Monday November 23, 2009

"Big Bang" machine set to yield surprises - scientist

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists could begin garnering information on the origins of the universe in the coming months as the world's biggest particle collider starts moving to full power next year, a project leader said on Monday.

A technician walks under the core magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) in the French village of Cessy, near Geneva March 22, 2007. (REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/Files)

But it may not be until 2011 that what is dubbed the "Big Bang Machine" -- the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) -- straddling the Swiss-French border at the CERN research centre will hit its top velocity, physicist Steve Myers added.

The LHC -- a nearly $10 billion experiment involving scientists worldwide -- was relaunched at the weekend after a technical accident 14 months ago brought it to a halt just nine days after its start-up.

Myers, CERN's Director for Accelerators, told Reuters Television that particle beams had been piped round the 27-km (17-mile tunnel) on Friday, and all had gone smoothly.

"Everyone is very confident because this has been a tremendous start-up. We're making measurements on this machine now that you normally only make a year or two into an accelerator's operations," he said.

ORIGINS OF LIFE

The key aim of the project is to discover how the universe took shape after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago that spilt out matter at vast speeds and energies that eventually became suns, stars, planets and then life itself.

But what Myers called "new surprises in physics that we can really measure" will probably have to wait until the particle beams can be collided at the LHC's maximum force.

"We will be contemplating reaching that ultimate energy in 2011," he said.

Experiments in a previous collider at CERN -- the European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva at the foot of France's Jura mountains -- staged particle collisions producing energy close to that of the Big Bang.

But the LHC at its full might should recreate conditions just one billionth of a second after the primeval explosion to be captured by an array of super-computers, which will transmit the data to scientists in 33 countries.

Among enduring mysteries that researchers hope to unravel are the black holes in the universe, what anti-matter is and whether there is a Higgs Boson

The Boson is a theoretical particle thought to give matter its mass, enabling it to come together. It was first advanced by Edinburgh University scientist Peter Higgs in 1964 as an explanation of how the universe was formed.

Earlier efforts to capture it at CERN and at a similar laboratory in the United States have failed.

The LHC relaunch was lower key than the first attempt on Sept. 10, 2008, where small technical faults culminated in a massive explosion.

The blast damaged the vast magnets that pull the particles around the tunnel and smash them together. But Myers said every precaution had been taken to ensure that could not happen again.

He said the first collisions would be staged at low energy within two weeks. After a two-week break over Christmas, energy would be increased, and then perhaps again in the spring.

(Editing by Jonathan Lynn; Editing by Victoria Main)

News Poll

Latest Jobs from Star-Jobs

Latest from StarProperty