Large Hadron Collider (LHC) -World's largest science experiment set to commence on Wednesday Sept 10, 2008
CERN or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which is the world's largest particle physics research facility is on the verge of significant scientific breakthrough in particle physics and in the process may shed some light on mysteries that have puzzled world scientific community for many decades... "how the universe works?". CERN is using the world's most advanced and expensive scientific contraption to study the tiniest particles in universe. And this contraption called Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - one of the largest machines ever built by man in Swiss-French border is scheduled to be activated for the first time on Sept 10 2008. This experiment is scheduled to be conducted in a 17 mile tunnel which is buried about 100 meters deep into the ground, where in, the machine will accelerate sub atomic particles to speed of light and then collide them to obtain measurements of its effects.
Through this experiment scientists all around the world hope to better understand the universe and confirm some of the predictions made in the now famous Standard Model of particle physics. According to news reports, a network of around 300 data processing centers in about 50 countries is being used to process the data as soon as the LHC gets activated by sending its first proton up until the particle beams are adjusted and their subsequent collisions. News reports from India also state that the Indian research establishments including the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), and Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP), were involved in providing software and quality-testing services of detectors.
(click on Google for LHC searches)Did you also know that in 1989, a scientist named Tim Lee created distributed information system at CERN and it later evolved into something which we all know as World Wide Web. [Ref: CERN & its WWW].
Some of the good links on related topic of CERN and particle physics
