Second (third, fourth?) Big Bang and We’re Still Here

Those quirky scientists at CERN have successfully re-created a “mini Big Bang” at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe.  Needless to say, if you are reading this, then you already know that we were not obliterated by a large singularity as a by-product of the event (yes, people were really afraid that we would all die if they did this).

The LHC just started a new phase of experiments this weekend.  Since it went into operation in 2008, the LHC has been slamming protons into each other in hopes of discovering the Higgs-Bosun particle (“The God Particle”) – this is the magical little guy that holds the parts of atoms together.  It exists in quantum physics, it has just not been observed (i.e. proven) yet.

This past Sunday, the LHC started slamming iron ions into one another in hopes of recreating the same conditions experienced during the Big Bang.  This pic above is an actual shot of the collision.  They were successful and the experiment resulted in a collision which reached a temperature of over ten trillion degrees.  Yes, ten trillion.  Dr. David Evans, one of the researchers working on the project explains what happens at this temperature: “At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma.”  Now, that is pretty cool – melting atoms.

It will take some time to review the data from the experiment and more will be run before returning to proton-based runs.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11711228

CERN Web site: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Welcome.html