Planck Scale - Experiments Probing The Planck Scale

Experiments Probing The Planck Scale

Experimental evidence of Planck scale dynamics is difficult to obtain, and until quite recently was scant to non-existent. Although it remains impossible to probe this realm directly, as those energies are well beyond the capability of any current or planned particle accelerator, there possibly was a time when the universe itself achieved Planck scale energies, and we have measured the afterglow of that era with instruments such as the WMAP probe, which recently accumulated sufficient data to allow scientists to probe back to the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, near the electroweak phase transition. This is still several orders of magnitude away from the Planck epoch, when the universe was at the Planck scale, but planned probes such as Planck Surveyor and related experiments such as IceCube expect to greatly improve on current astrophysical measurements.

Results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider have pushed back the particle physics frontier to discover the fluid nature of the quark-gluon plasma, and this process will be augmented by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, pushing back the 'cosmic clock' for particle physics still further. This is likely to add to the understanding of Planck scale dynamics, and sharpen the knowledge of what evolves from that state. No experiment current or planned will allow the precise probing or complete understanding of the Planck scale. Nonetheless, enough data has already been accumulated to narrow the field of workable inflationary universe theories, and to eliminate some theorized extensions to the Standard Model.