First protons fired at largest particle collider
Scientists fire first protons into a 27-kilometer tunnel at world's largest particle collider in science's next great step to understand makeup of universe
The Large Hadron Collider - built since 2003 at a cost of $3.8 billion - provides scientists with much greater power than ever before to smash the components of atoms in a bid to see how they are made.
Project leader Lyn Evans gave the order to send the protons into the accelerator below the Swiss-French border. The startup - eagerly awaited by 9,000 physicists around the world who will conduct experiments here - comes over the objections of some skeptics who fear the collisions of protons could eventually imperil the earth.
The skeptics theorize that a byproduct of the collisions could be 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, the host European Organization for Nuclear Research, before Wednesday's start.
CERN is backed by leading scientists like Britain's Stephen Hawking in dismissing the fears and declaring the experiments to be absolutely safe.
Gillies told the AP that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel. And full power is probably a year away.
"On Wednesday we start small," said Gillies. "What we're putting in to start with is one single low intensity bunch at low energy and we thread that around. We get experience with low energy things and then we ramp up as we get to know the machine better."
He said a good result for Wednesday would be to have one beam going all the way around the tunnel in a counterclockwise direction. If that works, the scientists will then try to send a beam in the other direction.
"A really good result would be to have the other beam going around, too, because once you've got a beam around once in both directions you know that there is no show stopper," Gillies said. "It's going to work."
However, if there is some blockage in the machine, experts will have to go in and fix the problem, and that could take time.
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CERN scientists in Geneva (Photo: CNN)
The LHC, as the collider is known, will take scientists to within a split second of a laboratory recreation of the big bang, which they theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe.
The project organized by the 20 European member nations of CERN has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country which contributed $531 million. Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.
The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.
Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Less than 100 years ago scientists thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but in stages since then experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons and that there were other forces and particles.
The CERN experiments could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle - the Higgs boson - believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.
Global collaboration
The project has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities, some 1,200 of them from the United States, which contributed $531 million of the project's price tag of nearly $4 billion.
Israel, in many ways, is one of the key players in helping make the super collider come to life, as 40 Israeli scientists from the Technion and the Tel Aviv and Haifa universities have spent the better part of the past 10 years developing several of its main electronic systems, particularly the core's detector system - which is charged with deciphering and analyzing the results of the unprecedented experiment.
"The Israeli science industry has a stellar reputation in Switzerland, especially when in comes to high level fiber-optic technology," said Professor Giora Mikenberg from the Department of Particle Physics at the Weizmann Institute, who heads the Israeli team.
The project also brought about several unexpected collaborations, with Israeli scientists working side by side with Lebanese, Pakistani and Iranian counterparts. But one cooperative effort stood out the most, that of the warm bonds forged with a young Palestinian scientist from the Birzeit University.
When work on the project ended the Israeli team even organized a celebratory party together with the Lebanese and Palestinian scientists. Both Israeli and Palestinian flags were hung.
One day, Mikenberg recalled, suffering from joint hunger pangs for some decent hummus, the Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli scientists "swung by Paris and scarfed some down, Israeli and Arab together. Science knows no borders and no enemies. It's a wonderful thing."
"This only happens once in a generation," added Katie Yurkewicz, spokeswoman for the US contingent at the CERN project. "People are certainly very excited."
