Large Hadron Collider Engaged!!!

Finally, the Large Hadron Collider is fully operational. Well almost. Scientists say it will take about a year for the project to ramp up to full power. Even so, the 1st proton beams are being pushed near the speed of light as they fly around the 17 mile tunnel at 11,000 times a second! The 10 billion dollar project by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN as it is known by its French initials), shares collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. Together they will search for the Higgs Boson (or God Particle) that is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

ATLAS – one of two so-called general purpose detectors. Atlas will be used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass and extra dimensions.
CMS – the other general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter.
ALICE – will study a "liquid" form of matter called quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang.
LHCb – equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the "missing" anti-matter.

Once the supercollider is up and running, CERN scientists estimate that if the Standard Model is correct, a Higgs boson may be produced every few hours. At this rate, it may take up to three years to collect enough statistics unambiguously to discover the Higgs boson. Similarly, it may take one year or more before sufficient results concerning supersymmetric particles have been gathered to draw meaningful conclusions.

Stephen Hawking said in a BBC interview that "I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of one hundred dollars that we won't find the Higgs." In the same interview Hawking mentions the possibility of finding superpartners and adds that "whatever the LHC finds, or fails to find, the results will tell us a lot about the structure of the universe."

Folks, it doesn't get much more exciting than this! Though I am skeptical that the LHC will find the secrets of our vast universe, it does fascinate me and give me joy knowing people in the world are spending large amounts of money on projects that involve learning instead of war and defense. This is the greatest experiment that humans on Earth have ever undertaken.