LHC First Beam Test Image, All Systems Go for First Collision Event
This is the first groovy image produced by the Large Hadron Collider, showing some of the first protons accelerated today at 1028h Central European Time (0428h Eastern Time), the exact time when CERN scientists successfully fired up the LHC for the first time. As we told you earlier this morning, this wasn’t the heads-on collision experiment, which will come later in the year.
This time they only steered the particles around the full 26.9km circumference of the underground facility. Nevertheless, the personnel involved in the test cheered in ecstasy as the multi-billion-dollar facility actually demonstrated that it was fully armed and operational:
It’s a fantastic moment, we can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.
LHC project leader Lyn Evans
“The LHC is a discovery machine, its research programme has the potential to change our view of the Universe profoundly, continuing a tradition of human curiosity that’s as old as mankind itself.
CERN Director General Robert Aymar
Following these beam tests–more will be coming in the next hours–the facility will prepare for the first heads-on collision later in the year. [CERN]
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Doomsday fear leads to teen’s death
From correspondents in Bhopal
September 11, 2008 02:14am
Article from: Reuters
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A TEENAGE girl in central India killed herself on Wednesday after being traumatised by media reports that a “Big Bang” experiment in Europe could bring about the end of the world, her father said.
The 16-year old girl from the state of Madhya Pradesh drank pesticide and was rushed to the hospital but later died, police said.
Her father, identified on local television as Biharilal, said that his daughter, Chayya, killed herself after watching doomsday predictions made on Indian news programmes.
“In the past two days, Chayya had asked me and other relatives about the world coming to an end on Sept. 10,” Biharilal was quoted as saying.
“We tried to divert her attention and told her she should not worry about such things, but to no avail.”
For the past two days, many Indian news channels held discussions airing doomsday predictions over a huge particle-smashing machine buried under the Swiss-French border.
The machine, called the Large Hadron Collider, was switched on on Wednesday, at the start of what experts say is the largest scientific experiment in human history.
The machine smashes particles together to achieve, on a small-scale, re-enactments of the “Big Bang” that created the universe.
Leading scientists and researchers at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, said the experiment was safe. They dismissed as “pure fiction” doomsday predictions that the experiment could create anti-matter, or black holes.
But in deeply religious and superstitious India, fears about the experiment and the minor risks associated with it spread rapidly through the media.
In east India, thousands of people rushed to temples to pray and fast while others savoured their favourite foods in anticipation of the world’s end.
“There were a thousand more devotees yesterday as well as today compared to (any) other normal day,” Benudhara Sahu, a temple official in Orissa state, said.
Many women and children rushed to temples and observed fasts as they prayed for deliverance, officials and witnesses said.
Assurances by scientists and the media that nothing would happen counted for nothing for housewife Rukmini Moharana.
“I visited temple, prayed to god,” Moharana said. “I am observing the fast for safety because god can only save us.”