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Catch Me Who Can
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Science Prepares To "Fire Up" the Large Hadron Collider: Investigating the "Big Bang"
If you've seen reports of the construction of CERN's gigantic particle accelerator near Geneva, this should prove to be one very big tool in the arsenal of scientific inquiry. On the other hand, if it suddenly gets very dark tomorrow, you feel extraordinarily heavy and the earth disappears, you'll know what's going on.
(Fair Use Excerpt)
Scientists to Probe Beginning of Time, Big Bang's Missing Mass
By Warren Giles
Sept. 9-- Scientists tomorrow will take a step closer to understanding the beginning of time when the European Organization for Nuclear Research powers up the world's biggest magnetic loop in the search for the universe's missing matter.
Particle physicists on the outskirts of Geneva are trying to find out what most of the universe is made of, and where it is, because most of the matter created in the ``Big Bang'' 13.7 billion years ago has disappeared. Adding up all the stars, planets, and black holes in the universe only accounts for about 4 percent of all the mass created when time began.
After a decade of work, physicists will fire the first particles around a 27-kilometer (16 mile) long magnetic loop buried 100 meters (328 feet) under ground in a tunnel large enough for subway trains through an environment colder than outer space.
As the particles lap at close to the speed of light some will collide, triggering new particles that may also help scientists understand why the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing as predicted by theory.
``We may find a whole new family of particles that might account for the missing mass, the `dark matter' that we know must be there,'' says David Evans, a scientist who helped to build some of the electronic equipment that have one-billionth of a second to spot a collision. ``One way or another, there's a 100 percent chance we will find something new to physics.''
The unknown outcome has prompted a challenge at the European Court of Human Rights by chemist Otto Roessler, of the University of Tuebingen in Germany, to try to stop the experiment, claiming the event will create a black hole that will destroy the planet.
The CERN complex, overlooked by the Jura mountains which rise to 1,720 meters, is where one of CERN's alumni, Tim Berners- Lee, invented the first World Wide Web browser in 1989 to help physicists all over the globe better swap notes. CERN is the French acronym for the nuclear research organization.
While the spin-offs for technologies used in the 6 billion Swiss franc ($5.3 billion) ``Large Hadron Collider'' experiments may not be immediately obvious, applications from other particle physics research include three-dimensional hospital scanners and non-invasive surgery, which will improve as a result of CERN's work, says Evans.
One of CERN'S problems in generating an environment that resembles conditions one thousandth of a millionth of a second after the start of time, and the creation of all the universe's building material, is the volume of data generated by the observations.
Within a year the particle accelerator's four experiments, one of which involves equipment weighing 7,000 metric tons or the equivalent of a subterranean Eiffel Tower, will have spewed enough data to fill a pile of compact discs 12 miles high.
Some of the material that the physicists may find is labeled ``dark energy,'' and may help explain why ``something is still driving the expansion of the universe, but at the moment we have no idea what it is,'' says Evans, who dismisses the risk of earth being swallowed by a black hole.
``Nature already produces far higher-powered particle accelerations and the earth would already have been destroyed if that were possible,'' says Evans. The experiments are ``a once- in-a-lifetime experience, 10-times more powerful than anything anyone has ever built and the first time we know for sure that something new and exciting is going to happen.''
If you've seen reports of the construction of CERN's gigantic particle accelerator near Geneva, this should prove to be one very big tool in the arsenal of scientific inquiry. On the other hand, if it suddenly gets very dark tomorrow, you feel extraordinarily heavy and the earth disappears, you'll know what's going on.
(Fair Use Excerpt)
Scientists to Probe Beginning of Time, Big Bang's Missing Mass
By Warren Giles
Sept. 9-- Scientists tomorrow will take a step closer to understanding the beginning of time when the European Organization for Nuclear Research powers up the world's biggest magnetic loop in the search for the universe's missing matter.
Particle physicists on the outskirts of Geneva are trying to find out what most of the universe is made of, and where it is, because most of the matter created in the ``Big Bang'' 13.7 billion years ago has disappeared. Adding up all the stars, planets, and black holes in the universe only accounts for about 4 percent of all the mass created when time began.
After a decade of work, physicists will fire the first particles around a 27-kilometer (16 mile) long magnetic loop buried 100 meters (328 feet) under ground in a tunnel large enough for subway trains through an environment colder than outer space.
As the particles lap at close to the speed of light some will collide, triggering new particles that may also help scientists understand why the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing as predicted by theory.
``We may find a whole new family of particles that might account for the missing mass, the `dark matter' that we know must be there,'' says David Evans, a scientist who helped to build some of the electronic equipment that have one-billionth of a second to spot a collision. ``One way or another, there's a 100 percent chance we will find something new to physics.''
The unknown outcome has prompted a challenge at the European Court of Human Rights by chemist Otto Roessler, of the University of Tuebingen in Germany, to try to stop the experiment, claiming the event will create a black hole that will destroy the planet.
The CERN complex, overlooked by the Jura mountains which rise to 1,720 meters, is where one of CERN's alumni, Tim Berners- Lee, invented the first World Wide Web browser in 1989 to help physicists all over the globe better swap notes. CERN is the French acronym for the nuclear research organization.
While the spin-offs for technologies used in the 6 billion Swiss franc ($5.3 billion) ``Large Hadron Collider'' experiments may not be immediately obvious, applications from other particle physics research include three-dimensional hospital scanners and non-invasive surgery, which will improve as a result of CERN's work, says Evans.
One of CERN'S problems in generating an environment that resembles conditions one thousandth of a millionth of a second after the start of time, and the creation of all the universe's building material, is the volume of data generated by the observations.
Within a year the particle accelerator's four experiments, one of which involves equipment weighing 7,000 metric tons or the equivalent of a subterranean Eiffel Tower, will have spewed enough data to fill a pile of compact discs 12 miles high.
Some of the material that the physicists may find is labeled ``dark energy,'' and may help explain why ``something is still driving the expansion of the universe, but at the moment we have no idea what it is,'' says Evans, who dismisses the risk of earth being swallowed by a black hole.
``Nature already produces far higher-powered particle accelerations and the earth would already have been destroyed if that were possible,'' says Evans. The experiments are ``a once- in-a-lifetime experience, 10-times more powerful than anything anyone has ever built and the first time we know for sure that something new and exciting is going to happen.''
