SINCE EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE ON THE HADRON COLLIDER'S JOCK...

all in the video... © Big suge

Today was a great day for me and others of my kind. It provided us with the opportunity to wax poetic on a subject we really enjoy, without appearing to be pompous. Or weirdos. Or both.

Schlemiel Schlimazel.

Anyway, today's topic dujour(is that redundant?) being what it is, i figured i take this time out to release my inner eddie deezen.

The beauty of CERN and other particle accelerator labs is that they allows us to peer into the infinitesimal. In the early 1900s the belief that the atom was the smallest unit of matter was shattered, being replaced with the knowledge that the atom itself is made up of even smaller fragments: electrons that revolve around a nucleus.

Not long after that it was discovered that even those can be broken down further and now its believed that all matter is made up of three building blocks: electrons and two types of quarks.

Here is where CERN comes in.

CERN houses several large particle accelerators that allow physicists to analyze the forces acting between them.

Imagine it this way: A ball is exchanged between two players. Depending on the sport, a different ball is used. football, basketball, baseball. In the same manner, each force has its own carrier-particle. The accelerator allows the scientists to study these particles.

Before a particle can enter the Hadron it must undergo preliminary acceleration in a smaller machine which will allow it to reach over 99% of the speed of light in a vacuum. Powerful electromagnets are used to keep the particles in a circular path, preventing them from flying into the thick walls that are used to absorb dangerous radiation.

Particles have a tendency to spread, and because of this they mustbe squeezed into a dense narrow beam by focusing magnets. Think lighthouse, and how its lenses are used concentrate light into a far reaching beam. Each time the particles go around they receive an additional supply of energy, that once allowed to deviate from the current trajectory, will be used to bombard a target.

A portion of the energy released in this collision between protons and their target particles results in MATTER*. Thats right. MATTER. In a collider, energy is converted to matter.

*wipes drool*

Some facts in brief:

Electrons: Particles with a negative electric charge equal to that of the proton and a mass nearly 2,000 times less. An electron moves about the nucleus of the atom, with the number of electrons matching the number of protons.

Protons: Particles with a positive electric charge equal to that of the electron. A constituent of the nucleus of every atom. The nucleus of hydrogen has one proton.

Neutrons: Particles with nearly the same mass as the proton but with no electrical charge. The other constituent of the nucleus of all atoms except those of hydrogen.

Quarks: Particles believed to be the basic constituents of protons and neutrons. Quarks do not exist singly but always in combination with other quarks. Each has an electric charge, either one third or two thirds that of the electric charge of the electron.

Bosons: Particles that transmit forces between other subatomic particles. A boson that leaves one particle is absorbed by another.

The purpose of all of this is to find the elusive higgs boson which was given the sobriquet of "god particle", named so because it is hoped that it will give scientists insight into what happened the moment after the "big bang". The moment when the universe began rapidly expanding in all directions.

(fun fact: big bang was a term coined by Fred Hoyle, a proponent of the steady state theory. His assertion was that there was no "big bang" only an ever existing universe. The discovery that the universe was expanding(see: redshift) proved to be a death knell for that theory, nevertheless Fred Hoyle was convinced of its validity until his death in 2001)

On Oct 21s the real excitement begins as the first set of collisions is set to start. Are you guys as excited as i am? You better be.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Hawking

*as far as i know not more than a milligram of matter has been produced. (physicists correct me if i'm wrong)

Also sprach zarathustra - Richard Strauss (cliche i know)