Birth of the Universe

Birth of the universe 're-created':

Large Hadron Collider generates 'mini Big Bang'

(Summary)

By: Hasan Akbar (260309463)

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was expected to solve many fundamental questions surrounding physics, and advance the world’s understanding of the deepest laws of nature.

For the first time in history scientists have created a new form of matter by creating a small scale version of the conditions thought to have existed 10 microseconds after the Big Bang at the start of the universe.

Based outside of Geneva, The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) had scientists from more than 20 countries working on the project and conducting the numerous experiments which smashed together heavy lead ions in a fireball to prove a theory that had only recently existed in theory over the last few years. With the collisions taking place at temperatures over 100,000 times greater than that of the sun's center and at astonishing energy densities which have never been done in any previous experiments. CERN says that the scientists had succeeded in isolating tiny components called quarks from more complex particles such as protons and neutrons.

The successful experiment, generally referred to as the "Little Bang,'' is a great stepping stone in better understanding the early state of the universe, created 13.7 billion years ago in the original Big Bang. The lead beam used by CERN has presented convincing evidence for the existence of a new state of matter 20 times density of nuclear matter, in which quarks, are liberated to roam freely as opposed to being bound up into more complex particles. These are the conditions that must have existed just a few microseconds after the Big Bang, before the formation of particles of matter as we know them today.

Over 350 scientists from institutes in 20 countries took part in seven large experiments linked to CERN's accelerator and...