ASSOCIATED PRESS / 2007
This is a view of the Large Hadron Collider in its tunnel at a lab near Geneva. One huge scientific experiment being launched Wednesday is described as an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe. The first beams of protons will be fired around the 17-mile tunnel Wednesday.
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Collider to smash open secrets of the universe
An atom-smasher preps to smash despite an end-of-the-world lawsuit
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GENEVA » The most powerful atom-smasher ever created will be turned on Wednesday, promising scientists a closer look at the makeup of matter and filling in gaps in knowledge.
The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and move closer to re-enacting the big bang, the theoretical massive explosion that created the universe.
The collider was the subject of a lawsuit filed this year in U.S. District Court in Honolulu by two men, including one from the Big Island, who claimed that it would create dangerous subatomic phenomena that could destroy Earth.
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CERN
This is a view into the Grid PC farm at the CERN Computer Centre, where banks of computers process and store data produced on the CERN systems. When the LHC starts operation, it will produce enough data every year to fill a stack of CDs 20 kilometers tall. To handle this huge amount of data, CERN has also developed the Grid, allowing processing power to be shared among computer centers around the world.
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Alexander Higgins
Associated Press
GENEVA » It has been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe - or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.
Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.
The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang, the theoretical colossal explosion that created the universe.
The machine at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, promises scientists a closer look at the makeup of matter, filling in gaps in knowledge or possibly reshaping theories.
The first beams of protons will be fired around the 17-mile tunnel to test the controlling strength of the world's largest superconducting magnets. It will still be about a month before beams traveling in opposite directions are brought together in collisions that some skeptics fear could create micro "black holes" and endanger the planet.
The collider was the subject of a lawsuit filed this year in U.S. District Court in Honolulu by two men, including one from the Big Island, who claimed that it would create dangerous subatomic phenomena, possibly including a tiny black hole that would quickly devour Earth. In a 50-page response in June, U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo and a team of Justice Department attorneys called the allegations "overly speculative and not credible."
Other skeptics have filed suit in the European Court of Human Rights to stop the project.
The project has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities, some 1,200 of them from the United States, which contributed $531 million of the project's price tag of nearly $4 billion.
"This only happens once a generation," said Katie Yurkewicz, spokeswoman for the U.S. contingent at the CERN project. "People are certainly very excited."
The collider at Fermilab outside Chicago could beat CERN to some discoveries, but the Geneva equipment, generating seven times more energy than Fermilab, will give it big advantages.
The CERN collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel 150 to 500 feet under the bucolic countryside on the French-Swiss border.
Once the beam is successfully fired counterclockwise, a clockwise test will follow. Then the scientists will aim the beams at each other so that protons collide, shattering into fragments and releasing energy under the gaze of detectors filling cathedral-size caverns at points along the tunnel.
CERN dismisses the risk of micro black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
The collider has been under construction since 2003, financed mostly by its 20 European member states. The United States and Japan are major contributors with observer status in CERN.
CERN hopes to re-create conditions in the laboratory a split second after the big bang, teaching scientists more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time.
The project has also generated some lighter moments.
Kate McAlpine, 23, a Michigan State University graduate at CERN, has produced the Large Hadron Rap, a video clip that has attracted more than a million views on YouTube.
"The things that it discovers will rock you in the head," McAlpine raps as she dances in the tunnel and caverns.