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more about #cern Roklimber: LHC well on its way A CERN bulletin dated December 14 (that's in the future!) talks about the awesome progress the LHC is making on its way to achiev... more » ceilingFANBOY: They are going to get it started up just in time to have it break down again until 2012. more » Sproing: Where is Swizerland? Is it near Autria? more » lightninglouie: Well hey, it may lead to the destruction of Earth, but if it means I can have a farcaster-connected dreamhouse with oceanfront views on six star syste... more » Grey_Area: I'm confused. Wasn't Higgs-Boson the butler on Magnum P.I.? more » -
#megaaccidents
LHC Shut Down After a Ton of Liquid Helium Leaks into Tunnel
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the mega-physics experiment in Switzerland where atomic particles will be smashed into each other, has been shut down. The BBC reports that a fault opened up in one of the underground tunnels this morning, releasing one ton of liquid helium into the tunnels. This in turn caused 100 supercooled magnets crucial to LHC experiments to heat up and fail (the liquid helium is what keeps the magnets cool). After the successful first startup of the LHC last week, does this mean it could be months or years before another beam gets shot through the vast underground structure? More » -
#largehadroncollider
What Will Happen When the LHC Turns On? 10 Scifi Stories Have the Answer
Today the mad physicists over at Swiss lab CERN will turn on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and begin the physics experiments that might end the world. While some fringe scientists worry that the LHC will destroy the fabric of spacetime, the rest of us armchair physicists are on the edge of our seats waiting to see what the giant underground magnet will tell us about, well, the universe. Lucky for us, science fiction has already come up with an answer. We've come up with ten crazy scifi tales where physics experiments destroy the world. More » -
#largehadroncollider
Anyone Who Thinks the LHC Will Destroy the World is a T***
Particle physics professor Brian Cox of the University of Manchester has pretty much the final word on Large Hadron Collider fear-mongering with the above quote. What prompted such an outburst? Death threats against scientists working on the LHC. Perhaps an even better question - what does "t***" stand for? More » -
#sciencefictionturnedreal
Five Ways Reality Went Sci-Fi So Far This Century
We love a good science fiction story, but sometimes reality is just as strange. While we may have seen 2001 come and go without an actual space odyssey, the last eight years have been full of events that - had they not actually happened - could easily pass for science fiction. Here are five real life events that still seem like they've come straight from the set-up of a big budget summer blockbuster. More » -
#madscience
The Truth About Microscopic Black Holes and the Utter Destruction of Earth
Science fiction is rife with tales of experiments that run out of control and blow up the planet or exterminate all life or something. Maybe that's why two U.S. researchers sued the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), trying to get an injunction that would prevent them from building their Large Hadron Collider. Their reason? Concern that it would create an apocalyptic mini-black hole here on Earth. Many debated whether their fears were pure cranksterism or held a grain of truth. Now a physics professor has researched the issue and discovered the truth about the LHC's inherent risks to all humanity. More » -
