Hadron Collider

I am feeling super sick today, so its hard to think properly. So I thought I would post about this amazing event that is happening in our world right now.

CERN or Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire is one of the world's largest and most respected centers for scientific research. Their latest project (although they have been working on this for 20 years now) is 100 meters under the ground on the border between Switzerland and France, is a 17 mile circular particle accelerator that is the largest scientific instrument to date. This tool is used by physicists to study the smallest known particles that make up our world. What the scientists are doing is is shooting two beams of subatomic particles together in opposite directions, when they collide, the pattern at which they seperate is recorded and compared to what scientists believe occured right after the Big Bang. Attempting to recreate the conditions that created the earth. Currently, the Collider is offline. It went active last May, but had an electrical malfunction, and is currently being debugged. It is scheduled to be restarted this septemeber and the amount of data that it will collect is uncertain, but I imagine it is going to change the way we understand our world. The interest in the human desire of creation amazes me. We all have some interest in creation, whether it is of object, or all of humanity, I guess it's just part of us.

Here are some interesting videos:

Interviews on National Geographic discuss the actual process and implications, as well as a dispute some scientists had that the collider would cause a black hole that would suck up the world.

There was also a 60 Minutes spot done on it as well. The interview has some interesting perspectives from the scientists working on it, as well as some one of kind insights. Like what happened the last time CERN worked on a project, and how useful their results have impacted the daily lives of all people.