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It’s the most outrageous scientific research that the human being has ever been able to plan.

But day after day we begin to forget all the hype about it as we were promised to ‘change our understanding of the Universe’.

The experiment that took place at the CERN’s LHC on September 10′th 2008 was only about accelerating the particles and not about colliding them. All the medias tried to get people into shock with stupid questions like “Will the World survive after colliding the particles?”. Hell, yeah! And you’ll be sucked into a giant black hole.

The collision of particles was planned on 21’st of October and guess what? Delayed again!

Now the problem is the 30 tonnes transformator that broke soon after accelerating particles (few days after September the 10′th). Fixing it will take about 2 months but the CERN ebters energy safe-mode during the winter and that’s why the experiments will continue in later Spring.

So it is 3′rd delay of colliding the particles since the creation of LHC and as it happens again and again it consumes more of fund’s money.

So the question itself is - in the time of World crisis which is the biggest since the Great Depression and make us enter the money safe-mode do we really need to know how the hell the Universe was created 13 billion years ago?

My answer is - hell with the creation of the Universe, I care about how we live today and what happens tomorrow, not what has blown up 13 billion years ago.

As I mentioned earlier the Large Hadron Collider’s (the most exciting scientific research project) launch had been postponed until October. Nonetheless, yesterday, September the 9th, all news-services were hit by the news that LHC would be launched on September the 10th, 2008 and the hype began again. The news came strictly from CERN

The first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made on 10 September. This news comes as the cool down phase of commissioning CERN’s new particle accelerator reaches a successful conclusion.

Short reminder for all the mortals who don’t know about micro black holes and sucking the Earth into 1pixel size particle.

The LHC is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, producing beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine, and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance, probably by 2010. Housed in a 27-kilometre tunnel, it relies on technologies that would not have been possible 30 years ago. The LHC is, in a sense, its own prototype.

The reason of all the postonings are not clear enough - it’s all linked with the fact that there should be absolutely no leakages on 27km long magnets, so the particles would move with the maximum speed.

As claimed by russian scientists, there is absolutely no danger in launching the LHC, because at this particular moment there are hundred billions particles collide above our heads in the atmosphere and guess what? No black holes 250 million light years away from the Solar System have been noticed.

Fear. Hope. Faith.

As Mozilla have introduced their invention Firefox 3 with tons of new features they have concluded what end-user might need to make life easier to browse through the web.

What to expect more? How to create even more comfortable and intelligent browser?

Google rethought the question and decided to build completely new browser, from scratch. The main reason is that we spend so much time online that it would be ideal to do everything only in browser - “search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser.”

“What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.”

What it looks like Google is building a new browsing platform to support their Javascript-rich applications - such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Notebook and so on.

Even if they build super-performance Javascript rendering engine, the question still remains - how it looks like, how comfortable and how customizable (add-ons, themes) it is.

The only advantage Google has revealed is a “sand-box” for every tab - if a tab crashes it won’t crash the whole application.

A short comic on advantages is here.

Hot screenshots (or just mock-ups?) are here.

So, what are we expecting?

Optimized for browsing complex ajax-rich web applications, customizable, high performance browser - as efficient and safe as Firefox is.

The beta of the browser is to be released on 3rd of September. Wait for updates and overviews.

Some features:

1. Personalized view: opening a new tab pops up the fast access page for navigation through most visited sites
2. “Incognito” tab - everything in this tab is not written into history, doesn’t contain cookies and 100% private.
3. Each tab is different process - good for performance - consumes less memory, secure when a tab crashes, application stays.

What do you think of new approach of browsing the web? What is missing in today’s browsers?

It’s not a secret that Apple has developed a new selling strategy for it’s sensational genius - iPhone. In a few words the new strategy means that not a single shop can sell iPhones with “no strings attached”, there’s always a mobile operator behind.

The trick is that mobile operator negotiates with Apple (or through third party operators) and Apple gets revenue from each sold iPhone. It leaded to absence of fixed price for the gadget and a lot of tricky contracts with operators appeared. In this post I’ll try to cover all the most unfriendly contracts and ways how to get your iPhone.

Estonia got iPhones 3G on August 22, 2008 through TeliaSonera and local operator - EMT. The price of the gadget is $250. For the money you get iPhone and 2 year contract which monthly price is $55. Simple calculations show us that the actual price is $55 per month * 24 months+ $250 for the phone = $1,570.

Who are the contracts targeted to? If you can count a bit and not sticked with the the number on a label and are able to see the asterix behind it - you easily notice the gadget doesn’t cost the money that is asked for it.

In comparsion in the UK you can get an iPhone in O2 for $70 per month of 1,5 year contract ($1260 + $230 for the gadget = $1,490).

For example in Russia “the black market” offers unlocked iPhone for about $2,500 with no warranty and no boundaries to a single operator, what makes the contract more preferrable. Officially iPhone is not available in the country.

So the marketing goes well - kiddies beg their parents to buy the gadget, the price itself is not that high and contracts are signed.

In the series of LHC we had a short history of what’s the giant that is developed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The LHC series first began on delay of the project’s launch - it should has been launched in the first days of July, then it gets postponed until August 8th, a few days before the theoretical launch the new delay has been set for October 21st. Quite a long time for an “engineer’s routine” as the news claimed it.

The history of CERN itself began due to needs of governments to invest in the progress of particles accelerators that would drive economics as the part of a huge progress in science, especially during confrontation between USA and Europe.

A quote from official CERN’s history:

While scientists in Europe still relied on simple equipment based on radioactivity and cosmic rays, powerful accelerators were being built in the US.

So the CERN was born.

CERN exists primarily to provide European physicists with accelerators that meet research demands at the limits of human knowledge.

Some of first inventions from CERN:

Notable “firsts” were the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) proton-proton collider commissioned in 1971, and the proton-antiproton collider at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS).

After a few inventions from CERN in the field of particles acceleration the LHC was born, being the most aspiring invention of 21st century:

LHC experiments are, of course, being designed to look for theoretically predicted phenomena. However, they must also be prepared, as far as is possible, for surprises. This will require great ingenuity on the part of the physicists and engineers.
T he LHC is a remarkably versatile accelerator. It can collide proton beams with energies around 7-on-7 TeV and beam crossing points of unsurpassed brightness, providing the experiments with high interaction rates. It can also collide beams of heavy ions such as lead with a total collision energy in excess of 1,250 TeV, about thirty times higher than at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) under construction at the Brookhaven Laboratory in the US. Joint LHC/LEP operation can supply proton-electron collisions with 1.5 TeV energy, some five times higher than presently available at HERA in the DESY laboratory, Germany. The research, technical and educational potential of the LHC and its experiments is enormous.

Here are some cost overviews of the projec:

Magnets

CERN LHC surroundings

LHC view from the top

Inside of LHC

The total cost of the project is anticipated to be between €3.2 to €6.4 billion. The construction of LHC was approved in 1995 with a budget of 2.6 billion Swiss Francs (€1.6 billion), with another 210 million francs (€140 million) towards the cost of the experiments. However, cost over-runs, estimated in a major review in 2001 at around 480 million francs (€300 million) for the accelerator, and 50 million francs (€30 million) for the experiments, along with a reduction in CERN’s budget, pushed the completion date from 2005 to April 2007.180 million francs (€120 million) of the cost increase have been due to the superconducting magnets.

LHC related topics:

• LHC interesting facts, why the launch is delayed again?

• Interesting links about LHC + pictures

• CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Outer Space

As has been announced, Large Hadron Collider (the most essential scientific research project) launch has been delayed until October 2008.

Quote from wikipedia:

The initial particle beams are due for injection in August 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled, on October 21, 2008.

It feels like managing 27km. long magnets with temperature below 1.9 Kelvins is not the simplest task.

Here is how CERN describes the LHC and what it can do:

Micro black holes

Some theorists and members of the general public have long voiced fears that microscopic black holes may appear as a result of the experiment, capturing surrounding matter and ultimately leading to the destruction of the entire planet.

However, scientists have consistently dismissed these allegations as “ridiculous” - even if a microscopic black hole did form, they say, it would only last for a fraction of a second. However, scientists have consistently dismissed these allegations as “ridiculous” - even if a microscopic black hole did form, they say, it would only last for a fraction of a second.

The largest machine in the world…

The precise circumference of the LHC accelerator is 26 659 m, with a total of 9300 magnets inside. Not only is the LHC the world’s largest particle accelerator, just one-eighth of its cryogenic distribution system would qualify as the world’s largest fridge. All the magnets will be pre‑cooled to -193.2°C (80 K) using 10 080 tonnes of liquid nitrogen, before they are filled with nearly 60 tonnes of liquid helium to bring them down to -271.3°C (1.9 K).

The fastest racetrack on the planet…

At full power, trillions of protons will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11 245 times a second, travelling at 99.99% the speed of light. Two beams of protons will each travel at a maximum energy of 7 TeV (tera-electronvolt), corresponding to head-to-head collisions of 14 TeV. Altogether some 600 million collisions will take place every second.

The emptiest space in the Solar System…

To avoid colliding with gas molecules inside the accelerator, the beams of particles travel in an ultra-high vacuum – a cavity as empty as interplanetary space. The internal pressure of the LHC is 10^-13 atm, ten times less than the pressure on the Moon!

The hottest spots in the galaxy, but even colder than outer space…

The LHC is a machine of extreme hot and cold. When two beams of protons collide, they will generate temperatures more than 100 000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun, concentrated within a minuscule space. By contrast, the ‘cryogenic distribution system’, which circulates superfluid helium around the accelerator ring, keeps the LHC at a super cool temperature of -271.3°C (1.9 K) – even colder than outer space!

The biggest and most sophisticated detectors ever built…

To sample and record the results of up to 600 million proton collisions per second, physicists and engineers have built gargantuan devices that measure particles with micron precision. The LHC’s detectors have sophisticated electronic trigger systems that precisely measure the passage time of a particle to accuracies in the region of a few billionths of a second. The trigger system also registers the location of the particles to millionths of a metre. This incredibly quick and precise response is essential for ensuring that the particle recorded in successive layers of a detector is one and the same.

The most powerful supercomputer system in the world…

The data recorded by each of the big experiments at the LHC will fill around 100 000 dual layer DVDs every year. To allow the thousands of scientists scattered around the globe to collaborate on the analysis over the next 15 years (the estimated lifetime of the LHC), tens of thousands of computers located around the world are being harnessed in a distributed computing network called the Grid.

The info is taken from CERN’s official site about the LHC here.

First of all, let me say that none of scientific researches have made such a hype about itself and as so many people are interesting - let me post some interesting links about the CERN’s giant project + pictures

LHC launch was postponed until 08.08.08.

Short intro:

The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator collider being built at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, or CERN, straddling the French-Swiss border near Geneva. It should be completed and ready to start producing data sometime this summer. In it, scientists will be able to smash protons travelling at more than 99.99 percent of the speed of light with protons traveling in the opposite direction at the same speed.

WIKI’s article on LHC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

Huge archive of high-res pictures: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html

About particles: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525979330&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

More photos: http://chemistry.about.com/b/2008/08/03/large-hadron-collider-photos.htm