Shuck and Jive


Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Big Bang Experiment: So Far, So Good

The Big Bang Experiment was launched today. Here is the article:

GENEVA (Reuters) - Physicists around the world, some in pyjamas and others with champagne, celebrated the first tests on Wednesday of a huge particle-smashing machine they hope will simulate the "Big Bang" that created the universe.

Experiments using the underground Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, the biggest and most complex machine ever made, could revamp modern physics and unlock secrets about the universe and its origins....

....Physicists brushed off suggestions that the experiment could create tiny black holes that could suck in the planet.

"The worries that scientists had were nothing to do with being swallowed up by black holes and everything to do with technical hitches or electronic failure," said Jim al-Khalili, a physicist at Britain's University of Surrey.

"Now, after a collective sigh of relief, the real fun starts," al-Khalili said. "No matter what we find, we will be unlocking the secrets of the universe."

The LHC will send beams of subatomic particles called protons whizzing around the tube at just under the speed of light.

The hope is they will smash into one another and explode in a burst of new and previously unseen types of particles -- recreating on a miniature scale the heat and energy of the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe 13.7 billion years ago." (Read More)
I love science.

And so does Jesus.


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