Posted on 11/28/2009 2:05:24 PM PST by NormsRevenge
ZURICH (Reuters) -- Scientists have smashed together proton beams for the first time in a 27-kilometre tunnel under the French-Swiss border in an initial step toward discovering how the universe came into existence, they said on Monday.
Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) hope experiments will already start giving clues about the origins of the universe in the coming months as the world's biggest particle collider starts moving to full power.
"It's a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer about the collision, achieved by sending two bunches of subatomic particles around the ring in opposite directions.
It is only three days since the "Big Bang Machine," or Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was switched back on after being halted by an accident 14 months ago, just 10 days after its first start-up.
Earlier, physicist Steve Myers told Reuters it could take until 2011 for beams of protons to hit top velocity in the nearly $10 billion experiment, which involves scientists from dozens of countries.
The key aim of the project at the CERN research center is to try to discover how the universe took shape, after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago spilled out matter at vast speeds and energies that eventually became suns, stars, planets and then life itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I just ordered a medium hadron collider online for Christmas. Think $99.95 was too much? It has free shipping from Switzerland.
Physics guys tend to be brutally honest. OCD honest, because another OCD physics guy with a better tech guy is going to punch a bunch of holes in the description. Forget conclusions.
Climate researchers? Not so much. Think statisticians on crank, without breakfast at Denny's(tm) at 2am. They can prove ANYTHING!
/johnny
/johnny
REPENT! THE END IS NEAR!!
That’s good advice, although not for the topic of this thread.
There are some that think this machine is the end of the world.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.