Large Hadron Collider

This summer is looking to see one of the biggest forward jumps in science and technology since our early ancestors discovered that using a rock to smash something could be effective.

Scientists from all over the world are combining state-of-the-art science and engineering in one of the largest scientific experiments ever conducted. Essentially, they are going back to basics, this time on a monumental scale. So what am I talking about?

The Large Hadron Collider

We know that the universe started with a phoenomenal explosion and that all the material in our universe appears to have originated from a single point, but we still have a very poor understanding of what happened at the moment the Universe exploded into existance. The Large Hadron Collider will allow us to see what happened in the Universe moments after it’s creation. I should explain at this point that when I meant the scientists were going back to basics, they are actually just going to be smashing things together, primative in concept but definately not in practice.

The Large Hadron Collider is a large ring 27km in diameter, 100m underground at the CERN Laboratory near Geneva.

By smashing together Hadron Particles (Any particle that reacts to the strong nuclear force) the collider will be able to take ‘photographs’ of the resulting formation of hundreds of new particles. The aim is to find the elusive Higgs Boson which in turn will take scientists a step closer to unifiying the 3 fundamental forces of Strong Nuclear, Weak Nuclear and Electromagnetic (The Grand Unified Theory) and maybe even towards Einstein’s elusive goal of ‘The Theory of Everything‘.

The collider will not only be able to simulate the universe moments after the Big Bang, but can also be used to create very small Black Holes, allowing the scientists to further understand what happens at the Event Horizon of a Black Hole

There are many naysayers to this project, least of all religeous groups, who claim scientists are playing God; In my opinion, if there were a God and something like this would offend that God, then they shouldn’t have made us clever enough to work out what they were thinking. God’s own fault really…

Objections with a little more grounding include people who beleive that there is a posibility that a new Big Bang could be triggered thus wiping out our own Universe in an instant, or we could create a black hole that was big enough to start gobbling up everything around it. Both of which we wouldn’t even notice as the whole world would either cease to exist or be reduced to a singularity in an instant. Anyway the Large Hadron Collider doesn’t create anywhere near enough energy for either of those to be a posibility. (Oooo have you played Half Life?)

This video might explain things a little better than I have. It does however come with a warning, ‘All Creationists will be offended by this material’ - And so they should, idiots…