A.L.I.C.E Due To Start On Wednesday!

[Marik]

GENEVA — It's been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe — or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.

Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.

The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang, the theory that a colossal explosion created the universe.

The machine at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, promises scientists a closer look at the makeup of matter, filling in gaps in knowledge or possibly reshaping theories.

The first beams of protons will be fired around the 17-mile tunnel to test the controlling strength of the world's largest superconducting magnets.

It will still be about a month before beams traveling in opposite directions are brought together in collisions that some skeptics fear could create micro "black holes" and endanger the planet.

[britain's Daily Telegraph reported last week that scientitst working on the collider had been receiving death threats, to which University of Manchester particle physicist and former rock star Brian Cox replied, "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a tw**."]

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.

"This only happens once a generation," said Katie Yurkewicz, spokeswoman for the U.S. contingent at the CERN project. "People are certainly very excited."

The collider at Fermilab outside Chicago could beat CERN to some discoveries, but the Geneva equipment, generating seven times more energy than Fermilab, will give it big advantages.

The CERN collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel 150 to 500 feet under the bucolic countryside on the French-Swiss border.

Once the beam is successfully fired counterclockwise, a clockwise test will follow. Then the scientists will aim the beams at each other so that protons collide, shattering into fragments and releasing energy under the gaze of detectors filling cathedral-sized caverns at points along the tunnel.

CERN dismisses the risk of micro black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

But the skeptics have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Hawaii and in the European Court of Human Rights to stop the project.

They unsuccessfully mounted a similar action in 1999 to block the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state.

CERN's collider has been under construction since 2003, financed mostly by its 20 European member states. The United States and Japan are major contributors with observer status in CERN.

Scientists started colliding subatomic particles decades ago. As the machines grew more powerful, the experiments revealed that protons and neutrons — previously thought to be the smallest components of an atom — were made of still smaller quarks and gluons.

CERN hopes to recreate conditions in the laboratory a split-second after the big bang, teaching them more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time.

Meanwhile, scientists have found innovative ways to explain the concept in layman's terms.

The team working on one of the four major installations in the tunnel — the ALICE, or "A Large Ion Collider Experiment" — produced a comic book featuring Carlo the physicist and a girl called Alice to explain the machine's investigation of matter a split second after the Big Bang.

"We create mini Big Bangs by bumping two nuclei into each other," Carlo explains to Alice, who has just followed a rabbit down one of the hole-like shafts at CERN.

"This releases an enormous amount of energy that liberates thousands of quarks and gluons normally imprisoned inside the nucleus. Quarks and gluons then form a kind of thick soup that we call the quark-gluon plasma."

The soup cools quickly and the quarks and gluons stick together to form protons and neutrons, the building blocks of matter.

That will enable scientists to look for still missing pieces to the puzzle — or lead to the formulation of a new theory on the makeup of matter.

Kate McAlpine, 23, a Michigan State University graduate at CERN, has produced the Large Hadron Rap, a video clip that has attracted more than a million views on YouTube.

"The things that it discovers will rock you in the head," McAlpine raps as she dances in the tunnel and caverns.

CERN spokesman James Gillies said the lyrics are "absolutely scientifically spot on."

"It's quite brilliant," Gillies said.

Source: FoxNews

[HgO]

all I have to say is despite what will happen, we will advanced way more in technology after the experiment. That is if we are still alive afterwards. what happened after Y2K, everyone started to take technology more serious and more competition came about in computer now something new is going to be discovered that will lead us to our own destruction. look around some articles say that it will produce a mini black holes that will eat the earth inside out in about four years. IDK what to think anymore. ;)

[dMog]

all I have to say is despite what will happen, we will advanced way more in technology after the experiment. That is if we are still alive afterwards. what happened after Y2K, everyone started to take technology more serious and more competition came about in computer now something new is going to be discovered that will lead us to our own destruction. look around some articles say that it will produce a mini black holes that will eat the earth inside out in about four years. IDK what to think anymore. ;)

yes, and the same people that say it will create that mini black hole are the same people that think the earth is flat and come from the same ideas such as.... man can never travel faster than 60 miles per hour because at that speed our bodies fall apart.... and yes there were people that thought that way back when steam locomotives were first coming of age...just plane dumb ignorant people. To be dangerous a black hole must originate from something the size of or bigger than our own Sun...not some tiny subatomic particle.

[irefay]

Radio check, radio check, this is the state of Wisconsin. Any one else still out there? I figured we would make it, cheese is a class 4 insulator against black holes only beer has a higher classification, which we also happen to have large lakes full of.

[dMog]

Radio check, radio check, this is the state of Wisconsin. Any one else still out there? I figured we would make it, cheese is a class 4 insulator against black holes only beer has a higher classification, which we also happen to have large lakes full of.

we in Canada are lucky...Canadian cheddar the best in the world...and our beer...well you know our Canadian beers just kicks ass :thumbsup: so we be covered enough to save the rest of the world yet again :dance2:

[irefay]

Radio check, radio check, this is the state of Wisconsin. Any one else still out there? I figured we would make it, cheese is a class 4 insulator against black holes only beer has a higher classification, which we also happen to have large lakes full of.

we in Canada are lucky...Canadian cheddar the best in the world...and our beer...well you know our Canadian beers just kicks ass :sneaky: so we be covered enough to save the rest of the world yet again :fear:

Wisconsin= Southern Canada

[LoKz]

in english this means?... sorry lol

[HgO]

all I have to say is despite what will happen, we will advanced way more in technology after the experiment. That is if we are still alive afterwards. what happened after Y2K, everyone started to take technology more serious and more competition came about in computer now something new is going to be discovered that will lead us to our own destruction. look around some articles say that it will produce a mini black holes that will eat the earth inside out in about four years. IDK what to think anymore. ;)

yes, and the same people that say it will create that mini black hole are the same people that think the earth is flat and come from the same ideas such as.... man can never travel faster than 60 miles per hour because at that speed our bodies fall apart.... and yes there were people that thought that way back when steam locomotives were first coming of age...just plane dumb ignorant people. To be dangerous a black hole must originate from something the size of or bigger than our own Sun...not some tiny subatomic particle.

Well I think we will have many people that think that way about advances for humanity but remember that for every good thing man make a bad thing comes out too. You know like those stupid prescription pill commercial that say it cures one thing and causes another. Just a thought, we find out about the big bang and how to make better things, new theories, etc. but what happens when you create nuclear fusion on earth. We know what happens with fission you make a nuclear bomb that explodes by splitting atoms but what about when you crush them together on earth. Anyways all I know is that scientist have been planing this for 15 years so I din't think they are going do something stupid that will destroy man kind right? idk. I just wanna know where to invest my money to get rich off all these new technologies in the future because tech babies are being born right now. Like green tech, browser races, going to mars, planing to live on the moon, cars that run on magnets h2o and all these other fuels. We are in a revolutionary age and I wanna take advantage of it.

well just a thought. "I think a lot"

[Sonar]

oh deer

"Play with fire burn with fire"

"Play with nature.... WHO KNOWS?"

[sumant30]

Well all the television channels here in India have been going ga ga over the doomsday thing that a black hole will be created and will destroy the earth and all but i think the scientist at CERN are pretty intelligent that would not have started the project if something like this was to happen.

[LoKz]

i think they postponed until 2009 :)