Atom smasher back on course
Source: Agencies |
November 24, 2009, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward yesterday by circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time in the US$10 billion machine after more than a year of repairs, organizers said.
New discoveries on the makeup of the universe and its tiniest particles are unlikely before next year, but the Large Hadron Collider has been advancing faster than expected in its startup phase that began Friday night, said Rolf Heuer, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Proton collisions could possibly begin within the next 10 days, officials said yesterday.
"It went much faster than foreseen," said Fabiola Gianotti, who speaks for the Atlas experiment, one of four major detectors in rooms the size of cathedrals about 90 meters underground. "We're all very happy."
Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were 1 trillionth to 2 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang -- which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.
The collider was started with great fanfare on September 10, 2008, only to be heavily damaged by an electrical fault nine days later. It has taken 14 months to repair and add protection systems to the machine before it was restarted.
The protons yesterday were traveling at almost the speed of light -- 11,000 times a second in each direction around the 27-kilometer tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva. The scientists are still testing the machine before causing proton collisions, the heart of the research at the organization, known as CERN.
New discoveries on the makeup of the universe and its tiniest particles are unlikely before next year, but the Large Hadron Collider has been advancing faster than expected in its startup phase that began Friday night, said Rolf Heuer, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Proton collisions could possibly begin within the next 10 days, officials said yesterday.
"It went much faster than foreseen," said Fabiola Gianotti, who speaks for the Atlas experiment, one of four major detectors in rooms the size of cathedrals about 90 meters underground. "We're all very happy."
Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were 1 trillionth to 2 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang -- which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.
The collider was started with great fanfare on September 10, 2008, only to be heavily damaged by an electrical fault nine days later. It has taken 14 months to repair and add protection systems to the machine before it was restarted.
The protons yesterday were traveling at almost the speed of light -- 11,000 times a second in each direction around the 27-kilometer tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva. The scientists are still testing the machine before causing proton collisions, the heart of the research at the organization, known as CERN.
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