![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Forget the Olympics - today CERN Labs in Switzerland will fire up the Large Hadron Collider for the first time, and shoot the very first protons through one of the eight sectors of the world's largest particle accelerator. Although this is just a test run (the facility won't be fully up and running until September 10th), the whitecoats at CERN are interested in eventual experiments that could reveal what, exactly, dark matter is, prove the existence of extra dimensions, lead to entirely new theories or physical laws, and show us what the universe looked like after the big bang.
Pretty awesome, right?
Also, it just might produce black holesand destroy the universe. Nobody really knows for sure.
No, seriously.
The purpose of this test? "It's, 'Let's see what happens,'" says Judy Jackson, head of the Office of Communications at Fermilab. "It's a very complex machine. This is a step towards getting ready."
Anyway, on the off-chance that we will all still be around to do this, instead of shortly disappearing into the black hole where Switzerland used to be:
Sign-ups close tomorrow!
Pretty awesome, right?
Also, it just might produce black holes
No, seriously.
The purpose of this test? "It's, 'Let's see what happens,'" says Judy Jackson, head of the Office of Communications at Fermilab. "It's a very complex machine. This is a step towards getting ready."
Anyway, on the off-chance that we will all still be around to do this, instead of shortly disappearing into the black hole where Switzerland used to be:
Sign-ups close tomorrow!
no subject
no subject
Also, I just watched the physics rap linked to in that last article, featuring a lot of people in lab coats and goggles and hard hats dancing around the collider. XD
Aaand if anyone in book, tv, movie, etc. fiction tried to use the phrase "450 gigaelectronvolts" - which is what the machine will use when fully powered up - they would be laughed out of the business. *uses!*