Collider still colliding? Check. Europe still around? Check. Phew

Collider still colliding? Check. Europe still around? Check. Phew

The largest and most expensive particle accelerator in the world, with a cost of $9 billion, was fired up today. The 17-mile’s of tunnel beneath France and Switzerland haven’t disappeared into a black hole yet, and as far as I know Europe hasn’t fallen into a worm-hole and is now in another galaxy, so we should be all OK.

“The Large Hadron Collider- particle accelerator designed to simulate conditions of the Big Bang that created the physical Universe– was switched on at 0732 GMT to cheers and applause from experts gathered to witness the event.”

Scientists hope that in recreating the origin of everything they will be able to recreate the first few days of God’s work. Wait, I mean the first few days after the Big Bang happened. I wonder if the scientists will also find a need to take a day for rest from their creation. The data created from the particles smashing into each other at near light-speed could potentially generate enough data to make discoveries by 2009. Along with working towards mundane things like proving the existence of extra dimensions and worm-holes the data from the accelerator could be used for future breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, and of course technology. Why do we care? Well, the last time we got this technical with our molecular origins the atom split open and electrons poured out. We don’t call them electronics for nothing.

If that isn’t a good enough answer then Howard Gordon, deputy research program manager for the collider’s ATLAS experiment says “It’s important for us to know just who we are, what we are.”

If you are curious to keep yourself up-to-date on whether or not the accelerator has destroyed the earth click on over to this.

UPDATE by Jason T.:  Wired’s got an informative and humorous blog post about the best- and worst-case LHC scenarios


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