CERN to Probe Life, the Universe and Everything

[cosmicone]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=570&e=1&u=/nm/20041018/sc_nm/science_cern_dc_1

By Richard Waddington

GENEVA (Reuters) - It has revolutionized physics, made Nobel Prize winners and given birth to the World Wide Web -- now its successor looks set to answer some of the natural world's most fundamental questions.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has made many formidable discoveries since its launch 50 years ago, but these achievements could be dwarfed by findings from a 17-mile accelerator, or particle-smasher, being assembled outside Geneva.

From 2007 it will be firing particles at speeds nearing that of light, before smashing them together to re-create the conditions scientists believe existed less than one billionth of a second after the Big Bang -- the birth of the cosmos some 14 billion years ago.

"(We) have achieved very, very important results in what we call particle physics, which is to say, what happened after the Big Bang," said CERN Director-General Robert Aymar.

</snip>

As Americans devote full attention to stupid wars for glory and fundamentalist religion, the others advance science, technology and the standard of living of humankind.

[calimary]

1. Sigh...

Their Age of Enlightenment.

Our Age of Darkness.

[Mister K]

2. Yes. We were building one of them too...

In Texas of all places. That is until W. shut down the program while he was governor.

[Dudley_DUright]

3. W. should be blamed for a lot of things, but shutting down

the superconducting super-collider (SSC) that was slated to be built in Texas is not one of them. The project was canceled during the Reagan administration.

On edit: My memory was a little faulty. It was formally shut down in 1993, but it had been underfunded for years before this, and was never supported adequately

http://www.hep.net/ssc/

[lil-petunia]

4. it should have been installed in Illinois, using

our current accellerator as an injector. But no, GOP in Texas demanded its share.

the true start of politics trumping good science.

[psychopomp]

14. No, started before that

NASA Mission Control- Houston
Kennedy Space Center -Near Jacksonville, FL

IIRC Mission Control's location in Houston was pork won by the senator from TX at the time.

[Mister K]

5. I remember reading an atricle that he terminated the project...

Will research it and post the answer when I find it.

P.S. - Where you from Dudley?

[On the Road]

10. I Think the US Congress Pulled Funding While Clinton was in Office

Maybe Bush had something to do with it, but I don't believe the federal money was there.

[Dudley_DUright]

12. Grew up in WI

Ph.D. in Physics from U. of Minnesota, and live in FL.

[shaolinmonkey]

9. What's amazing is that it cost more to shut it down

than it would have cost to finish it. wtf?

[Dudley_DUright]

13. The big cost was digging the tunnel underground

and I seem to recall they did roughly 14 miles of tunnel before it was abandoned (original design was for 53 mile circumference tunnel).

[tom_paine]

6. Remember when Amerika was America, and part of the Free World?

A leading light in science.

Now, of course, we lead the rush towards the New Dark Age, the Age of BushPutinism.

Disgusting and sad, but Imperial Amerika no longer belongs to the Free World.

And there are a whole lot of other shoes to drop before the Imperial Subjects of Amerika truly begin understanding just what we gave up during this era.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

7. but is there a restaurant at the end of the universe?

we are not going to be just great, we are not going to be just amazing, we are going to be.... amazingly amazing!

[jakpalmer]

8. You can help too !

People willing to give some computer time can help the CERN to build the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).

They have put up their own distributed computing project, using the BOINC technology from Berkeley (the same as the SETI project).


... Most of the scientific computing challenges that the LHC experiments are facing will require access to huge amounts of storage - the LHC will produce 15 Petabytes (15 million Gigabytes) of data per year. These data requirements means that most analysis programmes cannot be run on individual PCs. This is why CERN is leading the development of Grid computing, which aims to link hundreds of major computing centres around the world.

However, there are exceptions where public computing makes sense for the LHC. CERN's IT Department is interested in evaluating the sort of technology that is used by SETI@home for future use. A program called SixTrack, which simulates particles traveling around the LHC to study the stability of their orbits, can fit on a single PC and requires relatively little input or output. ...


So for those who are interested, have a look at: LHC@Home.

Thank you.

[Nihil]

11. Hey, what's a nanosecond between friends?

Can't they go the whole hog and recreate the Big Bang itself?

Please, blow this entire shagging planet into another asteroid belt
so that the cancer that has infected it can't pollute any other
possible sources of life.