Monday, November 23, 2009

LHC - the quiet giant

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Finally, science can proceed without major fear-mongering and cataclysmic predictions. A year ago, when the Large Hadron Collider started up for the first time, there were dire predictions of the entire planet getting swallowed into a large black hole. There were even groups of individuals trying to sue CERN - the organization that built the LHC.

This past weekend, the LHC started up again. And we are still here.

The Large Hadron Collider (if you have been living under a rock for the past year) is a particle accelerator attempting to collide protons to recreate events that occurred immediately after the Big Bang.

If understanding the origins of the universe, mass and quantum mechanics and dark energy wasn't motivation enough to be interested in the LHC....

It is REALLY big... I'm talking the biggest machine on the planet. It is 12 feet in diameter, 17 kms in circumference and passes through parts of France and Switzerland up to 175m underground.

And the experiment has begun, the protons are circulating as we speak - gearing up for a head-on collision that will give researchers the first glimpse at their long-awaited precious data. You can even pretend to be smart by following the progress online.

Its low key start-up has lacked any kind of controversy, which is great; but it also meant that the biggest scientific experiment in the history of mankind barely got any media coverage. At some point, we will realize that reporting science for science's sake is of fundamental importance to our lives. Not just the controversy over bullshit predictions like 2012 and spontaneous black holes.

-- Torah Kachur

1 comment:

  1. I thought it wasn't just the starting up of the LHC that would cause the black hole, because that's mostly just a lot of electromagnetism. My understanding is that the Mini Black Hole of Earthly Doom (TM) would show up immediately post-collision. You know, after the thing that's never been done before is done.