Topic: Large Hadron Collider nearly ready

[sam]

 Physics Nerds Rap About the LHC - http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/12/0036245&from=rss

[Clive]

Oh that's VERY good Sam.   

[Reno]

Either it forms a black hole, or it sterilizes half the continent. Nice pictures though sam.

[Sandra]

or it sterilizes half the continent.

Maybe they should have built it in Africa or in the Indian sub continent, then it would be a good result either way and reduce those countries overpopulation problems

[Clive]

Oh Sandra - that's not very PC.   

[sam]

Either it forms a black hole, or it sterilizes half the continent.

neither will happen.

[sam]

The world's largest particle accelerator has tasted its first protons.

On 8 August, physicists injected a few billion protons into a section of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The accelerator will eventually drive trillions of protons into each other at energies high enough to perhaps generate new kinds of particles.

The small beam tested the synchronization between the LHC and a booster accelerator. “I must say I was very pleased,” says Lyn Evans, LHC project leader at CERN. “It went extremely smoothly.”

Further tests will be carried out in coming weeks, with a view to having protons running laps around the 27-kilometre LHC ring by 10 September.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080813/full/454815a.html?s=news_rss

[GillE]

The scientists must have caught Olympic fever, wanting to see their athletic little protons running laps .

It's nice to hear the project's still chugging away. 

[Simon]

Talking of which, The Sun predicts the end of the world in nine days!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/article1630897.ece

[sam]

that Professor they quote hasn't obviously done basic physics courses.. 

and

But CERN, which includes several UK scientists, say their work is vital to unlock the secrets of matter that forms everything known in the universe.

several... I think they mean hundreds to thousands...

[Clive]

The Sun predicts the end of the world in nine days!

The Sun will be there. 

[Simon]

 

[GillE]

Isn't it great when scientists say exactly what they mean in terms that laymen can understand?  Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University leaves nobody in any doubt as to his views on the safety of the LHC:

"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

 


Daily Telegraph article.

[Simon]

[sam]

"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

I like Brian Cox and have a lot of time for him. He is also the reason the labour government got in, in the first place... he was in a certain band...