Daily Tomorrow-An Eco-blog about green living, health and the environment

A New Wonder of the World

by admin on May 18th, 2007

Swiss scientists have created an almost unimaginably massive instrument, the 17-mile Large Hadron Collider, designed to create the same kinds of subatomic particles generated by the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. And if you think that’s ambitious, just look at the real estate:

[T]his cavern almost measureless to the eye, stuffed as it is with an Eiffel Tower’s worth of metal, eight-story wheels of gold fan-shape boxes, thousands of miles of wire and fat ductlike coils, echoes with the shriek of power tools, the whine of pumps and cranes, beeps and clanks from wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers and the occasional falling bolt.

The device will become operational next Summer–and if it performs as expected, the data it generates will change physics forever.

Read more:

• A Giant Takes on Physics’ Biggest Questions (The New York Times)

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POSTED IN: Technology