[Please be aware that this post was written by a man who is very tired but also very excited; expect confusion and where possible refer to videos and links for coherent content!]
Well, we’re not all going to die as the result of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at least.
As you may or may not be aware; I have become obsessed in recent weeks with the LHC, I was probably more excited to see if it would work during testing today than I was about yesterday’s Apple event! Those of you who know me well will be able to gage what kind of level of excitement that is; HIGH!
If you know NOTHING about it then watch the video below in which Brian Cox introduces you to the LHC at the TED conference. Also there is a HUGE amount of information on the BBC website.
If you are in the UK then I implore you to also watch the BBC programme ‘The Big Bang Machine‘ while it is still on iPlayer; it really is a fascinating introduction. Brian Cox (presenting both videos) really reminds me of my old chemistry teacher although I don’t think he would have been quoted as saying, “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat”.
Today the LHC, for the first time, fired a beam of electrons protons around all 27KM of its total length successfully and at very VERY close to the speed of light threw pipes cooled to colder than that between galaxies! The idea is to fire these electrons protons in opposite directions around in a circle and to eventually smash together these hydrogen protons at nearly the speed of light and create conditions which were identical to those moments (we’re talking fractions of a nano-second) after the big bang happend. How exciting is that!? Physicists are hoping to discover the ‘higgs boson’ which is effectively the missing link in physics between BIG Physics and little Physics.
When these collisions occur they will create heat which is 100 times hotter than the centre of the sun and will compact atoms equivalent to crushing a pyramid to the size of a pin head. This concerned some scientists who thought that this immense crushing of atoms could create a black hole which would eat up the earth! While CERN haven’t tried to execute a collision as of yet, they shouldn’t create a black hole since it takes the force of a sun much MUCH larger than our own being crushed to an even smaller size as the centre is crushed by its own destruction, but this isn’t a blog about the consequences of an unstable red giant so I’ll go no further. If anyone is still concerned then make sure to regularly check this site, you can subscribe to their RSS feed for the latest updates.
I don’t know if its just me but I really look forward to my children being told the whole story about the Big Bang rather than just learning about what happened afterwards. Its amazing how fast science progresses; when my parents were at school black holes were mysterious and full of magic, now we know they’re the crushed hearts of stars with EPIC amounts of gravity. When I was at school I was told about the big bang ‘theory’; I look forward to finding our about what my kids are learning; exactly what happened at, and maybe even before, the big bang? Who knows!?
