Essentials
theDiagonal is a personal blog by Mike Gerra, skeptic, technologist, psychologist, artist, humanist, collector of grand, eclectic ideas.theDiagonal blog connects the dots across multiple disciplines for inquisitive, objective and critical thinkers, exploring the vertices of big science, disruptive innovation, global sustainability, illuminating literature and leftfield art. It is on this diagonal that creativity thrives, big ideas take flight and reason triumphs.
Tag Archives: CERN
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
What’s Next at the LHC: Parallel Universe?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN made headlines in 2012 with the announcement of a probable discovery of the Higgs Boson. Scientists are collecting and analyzing more data before they declare an outright discovery in 2013. In the meantime, they plan to use the giant machine to examine even more interesting science — at very small and very large scales — in the new year.
From the Guardian:
When it comes to shutting down the most powerful atom smasher ever built, it’s not simply a question of pressing the off switch.
In the French-Swiss countryside on the far side of Geneva, staff at the Cern particle physics laboratory are taking steps to wind down the Large Hadron Collider. After the latest run of experiments ends next month, the huge superconducting magnets that line the LHC’s 27km-long tunnel must be warmed up, slowly and gently, from -271 Celsius to room temperature. Only then can engineers descend into the tunnel to begin their work.
...read moreWednesday, July 11, 2012
Higgs?
A week ago, on July 4, 2012 researchers at CERN told the world that they had found evidence of a new fundamental particle — the so-called Higgs boson, or something closely similar. If further particle collisions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider uphold this finding over the coming years, this will rank as significant a discovery as that of the proton or the electro-magnetic force. While practical application of this discovery, in our lifetimes at least, is likely to be scant, it undeniably furthers our quest to understand the underlying mechanism of our existence.
So where might this discovery lead next?
From the New Scientist:
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Faster Than Light Travel
The world of particle physics is agog with recent news of an experiment that shows a very unexpected result – sub-atomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. If verified and independently replicated the results would violate one of the universe’s fundamental properties described by Einstein in the Special Theory of Relativity. The speed of light — 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) — has long been considered an absolute cosmic speed limit.
Stranger still, over the last couple of days news of this anomalous result has even been broadcast on many cable news shows.
...read moreMonday, August 8, 2011
Tim Berners-Lee’s “Baby” Hits 20 – Happy Birthday World Wide Web
In early 1990 at CERN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau published a formal proposal to build a “Hypertext project” called “WorldWideWeb” as a “web” of “hypertext documents” to be viewed by “browsers”.
Following development work the pair introduced the proposal to a wider audience in December, and on August 6, 1991, 20 years ago, the World Wide Web officially opened for business on the internet. On that day Berners-Lee posted the first web page — a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.
...read moreMonday, July 25, 2011
Tour de France and the Higgs Particle
Two exciting races tracked through Grenoble, France this passed week. First, the Tour de France held one of the definitive stages of the 2011 race in Grenoble, the individual time trial. Second, Grenoble hosted the European Physical Society conference on High-Energy Physics. Fans of professional cycling and high energy physics would not be disappointed.
In cycling, Cadel Evans set a blistering pace in his solo effort on stage 20 to ensure the Yellow Jersey and an overall win in this year’s Tour.
...read more
Posted in BigBang
Tagged Cadel Evans, CERN, Fermilab, Higgs, LHC, particle physics, Tour de France
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Friday, March 13, 2009
CERN celebrates 20th anniversary of World Wide Web
theDiagonal doesn’t normally post “newsy” items. So, we are making an exception in this case for two reasons: first, the “web” wasn’t around in 1989 so we wouldn’t have been able to post a news release on our blog announcing its birth; second, in 1989 Tim Berners-Lee’s then manager waved off his proposal with a “Vague, but exciting” annotation, so without the benefit of the hindsight we now have and lacking in foresight that we so desire, we may just have dismissed it. The rest, as they say “is history”.
From Interactions.org:
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The LHC Begins Its Search for the “God Particle
From Discover:
The most astonishing thing about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the ring-shaped particle accelerator that revved up for the first time on September 10 in a tunnel near Geneva, is that it ever got built. Twenty-six nations pitched in more than $8 billion to fund the project. Then CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research—enlisted the help of 5,000 scientists and engineers to construct a machine of unprecedented size, complexity, and ambition.
...read more