Guest guest Posted November 19, 2009 Report Share Posted November 19, 2009 Dec 1 is just a warm-up... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/6592961/Large-Hadron-Collider-ready-to-restart.html Large Hadron Collider ready to restart Scientists have repaired the world's largest atom smasher and plan by this weekend to restart the fault-ridden Large Hadron Collider. Excerpt: Once the two beams of protons are tightly packed into hairline shapes by the magnets, they will whiz in opposite directions at near the speed of light until they are forced to collide. That is expected to be about Dec. 1, a week after the beams circulate at low energy. "The plan is to do some collisions at that energy, but not very many," said Gillies. "That just allows the experiment to get some collision data that they can work with for calibration purposes." The first scientific experiments in Geneva are expected in January, when the LHC is to start its search for a better understanding of the subatomic makeup of matter and the universe. The LHC is supposed to pull ahead of the Tevatron's energy of 1 trillion electron volts, or TeV, by January. CERN aims to continue ramping up the energy to 3.5 TeV in each direction after that and start the experiments. That will make it easier to see what happens when the subatomic particles collide in vast detectors in rooms the size of cathedrals _ 100 meters (300 feet) below ground. The scientists hope the fragments that come off the collisions will show on a tiny scale what happened micro seconds after the so-called Big Bang, which many scientists theorize was the massive explosion that formed the universe. The theory holds that the universe was rapidly cooling at that stage and matter was changing quickly. Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Answers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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