Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
Some say in supercooled magnets.
Here in Geneva, I had a front row seat to what some feared would be the end of the world by black hole, as the Large Hadron Collider was officially initiated today. Over 1,000 magnets, cooled to near absolute zero (colder than deep space) and arranged along at 27 km track under the Swiss-French border, will steer beams of protons at close to the speed of light, in search of the "God particle."
As it happens, I'm staying in Geneva as the guest of a senior scientist from Cern, who will treat me and my colleague Hugo to a personal tour of the LHC. I'll be especially careful not to spill coffee on anything.
1 comment:
I thought your readers should know your "fire-and-ice" quote comes from Robert Frost--the first two lines anyway.
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