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Large Hadron Collider generates a 'mini-Big Bang'

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  • Large Hadron Collider generates a 'mini-Big Bang'

    The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a mini-Big Bang by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.


    The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.

    The scientists working at the enormous machine on Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November.

    The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.

    The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near Geneva.

    Up until now, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator - which is run by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) - has been colliding protons, in a bid to uncover mysteries of the Universe's formation.

    Proton collisions could help spot the elusive Higgs boson particle and signs of new physical laws, such as a framework called supersymmetry.

    But for the next four weeks, scientists at the LHC will concentrate on analysing the data obtained from the lead ion collisions.

    This way, they hope to learn more about the plasma the Universe was made of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

    One of the accelerator's experiments, ALICE, has been specifically designed to smash together lead ions, but the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments have also switched to the new mode.

    'Strong force'

    David Evans from the University of Birmingham, UK, is one of the researchers working at ALICE.

    He said that the collisions obtained were able to generate the highest temperatures and densities ever produced in an experiment.

    "We are thrilled with the achievement," said Dr Evans.

    "This process took place in a safe, controlled environment, generating incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs with temperatures of over ten trillion degrees, a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.

    "At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma."

    Quarks and gluons are sub-atomic particles - some of the building blocks of matter. In the state known as quark-gluon plasma, they are freed of their attraction to one another. This plasma is believed to have existed just after the Big Bang.

    He explained that by studying the plasma, physicists hoped to learn more about the so-called strong force - the force that binds the nuclei of atoms together and that is responsible for 98% of their mass.

    After the LHC finishes colliding lead ions, it will go back to smashing together protons once again.

  • #2
    Cool
    "Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."

    Comment


    • #3
      This will lead to warp engines and beaming people around.
      Blah

      Comment


      • #4
        I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.
        [Brandon Roderick? You mean Brock's Toadie?][Hanged from Yggdrasil]

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        • #5
          eventually they will realise that the process is irreversible, and a new universe will start engulfing the current one with the process they started...

          nothing can be done to stop it, but by the every nature of the reaction the end will come precisely on 31st of 12, 2012... so we finally found out how did the big bang start, except that the price fo finding it out was the universe itself.
          Socrates: "Good is That at which all things aim, If one knows what the good is, one will always do what is good." Brian: "Romanes eunt domus"
          GW 2013: "and juistin bieber is gay with me and we have 10 kids we live in u.s.a in the white house with obama"

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          • #6
            Originally posted by BeBro View Post
            This will lead to warp engines and beaming people around.
            Sure, but it will have to abort baby universes to do it. Can you live with that?
            “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
            "Capitalism ho!"

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            • #7
              Originally posted by DaShi View Post
              Sure, but it will have to abort baby universes to do it. Can you live with that?
              he is a Euro communist, off course he can.
              Socrates: "Good is That at which all things aim, If one knows what the good is, one will always do what is good." Brian: "Romanes eunt domus"
              GW 2013: "and juistin bieber is gay with me and we have 10 kids we live in u.s.a in the white house with obama"

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              • #8
                Originally posted by self biased View Post
                "My nation is the world, and my religion is to do good." --Thomas Paine
                "The subject of onanism is inexhaustable." --Sigmund Freud

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by DaShi View Post
                  Sure, but it will have to abort baby universes to do it. Can you live with that?
                  Sometimes you have to break some eggs to beam people around
                  Blah

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