The largest scientific experiment in history is about to begin. And most people know nothing about it.
Big Bang comes home
The LHC or “large hadron collider” Is the biggest and most expensive
scientific experiment in history. It is a 17 mile long pipe in the shape of
a ring, buried 330 feet down under the earth along the French and Swedish borders
near lake Geneva. It has cost close to 6 billion dollars to build and hundreds
of millions of dollars to run. It is funded by over 30 nations including the
United States.
This giant experiment is organized and ran buy a European agency called CERN. The scientist at CERN hope to capture and study a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson (some times referred to as the God particle). This particle is so small and so fast that billions of them pass through the earth every day undetected. It is thought to be the fundamental building block of the universe.
It is also thought that this may be a way to communicate back and forth over great distances from planet to planet or galaxy to galaxy. If other intelligent life forms exist in the universe it would be likely that they could communicate with each other using this dark anti matter. The scientists at CERN hope to catch and study this elusive piece of anti matter using their LHC machine. This machine will use super cooled magnets to propel atoms at a velocity close to the speed of light. Simply put the LHC is a giant atom masher.
The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some other bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August 2008.
However some scientist are concerned that the experiment could get out of control, and that there is a small but real chance that they might create a Black Hole that would swallow the earth.
Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN. David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets. "If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said. (Yahoo news)
The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings.
The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings.
The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near Chicago, has been debated for years. The physicist Martin Rees has estimated the chance of an accelerator producing a global catastrophe at one in 50 million — long odds, to be sure, but about the same as winning some lotteries. (yahoo news)
Is the reward worth the risk? Most of the world scientists say yes!
experiments start in August 2008
Count down
less than 60 days from now.
here are some other links to look at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJFllPVIcpg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM
Matt Capps