[video:  animation showing clouds of protons moving through the ring)
 For years, scientists had been accelerating protons in the giant CERN
 ring, and colliding them with stationary targets.

   [video:   anti-proton collector  ring] But now,  for the first time,
 anti-protons,  rare particles  identical  to protons, but with opposite
 charge, were manufactured and stored in this anti-matter collector.
 Then the anti-protons were injected into the main ring, hurtling in
 the opposite direction as the protons.  When matter meets anti-matter,
 the result is mutual annihilation.

  The impact between  a  single proton and anti-proton releases,  for
 a tiny fraction of  a second, more  energy than the electrical output
 of all the power plants  in the world.   Subatomic particles come
 reeling out of that tiny explosion, and are captured in the onion skin
 layers of this giant particle detector .

   [video:  CERN personnel studying particle tracings and other data on
 display screens.]   On the  28th of May, 1983, traces of a Z particle
 were detected in the  debris emitted  by  a  proton-antiproton collision.
 The electroweak unified theory had been confirmed.

   Carlo Rubbia of CERN shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics for having
 conceived of the idea of colliding matter with antimatter.

                                 *****

 CARLO RUBBIA:   What we are really doing here,  we are  making little
 bangs.   We are concentrating, in a very small volume of space, for a
 very short period of time, enough energy, density, so that we can
 revive--or replace, so to speak--on a very modest scale, what was really
 the state of affairs of the universe as a whole.

   The major progress in science has been made, I believe, by Galileo
 Galilei when he brought the experimental science to its right level of
 importance.  And I still believe that to a greater extent, our scientific
 progress is made through experimental science.   It's not because I am an
 experimental scientist.   [It's] just because I believe that there is
 always  the  final   verdict, the  final guidance, which comes from the
 physical phenomenon.
                                   *****

 TIMOTHY FERRIS: With electroweak theory a successor scientists went on to
 compose the  so-called  grand  unified  theories. These theories say that
 at still higher energy levels, three of the  four forces might function
 as a single force. And here again, it's theorized that an exotic particle
 would do the work  of unification.  It's called the X particle.

    [video: animation of particles] As we watch, a gluon, carrier of the
 strong force, strikes an X particle, and is transformed into a photon,
 the carrier of electromagnetism. Alternately, a gluon striking an X can
 be transformed into a weak boson, carrier of the weak force.

   [video: the "virtual  sea," a computer-animated representation of
 virtual particles appearing out of a vacuum] Particles  of energy
 live on borrowed time. They gather themselves up from the stray energy
 in a vacuum, then ebb back into nonexistence. The grand unified theories
 make the startling prediction that not just energy but matter may be
 temporary. They say that protons, the particles that form the heart of
 every atom in the universe, are not permanent, as had been thought,
 but are destined to decay.

    [voice over video, Venice, Italy, spires rising from the mist)
 The grand unified theories paint in deepened colors the old lesson that
 birth implies death.  It's the latest chapter in a scientific saga that
 began here in Venice 375 years ago.

    [Ferris at Piazza San Marco]  On August the 25th, 1609, Galileo led
 a procession of Venetian senators across the square and up to the top
 of that tower for their first look through his first telescope.
 Galileo was teaching just  up the river at the  University of Padua at
 the time. He was a respected teacher. Students flocked to his classes.
 He'd written a couple of good books. But his contract was about to
 expire, he never made  enough money to get by, and he needed something
 to help his career.  He found it.  It was the telescope.

    [voice over video of  Galileo's telescope]  The senators were
 impressed. They granted Galileo tenure, gave him a promotion, and
 they commissioned telescopes for sighting ships at sea.  But Galileo
 trained his telescopes on the sky.

    [video:    Galileo's drawings]   He saw that the moon has mountains
 as rugged as the  Apennines, and  that  other planets have moons, and
 that the Milky Way runs deep with  pasture lands of  stars.  And these
 sights helped to convince him that the  heavens  are  as  substantial
 and changeable as the Earth.

 Galileo's observations  provided evidence that  the stars and planets
 are worlds like ours,  made of the same elements  and  functioning in
 accordance  with the  same  physical  laws.   They  drew together the
 realms of the large and small, and married the Earth to the universe.

   [video:   canals of Venice]  The Venetians  understood that nothing
 on Earth lasts forever.   They were citizens of a republic  literally
 raised  upon shifting sands and  supported  by the  risky business of
 ocean-going trade.   But they  thought that the stars, at least, were
 immutable.

   Galileo's work changed that.   By introducing into science the idea
 that  the  Earth is part of the  universe, he set the  stage  for the
 subsequent discovery that even stars live and die.   Since  Galileo's
 day,  telescopes have  looked out into space to scales Galileo  never
 dreamed of,  and  particle  accelerators have looked just as far into
 the world of the small. And  everywhere, they have found  change.  If
 the  grand  unified  theories are right, not even atoms last forever.

   [video:   Venice  flooded]   The  city where Galileo glimpsed signs
 of the  mortality  of the  heavens is  itself in  peril.   Venice  is
 sinking,  its  streets  flooding with every winter's storm.  The city
 cannot  last forever, but it has company in that.  Neither, it seems,
 can the  sun, nor  the stars, nor  the atoms they are made of.

   [video:  a mine in the mountains]  Kamioka, Japan.  Here, in a lead
 mine, an experiment is underway  to learn whether protons are mortal.
 To minimize interference by high energy particles coming  from space,
 the experiment is conducted nearly two miles underground. The unified
 theories predict that the average  proton will last  many billions of
 years.  But by assembling an enormous quantity of protons, scientists
 can  test  the  theories  in  the  course of a year or two of careful
 observation.  And that's what's being done here.

 continued...

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