At 3:15 am EST this morning, a beam of protons will be circulated through the Large Hadron Collider, an 18 mile tunnel, 300 feet beneath the Franco Swiss Border just outside Geneva, the headquarters of Raymond Weil and a center of expertise in the watchmaking industry.The Large Hadron Collider will circulate two streams of protons in opposite directions, smashing them together at a rate similar to the speed of light. Scientists and physicists hope that in a few months, conditions will have reached the intensity as they were a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. To achieve collisions, a huge amount of electromagnets are needed to keep the protons on target.
Scientists believe this will be the most powerful particle accelerator in the entire world. They hope to find the secrets of the sub-atomic universe, such as a conversion of mass to energy, antimatter, dark matter, other dimensions, and the much publicized "Higgs boson" called by scientists the "God particle" which they theorize gave mass to all other particles. Professor Hawking has placed a $100 bet that scientists won't find the Higgs boson particle.
After 15 years of research and construction, 10,000 scientists, 60 different countries and approximately 7.7 billion dollars later, the Large Hadron Collider is set to be turned on.
Will a big Black Hole develop in the Large Hadron Collider and devour the earth? Scientists admit that microscopic black holes may develop but will rapidly evaporate. Although I am not much of a scientist, I must admit, I am a touch concerned.
