September 10 Before September 11

September 8, 2008

Everyone remembers September 11th. It will forever have a special place in the minds of people around the globe, expecially here in America. But, how many have thought about the day before, you know, the tenth! And? Well, let’s hope all goes well on September 10th and that we have a September 11th and don’t blow ourselves up. I’m jesting- a little. They throw the switch on the 10th!

I’m talking about the Large Hadron Collider switch- LHC!

The biggest week in science for decades is now just a couple days away. On September 10 they throw the switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, a 27km-long machine that will revolutionise our understanding of the universe by recreating the conditions which were present less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang.

How can they do that, know that?

The LHC has captured the public imagination, which is wonderful because scientific exploration on this scale is a prerequisite for our survival as a species in this dangerous and challenging universe. 2012 Predictions? As the Telegraph newspaper reported, “A significant fraction of the population would usually rather watch The X Factor. A slight irritant is that a small but vocal faction of nutters with a Frankenstein complex and membership of the “Relativity is a Zionist conspiracy” forum on the internet think that banging two hydrogen nuclei together will fulfil Nostradamus’s prophesy (Century 4, Quatrain 67) that everyone should leave Geneva in the year that the air becomes very dry.”

Whatever!

The bottom line is that the LHC is the world’s largest and the highest-energy particle accelerator. It is funded and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The idea of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), began in the early 1980s. The first approval of the project by the CERN Council occurred in December 1994 and the first civil engineering construction work began in April 1998. And come this week we find out if it’s all been worth it.

What’s the odds we all disappear into a black hole?

Written by Ernie · Filed Under Daily Commentary

Comments

One Response to “September 10 Before September 11”

James Heck on September 8th, 2008 2:47 pm

Check out this rap by a grad student regarding this.

This is pretty cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

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