What is the Large Hadron Collider?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN starts up next Wednesday. I have been meaning to post about this but think this video below gives a better outline than I could. (I’m all in favour of using novel and popular methods to communicate science). The rapper is Katherine McAlpine (known as alpinekat). She has a day job as a science writer.

Large Hadron Rap

LHC gets its own rap song Scientific American news.
Let the Proton Smashing Begin. (The Rap Is Already Written.) New York Times article.

Time Lapse video of ATLAS experiment assembly


See also:
LHC First Beam Photos
CERN Twitter
CERN Podcast – Dr. Brian Cox takes guests around the LHC discussing its construction and what discoveries are expected.
Guardian News and comment on the world’s most ambitious scientific experiment: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva.
Beautiful photographs of the LHC at the Big Picture.
Lecture on the LHC by Robert Orr, John Ellis – European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
Live Webcast of LHC first beam on 10 September.

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12 responses to “What is the Large Hadron Collider?

  1. im kinda looking forward to it and looking for the silver lining 🙂

    http://nodnodwinkwink.blogspot.com/2008/09/cern-and-end-of-world.html

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  2. Thanks for this post!! Very cool site!!! I am a Lisa Randall fan and she always refers to LHC which I am learning more and more about.

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  3. Everybody (in NZ) has probably seen this cartoon, but I found it quite funny, so here is a link LHC

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  4. Really like the cartoon, Nick.
    It reminds me of Gregory Benford’s scifi novel “Cosm” – a great story but based on good scientific theory and speculation.

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  5. Pingback: hadron collider live feed

  6. thenervousnation

    Well we are all still here – I guess the naysayers were wrong after all.

    Scott
    http://www.thenervousnation.net

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  7. Nope, the naysayers will (rightly) point out that there have been no collisions yet.

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  8. This thing is cool. If it doesn’t kill us all I bet we will find some very unexpected things. Things that won’t fit our present theories of physics…

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  9. James, as I understand it this is exactly what physicists are looking for. They have lots of gaps for which they have only been able to infer such things as the Higgs Boson and words like “dark matter” and “dark energy”. Unlike religion, science realises that it doesn’t know everything and is constantly looking for evidence to help close gaps in our understanding of the universe around us. (I add that in because I suspect you’re the same James I’ve seen posting here and that you were perhaps trying to undermine the scientific effort with your last sentence.)

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  10. “I understand it this is exactly what physicists are looking for.”

    They don’t hand out Nobel Prizes to scientists who go around confirming what we already know.

    A scientist is by his/her very nature is an iconoclast.
    🙂

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  11. hi i am interested in finding proof about something i have been doing for a long time that i need to make a monetary collection for. i have been controlling the weather it is now a multi trillion dollar profit loss situation. when i first started controlling it was on a multi thousand profit loss situation AROUND 1953-54. i need your help badly the discrimination is terrible PRESENTLY i am operating on around 15 thousand a year—-please reply soon—–thanks SAG TENNESSEE WINSTON LUKE

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  12. Do you think they got it going and aimed it at the Lab in Central Italy and cause the quake?

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