny particles
that form matter.
But these particles cannot be seen by the
naked eye and not even with a microscope
therefore over the years
CERN built powerful equipment
that reveals these particles
and connected them with particle
accelerators
in a 27 km circular tube,
at a depth of 100 meters in the Earth.
This was done at the French Swiss border
creating what is known as
the Large Hadron Collider
also know as the Big Bang Machine.
The Large Hadron Collider, LHC,
is made of 4 main colliders:
LHCB, Atlas, Alice and CMS.
They are all connected by a magnetic tube
that has a great ability to transport energy
known as Super Conducting Magnet.
In LHC, protons extracted
from hydrogen nuclei
are sent in batches through the tubes
using super conducting magnets
where each batch of particles
is sent in rays
that contain 100 billion protons
to move in the 27 kilometer tube
at a rate close to the speed of light.
Afterwards, they collide the protons
in one of the four colliders
and photograph the results
of each collision.
Scientists then analyze these collisions
over several years
before coming to any conclusion.
CMS and the other colliders, look like
a giant camera that captures every detail
and after each collision,
that is in every part of a second
large volumes of information are sent to the
giant data centers to be analyzed in detail.
By the way, CMS is considered
one of greatest human structures.
It is made up of 10,000 tons of iron
that is more iron than in the Eiffel Tower,
equivalent to 30 Jumbo jets,
or 2,500 African elephants
and its gravity force is 100,000 times
stronger than the gravity force on Earth.
At LHC, there are around
150 million sensors
that record data at 40 millions times
per second.
Just imagine the amount
of recorded data per year.
The recorded data of these collisions
is enormous.
By the way, the speeding particles
in the magnetic tube
cross a distance of 10 billion kilometers.
Can you guess in how much time?
In only 10 hours, that is equivalent to the
distance from Earth to Neptune and back.
These collisions they created, to simulate
the conditions of the Big Bang,
aim to understand
how the elementary particles
where created at the beginning
of the Universe.
So what happened between
the moment of the Big Bang
and when the Universe reached
the size of an orange?
Well when large numbers of particles collide
at very high speeds,
reaching almost the speed of light,
sometimes new particles are created.
Scientists don't know about them all
but if they get to know all the particles
that constitute matter, 
then they will know how
the Universe functions,
in other words, how everything functions.
For example why does a human get ill?
Why don't we have batteries
that last forever?
Why does wood abrade,
and why does iron rust?
Simply, we will be able to unlock
the mysteries of the visible Universe.
LHC collider keeps on working non-stop
for years
but the main challenge is in analyzing
the data of the colliders accurately.
In order to achieve that, CERN has one
of the largest data centers in the world.
By the way, the World Wide Web
was created out of this center
because the internet, which was invented
by the Americans,
was limited to military and scientific use
and its language was not simple,
but in 1989, the Swiss scientist
Tim Berners-Lee,
invented the Hypertext language,
from CERN, as he was an employee there,
and so internet became available
to the whole world.
By the way, from this location, the first
touch screen was invented in 1974.
One of CERN's inventions that created
a buzz in 2012 was the Higgs Boson
which was one of the first particles
that emerged after the Big Bang,
as we said at the beginning
of the episode.
Peter Higgs, which the particle
was named after him,
assumed with his colleagues in 1964,
that this particle exists
and it is responsible for giving the rest
of the particles its mass.
But this assumption was not proven
until fours years ago, do you know why?
Because finally man was able
to create equipment
that can reveal and monitor
these subatomic particles.
To comprehend what man has invented
and discovered... it's unprecedented.
By the way, Peter Higgs and his colleagues
were awarded the Noble Prize
after the experiments were proven at CERN.
Everything we mentioned today
and everything CERN is doing
comes down to Quantum Mechanics
which is one of the most studied physics
theories by scientists today.
For scientists at CERN and other scientific
research centers to understand
how Quantum Mechanics works, in order
to understand how the Universe functions,
they need 3 things: a particle collider,
like LHC's collider,
a data center with powerful analyzing
abilities, like the one we saw at CERN,
and particle accelerators to make it reach
a speed close to the speed of light
to simulate the conditions of the Big Bang.
Therefore, CERN has the most powerful
particle accelerators in the world.
But what is the importance
of these accelerators?
This magnet is one of the most advanced
scientific inventions
in the field of physics, electricity
and engineering
and soon NASA will use it in its inhabited
space crafts
to prevent its astronauts
from the dangerous rays
that they might be exposed to
when they travel to far locations in space.
This magnet will make man's
mission to reach and live on Mars easier
because it will make it much easier
to produce and deliver electricity to Mars
compared to the copper wires we use today.
The amazing thing is that this magnet
is made up of threads
where each thread is only
0.007 millimeters thick
meaning that a human hair
is 10 time thicker than this thread.
If we detached all the threads
of this magnet at CERN
and connected them together
to create one long thread
it would reach 6 times the distance
from Earth to the Sun.
The heat produced
by the accelerated particles
and their collisions in the accelerators
is very high because it operates
under enormous pressure.
Therefore they created gigantic coolers
to cool the magnet
and cooled it down to 271.3 degrees
below zero.
That is colder than the temperature
in outer space by 1 degrees.
Scientists say that this is the coolest spot
in the Universe known to man.
One would say, instead of investing all
this money in theoretical matters
that don't have a direct effect on humans
isn't it better to invest it in the
eradication of poverty and diseases,
and into creating infrastructure,
and developing countries
but the question is, is investing
in science and scientific research
part of development or not?
And what is the story of the
British inventor, Michael Faraday.
When the British physicist, Michael Faraday
was experimenting with electrical current
one of the British ministers asked him
about the benefits of this experiment.
Faraday told him I don't know
but I am sure that our government
will one day benefit from it.
Faraday didn't know exactly
how his country would benefit,
and in-turn the whole world
from these experiments
but if it wasn't for Faraday's experiments,
we wouldn't have electricity today.
Another great thing is treatment
with protons, known as Proton Therapy
which is being used today in treating
cancer in sensitive areas like the brain.
This technique is very safe.
In this treatment,
hospitals use particle accelerators
like the one we saw in CERN, imagine that,
but much smaller of course.
In the episode about cancer, we explain
in detail how this technique works.
CERN, where 10,000 scientists of physics,
mathematics, and space,
as well as engineers and experts
in different fields work,
is in reality a research center, but its
aim is not to develop the daily life.
Its aim is to discover the mysteries
of life itself,
scientists are breaking apart matter,
atoms and nuclei
to derive the rules of the Universe.
In this tedious journey, inventions that
never cross anyone's mind are born.
Sometimes we come across simple
mathematic equations
like Einstein's famous relativity equation,
but we don't know what it means.
Simple looking formulas like this one
changed the course of human history,
had us invent things like nuclear power,
and travel into space, and put mobile
vehicles on the Moon and Mars,
and create particle accelerators
that break up matter,
and visualize our insides in 3D technology.
Scientific research is not an art
and the search for the beginnings
of the Universe in not a waste of time
and is not a deviation from faith
as some people may think,
but it is a noble and beautiful task.
The Almighty says "God will rise up"
"to ranks those of you who believe"
"and who have been granted the knowledge."
