Is that a subatomic particle or are you just happy to see me?

The World Wide Web began at the Swiss nuclear research facility, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), and that may be its biggest claim to fame. But CERN really is a nuclear research facility and is home to some of the most advanced technologies for probing the inner workings of matter, especially sub-atomic particles. For example, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is located there. Hadrons are composite subatomic particles composed of quarks. They come in two flavors, baryons (three quarks) and Mesons (a quark and an anti-quark). We learn in Wikipedia that hadrons are "single particle excitations of the basic theory of strong interactions." How do you study excited hadrons? You could use the LHC, slated to be completed in May 2008. But that might only be good for single particle excitations. What if the subatomic particle were really excited? Then, according to the New York Times, you might want to use the Large Hardon Collider.

While the Large Hadron Collider is familiar to elementary particle physicists, the Large Hardon Collider seems to be new. Thanks to a hat tip on Boingboing, we managed to find a diagram at http://largehardoncollider.com/:

i-2defde8392813d108eb9e229e2a90f0f-lhc.small.jpg

You can read more about the Hardon Colllider here.

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tags: physics, Large Hadron Collider, Higgs f
"Rock star physicist" Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive project. ...
Apparently, some people think that the name "Large Hadron Collider" fails to capture the terrific grandeur of the device's mission.
A Hadron is a kind of particle, made of quarks. There are two kinds of hadrons, baryons (made out of three quarks) and mesons (made out of a quark and a quirky quark known as an antiquark).

Finally, I think I understand the Hadron collider. The above diagram was very helpful.

This article must surely have been sourced from Master Bates.

Science rules!

By C. Porter (not verified) on 02 Apr 2008 #permalink

Revere, you are clearly a pervert. Without people like you and me, the word almost surely not exist, and an entire sector of psychology would also not exist! But does anybody ever give us any award or express any sort of appreciation at all? No-o-o-o-o. I guess all we can do is keep trying ...

Hahahaha, you're a bunch of penis heads.