GENEVA, Switzerland — A small blip on a computer screen sent champagne corks popping among physicists in Switzerland. Near Chicago, researchers who watched via satellite let out an early morning cheer.
The blip was literally of cosmic proportions, representing a new tool to investigate the birth of the universe.
The world’s largest atom smasher passed its first test Wednesday as scientists said the powerful tool is almost ready to reveal how the tiniest particles were created after the big bang, which many theorize was the massive explosion that formed the stars, planets — everything.
Rivals and friends turned out at Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., to watch the event. Joining in from around the world were other physicists — many of whom may one day work on the new Large Hadron Collider.
Tension mounted in the five control rooms at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, as scientists huddled around computer screens. After a few trial runs, they fired a beam of protons clockwise around the 17-mile tunnel of the collider deep under the Swiss-French border. Then they succeeded in sending another beam counterclockwise.
The physicists celebrated when the white dots flashed on the blue screens of the control room, showing a successful crossing of the finish line on the $10-billion machine under planning since 1984.
“The first technical challenge has been met,” said a jubilant Robert Aymar, director-general of CERN. “What you have just seen is the result of 20 years of effort. … Now it’s for the physicists to show us what they can do.”
The beams gradually will be filled with more protons and fired at near the speed of light in opposite directions around the tunnel, making 11,000 circuits a second. At four points in the tunnel, the scientists will use giant magnets to cross the beams and cause protons to collide. The two largest detectors — essentially huge digital cameras weighing thousands of tons — are capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.
It is likely to be several weeks before the first significant collisions.
The CERN experiments could reveal more about dark matter, antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It also could find evidence of a hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — which is believed to give mass to all other particles.
The fear stemmed from doomsday predictions that were promptly rubbished by scientists, who were excited by the possibility of understanding the basic constituents of the universe a little better. People were seen talking about the media reports that predicted September 10 might be a doomsday as the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could “eat” the earth from within.
The start of the collider came over the objections of some who feared the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro-black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars. “It’s nonsense,” said James Gillies, chief spokesman for Cern.
Cern was backed by leading scientists like Britain’s Stephen Hawking, who declared the experiments to be absolutely safe.
source :http://www.freep.com and DC
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