Word: lhc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...initial excitement was short lived: a helium leak only nine days after the LHC was switched on led to an explosion that postponed data collection along with the careers of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows an ocean away—including several at Harvard. In the next few months, researchers plan to test the LHC a second time, in the hope that their years of hard work will finally help unravel some of the mysteries of the universe...
It’s rare for physics to make the news, but somehow the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator run by the CERN laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border, became a bona-fide celebrity. There hasn’t been a tube this famous since the London subway. The collider’s renown is likely because most of the news about it has been bizarre: The Wall Street Journal ran an article about physicists there studying with a comedy coach to help them think creatively. A rap about the collider reached three million views on YouTube. Rumors...
...Hopes for LHC seem a little high, especially given that the collider will probably remain powered down until April due to a recent malfunction. But what hasn’t been in the news is that LHC comes 15 years too late and on the wrong continent. A potentially more powerful collider, the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC), was being constructed in Waxahachie, Texas in the early 1990s, but after much debate, Congress cut its funding in 1993 and had workers dismantle its 14 miles of underground tunneling. Without money, the project quickly collapsed. The official website is still frozen in time...
...LHC will help us probe what the universe was like just moments after the Big Bang. It might explain why more than 95 percent of the stuff out there is actually invisible. And it could lead to technological breakthroughs years from now. Plus, with all the low hanging fruit in physics already picked, scientists need expensive technology to continue delving into the secrets of the universe. Clocks, pendulums, and oil drops just don’t cut it in the 21st century...
...With all the American scientists working at the LHC, it’s true that we can benefit somewhat from the discoveries made at CERN without having to foot the bill. But we risk losing our leadership role in science and technology if we continue to let similar landmark projects be completed elsewhere. As President Clinton wrote in 1993 in a vain attempt to stop the cancellation of SSC, “the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science - a position unquestioned for generations.” In the time since then, we have also...