Will the world end on Wednesday? The $9b question

Be a bit of a pain if it did, wouldn’t it? And the most frustrating thing is that we won’t know for sure either way until the European laboratory for particle physics (Cern) in Geneva switches on its Large Hadron Collider the day after tomorrow.

Be a bit of a pain if it did, wouldn’t it? And the most frustrating thing is that we won’t know for sure either way until the European laboratory for particle physics (Cern) in Geneva switches on its Large Hadron Collider the day after tomorrow.If you think it’s unlikely that we will all be sucked into a giant black hole that will swallow the world, as German chemistry professor Otto Rössler of the University of Tübingen posits, and so carry on with your life as normal, only to find out that it’s true, you’ll be a bit miffed, won’t you?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/08/particlephysics.physicsInto the unknown
Something extremely important is going on today in a giant tunnel beneath the Swiss countryside. But precisely what ‘mysteries of the universe’ are the scientists at Cern hoping to solve – and does it matter whether or not they succeed? Stuart Jeffries gets to grips with Higgs bosons, quarks, supersymmetric particles and miniature black holes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/10/cern.particlephysicsCERN reiterates safety of LHC on eve of first beam [news release]
A report published today in the peer reviewed Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics provides comprehensive evidence that safety fears about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are unfounded. The LHC is CERN’s new flagship research facility. As the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, it is poised to provide new insights into the mysteries of our universe.
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR07.08E.htmlCern special: The 9 billion dollar question
Today, mankind’s greatest experiment begins as the Large Hadron Collider powers up. The cost is huge, the scale is massive – and the discoveries could be enormous. But, asks Andy McSmith, what does it all add up to?It was Oscar Wilde who declared that “all art is useless” – which was not a condemnation, but a proclamation. If you want to create something of beauty, he meant, do not be distracted by people who ask what it is for. On that basis, whatever emerges from the £4.4bn experiment that begins today in the vast complex built at the Cern – The European Organisation for Nuclear Research – laboratory near Geneva, where infinitesimally small particles travelling at mind-boggling speeds will crash together with so much force that they almost replicate the Big Bang, could be called the most expensive work of art in human history.
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cern-special-the-9-billion-dollar-question-924345.htmlSo what the heck is a hadron?
Who is behind today’s experiment?This is probably the biggest international collaboration outside of the United Nations. It has involved something like 10,000 scientists and engineers from 500 research institutes in 80 countries. The building of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been co-ordinated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva, which carries out studies into particle physics on behalf of the 20 nations that fund it. Cern has already built several particle colliders, or “atom smashers”, which have produced fundamental discoveries in physics leading to several Nobel prizes.
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/so-what-the-heck-is-a-hadron-924346.html

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