Big Celebration to Kick Off CERN
Posted on: Wednesday, 22 October 2008, 08:45 CDT
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) officially celebrated its experiment to discover the origins of the universe.
It was a large inauguration, despite a technical hitch last month that shut it down within days of starting.
Taking particular pride was Robert Aymar, director general of CERN.
"When CERN chooses to be audacious, amazing things can happen," Aymar told government ministers, scientists and diplomats gathered for the event.
The CERN experiment will investigate the building blocks of matter to understand what makes the universe tick.
"The greatest philosophers, the greatest mystics, the greatest poets have never ceased meditating on these mysteries -- the mystery of matter and the mystery of the creation of the universe," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said.
"These two intertwined questions have never stopped fascinating humanity," he told the inauguration ceremony.
German Research Minister Annette Schavan proclaimed the inauguration of the ailing machine a great day for international science.
The ceremony was aimed at thanking the governments of CERN's 20 European member states and six collaborating nations from Russia to the United States for funding the $9 billion machine.
The atom smasher is called the Large Hadron Collider. It’s the result of a project that began two decades ago.
The purpose is to smash protons from hydrogen atoms together at high energy and record what particles come off the collisions.
It should give scientists a better idea of the makeup of the smallest components of everything in the universe, including the Earth and the human beings on it.
Aymar conceded there was great disappointment the collider had been sidelined by an electrical problem within days of its startup in September.
CERN has blamed the shutdown on the failure on a single, badly soldered electrical connection.
The experiment, which will run for 10-15 years, will not resume until spring 2009.
The collider will send beams of sub-atomic particles around the tunnel to smash into each other at close to the speed of light. These collisions will explode in a burst of intensely hot energy and of new and previously unseen particles.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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