It's Alive! The Large Hadron Collider is Working!

The Large Hadron Collider is turned ONNNN!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7604293.stm

Okay, so what the hell is it, you ask?

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, created to smash protons (and other particles I suppose) together. Protons, for everyone who took basic Physics in high school, is the positive charge of an atom (the smallest unit of an element). Protons reside in the nucleus of the atom (electrons orbit the nucleus). The LHC is so huge that it crosses Switzerland and France at four points. It's so sensitive that it has to be dug anywhere between 50 to 175 meters underground. It's so goddamn expensive that it cost 5 billion euros (half was shelled out by the US, the rest divided among different European countries). All of this attached at the CERN campus in Switzerland. The entire circular tunnel is surrounded by magnets, to push the speeding proton along - if at all possible - at the speed of light.

The hope is for two proton particles to smash and for the multitude of cameras in the LHC to capture the event.

The point of all this is for scientists to determine if, by smashing the particles together and getting data on the cloud smash, they can get any closer to understanding what made the universe. Some of the more popular theories that stands to gain from data taken from the LHC that people might know would be the Grand Unification Theory or the "Theory of Everything". The GUT is simply assuming that all the fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces) can be explained by one universal law. The limitation of the GUT is that the assumption encompasses everything except gravity. The TOE is GUT plus gravity.

Enter the Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson, also called 'The God Particle' , which is essentially the nothing that creates something right after the Big Bang (hence the nickname). If the Higgs Boson exists, then it is the thing that holds all the forces together.

This is where the Large Hadron Collider comes in. The big theories will be put to the test with the particle accelerator. Physicists got together in pajama parties reminiscent of Harry Potter book openings and Star Wars premieres. 

So. The LHC will try to simulate the first moment of the Big Bang by making a small smash. The smash cloud around that will make or break whatever it is that physicists thought could only exist in paper formulas. Kind of like watching the how the bricks fall down once you've toppled your Uno tower.

Very cool stuff.

Also, if anything goes wrong (or rather maybe completely right) they could simulate little black hole, which could suck everything in it's path.

(Guys: that last part was overly simplistic. Read this to get more info :) )