The news looks good for those who fear that recreating the Big Bang using the CERN Hadron collider will blast a black hole in the fabric of space-time and swallow first Switzerland and France, then the rest of the earth. As you may recall, on September 10 scientists flipped the switch on the machine. A few days later, they had to turn it off.
You see, for the machine to work properly, they need to cool the tunnel where the collisions will take place to temperatures near absolute zero. If I recall correctly from college chemistry, absolute zero means something close to minus 273 degrees centigrade (or minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s much colder than that pewter mug you keep in the freezer. The one your tongue got stuck to during the last Super Bowl and you thought they would have to amputate, remember?
On September 19, scientists at CERN turned off the collider because it had a problem with the cooling system. The original plan was to observe the first real collisions by December. Now, that may not happen until January.
We can all rest easy and celebrate the holidays.
Update (September 26, 2008) Scientists at the CERN Hadron collider have identified the faulty cooling unit (pictured below) and called for a repairman. The unit is still under warranty.
An earlier post on the Hadron collider and the end of the world is here.
Photo: defrost, ninemileskid blog; Sources: Mark Henderson, “Large Hadron Collider must hibernate after wrong sort of big bang,” The Times (Sept. 24, 2008) and “Le nouvel accélérateur de particules du CERN déjà en panne,” Le monde (Sept. 23, 2008)
Gonzalo Barr :: The End of of the World, Delayed a Second Time | 26-Jan-09 at 10:35 am | Permalink
[…] The good news is that when scientists threw the switch, back in September, there was a problem with one of the cooling units and they had to turn it off again. Instead of the machine coming on line in December 2008, oblivion was postponed until January 2009, which is when they estimated they could get a repairman to come fix it. (My previous posts on the travails of the CERN Hadron collider are here and here). […]