CERN and the LHC

The long awaited Large Hadron Collider is almost ready for it's first proton beam. I think that all the scientists at CERN are about to reveal some really cool stuff in the next couple of years. They will be firing up the LHC sometime in the next couple of weeks and will begin their quest to answer some long lived questions.

LHC experiments will address questions such as what gives matter its mass, what the invisible 96% of the Universe is made of, why nature prefers matter to antimatter and how matter evolved from the first instants of the Universe’s existence. - CERN, LHC Milestones

They are going to start off with very low energies, and will move to full 'Luminosity' (ie. the intensity of the beam in terms of number of proton-proton collisions) sometime next year. This is when things will get cool and they'll start understanding matter and (most importantly) anti-matter. They won't get answers immediately, as it will take time to understand how to read all the data that they recieve and calibrate the machine to it's optimal abilities, but still... This is a pretty cool time to be a scientist I'd think. If you are at all interested in this, I encourage you to check out this post (thanks Scott) and be sure to read the first post if nothing more.

Back in the day, I used to blog a lot about quantum physics with a main focus in how it related to computers (ie. quantum computing). Unfortunately, I've since gotten out of it for no good reason. At the time that stuff amazed me and had me reading and researching about it all the time. It goes without saying that I was rejuvenated today by all the content on CERN's website. There is tons of data on their site and it could really consume a lot of your time... just ask me. :)