Large Hadron Collider Begins Testing

[Jason]

The Large Hadron Collider, soon-to-be the world's most powerful atom smasher, begins testing this weekend.

CERN will fire the first test beam through one of the particle accelerator's sectors.

“It’s, ‘Let’s see what happens,’ ” Judy Jackson, head of the Office Communications at Fermilab, told Popular Mechanics. “It’s a very complex machine. This is a step towards getting ready.”

Then, on September 10th, a full-power beam will travel through the accelerator's entire 17 miles of tunnels, reaching up to 99.99 percent of the speed of light. And finally, assuming all goes well, the first real science experiments will begin some time in October.

Though the initial test beams won't be nearly as energetic as physicists hope subsequent beams will be, they mark an important milestone for the world's largest machine. It's cost something like $8 billion and taken 12 years to build it and now we all get to see if it actually, you know, works. After it's up and running, researchers hope to use it to answer some remarkably important questions about the nature of mass, dark matter, and the earliest moments of our universe.

Via >> io9.com

Source: Wired Science

[Almost Tactf]

Looks like something from Half Life

[WiCKeD]

My end-of-the-world insurance is stocked up.

[maastrix]

Any one seen the movie ' black hole ' ?

Think that started off the same as this.

[zlander79]

I love this thing, I read some of the eingineering documents for it and it is an amazing machine. Just they way it looks is astounding

[Vit^pr0n]

Haha, imagine if this thing explodes during testing. Wouldn't that be a sight to see

jkjk

[zlander79]

I think the worst case scenario would be cryo failures where venting of LHe would occur but youd have to be standing infront of it to get hit by it. Or, some how the beam could "crash", but raidation and a very very small hole (the beam is only a few mm). There was a failure of a magnet last year.



Check this out, lots and lots of info:
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

[BRONiUS]

Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons' anyone?

[Fourth]

Guys, you are definitely overlooking the positive aspects that this thing presents:

1. We will finally get to experience what its like to be sucked into a black hole
2. We will finally get to find out if black holes lead to parallel dimensions
3. We will take the rest of the solar system with us... party on pluto anyone?

In all seriousness, this thing is most likely perfectly safe. The only reason people are making a stink about it is because they don't understand it, and like they said in 'Batman Begins', "...you always fear, what you don't understand."

[ORGANZ]

BBC radio4, 08:30 10th September, be there or you'll never find out how the universe ended.
If against all probability a black hole does form, how long will I have to find religion before being sucked into an infinite nothingness?

[IceDragon]

I have been following the magnet temperatures for a while now. They have been cooling them down for ages. Right down close to absolute 0 (0 Kelvin, 273.15 C).

BTW: I thought they were going to start in September.

[Slovnaft]

man after following RHIC for a few weeks back...oh idkno a year, two years ago, CERN was just a thing in a magazine.
now lets see some pions!

[ORGANZ]

Originally Posted by icedragon999

BTW: I thought they were going to start in September.

Originally Posted by ORGANZ

BBC radio4, 08:30 10th September

Thats when its getting turned on, live coverage , I may annoy some teachers at my school, but I'm still going to be listening.

[Tweaky25]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashforward_(novel)