To me, the specs on this machine are more impressive than any data about the universe it might reveal...From FoxNews -- GENEVA -- The world's largest atom smasher set a record for high-energy collisions on Tuesday by crashing proton beams into each other at three times more force than ever before.
In a milestone in the $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 17-mile 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 order to get the proton beams close to the speed of light, they have to create an environment that is the coldest place in the universe...a couple of degrees above absolute zero(-273.15 on the Celsius scale) or nearing the absence of all thermal energy.
The fear is that if they mimic artificially, the beginning of the universe, they'll create micro black holes that could swallow up in a pico-second that part of Europe. I say to that......COOL!
Pop Quiz hot shots: without cheating, what is the log base 10 notation of the prefix "pico".
1 comment:
"pico second" LOL!
To Most people that's left-overs at a Mexican restaurant.
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