suffer for joy
October 19th 2004, 09:32 AM
SOURCE (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=570&e=1&u=/nm/20041018/sc_nm/science_cern_dc_1)
CERN to Probe Life, the Universe and Everything
By Richard Waddington
GENEVA (Reuters) - It has revolutionized physics, made Nobel Prize winners and given birth to the World Wide Web -- now its successor looks set to answer some of the natural world's most fundamental questions.
CERN (news - web sites), the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has made many formidable discoveries since its launch 50 years ago, but these achievements could be dwarfed by findings from a 17-mile accelerator, or particle-smasher, being assembled outside Geneva.
From 2007 it will be firing particles at speeds nearing that of light, before smashing them together to re-create the conditions scientists believe existed less than one billionth of a second after the Big Bang -- the birth of the cosmos some 14 billion years ago.
"(We) have achieved very, very important results in what we call particle physics, which is to say, what happened after the Big Bang," said CERN Director-General Robert Aymar.
"Right now we have too many theories and this is the machine to confirm, or not, the models that we have. Only experiment can help us make the choice," he told Reuters.
The new accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), replaces another, the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), which was the world's largest and Europe's biggest civil engineering undertaking until the Channel Tunnel was built.
The statistics of the new venture are mind-boggling. The temperatures created in the particle collisions will be around one billion times that of the center of the Sun.
Ever since Sir Isaac Newton, scientists have known that gravity acts on mass, but what they still do not know is where the particles get their mass from.
....
Someone smart explain what all this means. :blush:
sfj
CERN to Probe Life, the Universe and Everything
By Richard Waddington
GENEVA (Reuters) - It has revolutionized physics, made Nobel Prize winners and given birth to the World Wide Web -- now its successor looks set to answer some of the natural world's most fundamental questions.
CERN (news - web sites), the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has made many formidable discoveries since its launch 50 years ago, but these achievements could be dwarfed by findings from a 17-mile accelerator, or particle-smasher, being assembled outside Geneva.
From 2007 it will be firing particles at speeds nearing that of light, before smashing them together to re-create the conditions scientists believe existed less than one billionth of a second after the Big Bang -- the birth of the cosmos some 14 billion years ago.
"(We) have achieved very, very important results in what we call particle physics, which is to say, what happened after the Big Bang," said CERN Director-General Robert Aymar.
"Right now we have too many theories and this is the machine to confirm, or not, the models that we have. Only experiment can help us make the choice," he told Reuters.
The new accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), replaces another, the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), which was the world's largest and Europe's biggest civil engineering undertaking until the Channel Tunnel was built.
The statistics of the new venture are mind-boggling. The temperatures created in the particle collisions will be around one billion times that of the center of the Sun.
Ever since Sir Isaac Newton, scientists have known that gravity acts on mass, but what they still do not know is where the particles get their mass from.
....
Someone smart explain what all this means. :blush:
sfj