PrintMay 16, 2010
The Genesis Machine
Is a revolution in science and religion underway?On 30 March 2010, momentous experiments restarted at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In one of the coldest places in the universe -- a liquid hydrogen-cooled tunnel 17 miles in circumference and 300 feet below the French-Swiss border -- things were about to go nuclear and then some. Indeed, by April 2010, scientists had already created ten million mini-Big Bangs.Scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are smashing bits of atoms to Kingdom Come. Subatomic particles called protons whiz around the tunnel in opposite directions until reaching darn close to nature's speed limit -- 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum. Superconducting magnets guide the little speedsters toward a cataclysmic collision, whereupon they release astonishing amounts of energy. Given the equivalence of mass and energy as represented in the most famous equation ever -- E = mc2 -- the energy from these subatomic fireballs will...(Read Full Article)
