ASSOCIATED PRESS– The world’s largest atom smasher conducted its first
experiments at conditions nearing those after the Big Bang, breaking
its own record for high-energy collisions with proton beams crashing
into each other Tuesday at three times more force than ever before.
In a milestone for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider’s ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, collided the beams and took measurements at a combined energy level of 7 trillion electron volts. The collisions herald a new era for researchers working on the machine in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.
“That’s it! They’ve had a collision,” said Oliver Buchmueller from Imperial College in London as people closely watched monitors.
In a control room, scientists erupted with applause when the first successful collisions were confirmed. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links to witness the new record, which surpasses the 2.36 TeV CERN recorded last year. Dubbed the world’s largest scientific experiment, researchers hope the machine can approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.
Continue reading about Geneva Atom Smasher Sets Collision Record.
© AP, 2010
Photo by flickr user Image Editor
Not shure about this, but i heard that the gravity this created was emense. 100’s of thousands times the earths gravity. Think about that. What does that do to our souroundings? What kind of earth quakes, volcanic activity, or celestial movment could that affect? Just putting it out there.