By Colter Hettich, Features Editor
We may be getting a little ahead of ourselves. And by we, I mean the scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The LHC sits in Geneva, Switzer land, as the most powerful particle accelerator ever built. Simply put, the machine launches protons in opposite directions around a ring, creating almost a billion collisions a second at an energy of 14 trillion electron volts.
No worries, mate. Reuters conservatively described the particlesmasher as “giant.” Considering the $9 billion, Star Trek-esque machine is securely attached to a 17 mile underground ring, I would have used a slightly stronger word.
What do scientists hope to discover by smashing subatomic particles together at a speed just slower than the speed of light? For starters, they merely hope to recreate the Big Bang, the theoretical explosion many believe created our universe, on a small scale.
The president of a high school physics club would have a better idea than I do on how to recreate the Big Bang, but I’m sure the scientists involved know what they’re getting themselves into. At least, that’s what I thought.
Edward Kolb, chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, said this experiment “is opening the door into uncharted territory . rather than creating a black hole that destroys the universe, we expect to discover new laws of nature.”
Kolb didn’t volunteer his defense against doomsday predictions. Groups already have organized against the project. The organization Citizens Against The Large Hadron Collider filed a lawsuit in attempt to shut down the project.
This month, the father of a 16-year-old girl in India said his daughter killed herself after “being traumatized by news reports
of doomsday predictions,” according to reuters.com.
For every reaction, there exists an equal and opposite reaction. What possible result could balance all the fear and paranoia surrounding this experiment?
Thursday, Reuters reported, “Experiments using the LHC, the biggest and most complex machine ever made, could . unlock secrets about the universe and its origins.” Right. And why is Kolb not the slightest bit skeptical of this seemingly unpredictable technology?”The reason I’m not concerned is that nature has already done this experiment.
It was done in the early universe,” Kolb told Reuters’ correspondent Julie Steenhuysen. Why, yes, it was. And the result of that theoretical explosion is what we now call our universe. I feel safer already. And to further ease the minds of those skeptics out there, scientists had to stop the particle
beam’s spin Wednesday the first day it was turned on. Problems with the machine’s magnets “caused its temperature to warm slightly,” according to reuters.com.
Warm slightly. Like sitting a little too close to the campfire? The only reassuring news I’ve read is it will take months, if not years, for the machine to reach full speed.
I still won’t relax completely until the morning of Dec. 13, 2012. The Mayans stopped their calendar at 12/12/2012 for a reason.
