Tomorrow morning at 0730 GMT the Large Hadron Collider will be powered up in order to fire a proton beam around its length. Eventually, after its official unveiling (in October sometime), the LHC will accelerate two contra rotating proton beams at up to 99.9999% light speed, before directing them into each others paths at one of four detector positions located on the circumference of the 27km ring in Geneva, Switzerland.
The particle everyone is interested in is the Higgs Boson. If detected it could help explain some of the simplest quandries, such as "where does mass come from?"
CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)
received death threats, amongst other less threatening expressions of angst, mostly over the proposal that they were going to generate black holes which would devour the planet.
The conditions CERN are trying to recreate are the same as those present just after the big bang when all that is the universe was expelled from the first explosion (ever). At that time the pressures and temperatures were immense, sufficient enough to form singularities, hence the concern.
Who says particle physics isn't exciting!
alpinekat (online handle) is a scientific writer who works for CERN and wrote this song to help explain just what the hell they've been spending all that money on (3.2 to 6.4 Billion Euros)
Physics rocks
Hopefully I'll be back on here tomorrow night having seen footage of the first test.
Otherwise I'll see you in the next dimension...
