News archive

September-October 2008

The Big Bang machine
On Wednesday the 10th of September the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was activated for the first time.  The LHC is the world's largest, and highest-energy, particle accelerator.  Scientists think that the collider might eventually produce the elusive Higgs boson, which is the only standard model particle that has never yet been observed.  If it does, it could tell us a lot about physics.  Some scientists have speculated that the collider might produce stable micro black holes, leading some people to worry that it could be dangerous.  Don't worry though - Nature routinely produces higher energies in cosmic-ray collisions than will be produced in the collider.  Over the past billions of years, Earth has been bombarded with about a million LHC experiments worth of cosmic rays, and the planet is still here!

On the 20th of September it was reported that plans for the first collisions in the LHC have been set back due to faults with some of the superconducting magnets and a helium leak (liquid helium is used to cool the magnets), so it may be some weeks before we see any sign of the Higgs, or anything else...

 • Wikipedia page on the LHC
 • Times newspaper: CERN delays atom-smashing
 • The LHC homepage
 • Cern's page on the LHC
 • The safety of the LHC (summary report from CERN)

Creative chemistry
Ever thought that some of the chemicals we use in chemistry are just really beautiful? Well, the artist Roger Hiorns does. This summer he took over a condemmed flat near the Elephant and Castle in London. He reinforced the walls and covered everything with plastic sheeting. Then he pumped 70-80,000 litres of copper sulphate solution through a hole in the ceiling from the flat above. He and his team waited for about three weeks, until the temperature of the solution dropped and the crystals began to precipitate. Finally, any remaining liquid was pumped back out, to be recycled by the chemical industry. The result was an entire room coated in the most beautiful, blue crystals.

 • Guardian newspaper article on Hiorns's art installation
 • Growing crystals from architecture (how the project was completed)
 • Roger Hiorns's exhibition at the Milton Keynes Gallery


Return to homepage