Skeptiholic

Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster the end is here! As I type, the world is being engulfed by a massive black hole located somewhere in France or Switzerland. Wait- what’s that? Oh, we’re fine.  Really? Nothing, not even an explosion or two. Well, okay.

As I’m sure many of you have heard today (still today here), at 10:28 AM (4:28 AM EST) they shot the first beam through the 27 kilometer long Large Hadron Collider. And it worked perfectly, no black holes or anything of the sort. Although actual collisions aren’t planned until late October (21st) this is till really exciting. The LHC has been in the works since 1995 when it was approved for construction. I can’t imagine they excitement the people must be feeling over in Geneva. In terms of the possibilities for scientific discovery this right up there with the Moon Landing. One of the main goals of the LHC is to discover the Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson is a hypothetical particle predicted to explain how mass is given to otherwise massless particles. The LHC overall though is an unparalleled opportunity to see what the universe was like moments after the Big Bang.

For further reading and up-to-date reports on the experiments going on I highly recommend the CERN website. They include numerous links to the different experiment stations and press releases dating back to 1993 if you want to get really geeky.