Gadget lovers may contend themselves with a digital music player or a GPS navigation device. Technology fetishists might dream of a MacBook Air. Really rich guys go buy 70 inch LCD TVs for their home cinemas.

But the physicists of Europe have outdone all of humanity when it comes to expensive gadgets.

How about an underground tunnel of 27 kilometer circumference, that runs under the Swiss, French border and that is chock full with thousands of really really expensive magnets, amazingly complex sensors and endless pipes, wires and other super complicated equipment.

It’s called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It’s been 30 years in the making. It cost 10 Billion US$. And they’re switching it on today.

This machine, build by the European physics center CERN will be used to discover the secrets of the universe, by recreating the conditions of the Big Bang. This will require that two proton beam are smashed together at nearly the speed of light in the tunnel and then see what happens.

A few months ago, I read, on some blogs, that some people are fearful that this big gadget will end up producing a little back hole that will grow and swallow planet earth in a few years. Nicknames of the accelerator included “Doomsday Machine”, etc.

The scientist guys in the video above don’t seem to be conCERNed :-) Their employer has issued a press release on September 5th reassuring that “it is safe”..

Today, they will simply do a little test run. But soon they will be doing their Big Bang stuff.

There are tons of videos and blog posts about this “thing” on the web.

Check them out and keep your fingers crossed that no black holes will swallow you cat, car, country or planet.

“So long and thanks for all the fish“..

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7 responses to “Today, physicists will get to play with their 10 BILLION DOLLAR toy..”

  1. Hani Obaid Avatar
    Hani Obaid

    It’s not a fear, it does create micro black hole, and the scientists acknowledge this. They just insist that the chance of creating a major black hole or one that will keep growing is negligible since they claim the experiments they will be performing are similar to events occurring naturally thousands of times more when cosmic rays hit earth. I’m skeptical that they’d have to do experiments if they’re occupying naturally, and this type of experiment is often sighted in Science Fiction as examples of how civilizations end before they become advanced enough to do inter-galactic space flight or communication. Oh well, at least we won’t have to deal with inflation anymore.

  2. nasimjo Avatar
    nasimjo

    its amazing how no single newspaper or mass-media mean in the arab world is openning this subject! while its all over europe for example for the last week or so!

  3. John Doe Avatar
    John Doe

    great post!
    Allah yustor :)

  4. Mazz Avatar
    Mazz

    this is amazing stuff!

    i want to PLAY!

    tiny black hole or not, it must be done.

  5. I like this different Perspective Avatar
    I like this different Perspective

    Gregg Easterbrook is the author of The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, and other books. He writes a weekly football column for ESPN.com called Tuesdau Mornong Quarterback (TMQ)

    “Easterbrook wrote in his September 4th column:
    “TMQ still cannot fathom why society should spend many billions of dollars or euros to construct advanced atom-smashers whose main purpose is to provide employment for physicists, and which engage a chance, however small, of igniting general calamity.

    The fiscal 2008 federal budget, enacted last fall, awarded the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, which runs an atom smasher, $320 million for 1,940 employees – amounts that seem plenty generous, considering Fermilab hasn’t had a major discovery since 1995, when researchers there found the “top” quark.

    Fermilab’s accelerator yielded significant abstract knowledge in the 1970s and 1980s, when the device was staging experiments not previously attempted. …. The Fermi accelerator gradually evolved from interesting experiment into a boondoggle that supplies cushy jobs for physicists and politically connected contractors. The new Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland ups the ante by being a boondoggle from day one!”

    In his November 2007 column (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/071120&sportCat=nfl)
    (scroll to the middle of the page)
    “High-energy particle accelerators cost taxpayers large sums but stand little chance of discovering anything of practical value. Promoted as quests for understanding of the universe, particle accelerators serve mostly as job programs for physicists, postdocs, and politically connected laboratories and contractors.”

    Why does the world need two super-expensive tax-subsidized advanced accelerators when neither is likely to accomplish anything other than providing payroll checks for staff? Why, because if the Europeans are wasting $15 billion, we’ve got to show our national resolve by wasting $15 billion, too! We can’t let the French get all the credit for accidentally crushing the Earth into an inert hyperdense pinpoint!

  6. MP Avatar
    MP

    There is an unexpected coincidence happened yesterday, in the same time frame they initiated the experiment and earthquake hit Iran.