CERN – The Big Bang Machine
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Goes Live in Geneva Sept. 10, 2008
Sep 10, 2008
Wednesday 10th September 2008 is an important date for the scientific community and the world. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, will finally go live. The LHC is colloquially known as the 'Big Bang Machine' owing to its feted ability to recreate the conditions which led to the formation of planet Earth. The LHC is the result of a 4.4 billion pound (approx. $9 billion) collaboration between many of the top scientists of 85 different nations.
CERN was formed in 1954 and stands for the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (the European Council for Nuclear Research). Even though there are now over 10,000 scientists working at CERN, many from outside Europe, the acronym has stuck.
Aren't Black Holes Dangerous?
There has been a great deal of media attention focused on the LHC being capable of creating black holes, but there is a vast difference between what CERN will be capable of generating and the black holes formed by collapsing stars.
In a TV interview (This Morning, ITV 1, September 9, 2008) CERN scientist Professor Brian Cox explained that in Earth's atmosphere particles are crashing against each other constantly and cosmic rays are hitting us and zooming around all the time. He explained that whilst it would be highly unlikely, conditions at the LHC may indeed be conducive to the formation of mini black holes, but these “shouldn't really be called black holes...” He explained they would whizz in and out of existence in a blink, and that “...if they exist then they're raining down now, because they're being made in the atmosphere by these high energy collisions.”
So, the effects of the LHC experiments are not going to be any different to what's being created around us all the time, without anyone being too worried or even aware. It just means that scientists will be able to study these effects in a confined space. As the LHC is designed for looking at sub-atomic particles which fly around us all the time, there is no danger whatsoever of it creating a black hole that is capable of sucking us all in!
What Exactly is the LHC For?
The LHC is a particle accelerator which aims to re-create conditions that were present at the beginning of the universe and enable scientists to watch and record what's going on. Particles will be propelled through a tunnel 4 metres wide and 27 kilometres long where they will smash into each other. The results of the microscopic collisions will be recorded by cameras and computers capable of capturing details never ever seen before.
Everyone's hoping for groundbreaking revelations about the formation of the universe, but until the experiments get underway it is difficult to predict what discoveries lie ahead. The whole process of designing and building the massive LHC has already led to innovative work concerning the use of particle beams to kill cancers. Now it has finally gone live, the results and possible benefits to mankind, whilst still an unknown quantitative, are likely to be of the utmost importance.
Further reading: More info about the LHC experiments can be found in this article – World's Biggest Gun Set to Fire.
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