So just 3 more days until the LHC goes online this Thursday (the initial beams get injected on Thursday, the first collisions aren’t scheduled but for another 2-3 months or so).  Currently the whole thing is being frozen to 1.9 Kelvins using liquid Argon.  Can you say really cold?

Anyways the idea is that they’ll be able to recreate the big bang, but (hopefully) on a much smaller scale.  The internet is having a field day because the thing is so powerful it can create micro-black holes as well as other space-time anomalies, and the natural assumption is that we’re all going to die.  This suspicion of impending doom is further exaggerated by CERN (the orchestrating body) publishing reports stating that they "beyond reasonable doubt, heavy-ion experiments at RHIC will not endanger our planet"[src] (Murphy’s Law….) as well as the facility looking like the Black Mesa Research Facility from Half-Life.  More after the break.

Also the big search is for the Higgs boson, which would help solidify the Standard Model (I think) which is known to break down at high energy.  I’m not a particle physicist, I’m an engineer, so much of this deals outside of my realm but apparently confirming the existence of a Higgs boson would also help researchers in developing a Grand Unification Theory in Particle Physics.  Seems like an awfully expensive endeavor (at around 3.2 <-> 6.4 billion Euros, or $5 <-> $10 billion US), but maybe I’m missing something critically important, I’d be willing to compromise there.

If you do know something about particle physics, for all 3 of you who read my blog, care to elaborate a bit?

Now there was initially a bigger collider planned in Texas in 1993, at what I’m assuming is a rather massive 30 TeV (30 trillion volts is pretty freaking massive in my mind), but I’m neglecting the electron portion of that unit of measure (TeV = Tera electron Volt), but this project was canceled due to funding.  Would have been nice to see it go through as I’m so close to Texas and would be able to go visit it.  However assuming the LHC does blow up, maybe it’s better that I’m in a completely different hemisphere from it.

Enjoy some of these overly eerie pics from the LHC (sourced via Boston)