Even here, we are

September 10, 2008 - 8:02 AM by David

It’s the world’s largest experiment. Today’s the historic launch of the humungous particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) site on the Swiss-French border, a collaboration of some of the world’s top scientists.

Which, of course means, that Israelis are present and accounted for. There are 30 Israeli professors, students and technicians who have taken part in preparations, and three of them are actually at the launch: Prof. Giora Mikenberg of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Prof. Erez Etzion of Tel Aviv University and Prof. Shlomit Tarem of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

According to Judy Siegel at The Jerusalem Post, what they and the 6,500 scientists from over 80 countries, and half of the world’s particle physics researchers, are trying to do is to “is bash together the tiny particles that make up the universe at mind-boggling speeds, so scientists can observe the extreme energies, mini-black holes, and other phenomena that occurred during the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the mother of all explosions, in which all we know was created.”

Prof. Avner Soffer of Tel Aviv University’s Physics and Astronomy School – who has been involved in the project for only two years – said from his office that he is rather jealous of the three Israelis now at CERN but will go there for a two-week “shift” next month. “What happens tomorrow is a milestone. It will be the first time they’re gong to circulate one beam in the whole ring. It is not yet the final configuration of two beams colliding, with the staff raising the energy level and the number of protons in each beam. That will happen sometime later on this year.”

On Wednesday, participants will be able to say if the giant device works. But this is only the beginning, said Sofer. “We all want as many collisions as possible. It certainly won’t destroy all of Geneva,” as some laymen mistakenly believe – having even gone, unsuccessfully, to an international court to prevent it. “The experiment is just like turning on a new light so there will be more light. The project won’t do anything that doesn’t occur in nature every day, as there is natural cosmic energy. It is safe. The theory is that the universe has other dimensions, and this – among other things – will show whether it is so.”

The ultimate hope of the project is that the findings will help explain the foundations of particle physics, and shed light on the basic forces and building blocks of nature. And if they could figure out what’s wrong with my air conditioner, that would also be a good thing.

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