Large Hadron Collider Switches Back On – Earth Survives!
Posted by mattusmaximus on November 21, 2009
Hooray! 😀 The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe has switched back on after being offline for a year…
Europe: Proton beams circulate in Big Bang machine
GENEVA – Scientists switched on the world’s largest atom smasher Friday night for the first time since the $10 billion machine suffered a spectacular failure more than a year ago.
It took a year of repairs before beams of protons circulated late Friday in the Large Hadron Collider for the first time since it was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault.
Circulation of the beams was a significant leap forward. The European Organization for Nuclear Research has taken the restart of the collider step by step to avoid further setbacks as it moves toward new scientific experiments — probably starting in January — regarding the makeup of matter and the universe.
And, as I’ve blogged about before, where there is science being done by physicists via particle accelerators like the LHC, there are also pseudoscientific nuts who maintain that it’s going to destroy the Earth. Balderdash! Here are 3 good reasons why the LHC experiments are no danger to our planet.
I should also point out one more piece of good news regarding the re-starting of the LHC: despite all of the doomsday scenarios by the conspiracy-mongering pseudoscientists – the Earth survived 😉
Rob T said
Well of course the Earth survived – they didn’t collide anything yet!
heh-heh… Whatever…
Seriously, though, this is so cool. I was following @CERN on Twitter the whole afternoon. Can’t wait for the first collision.