For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a brief explanation of CERN, the Large Hadron Collider, and the planned experiment from Wikipedia:
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons (one of several types of hadrons) with very high kinetic energy. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. It is theorized that the collider will confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model, and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.
The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The LHC is operational and is presently in the process of being prepared for collisions. The first beams were circulated through the collider on 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled on 21 October.
Did you read all of that? Great. Now you're ready for the hilarious video:
Doesn't that just make you itch to go out and smash some atoms? Party on, nerds!
2 comments:
They are going to destroy the whole world!! ...not with the particle accelerator, but letting nerds film rap videos. We are all doomed!!
The LHCb sees where the antimatter's gone. Alice looks at collisions of lead ions....
Sorry, I can't help myself!
It's amazing, really, just how good an overview of the experiments that silly little rap song provides. It tells what each of the four detectors is looking for and why.
These experiments are going to contribute HUGELY to our understanding of the beginnings of the universe--and if they do NOT find the Higgs bosun (Stephen Hawking suspects they won't), the world of particle physics is going to be knocked out of its orbit.
So...exciting times ahead!
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead, and the things that it discovers will rock you in the head....
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