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…
Coast to Coast’s Art Bell In Conversation With Michio Kaku
Art Bell was joined for the entire program by one of his favorite guests, theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, for a discussion on a variety of science-related topics.
Kaku provided an update on the problem-plagued Large Hadron Collider (LHC), while quashing a theory that suggested the giant particle accelerator was being sabotaged from the future…
Large Hadron Collider Sets World Record
Betsy Mason reports for Wired News:
CERN announced early Monday that the Large Hadron Collider has become the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. The LHC pushed protons to 1.18 TeV (trillion electron volts), surpassing the previous record of 0.98 TeV held by Fermilab’s Tevatron.
The LHC had a rough start: It suffered a mechanical failure just a week after it fired up for the first time in September 2008. Now, 10 days after it turned on again, scientists are celebrating with their fingers crossed that the machine is safely on its way to the physics experiments they plan to begin next year when the LHC has reached its target energy of 7 TeV.
“We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is going,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer…
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]
