What do you think, are they going too far with this kind of experiment, there were alot of protests about the nature of this experiment, but the European court approved the experiment which is supported by more than 50 countries and thousands of scientists are taking part and putting data together.Qoute:
Scientists hope for surprises in Big Bang experimentGENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists involved in a historic "Big Bang" experiment to begin this week hope it will turn up many surprises about the universe and its origins -- but reject suggestions it will bring the end of the world.
And Robert Aymar, the French physicist who heads the CERN research centre, predicted that discoveries to emerge from his organization's 6.4 billion euro ($9.2 billion) project would spark major advances for human society.
"If some of what we expect to find does not turn up, and things we did not foresee do, that will be even more stimulating because it means that we understand less than we thought about nature," said British physicist Brian Cox.
"What I would like to see is the unexpected," said Gerardus t'Hooft of the University of Michigan. Perhaps, he suggested, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine at the heart of the experiment "will show us things we didn't know existed."
Once it starts up on Wednesday, scientists plan to smash particle beams together at close to the speed of light inside CERN's tightly-sealed Large Hadron Collider to create multiple mini-versions of the primeval Big Bang.Cosmologists say that that explosion of an object the size of a small coin occurred about 13.7 billion years ago and led to formation of stars, planets -- and eventually to life on earth.
A key aim of the CERN experiment is to find the "Higgs boson," named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who in 1964 pointed to such a particle as the force that gave mass to matter and made the universe possible.
But other mysteries of physics and cosmology -- supersymmetry,
dark matter and
dark energy among them -- are at the focus of experiments in the 27-km (17-mile) circular tunnel deep underneath the Swiss-French border.
Read more :
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSL846768920080908?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
Qoute:
Atom-smashing experiment ready to goScientists will launch an experiment in a tunnel deep beneath the French-Swiss border Wednesday, hoping to find evidence of extra dimensions, invisible
"dark matter," and an elusive particle called the
"Higgs boson."And although leading physicists such as Stephen Hawking say the atom-smashing experiment will be absolutely safe, some skeptics fear the proton collisions could unleash microscopic black holes that would eventually doom the Earth.
The most powerful atom-smasher ever built will produce collisions of protons travelling at nearly the speed of light in the circular tunnel, giving off showers of particles that will provide more clues about how everything in the universe is made.Read more :
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/09/09/science-collider.html
Qoute:
Big Bang 2: The milestone CERN experiment, step by step The most important scientific experiment in recent history starts officially on Wednesday morning when the biggest particle accelerator ever built becomes operational. Its purpose is to recreate what happened imediately after the Big Bang and thus help scientists to better understand universal processes. But the events involving the huge LHC particle accelerator today are just the start of a long period of collosal scientific efforts due to continue for years to come.
What happens today:- In the morning, at 9.00 Geneva time, a quick planning session takes place at the European center for nuclear research (CERN), to be followed half an hour later by the injection of a first particle beam into the LHC accelerator. The event can be followed live at http://webcast.cern.ch/
- Scientists, engineers and even Nobel laureates are expected to make regular briefings and hold Q&A sessions throughout the day
- The purpose of the first day of the experiment is that the first particle beam fully circles the accelerator. Armies of experts will try to make sure everything goes fine as malfunctions can occur, given the complexity of the system.
What will come next:- After a first evaluation of this phase, another beam will be injected in reverse direction into the accelerator. This may happen in a few days time
CERN representatives say the first collission of beams from opposite directions to take place no earlier than in six to eight months.
- The first collissions will have a low intensity which will increase gradually to reach a peak when hundreds of millions of collissions take place every second - the most important phase of the experiment, which has sparked speculations (strongly denied by scientists) about a so-called "end of the world"
- The LHC accelerator is due to be shut down for the winter period in mid-November and is expected to be restarted at full capacity next year
- The petabytes of data to be collected will be analyzed by some 5,000 scientists through a major computer grid for years to come.
Read more:
http://english.hotnews.ro/stiri-regional_europe-4289786-big-bang-2-the-milestone-cern-experiment-step-step.htm
Fi Amanallah,
Geeljire ~