Behind the Scenes of LHC

First beam in the LHC - accelerating science

Geneva, 10 September 2008. The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was successfully steered around 27 kilometers of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a pivotal moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery. Read more....

CERN reiterates the safety of LHC on the eve of the first beam

Geneva, 5 September 2008. A report published today in the peer-reviewed journal Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics provides comprehensive evidence that safety fears about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are unfounded. The LHC is CERN’s new flagship research facility. As the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, it is poised to provide new insights into the mysteries of our universe.

Read more about the following.

• Cosmic Rays
  
• Microscopic Black holes
  
• Strangelets
  
• Vacuum Bubbles
  
• Magnetic Monopoles

Safety of LHC: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html

Press releases: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR07.08E.html

Behind the scenes

The ultimate expirement

BBC Horizon - Six Billion dollar experiment

LHC - The ultimate experiment

Found Dark Matter

Dark Matter which makes up 25% of the Universe finally detected. Dark matter eluded scientists for years as it doesn’t emit or reflect light. Scientists found proof of dark matter in the galaxy cluster 1E0657-556. The evidence provided by a cosmic collision between two huge clusters of galaxies. As per Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard Smithsonian Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the “most energetic cosmic show, besides the Big Bang” that we are aware of.

Image to right: A purple haze shows dark matter flanking the "Bullet Cluster." Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/M.Markevitch et al. Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al. Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

The known universe (to us) is composed of 5% of matter (which includes, Free Hydrogen & Helium, Stars, Heavy elements (Earth), Ghostly neutrinos, air, life etc) while the rest 95% is made up of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The matter in the known universe is made up of Quarks (Up and Down) and Electrons. Proton consists of 2 Up Quarks and 1 Down Quark while Neutron consists of 2 Down Quark and 1 Up Quark. This is the first family of fermions in the standard model.

The scientists discovered the gravitational signature of the dark matter. This signature is the by product of an immense collision of two huge galaxies (happened 100 million years ago) tearing apart the normal matter and the dark matter. The kinetic energy of this collision is good enough destroy planet Earth ten trillion trillion times. The dark matter is not seen, however, its gravity has a predictable effect on the observations. The blue color in the image shows gravity fields observed by how light from each background galaxy is distorted.

As per Robert Roy Britt of Space.Com here’s what the image reveals:

“The hot gas – normal matter – was slowed by a drag force described as the cosmic equivalent of air resistance. But the dark matter was not slowed by this effect, presumably because it does not interact with normal matter, as theory had predicted. So the normal matter and dark matter became separated.”

References

1. AstroPhysics - A direct empirical proof of the existence of Dark Matter
2. BBC – Team finds ‘proof’ of dark matter
3. CNN – Scientists: Dark Matter exists!
4. Space.Com – Colossal cosmic collision reveals dark matter
5. NASA – A Matter of fact
6. BBC – Dark Matter comes out of cold
7. Wikipedia.org – Dark Matter
8. Wikipedia.org – Dark Energy
9. Scientific American - Colliding Clusters shed light on Dark Matter
10. Scientific American - Supernovae Back Einstein's Blunder