Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Large Hadron Collider

Click photos to enlarge:
God, I do love machines. They always work in the same ways, they are always predictable, and they always produce a change in the world to some degree. One of the world’s most intriguing machines right now is the Large Hadron Collider. The 10 billion dollar machine project was first planned in 1984. The collider is installed in a 17-mile circular tunnel, deep under Switzerland. The reason that I say “God” I do love machines, is because they are trying to determine where all the matter in the universe came from. They are searching for the “God Particle”. They call it the “God Particle” because it is everywhere, but it is, so far, undetectable.

From associated Content: “The Higgs Boson theory was created by Professor Peter Higgs in 1964 to try to explain how particles actually gather mass. Higgs proposed that an electromagnetic background field must exist and that particles, once they pass through it, attain mass. But the Higgs Boson, derogatorily referred to as the "god particle," has eluded scientific discovery. Researchers are hoping that the Hadron super collider will settle the question of the "god particle" once and for all.

Other questions the LHC hopes to answer are whether or not parallel universes may exist and what actually constitutes "dark energy" and "dark matter," believed to constitute 96% of the known universe.”


Okay, I won’t pretend to know what they are doing, but some scientist’s fear that they may activate a black hole, that may suck the whole universe back into it, but Steven Hawking says that there is nothing to worry about:

“…there's no threat from little black holes. If such black holes were to be created by a chance cosmic ray, for example, their runaway growth would be most evident from feasting on the super-dense matter of white dwarfs and neutron stars, but there are plenty of those stars that are very old.”

Suddenly, I’m reassured by all of those stars in the sky! But, it does bother me that they seem to be winking. They say that this machine wont be up to full power for a year yet, so maybe it is to soon to relax.

We must have more collider research that goes on around here, I’ve seen numerous places that had huge tunnels built into the ground, that had large power lines going into them. I expect that they will find the “God Particle” right here in Humboldt County!

Another thing that occurred to me, that if they do find where the “God Particle” came from back at the Big Bang, and it did cause a black hole. Was it caused by a collider that they were experimenting with? That sucked the universe wrong-side-out, and we are about the be sucked back through the hole, and become a negative universe again?

But, don’t you wish that you had a collider under your house? You could have one for only eight to ten billion dollars. Wouldn’t it be worth it to maybe see God?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw God once, and it only cost me two bucks!

Ernie Branscomb said...

Well, the ten billion dollar cost sure puts the Alaska "Bridge to nowhwere" in the proper prospective. It was only going to cost 400 million.

Carol said...

Didn't the test get postponed?

Ernie Branscomb said...

Nope, it's up and running, but they won't get into the high powered stuff for at least a year.

Anonymous said...

"God's Particle" Great band. Haight-Ashbury 1967, right?