Faith In God Releives Pain: UK Scientists

A team at Oxford University has based its findings on an experiment in which 12 Roman Catholics and 12 atheists were "tortured" with electric shocks as they studied two paintings - Virgin Mary and Leonardo da Vinci's Lady With An Ermine.

The subjects spent half-an-hour inside an MRI scanner, receiving a series of 20 electric shocks in four sessions and each time they had to rate how much it hurt on a scale of 0 to 100 as they looked at the paintings.

The researchers hoped that the face of the Virgin Mary would induce a religious state of mind in the believers, while da Vinci's painting was chosen because it did not look dissimilar and would be calming.

The scientists found that the Catholics seemed to be able to block out much of the pain. ...more 

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Chinese astronaut walks in space

China astronaut's space walk A Chinese astronaut has become the first in his country's history to take a walk in space. In an operation broadcast live on national TV, fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang emerged from the capsule orbiting the Earth to wave a Chinese flag. Mr Zhai, 42, stayed outside the capsule for 15 minutes while his two fellow astronauts stayed in the spacecraft. The exercise is seen as key to China's ambition to build an orbiting station in the next few years. Mr Zhai began the manoeuvre just after 1630 Beijing Time (0830 GMT) on Saturday, and completed it about 15 minutes later. more

New Protein Encyclopedia covers 20,325 human proteins in 57000 pages

New Protein Encyclopedia Looks At Life As It Is Organized In Body, At Molecular Level

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2008) — 

---

See also:

Plants & Animals

• Molecular Biology
• Cell Biology
• Biotechnology
• Genetics
• Biology
• Biochemistry Research

Reference

• Heat shock protein
• Antifreeze protein
• Protein folding
• Denaturation (biochemistry)

Professor Amos Bairoch, head of the SIB's Swiss-Prot group said: "If human DNA is the script of life, proteins are its actors, its living embodiment."

He added that the human genome-sequencing project produced a dictionary. This new encyclopaedia takes one major step further by looking at life as it is really organised in our body at the molecular level. The results will speed up the scientific work which aims to improve our quality of life. Particularly when it comes to understanding what life is, and how we can combat genetic-based diseases.

While proteins are the essence of life, when they become defective they can cause much suffering and often early death. Man's knowledge of proteins such as insulin and haemoglobins is crucial to combating diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and haemophilia.

Professor Bairoch said, "The general public would understand some of the entries in our protein encyclopaedia. Insulin, for instance, is a small protein that controls glucose levels in our blood. The performance-booster EPO is the protein used illegally by some cyclists. In the human body it takes many forms. But we detect its use in sport because competitors use a manufactured form which is not natural."

The new protein encyclopaedia, which will evolve further as our knowledge is refined, now informs a major part of the work of thousands of health researchers around the word. The data covers 20,325 human proteins. 

The breakthrough can be seen as one of the 21st century's major life science outcomes. It can help improve our chances of defeating a variety of diseases, by enabling researchers to model the interaction between individual patients, diseases and drugs.

Progress on the Human Protein Initiative (HPI) project has been rapid. Ten years ago, we had good data on less than 1000 proteins. Two years ago, we had good entries for 15,000, now the collection is complete. But one of the remaining challenges, though, is still to complete the same encyclopaedia of proteins for other animals.

This new protein encyclopaedia is published online and available for free to users. In printed form, it would correspond to 57 volumes of about 1,000 pages each.

Read it all 

Time Eating Grasshopper Clock -- Chronophage : New Way to see time

 Cambridge clock click here for video and story

The gold-plated timepiece, which is four feet across, was officially unveiled at Corpus Christi College last night by Stephen Hawking, the city's world-famous maths professor.

As the News has reported, the mechanical clock has been designed and paid for by Dr John Taylor, an honorary fellow at the college, and it has pride of place on the college's new library, which is also funded by him.

The clock is powered by a pendulum, driven by a mechanism in the shape of a giant grasshopper.
The grasshopper was sculpted by Cambridge-based artist Matthew Lane Sanderson, and the whole timepiece was put together by Huxley Bertram Engineering at Cottenham.

It has no hands or digital numerals. Instead there is a series of slits cut into the face, and blue LED lights are arranged behind the slits, which run round rapidly in concentric circles and pause at the correct hour, minute, and second. Its massive round face was engineered from a single sheet of stainless steel, and gold-plated.

Dr Taylor told the News: "It is my way of giving something back to my old college and to Cambridge - and I expect the clock will last for 200 years."

Helped by a carer, Prof Hawking pressed a button to reveal it to a waiting crowd of onlookers and college staff, headed by the President of Corpus Christi, Prof Christopher Andrew.

The inauguration was followed by a lecture by former Astronomer Royal Sir Arnold Wolfendale.

Unveiling the clock, Prof Hawking said: "I have been particularly concerned with time. Why does time go forward? Does time have a beginning and an end? Can one go sideways in time? Some of the answers are given in my book, A Brief History of Time.

"One of the challenges has been to measure the passage of time accurately. Dr John Taylor's invention is a true mechanical spring-driven clock, but it also uses modern technology, high-precision engineering, and high-quality craftsmanship to considerable effect."
Link

The Corpus Clock From the Telegraph.co.uk

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:45AM BST 20 Sep 2008

The Corpus Clock, a true mechanical mechanism, which is wound up by an electric motor, has no hands Photo: PA
The £1 million Corpus Clock has been invented and designed by Dr John Taylor for Corpus Christi College Cambridge for the exterior of the college's new library building.
It has no hands but displays the time on its four-foot wide face by using a series of lights denoting hours minutes and seconds.
Dr Taylor, a former student at Corpus Christi and now an inventor and horologist, created it as a tribute to John Harrison, the pioneer of longitude, who took 36 years to build one clock and he was still calibrating it when he died at his home in London on March 24, 1776, his 83rd birthday....>more

From The Times
September 19, 2008
Cambridge reveals the time-eater, Chronophage, devourer of hours

Lucy Bannerman

Unlike conventional timepieces, the extraordinary “Chronophage”,  does not use hands or digital numerals to show the time.

Instead, it relies on a mechanical monster – part demonic grasshopper, part locust – that rocks back and forth along a golden disc, edged like a lizard’s spine. By a complex feat of engineering, its movement triggers blue flashing lights that dart across the clockface, letting students know if they are late for a lecture.

About two metres in diameter, the clock is made from discs of stainless steel and plated with 24-carat gold. With each slackening of the monster’s jaw, and release of its claws, another second is devoured. Each new hour is signalled by the rattle of a chain on an unseen coffin to remind passers-by of their mortality.

The timepiece is completely accurate only every five minutes. The rest of the time, the pendulum pauses then corrects itself as if by magic. The blue lights play optical illusions on the eye, whirring around the disc one second, then appearing to freeze the next. The effect is hypnotic.

The clock is the brainchild of John Taylor, an inventor who made his fortune developing the kettle thermostat after graduating from Corpus Christi in the 1950s. A long-time admirer of Harrison, Dr Taylor, 72, said that he wanted to make a clock that would revolutionise the art of timekeeping. So he took the so-called “grasshopper escapement”, a tiny device invented by Harrison hidden away inside 18th-century clocks, and turned it into the time-eating insect that can be seen today on the college wall. The ultimate aim, explains Dr Taylor, was to create a timepiece that kept time while, paradoxically, showing it, as they say, to be relative.

“Clocks are fixed, whereas we all know, time is fluid. It drags and it flies. Like Einstein said, an hour sitting next to a pretty girl can be like a minute, and a minute sitting on a hot stove can seem like an hour. I wanted this clock to reflect that, to play tricks with observers.” Dr Christopher de Hamel, Fellow Librarian at Corpus Christi, said: “I wanted it to be a monster, because time itself is a monster . . . It is horrendous, and horrible, and beautiful. It reminds me of the locusts from the Book of Revelations.

“It lashes its tongue, and flicks its eyes at you. It’s bonkers.” More

From 

Trendwatch

By Wolfgang Gruener

Friday, September 19, 2008 17:13

vote nowBuzz up! Cambridge (UK) – Physicist Stephen Hawking helped unveil what may be most scary clock in the world. The Corpus Clock, located at the University of Cambridge, visualizes the belief that time will always be against us. A grasshopper/locust sits atop the dial, eating away every second of our life, swallowing minutes and hours with pleasure. You could get very depressed watching this $2 million clock tick away – or you may see this time-eater as an image to highlight the value of every second that is given to us. The unusual clock, designed by John Taylor and unveiled by Stephen Hawking, took five years to create and makes a big statement through its gold-plated, almost 4 foot-wide dial and a gold-encrusted monster, part grasshopper, part locust sitting on top of it. As the time passes, the grasshopper/locust turns the dial, sixty times a second, and eats minutes and hours with opening jaws and shaking tail.  The time (hours, minutes, seconds) is shown through slits in the dial, which are illuminated with blue LEDs. "It is terrifying, it is meant to be," Taylor told The Guardian. "Basically I view time as not on your side. He'll eat up every minute of your life, and as soon as one has gone he's salivating for the next. It's not a bad thing to remind students of. I never felt like this until I woke up on my 70th birthday, and was stricken at the thought of how much I still wanted to do, and how little time remained." "I also wanted to depict that time is a destroyer - once a minute is gone you can't get it back,” he said. Taylor, who amassed a fortune by inventing and selling kettle thermostats, said that it took 200 people and an investment of £1 million, almost $2 million, to build the lock. Its electric motor is expected to last for about 25 years.  Link

Corpus Clock - A New Time Machine

Dr Taylor told the News: "It is my way of giving something back to my old college and to Cambridge - and I expect the clock will last for 200 years."

Helped by a carer, Prof Hawking pressed a button to reveal it to a waiting crowd of onlookers and college staff, headed by the President of Corpus Christi, Prof Christopher Andrew.

The inauguration was followed by a lecture by former Astronomer Royal Sir Arnold Wolfendale, and then a banquet.

Unveiling the clock, Prof Hawking said: "I have been particularly concerned with time. Why does time go forward? Does time have a beginning and an end? Can one go sideways in time? Some of the answers are given in my book, A Brief History of Time. 

"One of the challenges has been to measure the passage of time accurately. Dr John Taylor's invention is a true mechanical spring-driven clock, but it also uses modern technology, high-precision engineering, and high-quality craftsmanship to considerable effect."

He said the grasshopper would become "a much loved and possibly feared addition to Cambridge's cityscape."

Stephen Hawking unveils strange new way to tell the time - a little late

Prof Stephen Hawking, the physicist who tried to explain time, has unveiled one of the world's most striking clocks - 14 minutes and 55 seconds late.

 

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:45AM BST 20 Sep 2008

The Corpus Clock, a true mechanical mechanism, which is wound up by an electric motor, has no hands Photo: PA

The £1 million Corpus Clock has been invented and designed by Dr John Taylor for Corpus Christi College Cambridge for the exterior of the college's new library building.

It has no hands but displays the time on its four-foot wide face by using a series of lights denoting hours minutes and seconds.

Dr Taylor, a former student at Corpus Christi and now an inventor and horologist, created it as a tribute to John Harrison, the pioneer of longitude, who took 36 years to build one clock and he was still calibrating it when he died at his home in London on March 24, 1776, his 83rd birthday.

Read more

Large Hadron Collider gets new name: 'Halo'

Large Hadron Collider: Public chooses 'Halo' as its new name By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 17/09/2008

Forget about the yawn-inducing Large Hadron Collider. Full coverage of the Large Hadron Collider atom smasher Large Hadron Collider: Scientists launch competition for a funkier name Large Hadron Collider: First subatomic particle collision to happen next week The name "Halo" sounds much catchier and should adorn the £4.4 billion experiment, according to a poll organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London   The public have decided the Large Hadron Collider should have the catchier name Halo The Large Hadron Collider does what it says on the tin, since hadron refers to the subatomic particles that the giant machine smashes together at a shade below the speed of light. But this "fails to reflect the drama of its mission, or the inspiration it should be conveying to the wider public," says Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the Society. The Society launched a competition to suggest an inspiring name for the 17 mile circumference machine, which is going to smash its first particles next week at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva, known by its French acronym Cern. After sifting more than 2,500 responses, ranging from The Big Banger to Infinite Devil Machine and The Matter Splatterer, it has now selected a winner to rechristen the vast enterprise. Fed up with "the contrived acronyms that plague the world of science," the RSC says it "picked a suggestion which is simple, memorable, and brings to mind the deserved grandeur of perhaps the most important experiment ever built." "Halo conjures visions of radiant beauty, power and wisdom. The circle of light reflects the collider's form; it is a crowning achievement of science and engineering. It also gives more than a nod to the experiment's importance to religious debate. The name Halo was by far the most popular entry. The winner was chosen at random from the hundreds of people who suggested it; Aaron Borges of Rhode Island, USA, who wins £500 ($892) . Link

Indian American Mathew L. Thakur wins 2008 Benedict Cassen Prize for Nuclear Medicine

Mathew L. Thakur Wednesday,17 September 2008 21:33 hrs IST

Indian American wins nuke medicine 'Nobel'  - New York: An Indian American doctor, Mathew L. Thakur has been conferred the Society of Nuclear Medicine's 2008 Benedict Cassen Prize, often called the 'Nobel' of nuclear medicine. Thakur, a pioneer in molecular imaging, an emerging technique that helps detect disease at the molecular or cellular level in the human body and thus helps develop personalised medicine, received the biennial $25,000 award during the Society's 55th annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, recently. He is professor of radiology and radiation oncology/nuclear medicine at the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a member of the Kimmel Cancer Centre at the university. Thakur has focused on developing and evaluating radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic imaging and therapy. He has produced and isolated many medically useful radionuclides and has been instrumental in the preparation of several novel radiopharmaceuticals, noted the society in its press release. Radionuclides or radiopharmaceuticals, also called tracers, are drugs with small amount of radioactive material that are administered to patients, and the radiation emitted detected or photographed. In most cases, it enables physicians to quickly diagnose conditions like cancer, heart disease, thyroid disorders and bone fractures. Sometimes, this compound is also used to treat the condition. "Among the many life threatening diseases, cancer remains the most formidable disease for mankind," Thakur, who holds several patents, was quoted as saying. His current research focuses on finding DNA patches that can help in the early detection of breast and prostate cancer. At the award ceremony, Thakur delivered the Cassen Lecture on 'Genomic Biomarkers for Molecular Imaging: Predicting the Future.' The Cassen Award, sponsored by the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Education and Research Foundation, is named after the late physicist Benedict Cassen and only eight other researchers have been awarded the prize so far. Thakur's career, spanning more than 35 years, has benefited millions of patients worldwide. He has developed widely used radiopharmaceuticals that have improved diagnostic accuracy and patient care, the university said. He became interested in nuclear medicine and radiopharmaceuticals as an undergraduate at Bombay University, and later as a graduate student at the University of London in the late 1960s. Link Manorama  Link Times of India

Immigrant Sun: Drifting in the Galaxy

Immigrant Sun: Our Star Could Be Far From Where It Started In Milky Way

ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2008) — A long-standing scientific belief holds that stars tend to hang out in the same general part of a galaxy where they originally formed. Some astrophysicists have recently questioned whether that is true, and now new simulations show that, at least in galaxies similar to our own Milky Way, stars such as the sun can migrate great distances.

What's more, if our sun has moved far from where it was formed more than 4 billion years ago, that could change the entire notion that there are parts of galaxies – so-called habitable zones – that are more conducive to supporting life than other areas are.

"Our view of the extent of the habitable zone is based in part on the idea that certain chemical elements necessary for life are available in some parts of a galaxy's disk but not others," said Rok Roškar, a doctoral student in astronomy at the University of Washington.

"If stars migrate, then that zone can't be a stationary place."

If the idea of habitable zone doesn't hold up, it would change scientists' understanding of just where, and how, life could evolve in a galaxy, he said. ....> full story

Oxygen At The Origin Of The Solar System

New Clues To Oxygen At The Origin Of The Solar System

ScienceDaily (Sep. 17, 2008) — Oxygen is the most abundant element on Earth, accounting for almost half the planet’s mass. Of its three stable isotopes, oxygen 16 (¹⁶O, whose nucleus contains eight neutrons) makes up 99.762 percent of oxygen on Earth, while heavier oxygen 17 (¹⁷O, with nine neutrons) accounts for just 0.038 percent, and the heaviest isotope, oxygen 18 (¹⁸O, with 10 neutrons), makes up 0.2 percent.

Yet minerals in some of the most primitive objects in the solar system, including the meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites, have quite different ratios of oxygen isotopes than on Earth; presumably the rare heavy isotopes occurred in much greater abundances in the early solar system.

...>  full story

LOFAR - Digital Telescope to Observe the Birth of Stars

Astronomers at the School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, have joined an innovative project that aims to address many of the key issues in astrophysics. The University’s main role will be to search for signals which accompany the birth of stars.

Such an undertaking will require the completion of arrays of antennas to detect radio waves at metre-long wavelengths. The low frequencies of these waves gives rise to the telescope by the name of LOFAR – the LOw Frequency ARray. The arrays will be spread across the Netherlands, Germany, France and Great Britain.

LOFAR is the first telescope of this new sort, using an array of simple omni-directional antennas instead of mechanical signal processing with a dish. The electronic signals from the antennas are digitised, transported to a central digital processor, and combined in software to emulate a conventional antenna.

.">Science Daily

Stem cells from Skin row

Japan university gets patent for stem cell breakthrough

Fri Sep 12, 12:02 PM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan has given Kyoto University a patent for groundbreaking stem cell research in what is believed to be a world first for such scientific research, officials said Friday.
Teams at Kyoto University and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the United States last year discovered how to use skin to produce stem cells -- which can develop into various organs or nerves.

The finding was hailed by the Vatican and US President George W. Bush because it can circumvent an ethical row over conventional stem cell research using human embryos.  More

Black Holes pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.

http://space.about.com/od/blackholes/ig/Black-Holes-Pictures-/Formed when a massive star collapses from its own gravity, black holes have such a strong pull of gravity that not even light can escape from them.

Today's scientists believe that a black hole is the end product in the lifecycle of a giant star. If this star is three or four times as massive as our own sun, even after it has exhausted all its fuel, then it can collapse under its own gravity. Just like a crab burying itself at the beach and pulling the sand down over itself, the collapsing star pulls in everything around it as well.

These Black Holes pictures are from the Hubble Space Telescope.

LifeWorld: Chandrayaan -1 : India's moon mission to launch in October 2008

LifeWorld: Chandrayaan -1 : India's moon mission to launch in October 2008

Satyendra Nath Bose: The Indian behind the boson

It is Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974) after whom the sub-atomic particle 'boson' is named - probably the only noun in the English language named after an Indian (hence never capitalized). Sharon Ann Holgate, a British science writer and broadcaster who made an acclaimed radio documentary on Bose for the BBC some years ago said that Bose was overlooked, perhaps because of institutionalised racism. Of the three main past and present physicists behind the landmark proton-smashing quantum physics experiment in Geneva Wednesday, one has a Nobel Prize, the other is waiting to find out if he has one, and the third never got one. The third man is the Bose of the 'Higgs-boson' experiment - Satyendra Nath Bose. The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider experiment in Switzerland Wednesday could not have happened without Bose and Albert Einstein. In 1924, Bose sent a paper to Einstein describing a statistical model that eventually led to the discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate phenomenon. The paper laid the basis for describing one of the two categories of the elementary particles that make up an atom - one was boson, and the other came to be known as fermion, after the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. Einstein had already won the Nobel in 1921 for services to theoretical physics and the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, and Fermi won it in 1938. Decades later, in 1964, the British scientist Peter Higgs returned from a walk in the Scottish mountains to tell his colleagues that he had just experienced his "one big idea", which could hold a clue to how matter in the universe got its mass in the billionth of a second after the Big Bang. Higgs eventually came up with his theory of the Higgs boson, a boson that gives mass to all other subatomic particles that happen to interact with it in a 'Higgs field'. The more they interact, the heavier they become. And the ones that don't interact don't gather mass. The theory could not only throw further light on the creation of the universe, but also help explain the shape of it. Wednesday's experiment at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, where protons will be smashed against each other at great speed, will be the first attempt to actually observe the Higgs boson - nicknamed the 'God particle'. So far, it is the last undetected elementary particle, also called a fundamental particle, going by the standard theory of particle physics. Higgs, who is professor emeritus at Edinburgh University, is now widely tipped to win the Nobel, particularly if the Higgs boson is detected. The first Nobels for physics in the 21st century went jointly to three Americans - Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle. The won it for creating the 'condensate' - a new type of matter - that Bose and Einstein had postulated. According to Bose's grandson Falguni Sarkar, six other physicists have won the Nobel for work in the area of Bose statistics. However, 34 years after his death, the Nobel continues to elude Satyendra Nath Bose himself.  Read

Secrets of the hidden universe: Test Drive Successful

Secrets of the hidden universe: first hurdle cleared in hunt for dark matter

Tense scientists celebrate as beams of protons go round Cern ring in both directions

• Ian Sample, science correspondent
• The Guardian, 
• Thursday September 11 2008
• Article history

The man with his finger on the button was Lyn Evans, a Welsh engineer who has devoted 14 years of his life to the machine. The moment came at 8.32am UK time and was broadcast around the world, and via videolink to more than 300 journalists who had descended on the laboratory to witness the event.

The LHC lies 100 metres beneath fields and farmland, where it occupies a 17-mile (27km) circular tunnel carved through rock and sandstone.

When it is working at full speed, it will be the most powerful particle collider on the planet. Inside, it will crash subatomic particles together with enough energy to re-create the intense conditions that existed one trillionth of a second after the big bang.

Yesterday, the scientists' ambitions were more modest. Before the machine can be put to work, its makers had to take it for a test drive.

The goal was to send beams of protons around the collider's hollow ring in both directions, to make sure there were no obstructions and to check that powerful superconducting magnets surrounding the ring can steer the beams with exquisite precision. When Cern attempted this on an older, less powerful collider in 1996, it found two beer bottles stuck inside the ring.

Yesterday, the tests went more smoothly than many scientists dared hope for. At 9.28am UK time, two spots flickered on to a screen in the control room, one spot caused by the beam on the way in, the other as it completed its first lap. Cheering, relieved scientists clapped and slapped each other on the back. The test had taken less than one hour. "My first thought was one of relief. I'm too preoccupied at the moment to have emotions," said Evans, who later confessed to laying a bet with fellow physicist Steve Meyers, head of Cern's accelerator and beam operations, that he could get the beam to circulate within an hour.

By 2pm UK time, the scientists had sent a beam of protons around the machine in the opposite, anticlockwise direction to the first beam.

David Evans, a physicist from the University of Birmingham, who works on one of the machine's giant detectors, said: "It's gone so well I'm optimistic we can probably do low-energy collisions within days. We could be looking at high-energy collisions within weeks." Now the real work begins. Scientists will spend the coming days and weeks fine-tuning the machine and testing the four huge detectors, which will sift through the subatomic debris of the collisions for evidence of new physics.

Tejinder Virdee, a physicist at Imperial College London and head of one of the LHC's detector groups, said: "With the LHC, we will be able to look deeper into matter, and look further back in time than ever before.

"Particle physics is a modern name for the centuries-old effort to understand the laws of nature."

Within weeks, the machine could produce particles of dark matter, a mysterious substance that stretches through the universe and clings around galaxies. The discovery would be profound.

Astronomers know that normal matter, the stuff of stars and planets, makes up only 5% of the observable universe. Dark matter accounts for a further 25%, with the remaining 70% being the even more exotic dark energy, which drives the expansion of the cosmos.

By creating a microcosm of the big bang, scientists hope the machine will explain how the forces of nature became what they are today.

The machine will also hunt the famed Higgs boson, or "God particle". Named after Peter Higgs, an Edinburgh University physicist, the Higgs boson is crucial to understanding the origin of mass.

Cern thought it had caught a glimpse of the Higgs particle before with its previous particle collider in 2000.

It will now race against scientists at the American Fermilab, near Chicago, which is working around the clock to discover the particle first. "This is a unique machine and it will certainly advance the knowledge of mankind. But we also know that pushing technology to the limit always has spinoffs. We don't know what the LHC will bring apart from wonderful science, but we're already working on a far more powerful system than the internet. Where we lead, others will follow," said Evans. Read

Moment of Truth

Mark Henderson

The cheering began at 8.32, when the first particles were detected snaking around the first three kilometres (1.9 miles) of the 27km (17mile) LHC ring. By 8.55, it was halfway around the track, which will soon be used to smash protons and lead ions against each other at 99.9999991 per cent of the speed of light. At 9.28, only 56 minutes after the start-up, came the champagne moment — the double trace showing that the beam had completed the first of countless trillions of laps that will explain many of the enduring mysteries of the Universe.

Once the clockwise beam was circulating, the anticlockwise stream with which it will ultimately collide was inserted in the afternoon, completing its own tour of duty soon after 2pm. Over the next few days, they will be tuned and “captured” so they fire in neat pulses. Then it will be time for business – the collisions that will generate new physics.

By recreating the environment of the dawn of time, the LHC will detect phenomena that have never before been observed. It should find the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle” that theory suggests gives matter its mass, but which has never been found. It should also determine whether all particles have a twin, as a theory known as “supersymmetry” suggests, and thus explain the mysterious “dark matter” that pervades the Universe, but which cannot be seen.

The LHC may even find new dimensions, beyond the three of space and one of time with which we are familiar. It promises to unlock great secrets of the cosmos.

“Particle physics is a modern name for the centuries-old effort to understand the laws of nature,” said Professor Tejinder Virdee, who heads the Compact Muon Solenoid detector team. “Humankind has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding the surroundings in which we live.

“The excitement is of having completed a machine that’s taken 20 years to plan and build. Now we’re looking forward to the really interesting part: even more excitement awaits us as we start doing the science. The LHC is going to look deeper into matter and go back further in time than we’ve been able to go before. It’s the most powerful microscope ever built and at the same time the most powerful telescope ever built.

“We have these theories, and now we’re getting into new territory to put them to the test. We don’t know what we’re going to find – that’s why we do the experiments.”

The first trial collisions, from which researchers will calibrate their detectors, could start as early as next week. The LHC will then start operating at about 70 per cent of maximum energy, before it is ramped up to full power next year. Discoveries about supersymmetry could come quickly, but the hunt for the Higgs boson will take longer, with few results expected before 2010.  

More