…but this rap about the Hadron Collider definitely puts him to shame!

This video, with the lyrics written by one of CERN’s science writers, Kate McAlpine, definitely covers quite a bit of ground and actually explains quite a bit. I will admit this up front. I may be an engineer, but the first time I have heard about this collider has only been in the past few months leading up to the first test. The Hadron Collider is located in a concrete tunnel about 17 miles in length and located between 150′ and 450′ underground between the border of France and Switzerland. Some very beautiful pictures can be found at the Boston Globe.

I am going to try and understand this in the next few weeks, but until then, you can read the description of what the Hadron Collider does here (quoted from the ever reliable Wikipedia):

The LHC is being built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC will become the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is funded and built in collaboration with over two thousand physicists from thirty-four countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.

The collider is currently undergoing commissioning while being cooled down to its final operating temperature of approximately 1.9 K (−271.25 °C). The initial particle beams are due for injection in August 2008, the first attempt to circulate beam through the entire LHC is scheduled for September 10, 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled, on October 21, 2008.

When activated, it is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and “missing links” in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would be a significant step in the search for a Grand Unified Theory, which seeks to unify three of the four known fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, leaving out only gravity. The Higgs boson may also help to explain why gravitation is so weak compared to the other three forces. In addition to the Higgs boson, other theorized novel particles that might be produced, and for which searches are planned, include strangelets, micro black holes, magnetic monopoles and supersymmetric particles.

So, most people fear that this may create a black hole which could be the undoing of all that we know. The physicists claim they have this under control, but I still have concerns over theoretical physics and how we determine what can happen.

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