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 ...
Overview of the first element (L) of the huge magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experimental site at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) before its lowering on Thursday in the French village of Cessy near the Swiss city of Geneva November 29, 2006. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
REPENT! THE END IS NEAR!!
Tiger Woods and his wife achieved some possibly multi-millions dollar collisions of sorts, as well.
Congrats to both teams.
I hope it don’t mess with our magnetic poles. Could be cataclysmic.. or worse. ;-)
Big Bang Machine? that was my nickname in high school!
They must have put a bird poop roof over the critical place.
bada bing!
A technician walks under the core magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) in the French village of Cessy, near Geneva March 22, 2007. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/Files
tune up your Mayan Calendars, zotheads!
I was wondering why it feels like I am living in a parallel word these days.
At best in that situation we would be living in the south.
So the world just imploded in a man-made black hole, like some predicted? Darn, missed it. Guess I’ll have to go to work on Monday after all.
If these pinheads blow up the world, Im going to be pretty annoyed.
I wonder if those guys at CERN are as honest as the British climate researchers at CRU?
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