“It’s really a generation that we’ve been looking forward to this moment, and the moments that will come after it in particular. September 10 is a demarcation between finishing the construction and starting to turn it on, but the excitement will only continue to grow.” A Quantum Leap Forward, or the End of Days? (Answer: The former.) Over on the border of France and Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider — the giant, multi-billion-dollar particle accelerator decades in the making — gets ready for its first big test on Wednesday (as does its accompanying “Grid”.) “The collider will recreate the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, when there was a hot ‘soup’ of tiny particles called quarks and gluons, to look at how the universe evolved, said John Harris, U.S. coordinator for ALICE, a detector specialized to analyze that question.“
I got to tour part of the Cornell particle accelerator this summer. It was pretty awesome, although the number of monochrome monitors and late 70’s technology was a bit strange.
My brother (an erstwhile CERNiac) recommends this take on how the LHC will expand our knowledge of the known ‘verse:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5726515801999608036&vt=lf&hl=en
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
It reminds me of that game that someone had at GSSM junior year, I think either Jasper’s or Craig Savage’s roommate? It was a side view maze game (like Prince of Persia), except you were in some alternate alien universe because you got zapped there working late one night at the supercollider (part of some plot). Anyone remember what that was called?