Large Hadron Collider brings mankind’s biggest bang
As children, most of us banged things together to see what would happen. Staff at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have just done that on the largest scale in history.
Staff at the group’s Large Hadron Collider today collided beams of protons at an energy level 3.5 times higher than humans have ever achieved before. That level, 7 trillion electrovolts, is only the same amount of energy as that of a mosquito in flight, but is compacted into a few particles and thus has a truly immense amount of force.
The collision, which took place with the particles moving at 99 percent the speed of light, is designed to be as close a replication as possible of the moments immediately after the “Big Bang” which created the universe.
The purpose of such experiments is to analyze the collisions and the fallout, which may tell scientists more about some of the fundamentals of physics and thus the way the universe works. It should allow the practical testing of some theories about particle behavior which have previously only existed on paper.
As CERN’s Twitter feed notes today, the events today aren’t a first in themselves: “Nature does it all the time with cosmic rays (and with higher energy) but this is the first time this is done in Laboratory!!”
A spokesman gave some insight into just how fundamental the questions being explored are: “We’ll address soon some of the major puzzles of modern physics like the origin of mass, the grand unification of forces and the presence of abundant dark matter in the universe. ”
The collisions will be carried out on an ongoing basis over the next 18 months to 2 years rather than it being a single “bang”. Researchers plan to first map out the particles to confirm they fit the known patterns of physics that have already been shown in experiments. They’ll then try to identify the “Higgs boson”, a currently hypothetical particle which, if it exists, would confirm some theories about how physics fits together.
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March 30th, 2010
Yeah !
To do what ?
More destructive bombs ?
We surely need it !
As if we din’t have enough yet !
Thanks you all, guys at CERN, for wasting such amounts of money that could be used to feed starving people, cure AIDS and cancers, build new schools and zillions other things humanity really NEED … but instead was used to satisfy a few “researchers” curiosity about the Big Bang … something that 99,999999999999999999% of mankind doesn’t care about !
March 30th, 2010
rocket007 – how much more short sighted do you want to be? they are talking about understanding the fundamental building blocks of mass, which itself should help towards developing cures for AIDS and cancer, developing new building materials and the zillions of other things that Humanity needs. Just because you don’t understand it does not make it useless.
March 30th, 2010
Rimmer – just to make me understand how stupid I am, tell me how creating the Higgs bozon, or trying to understanding the dark mater would cure Aids or cancer or analphabetism . Just tell me your gnose so I can laugh at your explanation. Please. Make me laugh out very loud. Please flood me with you Uber Knowledge to eradicate my Uber Moronnes. I am waiting. Really.