By Alexander G. Higgins
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 09/10/2008 06:21:28 AM MDT
A European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientist looks at
computer screens showing traces on the Atlas experiment of the first
protons injected in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during its switch-on
operation at the Cern's press center on September 10, 2008 near Geneva.
(POOL | FABRICE COFFRINI)
An engineer points to the magnet core of the world's largest
superconducting solenoid magnet in Geneva, Switzerland (AP | FABRICE
COFFRINI)
GENEVA — The world's largest particle collider successfully completed
its first major test by firing a beam of protons around a 17-mile
underground ring today in what scientists hope is the next great step to
understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer
screen at 10:36 a.m. indicating that the protons had traveled the full
length of the $3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider.
Coincidently a series of Large Earthquakes Struck around the world as
the collider was fired up.
"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its
lap.
Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where
contributing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite.
Physicists around the world now have much greater power than ever before
to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to see how they
are made.
"Well done everybody," said Robert Aymar, director-general of the
European Organization for Nuclear Research, to cheers from the assembled
scientists in the collider's control room at the Swiss-French border.
The organization, known by its French acronym CERN, began firing the
protons — a type of subatomic particle — around the tunnel in stages
less than an hour earlier.
Now that the beam has been successfully tested in clockwise direction,
CERN plans to send it counterclockwise. Eventually two beams will be
fired in opposite directions with the aim of recreating conditions a
split second after the big bang, which scientists theorize was the
massive explosion that created the universe.
The start of the collider — described as the biggest physics experiment
in history — comes over the objections of some skeptics who fear the
collision of protons could eventually imperil the earth.
The skeptics theorized that a byproduct of the collisions could be micro
black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so
strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
"It's nonsense," said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN, before
today's start.
CERN is backed by leading scientists like Britain's Stephen Hawking in
dismissing the fears and declaring the experiments to be absolutely safe.
Gillies told the AP that the most dangerous thing that could happen
would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that
would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around
the tunnel.
Nothing of the sort occurred today, though accelerator is still probably
a year away from full power.
"On Wednesday we start small," said Gillies. "A really good result would
be to have the other beam going around, too, because once you've got a
beam around once in both directions you know that there is no
show-stopper." The project organized by the 20 European member nations
of CERN has attracted researchers from 80 nations. Some 1,200 are from
the United States, an observer country which contributed US$531 million.
Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.
The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of
light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.
Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the
atom. Less than 100 years ago scientists thought protons and neutrons
were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but in stages since
then experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and
gluons and that there were other forces and particles.
The CERN experiments could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter
and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find
evidence of the hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — believed to
give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the
universe.
