*** UPDATE ***

LHC helium leak will shut collider down for two months

The fridge was not working. Apparently this was not the first time.

Particle Collider Not Quite Ready to Collide

A week after subatomic particles began zooming around its underground racetrack amid cheers and Champagne, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN outside Geneva, is still struggling to take its next big step. Read here 

In a nutshell, they wanna find out how a particle gets mass. The days when the standard model for particles might be smashed up. Big Bang style…what is it about? here!

 

Giant particle collider set to start

The story

Scientists hope to fire the first beam of protons around a 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel on Wednesday in science’s next great step to understand the makeup of the universe.

The Large Hadron Collider — built since 2003 at a cost of $3.8 billion — will provide scientists with much greater power than ever before to smash the components of atoms in a bid to see how they are made.

The startup has been eagerly awaited by 9,000 physicists around the world who will conduct experiments here, though some skeptics have criticized the experiment, saying they fear the collisions of protons could eventually imperil Earth

Read full article here 

or here

or even here

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It all began with Light.

In the “miracle year” of 1905, Albert Einstein published five groundbreaking papers still sparking innovations 100 years later. But he was asking questions much way earlier, when he was a teenager. There is bound to be someone in this generation to unify ALL theories of science, not only physics in particular. Where even Einstein’s achievements and impact could be surpassed. This is what I call The Physics Revolution. We just need to ask the right questions…

So what’s YOUR big idea?

Click Here
An excerpt:

Why does it matter?
If it’s impossible to say where the solution will come from, it’s doubly impossible to predict what the real-world consequences of that solution might be. But if the next century plays out like the last one, advances in our understanding of physics could turn today’s science fiction into tomorrow’s everyday technologies.

In a science-fiction world, dark energy could be harnessed as a power source or for interstellar travel. Weird quantum effects could serve as the basis for ultra-secure communications,  ultra-miniaturized nanocomputer chips or new ways of storing data as holograms.

But Carroll believes cosmological research is more important for answering cosmic questions — for example, whether the universe will someday spread out to near-nothingness in a“Big Chill” (currently the most widely accepted scenario); tear itself apart in a “Big Rip”; fall back on itself in a “Big Crunch”; begin yet another Big Bang cycle; or even spawn another generation of “daughter universes.”

“It might be the case that investigations into quantum gravity or dark energy might end up with tangible benefits on technology in the next 100 years,” Carroll admits, “but mostly I emphasize the fact that people just want to know the answer. … It’s part of innate human curiosity to figure out how the universe around us works.”

Many things may have changed in the century since Einstein’s miracle year, but that innate curiosity is constant.

“I want to know God’s thoughts,” Einstein once said. “The rest are details.”