Will it be the Big Bang or the information of the experiment that will reach the scientific data ports soonest?
Prairy

DO WE NEED TO REPRODUCE THE BIG BANG???

Published on 18 September 2007

European Scientists prepare to test the limits of Physics

European Scientists are gearing up for a series of experiments that will probe deeper into the nature of matter than ever before. At the end of August the Scientific Information Port (PIC), a centre for technology based at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) began work on the first stage of the European project Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The aim of the project is to study the origins of matter by reproducing conditions similar to those produced during the Big Bang. The PIC, as well as other computational centres around the world, began receiving data concerning cosmic rays collected using Atlas, a large ''general purpose'' particle detector. This information is to be used to test the system before the LHC starts up in the spring of 2008.

This exercise was the first time that data from the LHC was sent in real time to centres outside of CERN and information regarding ten million events (particle collisions) has been stored. Once the data has been processed it will be used to test the acquisition, distribution and detection systems and to refine the calibration parameters of the detector before it begins operation in April 2008. The data originates from experiments on particle acceleration and collision.

The LHC project will be undertaken by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), located near Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC is expected to become the world's largest particle accelerator and is contained in a 27 kilometre circumference underground tunnel straddling the border between France and Switzerland. Within the tunnel two pipes are enclosed with superconducting magnets, cooled by liquid helium. Each pipe contains a proton beam which travel in opposite directions around the ring. The proton beams will be accelerated at velocities close to the speed of light and made to collide using additional magnets.

The collision creates conditions of extremely high density energy, similar to those of the first moments of our universe, the Big Bang. In this way, scientists can study the origin of matter and test the validity of the Standard Model of particle physics, which is used to explain the behaviour of elemental particles.

When high energy particles collide, enormous amounts of data are produced which are detected by four pieces of apparatus. The detectors then send the information to a number of computational centres located across the world where the data is stored and processed. The PIC is one such place where UAB, the Centre for Energy, Environmental and technological Research (CIEMAT), the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Institute of High Energy Physics (IFAE) all participate.

From; ec.europa.eu.research

EUROPEAN SCIENTISTS=The Stupidity And Qupidity Of FlatEarthers': SomeThings Should Not Be Known By Those Not In The Full Possession Of Logic And Reasoning Of Spiritual Purpose=Intellectual Masterbators' Lost In The Reflection Of Their Own Imagined Importance...

They Are Not Ready To Know Or Hold Nothing....The World Will Be Cleaning Them Up Off The Lab Floor For Sometime To Come....The GhostChild.

Hi GC,

I'm still concerned in regards to these projects. CERN in Europe isn't the only super collider gearing up for "big bang" type experiments.

Fermilab on this continent, not wanting to be outdone by CERN, already has plans for expanding their super colliding playing field underground.
Prairy
---------------------------------
Kane County Illinois

9/16/2007

Tunnel vision


By PAUL DAILING - pdailing@kcchronicle.com
Comments (No comments posted.)
BATAVIA – Momentarily blinded by the sun after emerging from the 350-foot shaft into the earth’s crust where scientists blast a stream of high-energy particles to Minnesota, Roger Vernon of Aurora turned to peer at the access building.

“I can see something like this very easily in a residential neighborhood,” he said.

Vernon, who represents Aurora’s Big Woods/Marmion neighborhood, was one of the local representatives who toured Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s underground Neutrinos at the Main Injector facility, NuMI for short.

The purpose wasn’t sightseeing, nor was it learning how neutrinos change after being blasted through the earth from Batavia to a lab in northern Minnesota.

The tourists were members of the International Linear Collider Citizens’ Task Force, a group of local officials and lab neighbors trying to see whether a Fermilab tunnel under their homes would work.

“We’re here to ask the same questions any citizen would ask,” member Brett Larson said.

Just a little science

Unlike NuMI, which is built entirely on – or rather, under – Fermilab’s grounds, the proposed International Linear Collider will be a 20-mile tunnel jutting west under roads, homes, workplaces, and farmland.

Fermilab still is unsure of the legal procedure for buying land underground, said Communications Director Judy Jackson.

“This is a unique project,” she said. “So far, it’s a hypothetical project.”

OK, but why is this happening? It’s time for a little science.

Fermilab is in the top spot in the world for particle physics for one main reason – it has the world’s highest-energy particle collider.

Fermilab’s Tevatron collider is due to be knocked from the top spot next year when a bigger, faster and therefore better collider is scheduled to be complete in Switzerland.

This will make the Tevatron, which went online in 1983, obsolete.

So to keep its place in the competitive world of particle physics, Fermilab is one of the contenders vying to become the home of the proposed International Linear Collider, a multibillion-dollar, international project.

Now, there’s one big difference between the ILC and the other two projects.

The Tevatron and the proposed collider in Switzerland – it’s called the Large Hadron Collider at CERN – are both circular colliders. They spin protons and antiprotons around and around giant rings so that they can study them.

However, the ILC will shoot electrons, which can’t handle curves. That means that the ILC has to be a straight line.

The tour

After touring the network of tunnels lined with “shotcrete” – concrete shot from a cannon onto the rock walls – and areas where the dolomite of the earth was simply left as the walls, group members had few questions about the stability. Some questioned the noise.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has shown the physics world what can happen when you dig and blast tunnels under homes.

“It can rattle the windows, we know that for a fact, but the people had a perception that the whole house was shaking,” Fermilab spokesman Kurt Riesselmann said.

When NuMI was dug, neighbors only complained about the noise during the night, said physicist Dixon Bogert. During the day, Kirk Road traffic drowned out the digging, he said. Vernon, a neighbor himself, said the noise never bothered him.

But it can.

“If you’re fast asleep in the middle of the night or you’re going there, you’re going to pick [the sound] up pretty well,” said Chris Laughton, the engineer who helped dig NuMI.

However, the drills that would be used on the ILC can dig more than 100 meters a day, he said.

That means that any one homeowner would not be bothered for more than a few days as the tunnel goes west.

From; http://www.kcchronicle.com/articles/2007/0...97409351555.txt

While posting that article, my browser was just knocked out!

Now, the page just jumped while typing this one. Anyone else having problems here?

Nothing new I suppose, same old, same old....
Prairy

Science | 11.11.2007
Scientists to Build Giant Particle Accelerator in Germany

Envoys from Italy, India and 13 other nations signed a communique this week confirming the go-ahead for a giant particle accelerator that will yield scientists new data about the Big Bang.

Code-named FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research), the device will be built at Darmstadt, south of the city of Frankfurt, and will be one of the biggest new science projects in Germany of the coming decade.

The German Society for Heavy Ion Research (GSI), a premier nuclear physics lab concentrating on heavy ions, is to oversee the 1.2 billion euro ($1.7 billion) device, which will begin in 2013 to use beams of ions and anti-protons to help physicists discover how matter came into being.

An ion is an electrically charged atom, and GSI defines a heavy one as anything heavier than helium.

"This laboratory will be recreating a mini-version of the Big Bang," said Horst Stöcker, the GSI scientific director, referring to the primal explosion 14 billion years ago with which the existence of the universe began.

Recreating the start of the universe -- sort of
"The substance we'll be making resembles that in the first microseconds of the Big Bang, when it was a million times hotter than at the center of the sun. We're talking a million times 10 million degrees Celsius."

The 3,000 scientists to work at FAIR will find out how the different chemical elements developed.

Stöcker said he cannot guess what the answers will be, but added that FAIR will be Darmstadt's key laboratory for the next 25 years.

Past GSI achievements include discovering short-lived, new heavy elements such as element 108, hassium, and element 110, darmstadtium, which is named after the city of Darmstadt.

Scientists believe that all the elements heavier than iron arose from supernovae, or explosions of stars, and will also reconstruct these events in FAIR, which is a double ring with a circumference of 1,100 meters (3,609 feet).

Lightspeed crashes planned in Darmstadt

An existing particle accelerator at GSI will be re-used as a kind of first stage in the new facility, which will accelerate particles to 99 percent of the speed of light, then crash them into atomic nuclei.

Unlike another famous accelerator, at CERN near Geneva in Switzerland, FAIR's specialty will not be the speed of the particles, but rather the intensity of the beam.

"With CERN, it's like getting a look at a new country at high speed from the highway," spokesman Ingo Peter said. "With FAIR, it will be like 1,000 four-wheel-drives swarming over it off-road.

"We have different scientific purposes. CERN scientists can tell you how the far side looks. We'll be able to tell you about the fine detail of this new country: matter."

Germany is to pay 75 percent of the costs of FAIR, with the other 14 nations, also including Spain, Britain, Poland, China and Russia, contributing the rest.

DW staff (nda)

From;
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2881843,00.html

March 14th, 2008 a COMPLAINT FOR TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER, PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION, AND PERMANENT INJUNCTION was filed against Large Hadron Colliders at the UN.
________________________________________________________________
Luis Sancho





PO Box 411


Honomu, HI 96728




808-964-5535




pro se






















































IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT









DISTRICT OF HAWAII









--oo0oo--








LUIS SANCHO, WALTER L. WAGNER, ) Civil No. ____________




)




Plaintiffs ) COMPLAINT FOR TEMPORARY




) RESTRAINING ORDER,




vs. ) PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION,




) AND PERMANENTINJUNCTION




US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, )




FERMILAB, CENTER FOR NUCLEAR )




ENERGY RESEARCH (CERN), )




NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, )




DOE ENTITIES 1-100, )




)




Defendants )




________________________________)



















COMPLAINT FOR TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER, PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION, AND PERMANENT INJUNCTION











COME NOW Plaintiffs LUIS SANCHO and WALTER L. WAGNER, and for

causes of action allege as follows:


I



JURISDICTIONAL ALLEGATIONS









1. At all times herein mentioned plaintiff Luis Sancho is a citizen of

Spain, with residence in the United States.



2. At all times herein mentioned plaintiff Walter L. Wagner is a citizen of

the State of Hawaii.



3. At all times herein mentioned defendant United States Department of

Energy [hereinafter DOE] is a federal agency with operations in the State of Hawaii.



4. At all times herein mentioned defendant Fermilab is a federal

laboratory with operations in Chicago, Illinois and Geneva, Switzerland at the LHC.



5. At all times herein mentioned defendant National Science

Foundation [hereinafter NSF] is a federally chartered agency for distributing federal

funds to recipients, including defendants herein.



6. At all times herein mentioned defendant Center for Nuclear Energy

Research [hereinafter CERN] is a European agency with operations in Switzerland

and France.



7. Plaintiffs are presently unaware of the names or locations of Doe

Defendants 1-100.





II



SUBSTANTIVE ALLEGATIONS Re LHC









8. Defendants DOE, Fermilab, NSF and CERN, and Does 1-100 have

engaged in a partnership relationship to construct a machine in and around

Geneva Switzerland known as the Large Hadron Collider [hereinafter LHC]. The

LHC machine is presently under construction and nearing completion, with

completion anticipated in April, 2008.



9. Defendants intend to test the LHC machine upon completion, with

testing to commence within days of completion.



10. The purpose of the LHC machine is to create novel conditions of

matter never previously existent on earth, so that defendants may seek to

investigate the properties of this novel condition of matter for purposes of

fundamental physics research.



11. The machine is scheduled to operate by colliding high-energy beams

of protons [Hydrogen nuclei] or Lead nuclei into each other. The resultant collision

of the two atoms traveling in opposite direction and then colliding head-on is

designed to release a large amount of energy, and fracture the atoms into more

fundamental particles, as well as create novel particles from the abundance of

energy present.



12. Various competing theories of physics predict various outcomes

from these collisions, with no agreement amongst physicists as to what the

outcome will be.



13. In addition to fracturing the atoms into smaller, more fundamental

particles, some of the competing theories predict that the outcome will be a

rearrangement of the more fundamental particles, or creation de novo from the

abundance of energy present, or both, into novel forms, which include the following

descriptive particles from those theories:



a) Strangelets: Under this theory, the original constituents of the atom

[“up” quarks and “down” quarks] will recombine with newly created “strange” quarks

to form a new, more stable form of matter called a “strangelet”. Its enhanced

stability compared to normal matter would allow it to fuse with normal matter,

converting the normal matter into an even larger strangelet. Repeated fusions

would result in a runaway fusion reaction, eventually converting all of Earth into a

single large “strangelet” of huge size.



Micro Black Holes: Under this theory, the compression of the two

atoms colliding together at nearly light speed will cause an irreversible implosion,

forming a miniature version of a giant black hole, the remnant of a collapsed star.

Like its much larger cousin, a miniature black hole would not emit light, and any

matter coming into contact with it would fall into it and never be able to escape.

Eventually, all of earth would fall into such growing micro-black-hole, converting

earth into a medium-sized black hole, around which would continue to orbit the

moon, satellites, the ISS, etc.

c) Magnetic Monopoles: Under this theory, the high energy of the

collision would be converted into two massive particles known as north and south

magnetic monopoles. Each would carry a fundamental unit of magnetic charge.

Such particle might have the ability to catalyze the decay of protons and atoms,

causing them to convert into other types of matter in a runaway reaction.



14. The above theories, and other theories showing potential adverse

consequences, have been well articulated in various scientific publications. No

absolute refutation of the adverse scenarios that have been described has yet

been articulated, though efforts have been made, and it has been suggested by

defendants that the ‘risk’ of the adverse scenarios is small. Those efforts were

perfunctory “safety reviews” which purported to prove the falsity of the adverse

scenarios by indirect means. However, fundamental flaws were existent in

those “safety reviews” and pointed out to defendants by plaintiffs. As a result,

another “safety review” is currently underway by the defendants. The current safety

review is known as the LHC Safety Assessment Group [LSAG] Safety Review. It

was initially scheduled for completion by January 1, 2008, but defendants have

delayed its release, and it has not yet been released to the public for review by the

science community at large, as promised [see Exhibit “A” of affidavit of Walter L.

Wagner].



15. Plaintiffs and their associates are experts in physics and other fields

of science, technology and ethics who are capable of reviewing and analyzing such

safety reviews for flaws or errors. Plaintiffs and some of their associates have filed

in support of this complaint various affidavits detailing some of the safety flaws and

ethical flaws in safety review currently evidenced. Plaintiffs and their associates

require a minimum of four to six months time to review the LSAG Safety Review, as

well as the relevant scientific literature, in order to determine whether defendants’

most recent pending LSAG Safety Review is once again fundamentally flawed, or

satisfactory in addressing the safety issues in accordance with generally accepted

standards in science, technology and industry.


cont......

III









NEPA VIOLATIONS, ETC.







16. Defendants are obligated under the National Environmental Policy Act [hereinafter NEPA] to include either an "Environmental Assessment" [EA] if there is a "finding of no significant impact" [FONSI], or a full "Environmental Impact Statement" [EIS] if there is no FONSI, and to do so in a timely manner so impacted parties have a meaningful opportunity to respond.







17. NEPA is essentially a procedural statute, and a federal agency's actions under NEPA are generally reviewed to determine if the agency observed the appropriate procedural requirements. LaFlamme v. F.E.R.C., 852 F.2d 389, 399 (9th Cir. 1988) (citing 5 U.S.C. S 706(2)(D)). Substantive NEPA decisions by the agency are reviewed under the arbitrary and capricious standard. See Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Council, 490 U.S. 360, 376-377 (1989) (whether the agency needs to conduct an EIS is reviewed under arbitrary and capricious standard). Under the arbitrary and capricious standard, courts will overturn an agency's decision if the agency committed a "clear error of judgment." California Trout v. Schaefer, 58 F.3d 469, 473 (9th Cir. 1995).







18. Defendants failed to comply with NEPA because it did not give, let alone timely give, the plaintiffs or other members of the public either: (1) a FONSI for the LHC project; (2) an EIS for the LHC project, (3) a FONSI EA for the LHC project, or (4) the pending LSAG Safety Review, which if considered to be either a FONSI EA or an EIS, has not been timely prepared in advance of anticipated start-up of LHC operations so as to give the plaintiffs meaningful opportunity to respond, and seek court intervention if necessary.







19. NEPA procedures are set forth in the Council on Environmental Quality ("CEQ") regulations. These procedures are designed to "[e]ncourage and facilitate public involvement" in projects which affect the environment. 40 C.F.R.S 1500.2(d) The procedures for public notice are set forth in 40 C.F.R. S 1506.6 which provides in pertinent part that:







Agencies shall:







(a) Make diligent efforts to involve the public in preparing and implementing their NEPA procedures.







( Provide public notice of NEPA related hearings, public meetings and the availability of environmental documents so as to inform those persons and agencies who may be interested or affected.







(1) In all cases the agency shall mail notice to those who have requested it . . . .







(2) In the case of an action with effects of national concern notice shall include publication in the Federal Register and notice by mail to national organizations reasonably expected to be interested in the matter . . . .







(3) In the case of an action with effects primarily of local concern, the notice may include:







(i) Notice to State and area-wide clearinghouses . . . .







***







(iv) Publication in local newspapers . . . .







(v) Notice through other local media.







(vi) Notice to potentially interested community organizations . . . .







(vii) Publication in newsletters that may be expected to reach potentially interested persons.







(viii) Direct mailing to owners and occupants of nearby or affected property . . . .







[40 C.F.R. S 1506.6.]







20. The defendants’ LHC project contains both national and local components. For matters of national concern, the CEQ regulations mandate notice in the Federal Register and mailed notice to interested national organizations. 40 C.F.R. S 1506.6((2) The defendants failed to provide notice in the Federal Register, and failed to mail notice to interested national organizations including plaintiffs.







21. The CEQ regulations mandate public notice in matters of local concern, though they do not mandate any particular form of notice. 40 C.F.R. S 1506.6( The methods of notice listed in 40 C.F.R. S 1506.6((3) are merely permissive. However, the defendants failed to provide any form of notice, and the late-issued, still-pending LSAG Safety Review is utterly untimely, and does not comport to EIS or FONSI EA requirements.







22. Defendants’ decisions not to prepare an EIS or a FONSI was arbitrary and capricious. Though NEPA does not require an agency to prepare site-specific environmental impact studies for each potential location of adverse impact[1], the purpose of the environmental assessment is to "provide sufficient evidence and analysis for determining whether to prepare an environmental impact statement or a finding of no significant impact." 40 C.F.R. S 1508.9. This purpose has been thwarted by the arbitrary and capricious actions of defendants.







IV







Defendants Fail to Abide by European Council’s Precautionary Principle







23. In addition to defendants failures to adhere to NEPA requirements, detailed supra, defendants have also failed to adhere to the requirements of the European Council’s Precautionary Principle adopted in support of the World Trade Organization [WTO].







24. Additionally, the defendant’s have failed to adhere to the European Commission’s “Science and Society Action Plan”, which states in its Risk Governance section:







"The Commission has also set out its approach to the use of the Precautionary Principle, suggesting guidelines for risk management when faced with scientific uncertainty, and stating general principles always to be applied in risk management."















25. The prime risk is derived from the fact that there is a lack of an ethical governance institution for, and indeed, independent government regulation of, the LHC risk.







V







PRAYER FOR RELIEF







26. There is no question that should defendants inadvertently create a dangerous form of matter such as a micro black hole or a strangelet, or otherwise create unsafe conditions of physics, then the environmental impact would be both local and national in scope, and quite deadly to everyone.







24. Accordingly, defendants are obligated under NEPA, etc., to provide plaintiffs with either an EIS, or a FONSI EA, addressing the safety issues that are and have been known to defendants for several years. Additionally, plaintiffs are to be afforded a reasonable amount of time in which to respond appropriately to either the EIS or FONSI EA, before defendants would be allowed to operate their LHC.







25. Because plaintiffs have been required to spend an inordinate amount of time and resources in defending against defendants’ failures to properly address the issues raised by plaintiffs and others, they should be awarded their costs of preparing for suit, as well as attorney’s fees and litigation costs after filing of suit.







26. WHEREFORE, it is respectfully requested as follows:







a) A temporary restraining order be issued restraining defendants from operating the LHC or further preparing the LHC for operation for four months;







A preliminary injunction enjoining defendants from operating the LHC until after they have completed either a FONSI or EIS, as appropriate, be issued and to last until such time that such FONSI or EIS has been reviewed by plaintiffs or the court and approved for operation;







c) A permanent injunction be issued enjoining defendants from operating the LHC until such time that the LHC can be proven to be reasonably safe within industry standards; and







d) For costs of suit, attorney’s fees, and such other relief as the Court deems just and proper.







DATED: March 14, 2008




















__________________________ __________________________







Luis Sancho Walter L. Wagner













--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] See Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Council, 490 U.S. 360, 373 (1989) ("[I]f an agency is unsure whether a proposed project requires [a] . . . supplemental EIS, federal regulations direct the agency to prepare an environmental assessment on which it may then base its decision"); Oregon Natural Resources Council v. Lyng, 882 F.2d 1417, 1421-22 (9th Cir. 1989) (citing 40 C.F.R. S 1501.4(-©)

More and More scientists from around the Globe want in on the big bang.....for example:

Israeli scientists to smash particles at super speeds

Jun. 6, 2008
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , THE JERUSALEM POST
Working deep underground, in a quest to recreate the wonders of the universe's birth, 40 Israeli scientists, engineers and technicians on board the team of a momentous scientific endeavor in Geneva feel like crew members of Columbus's voyage to the New World.

They are part of an international project known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a massive particle accelerator spanning the border between Switzerland and France. What this gigantic instrument does, in simple terms, is bash together the tiny particles that make up the universe at mind-boggling speeds, so scientists can observe the extreme energies, mini-black holes, and other phenomena that occurred during the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the mother of all explosions, in which all we know was created.

The potential findings "will be more important and have more applications than the first landing on the moon," says Tel Aviv University theoretical physicist Prof. Erez Etzion, who has spent a whole year at the site, joined by Israelis from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, TAU and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, some of whom shuttle back and forth.

"Just as man strives to reach the hottest, coldest and highest places on Earth, we want to reach the smallest particles in the Universe," says Prof. Ehud Duchovni, a particle physicist at the Weizmann Institute.

"And to do so, you have to build the biggest machine in the world. We are going into unchartered territory."

Like Etzion, Duchovni will be there when the "mini-Big Bang" takes place sometime within the next two months, and will continue to work on the resulting data, helping to translate it into new knowledge for mankind. Some 6,000 scientists in 50 other countries are participating, with 100,000 computers all over the world connected to function as a giant supercomputer that will work on the data around the clock.

It will take a decade to decipher all the data, but "much new information will already be available during the first few months," says Etzion.

The project, which cost some $10 billion and took around 14 years to build, is being coordinated by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and is actually the world's largest particle physics laboratory. The LHC has been built in a circular tunnel buried 50 to 175 meters under Switzerland and France, with a circumference of 27 kilometers.

The participating Israeli universities and the Israel Science Foundation are contributing $12 million towards the project.

In the accelerator tunnel, two beams of protons (one of the basic building blocks of atoms) travel at nearly the speed of light, guided in opposite directions by massive magnets (inside a continuous vacuum) and thousands of detectors - each the size of a refrigerator door and many of them built in Israel - will collect the flood of data.

So big and groundbreaking is the project that lawsuits
have been filed against it, alleging everything from a potential "environmental catastrophe" to fears that the world would be sucked into a tiny black hole created by the extreme energy in the accelerator.

The suits were all rejected, and "the particle collision will not cause all of Europe to be sucked into the tunnel," laughs Duchovni.

"It is a very 'green' experiment that is not nuclear and will not produce dangerous waste or have any environmental implications. The electricity will come from French nuclear power plants.

The mini-black holes we hope will be created will be very hot and just evaporate." When Duchovni was in Geneva at the beginning of the project in 1985, he asked the scientists there why they didn't do "something practical instead."

But he quickly realized that the knowledge likely to be obtained about the Universe will surely have a major impact on the world.

"It will work against poverty and illness. As time passes, the basic scientific knowledge will be applied in a wide variety of fields. Already, CT, PET and MRI imaging machines have improved because of information on magnetic forces and radiation. It will help in the development of x-ray technology [capable of scanning] of whole containers at once to fight terrorism and smuggling, for example.

"Today it is hard even to conceive of the practical benefits from this project." "We will discover the basic forces that hold the world together," explains Etzion.

"Just one benefit will be advances in detecting technology, such as the very exact and sensitive ones that have been produced at a special factory on the Weizmann campus."

The two physicists agree that the high-level of Israeli theoretical and practical know-how is greatly appreciated at CERN and is much greater than Israel's proportionate size.

"CERN has ordered parts from our industry and sent experts to visit on a regular basis. Among other things, we excel in soldering tiny parts together," says Etzion.

"We are among the top eight countries along with scientists from Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the US and the UK," asserts Duchovni.

Etzion, who is going to CERN again next week and will be in the control room when the button is pressed, calls the project "the biggest and craziest I know. Crazy, because there is no one boss. Nobody decides, but it works like a Swiss watch. We do teleconferences via Skype on our computers all the time and video-conferences with CERN every few days.

"The people at CERN didn't believe it could function without hierarchy, but because we all have such strong motivation that it should succeed, we all blend well together despite the cultural and language differences. If it fails to produce the data we expect, we will all be blamed together."

There is a small possibility that all their calculations fail and that "nothing will happen," concedes Etzion.

"Maybe the physics are hiding beyond the energies we are searching for. Maybe we have lit a very strong streetlight but the coin is too far away to be seen with it," suggests Etzion, who returned to TAU nine years ago after post-doctoral work at Stanford University, and immediately began to contribute to LHC.

Albert Einstein, some of whose theories are expected to be demonstrated by the LHC, surely would have wanted to be present in the Geneva control room, looking over the scientists' shoulders, Etzion says with a smile. As for religious believers who hope the Big Bang will show that the Universe was a Divine creation, and the atheists who want it to prove the opposite, Etzioni is certain that both sides will be able to produce their own commentary from the same results.

"It will not harm the beliefs either of the religious or of the non-believers."

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1212659672990&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

July 7th, 2008, the UN and the scientific communities and their Governments will ignore the UN injunction and rev up the Large Hadron Collider under Geneva, Switzerland.

http://www.lhcountdown.com/

Prairy