What is LHC?

An international team is currently installing the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in a 27-kilometer ring buried deep below the countryside on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland. When its operations begin in Sept 2008, the LHC will be the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. Scientists predict that its very-high-energy proton collisions will yield extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the physical universe. Beyond revealing a new world of unknown particles, the LHC experiments could explain why those particles exist and behave as they do. The LHC experiments could reveal the origins of mass, shed light on dark matter, uncover hidden symmetries of the universe, and possibly find extra dimensions of space.

Billions of protons in the LHC’s two counter-rotating particle beams will smash together at an energy of 14 trillion electron volts. After injection into the accelerator, the hair-thin proton beams will accelerate to a whisker below the speed of light. They will circulate for hours, guided around the LHC ring by thousands of powerful superconducting magnets. For most of their split-second journey around the ring, the beams travel in two separate vacuum pipes, but at four points they collide in the hearts of the main experiments, known by their acronyms: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb.

The experiments’ complex detectors could see up to 600 million collisions per second, as the energy of colliding protons transforms fleetingly into a plethora of exotic particles. In the data from these ultrahigh-energy collisions scientists from universities and laboratories around the world will search for the tracks of particles whose existence would transform the human understanding of the universe we live in.

About those black holes …
The black holes that may (or may not) be generated by the Large Hadron Collider would have theoretical rather than practical applications.

If the collider’s detectors turn up evidence of black holes, that would suggest that gravity is stronger on a subatomic scale than it is on the distance scales scientists have been able to measure so far. That, in turn, would support the weird idea that we live in a 10- or 11-dimensional universe, with some of the dimensions rolled up so tightly that they can’t be perceived.

“It will be extremely exciting if the LHC did produce black holes,” CERN theoretical physicist John Ellis said.  “OK, so some people are going to say, ‘Black holes? Those big things eating up stars?’ No. These are microscopic, tiny little black holes.  And they’re extremely unstable.  They would disappear almost as soon as they were produced.”

Black hole star mystery ’solved’

Astronomers have shed light on how stars can form around a massive black hole, defying conventional wisdom.

Scientists have long wondered how stars develop in such extreme conditions.

Molecular clouds – the normal birth places of stars – would be ripped apart by the immense gravity, a team explains in Science magazine.

But the researchers say stars can form from elliptical discs – the relics of giant gas clouds torn apart by encounters with black holes.

They made the discovery after developing computer simulations of giant gas clouds being sucked into black holes like water spiralling down a plughole.

“These simulations show that young stars can form in the neighbourhood of supermassive black holes as long as there is a reasonable supply of massive clouds of gas from further out in the galaxy,” said co-author Ian Bonnell from St Andrews University, UK.

Ripped apart

Their findings are in accordance with actual observations in our Milky Way galaxy that indicate the presence of a massive black hole, surrounded by huge stars with eccentric orbits.    

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Morgan Freeman Injured in Car Accident

Freeman discharged from hospital 
 
Hollywood star Morgan Freeman has been discharged from a hospital where he was recovering after a car crash.

In a short statement issued after his release, Freeman said that he was well.

He suffered a broken arm and had to undergo surgery after his car overturned and landed in a ditch near his home in Mississippi on Sunday.

Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman was listed in “serious” condition at a Memphis hospital Monday following a late-night car crash in rural Mississippi.

Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Sgt. Ben Williams confirmed Freeman was in a wreck shortly before midnight Sunday, but said he was still gathering information and had few details Monday.

The accident occurred around 11:30 p.m. Sunday near the small town of Ruleville. Freeman, 71, was airlifted from the scene to Regional Medical Center in Memphis, Tenn.