Big Bang experiment sparks fear of apocalypse

[Marshal]

Big Bang experiment sparks fear of apocalypse
Geneva: Scientists involved in a historic "Big Bang" experiment to begin this week hope it will turn up many surprises about the universe and its origins, but reject suggestions it will bring the end of the world.


The French physicist who heads the CERN Research Centre Robert Aymar, predicted that discoveries to emerge from his organisation's 6.4 billion euro ($9.2 billion) project would spark major advances for human society.


"If some of what we expect to find does not turn up and things we did not foresee do, that will be even more stimulating because it means that we understand less than we thought about nature," said British physicist Brian Cox.


"What I would like to see is the unexpected," said University of Michigan’s Gerardus t'Hooft.


Perhaps, he suggested, the Large Hardron Collider (LHC) machine at the heart of the experiment "will show us things we didn't know existed".

Once it starts up on Wednesday, scientists plan to smash particle beams together at close to the speed of light inside CERN's tightly-sealed Large Hadron Collider to create multiple mini-versions of the primeval Big Bang.


Cosmologists say that that explosion of an object the size of a small coin occurred about 13.7 billion years ago and led to formation of stars, planets and and eventually to life on earth.


A key aim of the CERN experiment is to find the "Higgs boson," named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who in 1964 pointed to such a particle as the force that gave mass to matter and made the universe possible.


But other mysteries of physics and cosmology, supersymmetry, dark matter and dark energy among them, are at the focus of experiments in the 27-km (17-mile) circular tunnel deep underneath the Swiss-French border.

Fears of Disaster


CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, says its key researchers – and many ordinary staff – have been inundated by e-mails voicing fears about the experiment.


There have been claims that it will create "black holes" of intensive gravity sucking in CERN, Europe and perhaps the whole planet, or that it will open the way for beings from another universe to invade through a "worm hole" in space-time.


But a safety review by scientists at CERN and in the United States and Russia, issued at the weekend, rejected the prospect of such outcomes.


"The LHC will enable us to study in detail what nature is doing all around us," Aymar, who has led CERN for five years, said in response to that review.


"The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction." Cox, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Britain's Manchester University, was even more trenchant.


"I am immensely irritated by the conspiracy theorists who spread this nonsense around," he said.


When the experiment begins soon after 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on September 10, disaster scenarists will have little to work on.


In the first tests, a particle beam will be shot all the way around the LHC channel in just one direction. If all goes well, collisions might be tried within the coming weeks, but at low intensity.


Any bangs at this stage, said one CERN researcher, "will be little ones."
Big Bang experiment sparks fear of apocalypse

 

[Marshal]

CERN reiterates safety of LHC on eve of first beam
Geneva, 5 September 2008. A report published today in the peer reviewed Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics1 provides comprehensive evidence that safety fears about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are unfounded. The LHC is CERN’s2 new flagship research facility. As the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, it is poised to provide new insights into the mysteries of our universe.

“The LHC will enable us to study in detail what nature is doing all around us,” said CERN Director General Robert Aymar. “The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction.”

Safety has been an integral part of the LHC project since its inception in 1994, and the project has been subject to numerous audits covering all aspects of safety and environmental impact. A comprehensive report by independent scientists addressing safety issues related to the production of new particles at the LHC was presented to CERN’s governing body, the CERN Council, in 2003. It concluded that the LHC is safe. This report was updated and its conclusions strengthened in a new report incorporating recent experimental and observational data that was presented to Council at its most recent meeting in June 2008. This new report confirms and strengthens the conclusion of the 2003 report that there is no basis for any concern about the safety of the LHC.The CERN Council is composed of representatives of the governments of the 20 European Member States of CERN.

The report was prepared by a group of scientists at CERN, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The papers comprising the report have been accepted for publication in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals. The report was reviewed carefully by the Scientific Policy Committee (SPC), a body composed of 20 independent external scientists that advises the CERN Council on scientific matters. Five of these independent scientists, including one Nobel Laureate, examined in detail the 2008 report and endorsed the authors’ approach of basing their arguments on irrefutable observational evidence to conclude that new particles produced at the LHC will pose no danger. The full SPC agreed unanimously with their findings.

“The LHC safety review has shown that the LHC is perfectly safe,” said Jos Engelen, CERN’s Chief Scientific Officer, “it points out that Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth – and the planet still exists.”
CERN Press Release – Final LHC Synchronisation Test a Success

 

[Marshal]

India's Participation in this project
http://www.cat.gov.in/happenings/Indian%20Participation%20in%20LHC%20and%20a%20Glimpse%20of%20the%20Road%20Ahead-%20APS%20Talk%20by%20VCS.pdf

 

[Marshal]

For more basic information
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

 

[nitesh]

Hey that's good news

 

[nitesh]

200 Indian scientists line up for Big Bang effort- Education-Services-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

200 Indian scientists line up for Big Bang effort
10 Sep, 2008, 0800 hrs IST,Shelley Singh, ET Bureau

NEW DELHI: When the 27-km long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator, goes live on Wednesday in the Alps along the Swiss-French border, it will kick off one of the largest man-made experiments in history.

Interestingly, it’s not just a massive science experiment being conducted by CERN, a French acronym for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, but also one of the biggest IT projects.

India's contribution to the $10-billion effort in search of the universe’s missing matter by smashing particles like during the Big Bang is equally impressive. Around 200 of the 2,000 scientists doing the experiment are from India.

The entire system comprising 1,232 cryo magnets, each weighing about 32 tonne, is sitting on precision motion positioning systems developed, among other places, at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore, by the Electronics Corporation of India.

Indian institutes like Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, RRCAT, Indore, Benares Hindu University and varsities of Delhi, Jaipur, Punjab have contributed significantly to the experiment and will also be involved in analysing the collision debris.Says Amit Roy, director of Delhi-based Inter-University Accelerator Centre (earlier called Nuclear Science Centre): “About 200 scientists involved in the experiment are of Indian origin. “

“India has also been involved in supplying material to build the tunnel and several Indians have played a key role in the whole project,” Mr Royadded.

The monetary contribution by India is $25 million. The prominent Indians who are part of the project include Atul Gurtu of TIFR, an expert on particle colliders, Vikas Sinha of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, who created a chip to process signals, and Vinod Chauhan employed by CERN to lead the group which tested the magnets.

Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology director Vinod Chandra Sahni says: “No collisions will take place today. September 10 simply marks the launch wherein two beams will be sent in the tunnel, one clockwise and the other anti-clockwise.

The particle smashing at close to speed of light (about 300,000 km per second) will start on October 21. Some particles will collide, triggering new particles that could help scientists understand the universe better.”

The tunnel, buried 100 metres underground, is lined with sensors and 1,600 superconducting magnets across eight sectors, which are held at an operating temperature of 271 degrees below zero — colder than outer space. The LHC accelerator, which is accurate to a nanosecond, will be used to slam particles into each other to try to recreate the conditions at the beginning of time — as in the Big Bang.

Data from the collision, about 15 petabytes (1 petabyte is quadrillion bytes or 1,000 terabytes) a year will be studied around the world by some 100,000 computers across 50 countries. Within a year, the particle accelerator’s experiments will have spewed enough data to fill a pile of compact discs 12 miles high. India is part of the world-wide computational grid that will help analyse this data.

But the massive experiment is not without its share of controversy. Cynics believe that all the particle smashing will create a massive black hole, sucking life out of earth, if things don’t follow the planned script. However, Mr Roy adds: “The scientific community the world over is eagerly looking at the experiment. The claims of this experiment turning out to be a disaster are rather exaggerated and based on wrong calculations.”

Brusing aside fears of the experiment going wrong, geeks at CERN believe that they are going to find the so-called God-like particle dubbed Higgs Boson, which will offer clues about dark matter and other missing links of physics.

This, in turn, will accelerate our own understanding of life. If they don’t find that, they still hope to lay their hands on something exciting and worthwhile out of the tunnel. Much like one of CERN’s alumni, Tim Berners-Lee, stumbled upon the internet and invented the first web browser in 1989 to initially help physicists worldwide to swap notes!

 

[Marshal]

Actully I was searching for this stat that how India is going to participate in terms of no. thanks for providing it....

 

[nitesh]

Actully I was searching for this stat that how India is going to participate in terms of no. thanks for providing it....

But any way we are not going to be alive na ha ha ha

 

[Awesome]

Khwamkha k pangay!

Let the universe bang in peace!

 

[Spring Onion]

Khwamkha k pangay!

Let the universe bang in peace!

after Indians going to have another junum why to worry (kiddin)

 

[Spring Onion]

'Big Bang' day for 30 Indian scientists
10 Sep 2008, 1000 hrs IST, Akhilesh Kumar Singh,TNN


JAIPUR: When, on Wednesday, at 12.30 pm IST, a group of physicists turn on a machine that will recreate the birth of the universe, the Raniwala couple from Jaipur will be watching the experiment very closely. After all, this will be the largest experiment in human history. And Sudhir Raniwala and Rashmi Raniwala, associate professors of physics at Rajasthan University, are among the 30-odd physicists from India, who are part of this experiment. ( Watch )

At the heart of this is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which was constructed at a cost of $4.4 billion. It is the latest in a series of successively more powerful particle accelerators that have been built at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) laboratory in Geneva. ( Watch )

Within the LHC's circular tunnel, 27 km in circumference, beams of protons will be accelerated to up to 99.999999% of the speed of light. When they smash together, they will generate concentrations of energy resembling those that occurred during the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

"We have designed the Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD), which has been fitted in the LHC, in which small particles (protons) will be accelerated and made to collide at the highest-ever man-made speed," Raniwala told TOI on Monday. He said the PMD, designed by him and other Indians, is part of the ALICE project in the LHC, under which experts will try to generate quark-gluon plasma matter, which was present at the time of the creation of the universe.

To give you an idea, everything that you see around you, including yourself, can be reduced to atoms. Now, atoms can be further broken up into neutrons, protons and electrons. Neutrons and protons together form the nucleus of an atom. But what makes up neutrons and protons? That's where quarks come into the picture. These are subatomic particles held together by gluons and form the nucleus of an atom.

In nature, quarks are always found bound together in groups, and never in isolation, because of a phenomenon known as confinement. These groups of quarks are called hadrons. (That's where the collider gets its name from.) Now, when beams of protons smash together at almost the speed of light there will be such a high concentration of energy that a form of matter called quark-gluon plasma will be created. In this phase, for a brief period of time, a large number of free quarks and gluons can exist. That was how things were just after the Big Bang.

The Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD) will play a key role in this experiment. The PMD was developed at the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre in Kolkata, which is a body of the Department of Atomic Energy, and the machines were transported to Geneva from February this year. The machines sent from Kolkata were fitted in the LHC by June. Raniwala said experts from IIT-Mumbai, Panjab University, Jammu University, Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and Rajasthan University worked together to develop the PMD.

Raniwala, who has been associated with the project since its letter of intent was submitted in 1992, will be going to Geneva on September 21 to study the after-effects of the collisions. "The idea is to study whether the lab can create what happened at the time of the creation of the universe." The Indian physicists will be connected with the LHC experiment through GRID computing system, which has been installed at the RU physics laboratory also. "There will be $600 million collisions every second and every collision will emit two-lakh small signals. We will study these signals, clean the data and analyse them," Raniwala said.


Allaying fears about the high-speed collisions in the tunnel, Raniwala said, "Cosmic rays in the universe send particles with much greater energies than those being achieved in the lab, so there's nothing to worry about." He said that even the CERN director-general had assessed the safety issues and nothing was found to be unsafe. "The internal safety assessment report concluded that there is no basis for any concern, which was also endorsed by the 20 independent experts from the Science Policy Committee," he added.

The giant new particle collider is being linked to spectacular spinoffs, including improved cancer treatments, systems for destroying nuclear waste and insights into climate change.


'Big Bang' day for 30 Indian scientists-India-The Times of India

 

[Spring Onion]

'Doomsday' rumour sets off panic
10 Sep 2008, 0309 hrs IST, Minati Singha,TNN

BHUBANESWAR: What would you do when you hear someone say that the world is coming to an end? In Orissa's capital, Bhubaneswar, the response on Tuesday to such a prank was different for different people.

While many of them headed straight for temples, which recorded an unusually high turnout for a Tuesday, others sat at home and waited for the end instead of going to work. Some others rushed to restaurants to have their hearts fill of their favourite dishes.

The rumours spread soon after TV channels reported the European underground experiment to recreate conditions that existed immediately after the Big Bang. There was panic after the facts were twisted to include the grim possibility of the earth itself betting sucked into a black hole and self-destructing.

"There must be some truth to the news. I didn't allow my husband and children to leave house because I wanted to spend what could be the last day of my life with my family," said Renuka Das, a housewife.

'Doomsday' rumour sets off panic -India-The Times of India

 

[Marshal]

after Indians going to have another junum why to worry (kiddin)

yea.......keep laughing..........

 

[nitesh]

'Big Bang' experiment begins-Europe-World-The Times of India



'Big Bang' experiment begins
10 Sep 2008, 1230 hrs IST,REUTERS

GENEVA- The World’s biggest scientific experiment recreating the ‘Big Bang’ has begun. First beam to simulate Big Bang on Earth has been fired at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ( Watch )

Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) started up a huge particle-smashing machine, aiming to re-enact the conditions of the "Big Bang" that created the universe.

Experiments in the Large Hadron Collider, a 10 billion Swiss franc ($9 billion) accelerator built underneath the Swiss-French border, could unlock the remaining secrets of particle physics and answer questions about the universe and its origins.

"There are two emotions, the pleasure of completing a great task and the hope of great discoveries ahead of us," said CERN Director General Robert Aymar.

The giant accelerator's first task is to send a particle beam in one direction around its 27-km (17-mile) circumference, and then one in the other direction to test if the path is clear.

In the coming weeks beams will be sent in both directions simultaneously to create high-speed collisions.

Scientists around the world are eagerly anticipating data on those minuscule crashes. One possibility is that they will cause the creation of matter -- proving correct the theory that there exists a "Higgs Boson" that gives matter its mass.

Doomsday writers have also fanned fears that the experiment could create anti-matter, or black holes, spurring unprecedented public interest in particle physics ahead of the machine's start-up. CERN has insisted that such concerns are unfounded and that the Large Hadron Collider is safe.

 

[x_man]

Well well well....what an anti-climax!.....0730 (UTC) has passed and I don't think I have been sucked into a black hole. Although never having been through one before but I am fairly certain I am still alive ...

I wasnt worrying too much either.... In all probability only Switzerland would had disappear and I am sure that it would'nt be missed much. Their watches are overrated and I never liked their chocolate either.

Oh well, another pointless end of the world rumour in the bin. Back to work then i guess..