Geneva atom smasher sets record

       Geneva: The world's largest atom smasher set a record for high-energy collisions on Wenesday by crashing proton beams into each other at three times more force than ever before.

     In a milestone in the $10 billion (Dh36.7 billion) Large Hadron Collider's ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN, collided the beams and took measurements at a combined energy level of seven trillion electron volts.

       The collisions herald a new era for researchers working on the machine in a tunnel below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

      "That's it! They've had a collision," said Oliver Buchmueller from Imperial College in London as people closely watched monitors.

       In a control room, scientists erupted with applause when the first successful collisions were confirmed. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links to witness the new record, which surpasses the 2.36 TeV CERN recorded last year.

        The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter.

Yesterday's initial attempts at collisions were unsuccessful because problems developed with the beams, said scientists working on the massive machine. That meant that the protons had to be "dumped" from the collider and new beams had to be injected.

      The atmosphere at CERN was tense considering the collider's launch with great fanfare on September 10, 2008. Nine days later, the project was sidetracked when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to the massive magnets and other parts of the collider some 100 metres below the ground.

      It cost $40 million to repair and improve the machine. Since its restart in November 2009, the collider has performed almost flawlessly and given scientists valuable data.Bivek Sharma, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, said the images of the crashed proton beams were beautiful.

        "It's taken us 25 years to build," he said. "This is what it's for. Finally the baby is delivered. Now it has to grow."

     Experiments are collecting their first physics data — historic moment here!" a scientist tweeted on CERN's official Twitter account.

Source:gulfnews