[tomcatjosh]

This Sounds Interesting, What IS A Particle Accellarator?
BTW, It Looks Like One Heck Of A Machine, Though



Atom Smashing To Begin Oct. 21st
The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, will be officially launched in Switzerland on October 21st of this year. It will operate in a circular 27-kilometer tunnel about 100 meters underground and will create almost a billion proton-proton collisions per second. Take a look at some amazing high-res images.

Just one of the awesome LHC images

[MissionTrek08]

Well, let Wiki or Google be your friend -- there's plenty of info and press about the LHC and its purpose.

Basically, it accelerates two beams of protons in opposite directions around ring tunnels about 17 miles in circumference. When the particles reach their max velocity, the opposing beams are focused into a chamber where they will collide at high speed, releasing extremely high energy and signatures of these unique particles which only existed for fractions of a second after the big bang.

Specifically they're looking for the Higgs boson which, if it exists, may complete the Standard Model used by physicists to help explain the properties and rules of the universe.

Short version: the Higgs boson would help the Standard Model explain why some particles attain mass (making up you, me, the stuff of the universe) while other particles have no apparent mass.

This matters because physics is basically stuck trying to explain the universe, and such experiments as this will either show the Higgs boson (implying the Standard Model is on the right track), or it won't which means the SM is flawed and needs considerable reworking.

Oh, and don't worry: the LHC will NOT create a black hole when turned on, as some people were proposing.

[NCC-73515]

Well, it accelerates particles!

[TheTrekkie]

Oh, and don't worry: the LHC will NOT create a black hole when turned on, as some people were proposing.

I watched an Interview of a CERN scientist on a partly Swiss TV channel yesterday and he also laughed about that fear.
He said there would be a small mathematical possibility that for around 20 seconds a small, very small micro-singularity could be created that collapses instantly. And some journalists who just wanted to have a spectacular superscription used a similar statement and simply invented the fear the world could be destroyed by a black hole.


An other promising international project that - if it would work - could solve many problems is ITER, a fusion reactor in France funded by almost every big country, to make fusion energy become possible in the next decades or at least the possibilities explored.

[tomcatjosh]

Next Up: Matter/Antimatter Collisions...Wait, We Have To Find Antimatter

[horatio]

Originally Posted by tomcatjosh

Next Up: Matter/Antimatter Collisions...Wait, We Have To Find Antimatter

I am no expert in physics, but as far as I know, there is some antimatter in our universe, but that is probably too far away. Antimatter's only use would be as an energy carrier like in ST. So we have to synthesize antimatter, which has been done only in small quantities so far and we have to adept the magical "magnetic containment" to prevent blowing ourselves up.

[Botany Bay]

Originally Posted by NCC-73515

Well, it accelerates particles!

Yupp, the aproximatly most expensive sport on earth: Quantum Billiard.

[tomcatjosh]

Originally Posted by horatio

I am no expert in physics, but as far as I know, there is some antimatter in our universe, but that is probably too far away. Antimatter's only use would be as an energy carrier like in ST. So we have to synthesize antimatter, which has been done only in small quantities so far and we have to adept the magical "magnetic containment" to prevent blowing ourselves up.

It's Been Discovered?

[Botany Bay]

Originally Posted by tomcatjosh

It's Been Discovered?

Its also been produced on earth. Trouble is, its production costed a huge load of money and it existed not longer then a few nano seconds or less. That makes anti-matter the most expensive stuff on earth.

[TheTrekkie]

Originally Posted by tomcatjosh

It's Been Discovered?

CERN already produced it. (The Swiss research facility that built the discussed particle accellarator). But I think the antimatter was annihilated seconds after its creation.