Post by Wes on Mar 31, 2010 12:03:40 GMT 10
Large Hadron Collider a little closer to Higgs Boson answer after record collisions .
SCIENTISTS at the world's biggest atom smasher near Geneva have started colliding particles at record energy levels, opening a new era in the quest for the secrets of the universe.
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research said the Large Hadron Collider had unleashed the unprecedented bursts of energy on the third attempt, as beams of protons thrust around the 27km accelerator collided at close to the speed of light.
"This is physics in the making, the beginning of a new era, we have collisions at 7 TeV (teralectronvolts)," CERN scientist Paola Catapano said, referring to the record energy levels achieved.
CERN Director General Rolf Heuer could barely contain his excitement by video conference from Japan.
"It is a fantastic moment for science," he said.
The success came after a faltering start at the giant €3.9 billion ($5.73 billion) machine under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, which is aimed at unravelling some of the outstanding secrets of the universe.
The third attempt triggered collisions among the 20 billion protons in the Large Hadron Collider, creating powerful but microscopic bursts of energy that mimic conditions close to the Big Bang that created the universe.
"We're within a billionth of a second of the Big Bang," CERN spokesman James Gillies said.
Cheers and applause erupted in separate control rooms around the huge ring as the detectors recorded the collisions of sub-atomic particles on computer screen graphs.
One spokesman likened the attempt to firing needles from either side of the Atlantic and getting them to collide halfway, while the particles sped around the ring more than 5000 times a second.
The new stage, dubbed "First Physics", marks only the beginning of an initial 18- to 24-month series of billions of such collisions.
Scientists around the world will sift through and process the data on a giant computer network, searching for evidence of a theorised missing link called the Higgs Boson, commonly called the "God Particle".
"In this kind of physics, what's important in order to observe new phenomena is to collect statistics," CERN scientist Despiona Hatzifotiadu said.
"It will give us a clue of how we were created in the beginning," she added.
The experiment also aims to shed light on "dark matter" and subsequently "dark energy", invisible matter or forces that are thought to account together for some 96 per cent of the cosmos.
At this stage the LHC is still running on only partial power.
It is designed to run collisions at twice the current energy - 14 TeV, equivalent to 99.99 per cent of the speed of light.
CERN is aiming to cross that threshold with the giant, cryogenically-cooled machine after 2011.
At full power the detectors in cathedral-sized chambers should capture some 600 million collisions every second among trillions of protons racing around the LHC 11,245 times a second.
The decades-long attempt by CERN to observe and understand mysterious forces has also attracted sceptics, especially in Germany and the United States, who claim that the organisation is tampering with forces that might suck the world into a black hole, or generate destructive theoretical particles called strangelets.
Just the facts:
* Though built to study the smallest known building blocks of all things - known as particles - the LHC is the largest and most complex machine ever made. It has a circumference of 27km (17 miles) and lies 100 metres (330 feet) under the ground, straddling French and Swiss territory.
* At full power, trillions of protons will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11,245 times a second, travelling at 99.99 per cent the speed of light. It is capable of engineering 600 million collisions every second.
* When two beams of protons collide, they will generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the sun, concentrated within a miniscule space. Meanwhile, the cooling system that circulates superfluid helium around the LHC's accelerator ring keeps the machine at minus 271.3 degrees Celsius (minus 456.34 degrees Fahrenheit).
* To collect data of up to 600 million proton collisions per second, physicists and scientists have built devices to measure the passage time of a particle to a few billionths of a second. The trigger system also registers the location of particles to millionths of a metre.
* The data recorded by the LHC's big experiments will fill around 100,000 dual-layer DVDs each year. Tens of thousands of computers around the world have been harnessed in a computing network called "The Grid" that will hold the information.
www.news.com.au/technology/large-hadron-collider-a-little-closer-to-higgs-boson-answer-after-record-collisions/story-e6frfro0-1225847735982
SCIENTISTS at the world's biggest atom smasher near Geneva have started colliding particles at record energy levels, opening a new era in the quest for the secrets of the universe.
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research said the Large Hadron Collider had unleashed the unprecedented bursts of energy on the third attempt, as beams of protons thrust around the 27km accelerator collided at close to the speed of light.
"This is physics in the making, the beginning of a new era, we have collisions at 7 TeV (teralectronvolts)," CERN scientist Paola Catapano said, referring to the record energy levels achieved.
CERN Director General Rolf Heuer could barely contain his excitement by video conference from Japan.
"It is a fantastic moment for science," he said.
The success came after a faltering start at the giant €3.9 billion ($5.73 billion) machine under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, which is aimed at unravelling some of the outstanding secrets of the universe.
The third attempt triggered collisions among the 20 billion protons in the Large Hadron Collider, creating powerful but microscopic bursts of energy that mimic conditions close to the Big Bang that created the universe.
"We're within a billionth of a second of the Big Bang," CERN spokesman James Gillies said.
Cheers and applause erupted in separate control rooms around the huge ring as the detectors recorded the collisions of sub-atomic particles on computer screen graphs.
One spokesman likened the attempt to firing needles from either side of the Atlantic and getting them to collide halfway, while the particles sped around the ring more than 5000 times a second.
The new stage, dubbed "First Physics", marks only the beginning of an initial 18- to 24-month series of billions of such collisions.
Scientists around the world will sift through and process the data on a giant computer network, searching for evidence of a theorised missing link called the Higgs Boson, commonly called the "God Particle".
"In this kind of physics, what's important in order to observe new phenomena is to collect statistics," CERN scientist Despiona Hatzifotiadu said.
"It will give us a clue of how we were created in the beginning," she added.
The experiment also aims to shed light on "dark matter" and subsequently "dark energy", invisible matter or forces that are thought to account together for some 96 per cent of the cosmos.
At this stage the LHC is still running on only partial power.
It is designed to run collisions at twice the current energy - 14 TeV, equivalent to 99.99 per cent of the speed of light.
CERN is aiming to cross that threshold with the giant, cryogenically-cooled machine after 2011.
At full power the detectors in cathedral-sized chambers should capture some 600 million collisions every second among trillions of protons racing around the LHC 11,245 times a second.
The decades-long attempt by CERN to observe and understand mysterious forces has also attracted sceptics, especially in Germany and the United States, who claim that the organisation is tampering with forces that might suck the world into a black hole, or generate destructive theoretical particles called strangelets.
Just the facts:
* Though built to study the smallest known building blocks of all things - known as particles - the LHC is the largest and most complex machine ever made. It has a circumference of 27km (17 miles) and lies 100 metres (330 feet) under the ground, straddling French and Swiss territory.
* At full power, trillions of protons will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11,245 times a second, travelling at 99.99 per cent the speed of light. It is capable of engineering 600 million collisions every second.
* When two beams of protons collide, they will generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the sun, concentrated within a miniscule space. Meanwhile, the cooling system that circulates superfluid helium around the LHC's accelerator ring keeps the machine at minus 271.3 degrees Celsius (minus 456.34 degrees Fahrenheit).
* To collect data of up to 600 million proton collisions per second, physicists and scientists have built devices to measure the passage time of a particle to a few billionths of a second. The trigger system also registers the location of particles to millionths of a metre.
* The data recorded by the LHC's big experiments will fill around 100,000 dual-layer DVDs each year. Tens of thousands of computers around the world have been harnessed in a computing network called "The Grid" that will hold the information.
www.news.com.au/technology/large-hadron-collider-a-little-closer-to-higgs-boson-answer-after-record-collisions/story-e6frfro0-1225847735982