We all should know by now about Roger Moore and the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. For those of you that don't, let me fill you in:"Since 2003, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world's largest particle physics laboratory, has been constructing a multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider."
This is the largest particle accelerator in the world, located in Geneva, in a 27 km tunnel underground. They will be taking accelerated protons and beaming them into the collider. After a while, the protons will start traveling in the opposite direction making them collide with each other. They are trying to cause these collisions on purpose, to release energy that will be visible by detectors and collect data that will unravel the secrets of the universe and whatnot.
What they're trying to do is recreate the conditions that immediately followed the Big Bang, which will allow them to explore the make-up of matter. It could also possibly create miniature black holes that could destroy the Earth, but Dr. Moore assures us that this is "overwhelmingly unlikely."
There was a group of scientists that were trying to halt the experiments so as to not create conditions that could, you know, make the Earth not exist, but they were allowed to continue because the risk was minimal. While CERN and Roger Moore never deny the possibility of the creation of black holes, they insist that they will be small and temporary, and won't cause any damage.
However, there was a comment from Dr. Moore that made me a bit nervous: "You steer them using magnets and you've got to get everything absolutely correct or you get instabilities"
What does he mean by instabilities?
Well, it can't be too dangerous, because they Started yesterday, and nothing too bad happened. Here is the full text of an article I found:
"The world's biggest experiment aimed at solving the mysteries of the universe, and the birth of matter, got underway on Wednesday.
Scientists from around 80 countries switched on the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, at the border between France and Switzerland.
The machine, sitting on Indian made arms, fired a beam of protons around a 27-kilometre tunnel close to the speed of light.
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research or CERN began firing the protons around the tunnel in stages.
Eventually, two beams were fired in opposite directions to make particles smash into each other and recreate conditions a split second after the big bang.
This experiment could also find evidence of the Higgs boson, also called god's particle, believed to add mass to matter.
There have been fears that this could somehow lead to the end of the world, by creating black holes, whose gravity is so strong that it can suck in all matter.
But fortunately, the big bang experiment has started without a bang."
Well, it's risky, but the scientific advancement, in my opinion, is worth it.
