Re: Ruth - Did You See This?

In article <09OdnaCRw_UaUZ_YnZ2dnUVZ_oadnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"gumboman" <noemail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This thing is going to be cool. I wish I was young enough to go work over
there.



JH



Machine readied to create 'mini-Big Bangs'
Large Hadron Collider likely to shed light on dark matter, dark energy
By Jeremy Lovell
Reuters


Updated: 2:29 p.m. CT Sept 7, 2006
NORWICH, England - Deep underground on the Franco-Swiss border, someone will
throw a switch next year to start one of the most ambitious experiments in
history, probing the secrets of the universe and possibly finding new
dimensions.

The Large Hadron Collider - a 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) circular
particle accelerator - at the CERN experimental facility near Geneva will
smash protons into each other at unimaginable speeds, trying to replicate in
miniature the events of the Big Bang.

"These beams will have the kinetic energy of an aircraft carrier slammed
into the size of a zero on a 20-pence piece," Brian Cox of Manchester
University told the annual meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science.

"We are going to make mini-Big Bangs. There has never been such a jump in
particle physics. It will go into an area that we don't really understand,"
he added.

Dark secrets
The fundamental goal of the massive machine is to answer the basic but
crucial question of how matter was created at the birth of the universe.

"We don't know what 95 percent of the universe is made of - which is a bit
embarrassing for a subject that claims to be fundamental," Cox said. "There
is dark matter. It is all over the place, but we have no idea what it is.

"There is also something called dark energy, and that is an even bigger
question. It makes up about 70 percent of the energy in the universe but
again we have absolutely no idea what it is.

"It is an incredibly exciting machine. It will be turned on next year and
run for at least a decade and probably 20 years, and the first results - if
the machine behaves itself - should start coming out within a year," he
added.

Tiny black holes
If the theories are correct, the machine will create tiny black holes that
evaporate, and possibly even find particles indicating that the three
dimensions known to mankind are just a fraction of those that actually
exist.

"That would be an even bigger headline than the black holes. It could be
that there is a whole new universe a millimeter away from our heads, but at
right angles to the three dimensions that are here," Cox said.

"That would be a real paradigm shift - our relegation to a little *** in a
multidimensional universe. That kind of thing is really profound and will
capture the imagination that perhaps the origin of mass won't, although it
should.

"For the first time in many decades we have built a machine that exceeds our
powers of prediction. New processes are bound to be discovered," he added.
"We are truly journeying into unknown territory."

Cox dismissed worries that by adventuring into the unknown and creating tiny
black holes, the machine could even threaten to destroy the planet.

"The probability is at the level of 10 to the minus 40," he said.

gives me lovely goosebumps and chills....
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