Monday 8 September 2008

Relive The Big Bang!

On Wednesday 10 September 2008, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is going to recreate the BIG BANG. Yes, the one that created the universe.

At about 0900 Swiss time (quite apt eh) (1500 SG time), some scientists are going flip a switch and send tiny atomic particles accelerating to near light speed around a set of tunnels 27 kilometers long under the Swiss-French border. The colossal complex is known as the Large Hadron Collider. The particles will then hurtle into each other, releasing massive amounts of energy in as many as 600 million collisions each second. Cool eh. All this in the pursuit of knowledge, and hopefully answers to questions like "What other dimensions are there?", "What happened to all the anti-matter?" and "Why do women need so many shoes?".

CERN had to commission an new computer system called The Grid to capture all that day and beam it to labs all over the world. Lagi cooler.

For more geeky background into the multi-billion dollar project, go to BBCNews.

You can watch the live webcast on Wednesday here.

In honour of the project, I have embedded a YouTube video that deserves a Nobel Prize of its own. Presenting the Large Hadron Rap! (BTW hadrons are too complicated to explain simply. The best known hadrons are protons and neutrons.)

1 comment:

Mike Tan said...

They are much better than our mda hip-hop rap video, remember?

Well done! Science can hip-hop too. Sound like one of those sesame street educational jiggles/songs. But I wouldn't trust those scientist doing the "big bang" experiment.