Hum Posted May 15, 2007 Share Posted May 15, 2007 300 FEET BELOW MEYRIN, Switzerland ? The first thing that gets you is the noise. Physics, after all, is supposed to be a cerebral pursuit. But this cavern almost measureless to the eye, stuffed as it is with an Eiffel Tower's worth of metal, eight-story wheels of gold fan-shape boxes, thousands of miles of wire and fat ductlike coils, echoes with the shriek of power tools, the whine of pumps and cranes, beeps and clanks from wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers and the occasional falling bolt. It seems no place for the studious. The physicists, wearing hardhats, kneepads and safety harnesses, are scrambling like Spiderman over this assembly, appropriately named Atlas, ducking under waterfalls of cables and tubes and crawling into hidden room-size cavities stuffed with electronics. They are getting ready to see the universe born again. Again and again and again ? 30 million times a second, in fact. Starting sometime next summer if all goes to plan, subatomic particles will begin shooting around a 17-mile underground ring stretching from the European Center for Nuclear Research, or Cern, near Geneva, into France and back again ? luckily without having to submit to customs inspections. Crashing together in the bowels of Atlas and similar contraptions spaced around the ring, the particles will produce tiny fireballs of primordial energy, recreating conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Whatever forms of matter and whatever laws and forces held sway Back Then ? relics not seen in this part of space since the universe cooled 14 billion years ago ? will spring fleetingly to life, over and over again in all their possible variations, as if the universe were enacting its own version of the "Groundhog Day" movie. If all goes well, they will leave their footprints in mountains of hardware and computer memory. "We are now on the endgame," said Lyn Evans, of Cern, who has been in charge of the Large Hadron Collider, as it is called, since its inception. Call it the Hubble Telescope of Inner Space. Everything about the collider sounds, well, large ? from the 14 trillion electron volts of energy with which it will smash together protons, its cast of thousands and the $8 billion it cost to build, to the 128 tons of liquid helium needed to cool the superconducting magnets that keep the particles whizzing around their track and the three million DVDs worth of data it will spew forth every year. The day it turns on will be a moment of truth for Cern, which has spent 13 years building the collider, and for the world's physicists, who have staked their credibility and their careers, not to mention all those billions of dollars, on the conviction that they are within touching distance of fundamental discoveries about the universe. If they fail to see something new, experts agree, it could be a long time, if ever, before giant particle accelerators are built on Earth again, ringing down the curtain on at least one aspect of the age-old quest to understand what the world is made of and how it works. "If you see nothing," said a Cern physicist, John Ellis, "in some sense then, we theorists have been talking rubbish for the last 35 years." Fabiola Gianotti, a Cern physicist and the deputy spokeswoman for the team that built the Atlas, said, "Something must happen." The accelerator, Dr. Gianotti explained, would take physics into a realm of energy and time where the current reigning theories simply do not apply, corresponding to an era when cosmologists think that the universe was still differentiating itself, evolving from a primordial blandness and endless potential into the forces and particles that constitute modern reality. She listed possible discoveries like a mysterious particle called the Higgs that is thought to endow other particles with mass, new forms of matter that explain the mysterious dark matter waddling the cosmos and even new dimensions of spacetime. "For me," Dr. Gianotti said, "it would be a dream if, finally, in a couple of years in a laboratory we are going to produce the particle responsible for 25 percent of the universe." full article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent Posted May 15, 2007 Share Posted May 15, 2007 It begins..... :| Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MGS4-SS Posted May 15, 2007 Share Posted May 15, 2007 Next summer can't arrive soon enough :D Damn I'm exited about this :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acies Posted May 16, 2007 Share Posted May 16, 2007 Isn't it November they're turning it on? I saw a documentary on this recently, very interesting stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shibby Posted May 16, 2007 Share Posted May 16, 2007 I think they shut down in the winter months to keep the costs down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheElite Posted May 16, 2007 Share Posted May 16, 2007 If they see something happening which may explain the start of the universe, how do they know that what they saw DID happen, and not any of the other infinite possibilities? If this is going to happen, then they really aren't going to get any further to the truth, by looking at what COULD have happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acies Posted May 16, 2007 Share Posted May 16, 2007 If they see something happening which may explain the start of the universe, how do they know that what they saw DID happen, and not any of the other infinite possibilities?If this is going to happen, then they really aren't going to get any further to the truth, by looking at what COULD have happened. I am no expert but well it's alot more complex than that. It's not like they just made up the idea of the Big Bang, and said lets try this. They're goal I believe is to understand everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hum Posted May 16, 2007 Author Share Posted May 16, 2007 What if they accidently trigger a new Big Bang ? :laugh: Ooops -- no more Earth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent Posted May 16, 2007 Share Posted May 16, 2007 If this is going to happen, then they really aren't going to get any further to the truth, by looking at what COULD have happened. Yes, you know this because you've actually taken the time to study Physics...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheElite Posted May 16, 2007 Share Posted May 16, 2007 Yes, you know this because you've actually taken the time to study Physics...... Well, now that I look again at my post, I do think that they could actually learn something, because seeing what COULD happen is better than learning nothing at all. PS. Actually I have taken the time to study physics, an A in my A-Level didn't just "come out of nowhere", if you catch my drift :whistle: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MGS4-SS Posted May 16, 2007 Share Posted May 16, 2007 If they see something happening which may explain the start of the universe, how do they know that what they saw DID happen, and not any of the other infinite possibilities?If this is going to happen, then they really aren't going to get any further to the truth, by looking at what COULD have happened. Well, for starters its the first experiment to try to provide information of how the universe was created. I have yet to see an experiment where God created another universe, or a concrete experiment of the String Theory, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheElite Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 Well, for starters its the first experiment to try to provide information of how the universe was created. I have yet to see an experiment where God created another universe, or a concrete experiment of the String Theory, etc. Tell me again, if God did create another universe, why he would show you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathiasdm Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 Well, now that I look again at my post, I do think that they could actually learn something, because seeing what COULD happen is better than learning nothing at all.PS. Actually I have taken the time to study physics, an A in my A-Level didn't just "come out of nowhere", if you catch my drift :whistle: I think he was talking about slightly more 'advanced' physics, if you catch my drift ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheElite Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 I think he was talking about slightly more 'advanced' physics, if you catch my drift ;-) At 19, you can't get too far :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MGS4-SS Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 Tell me again, if God did create another universe, why he would show you? Maybe because... I don't know... its one of the most asked questions of mankind? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheElite Posted May 18, 2007 Share Posted May 18, 2007 Maybe because... I don't know... its one of the most asked questions of mankind? No, but why YOU? If God did wanted to reveal something to man, wouldnt he share this knowledge to a believer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MGS4-SS Posted May 18, 2007 Share Posted May 18, 2007 No, but why YOU? If God did wanted to reveal something to man, wouldnt he share this knowledge to a believer? So you're saying that God would have preferences over believers because they believe in him? Doesn't seem like a very caring and fair God if you ask me. In my opinion, if God did exist, he would share the information to a non believer because that way he can show him the "truth" as you call it. Why would he show it to a believer, the believer believes in anything without proof nor reasoning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheElite Posted May 18, 2007 Share Posted May 18, 2007 So you're saying that God would have preferences over believers because they believe in him? Doesn't seem like a very caring and fair God if you ask me.In my opinion, if God did exist, he would share the information to a non believer because that way he can show him the "truth" as you call it. Why would he show it to a believer, the believer believes in anything without proof nor reasoning. He can show it to whom he wants. I was wrong to speculate. Why do you think that people believe without reasoning or proof? Are you saying that as time is moving on and as technology advances, humans as a whole are losing their reasoning? Because from what I see, more and more people are accepting belief in God everyday, and these aren't your average run-of-the-mill people either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MGS4-SS Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 He can show it to whom he wants. I was wrong to speculate.Why do you think that people believe without reasoning or proof? Are you saying that as time is moving on and as technology advances, humans as a whole are losing their reasoning? Because from what I see, more and more people are accepting belief in God everyday, and these aren't your average run-of-the-mill people either. Maybe people believe without reasoning or proof because they are... I don't know... desperate? And yes, as technology advances more of us loose reasoning. Though there is one reason why religion is not as powerful now as it was in the Middle Ages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheElite Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 Maybe because it is more diverse and less concentrated in one religion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Wang Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 Zanwar lol you're on a roll with this lately mate. The fact people believe without proof is proof of a god? Atheism and agnosticism toward religion is becoming more widespread every day and it is simply because information is easier digested and obtained, not the other way round. Why do you think the Vatican used to silence scientists? It's because knowledge negates God. Whether someone chooses to view the complexity of life and the universe as evidence of a god is fine but if someone has truly embraced science and the truth they must also accept it makes a divine unnecessary and superfluous, and at the very least highly unlikely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hum Posted May 19, 2007 Author Share Posted May 19, 2007 ^ Worry not -- eventually Science will run out of road, and will recognize just what 'God' is. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
comk Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 good news Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Wang Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 ^ Worry not -- eventually Science will run out of road, and will recognize just what 'God' is. ;) I'm not quite sure what that is meant to mean but science has got along just fine without god for this long and provided many many more actual answers than spirituality has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheElite Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 Has anyone tried to find answers in spirituality? Ask someone who has tried, he'll tell you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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