Thursday, September 11, 2008

Yesterday's Trivia Answer: The world's most expensive science experiment

The laboratories at CERN (located on the border between France and Switzerland, I think) have spent the last 20 years or so constructing the largest particle collider, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), on Earth in an attempt to replicate the conditions that existed prior to the Big Bang. By firing trillions of Photons at each other and analyzing the collision that entails, scientist hope to discover new particles, other dimensions, and the "God particle" (which will help explain our existence). Oh yeah, and the slight chance of a supermassive blackhole that will devour the Earth in a matter of seconds.



Last night, the world's most expesive science experiment successfully completed it's first test by firing a beam of photons around the 17 mile circular, underground tunnel. The screenshot from yesterday was that of one of the 4 experiments that hope to take advantage of this powerful particle collider.



If some of you are thinking that this project sounds familiar, it plays a key role in the book by Dan Brown, "Angels and Demons." (Great book by the way)

Stay tuned for more posts about this project. I have a feeling we will be discovering some pretty intense things when this particle collider operates at 100%.

2 comments:

Mikey said...

YESSS, I love super expensive science experiments.

katrinuhhh said...

Wowz. That's completely ridiculous. Almost scary to think what it'd be like at 100%...