CERN And The Vatican Will Study Origins Of The Universe Together
If you’re among the millions of people who read Dan Brown’s Illuminati-vs.-Catholic Church thriller Angels & Demons, you’ll feel that the idea of the Vatican collaborating with CERN on the Large Hadron Collider project is more than a little unlikely; nonetheless, the Catholic Spirit is reporting that it’s going to happen:
The Geneva-based laboratory would like to invite an astronomer from the Vatican Observatory to collaborate on studies concerning the origin of the universe, said Ugo Amaldi, a professor of medical physics and president of the TERA Foundation, which works closely with CERN in finding ways to apply atomic research in treating cancer.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, “is an international and European (facility), and to have the Vatican Observatory send some or one of its young scientists will be something that is extremely important,” he said.
He made his comments during a Dec. 10 Vatican press conference launching the Italian-language version of “The Heavens Proclaim,” a book about the history of the Vatican and astronomy.
The head of the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Father Jose Funes, said during the book presentation that he hopes Gabriele Gionti, a young Vatican astronomer who will be ordained in June, will be involved in the CERN collaboration…
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Making Massive Progress
The BBC reports:
Researchers working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they are delighted with the progress made since the machine restarted on Friday.
One official said the collider had done more in a few hours than it did in five days of operations last year.
The LHC is being used to smash together beams of protons in a bid to shed light on the nature of the Universe.
Housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the Franco-Swiss border, it is the world’s largest machine.
During the experiment, scientists will search for signs of the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle that is crucial to our current understanding of physics. Although it is predicted to exist, scientists have never found it.
[continues at the BBC]
Nuclear Engineer from CERN lab arrested for Al-Qaeda links
Adam Sage reports for The Times:
Fears that al-Qaeda is planning an attack on the nuclear industry in Europe were renewed yesterday after French secret agents arrested a physicist working at an atomic research centre.
The 32-year-old man, who was detained with his brother, 25, is suspected of providing a list of terrorist targets to North African Islamic radicals. He worked for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, according to French police sources.
Agents were said to have intercepted messages in which the physicist, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, had suggested targets in France.
He is believed to have been in contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian-based terror organisation that joined Osama bin Laden’s network in 2007.
