Powerful collision has 'universal' significance
Source: Agencies |
March 31, 2010, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
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 yesterday at three times more force than ever before.
In a milestone for the US$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 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 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.
The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.
Yesterday's initial attempts at collisions were unsuccessful because problems developed with the beams. That meant the protons had to be "dumped" from the collider and new beams had to be injected.
The atmosphere at CERN was tense considering the collider's launch with such great fanfare on September 10, 2008.
Nine days later, the project was sidetracked when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to magnets and other parts of the collider.
It cost US$40 million to repair the machine. Since its restart in November 2009, the collider has performed almost flawlessly and given scientists valuable data.
In a milestone for the US$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 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 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.
The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.
Yesterday's initial attempts at collisions were unsuccessful because problems developed with the beams. That meant the protons had to be "dumped" from the collider and new beams had to be injected.
The atmosphere at CERN was tense considering the collider's launch with such great fanfare on September 10, 2008.
Nine days later, the project was sidetracked when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to magnets and other parts of the collider.
It cost US$40 million to repair the machine. Since its restart in November 2009, the collider has performed almost flawlessly and given scientists valuable data.
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