Scientists are today preparing to switch on the world's biggest scientific experiment.

The £5billion Large Hadron Collider aims to recreate the conditions moments after the Big Bang that created the universe.

To do this, a massive 27km tunnel has been constructed under countryside in France and Switzerland near Geneva, which will be used to smash protons together at 99.99 per cent of the speed of light.

Tomorrow morning, it will be switched on and the first attempt to send the particle beam around its entire 27km length will be made.

Experts say the LHC is probably the most complex and challenging scientific endeavour since the Apollo programme put astronauts on the moon.

"This is an incredibly exciting time for physics," said Professor Nick Evans of Southampton University.

"The LHC will help scientists to unlock the secrets of our Universe.

"The great thing about this experiment is that we know we must find something new because our current theories don't explain what will happen at LHC. We have some guesses which may or may not be right, but whatever the results, the LHC will herald a new age in our understanding of physics."

The discoveries made by the LHC could also lead to practical applications, it is hoped.

Major spin-offs have already emerged from earlier particle accelerator experiments at CERN, the European nuclear research organisation based in Geneva where the LHC is housed.

It is credited with pioneering radiotherapy machines and even the world wide web. One of the aims of the LHC is to hunt for the Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle".

The Higgs is said to be the so-far undetected key to mass. If scientists can prove its existence, it could pave the way for manipulating the gravity which exists in all mass - rather like Star Trek "tractor" beams.

Professor Brian Cox, from the University of Manchester, is one of the LHC scientists and also played keyboard with pop band D:Ream. He admitted to having received death threats from opponents of the LHC, who claim it could create black holes which could swallow the Earth.

Scientists dismiss such fears as nonsense. "At every stage of understanding the universe better, the benefits to civilisation have been immeasurable," he said.

"None of these big leaps were made with us knowing what was going to happen."


Mark Prigg, Science Correspondent
09.09.08

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23552722-details/Countdown+to+man%27s+Big+Bang+begins/article.do

Another zombie!!

I GOT MY WILL MADE OUT...JUST WONT BE ANYONE LEFT TO GIVE ANYTHING TOO.


its the apocolyse

mark my words..

if not..will talk to you tomorrow...LOL

what time today does the world end?????

do i have time to have breakfast???

at least i will go out with a full stomach...

what is a black hole????

Authoritative astrophysicist Dr Rainer Plaga finds significant gaps in the CERN in-house LSAG safety study. His detailed quantitative analysis published August 10, 2008 comes to the conclusion that "at the present stage of knowledge there is a definite risk from Micro Black Hole production at colliders."

Even CERN scientists concede that there is a real possibility of creating destructive theoretical anomalies such as miniature black holes, strangelets and deSitter space transitions. These events have the potential to fundamentally alter matter and destroy our planet.

way over my head....

are they gonna give us vaseline before they F**k the entire planet up

A micro singularity would not have sufficent mass to gobble the earth.

Are you all sheep?

The worse I could see happening is at its moment of creation the thing would suck in just enough energy to destroy the darn super expensive toy that created it.

Wouldn't that be a hoot.

Noted. However, if such micro singularity, in the form of a blackhole,were to stabilize, what would stop it from doing what black holes do, which is gobbling up all matter and energy, even light can't escape its pull. Another question. Lets say it doesn't end the world (LOL!) What they are looking for right now, what they are trying to recreate is the big bang. Okay, well if they are successful, wouldn't that produce an incredible amount of energy? How do they propose to be safe while doing that, especially considering the size of the Hadron Super Collider.

One more question, this one is more theory in nature, but say, once again, that they succeed in recreating a big bang, is it not theoritically possible that they could just accidentally create their own little planet earth?

Does that make Dr.Frankenstein, in his nice white lab coat, a deity, a creator?

LOL, from my understanding this is an ongoing science experiment. Im not sure exactly where the stand in actally having produced this "lil" bang...and Im not actually sure what the want to gain out of such an experiemnt.
too many variables in it for me..
and sometimes I do like living on the planet earth!

They are chasing a THEORY.

Might open a quantum gate in the foam and create a seperate reality but it won't have much effect on the rest of us other than a big laugh when the supercolider becomes a small crator.

What cheek to think we have that much control over the forces of the megaverse. We can't even figure out all the interactions of a single atom in our reality.

Im crossing my fingers that the Mayans were right, cant wait till 2012....

The CERN scientists have admitted that the creation of miniature black holes is indeed possible but they believe they would evaporate immediately.

Other theories state that they would not evaporate but would leave the LHC containment at the speed of light and since they are sub atomic, would pass through the earth and out into space in a repeating orbit, perforating the planet with every pass through.

This miniature black hole could pass through you and you would never know it. Until it gains in mass, then all hell will break loose trying to stop the anomoly.

Was Oppenheimer not chasing a theory?
We operate on such a small little fragment of what actually goes on around us, for these scientists running the Cern experiments, to just totally dismiss the danger of what they are doing is what scares me most, because in chasing a theory, to me, that means they built a machine and don't really know what it's going to do. At the end of the day, I think science in some categories is getting out of control, like messing around with the genetics of our food. Dr.Moreau anyone?

The Higgs-Bosun particle is the key to attaining the higher density levels.