Scientists To Probe Earth To Understand Big Bang
LONDON — Today scientists will throw the switch on the biggest and most complex experiment ever devised to lay bare the secrets of nature.
After 14 years, $5.3 billion, and the efforts of 10,000 researchers, the Large Hadron Collider will attempt to recreate the conditions that existed fractions of a second after the Big Bang.
Today will see the first particles circulate in the tunnel, as the machine limbers up to smash beams of subatomic particles called hadrons in about 30 days.
The LHC will produce beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine. The monster atom smasher sits in a 17-mile tunnel near Geneva, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research --known by its French acronym, CERN.
Doomsayers have claimed that it could create a black hole to swallow the Earth and have even mounted legal challenges to halt the project, often accompanied by headlines such as "Will the World End on Wednesday?"
But Stephen Hawking, the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, dismissed their concerns. "The world will not come to an end," he said.
"The LHC is feeble compared with what goes on in the universe," said Mr. Hawking, who added that each particle collision releases an amount of energy comparable to two mosquitoes colliding. He insisted that the LHC was vital "if the human race is not to stultify, and eventually die out."
Among the mysteries the LHC hopes to illuminate are the existence of the Higgs boson — a theoretical particle used to explain how matter gains mass — and extra dimensions.
