http://www.lhc-live.com/
Seriously though, I think this is a great project, large international projects like this always restore some of the faith I have in mankind, as I believe our ability to colloborate and work together is definitely the future.
So what does the LHC Actually do?
effectively it uses a 27-od kilometer long tube that is surrounded by electro-magnets that accelerate sub-atomic particles to 99.9999999% of the speed of light in opposite directions and then slam them into each other.
(it works like the rail gun from quake excepted bigger and in a loop)
Why?
By slamming the particles into each other it should break them down into the parts that make them up _hopefully_ recreating conditions that existed nano seconds after the big bang.
What will we find / will happen?
Well the honest answer is we dont know but the hope is that we may be able to discover the Higgs Boson, also nicknamed the "God Particle"
this hopefully would provide the answer as to what causes mass,
We could also discover additional previously unknown dimensions of space - time (- this could be real handy for space travel and other bits and pieces)
Could it actually cause a black hole?
Absolutely. could it cause a black hole that poses a danger to earth and the solar system and everything? well yes, but its not very likely.
When is the _real_ stuff happening? (eg the smashing and bashing) in about 4 weeks to a months time.
What will this give us?
Well the CERN project gave us the World - Wide - Web (not the internet) as a major part of it was created to share information between scientists, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee
So its already (arguably) better the grand total of mankind.
What else?
the applications for the results of the experiment could be endless, or could be not much at all, noone knows till we get some results and experiments done.
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