An Interview with Albert Einstein

Note from mum: This is Jack's next assignment. If he had the exclusive opportunity to ask Einsten 10 questions, what would his questions? After figuring out the questions, he has to answer it as Einstein. Any creative thoughts are welcome and there is no right or wrong. Here is Jack's imaginary interview with Einstein.

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1. Jacques: What happens to antimatter and matter if they collide with each other head-on?
Einstein: The molecules inside antimatter and matter will annihilate each other when they are head-on. For some reason this theory works in reverse, so antimatter and matter can just come out of no where, but because of the tiny space in between them there is a chance that they will annihilate each other straight away.

2. Jacques: What caused the Big Bang to happen?
Einstein: Parts of other universes which were destroyed by a black hole which formed and grew itself into a giant explosion which is the Big Bang and then shaped it into the universe we are in now. A black hole is caused when a star has so much gravitational force that even light can not escape it’s clutches, because there is nothing faster than light all objects are pulled in by the force.

3. Jacques: Why is a black hole known as a black hole?
Einstein: The answer isn’t certain but it might be because it pulls in objects into darkness or emptiness.

4. Jacques: Can you tell me about the LHC (Large Hadron Collider)?
Einstein: The LHC is located in Geneva, Switzerland and belongs to CERN, the French acronym for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research; it costs more than £4billion and has a length of 27km. It is still being made and will open sometime in 2008. This large particle accelerator is a key importance and will help scientific theories. One of them is to prove the existence of supersymmetrical particles such as squarks, selectrons, sleptons etc. According to the theory of supersymmetry when the ‘regular’ particles were made by the Big Bang a matching supersymmetrical particle was made with it, these twins have far more mass than ‘regular’ particles making them massively unstable and, so to this, they disappear almost right when they are born.

5. Jacques: What happened when nucleosynthesis occurred only a few minutes after the Big Bang?
Einstein: Nucleosynthesis was the process when new atomic nucleuses were created from preexisting nucleons, protons and neutrons. These earlier particles were created by the quark-gluon plasma from the Big Bang once it cooled below 10,000,000 degree Celsius. A few minutes later, starting with only the preexisting nucleons, nuclei up to lithium and beryllium (both having a mass number of 7) existed but in relatively small numbers. This first process of primordial nucleosynthesis could also be called nucleogenesis. The subsequent nucleosynthesis of the elements (all carbon, all oxygen, etc.) occurs firstly in stars either by what’s known as nuclear fusion or nuclear fission.

6. Jacques: What are the most basic particles which are smaller than atoms?
Einstein:
- Leptons : Electrons, Electron Neutrino, Muon, Muon Neutrino, Tau, Tau Neutrino
- Quarks: Down Quark, Up Quark, Strange Quark, Charm Quark, Bottom Quark, Top Quark
- W Boson Z Boson Gluon Photon
Force Carriers
These are the fundamental particles of the standard model with its partner.

7. Jacques: What order is the periodic table in?
Einstein: It is in the order of their atomic numbers. For example Hydrogen has an atomic number of 1 and so is first. Another thing is the periodic table are made of ‘pure’ elements and so each one of them are not made of other elements (for example carbon dioxide is a mixture between 2 oxygen molecules and 1 carbon so it is not a ‘pure’ element).

8. Jacques: What is it that detonates a hydrogen bomb?
Einstein: Hydrogen bombs work by using the energy of a fission bomb in order to compress and heat fusion fuel. In the Teller-Ulam design, which represents all other multi-megaton yielding hydrogen bombs, this is accomplished by stating a fission bomb and fusion fuel (such as tritium, deuterium or lithium deuteride) approximately into a special, radiation-reflecting container. When the fission bomb is detonated gamma and X-rays emitted, at the speed of light, first compress the fusion fuel, and then heat it to what’s known as thermonuclear temperatures. The fusion reaction creates enormous numbers of high-speed neutrons, which then can cause fission in materials which normally are not prone to it, such as depleted uranium.

9. Jacques: What is the ‘standard model’ of particle physics?
Einstein: The ‘standard model’ of particle physics is the theory which describes three of the four known interactions between the elementary particles (such as protons, neutrons…etc) which made all of matter. It is a quantum field theory developed between 1970 and 1973 which is regular with both quantum mechanics and special relativity. Up to now, almost all experimental tests of the three forces described by the standard model have agreed with its predictions. However, the standard model falls back of being a complete theory of fundamental interactions, firstly because of its lack of the inclusion of gravity, the fourth known fundamental interaction, but also because of the eighteen numerical parameters (such as masses and coupling constants) that must be put ‘by hand’ into the theory (rather than being from the first principles).

10. Jacques: What is an atom made of?
Einstein: A negatively charged neutron, a positively charged proton and a negatively charged electron cloud surrounding the proton and neutron. When the number of protons in the nucleus equals the number of electrons, the positive and negative charges equal out and the atom is electrically neutral; otherwise it is an ion and is either positively charged or negatively charged. An atom is classified according to its how many neutrons and protons it has; the number of protons determines the chemical element of the atom and the number of neutrons determines the isotope of that element.