Science & biotech

Simonyi signs up for another rocket ride

Software industry veteran Charles Simonyi is ready to go back to outer space.

In April 2007, Simonyi spent close to two weeks in orbit, in a very expensive round trip via Russian rocket to spend time aboard the International Space Station. The trip reportedly cost Simonyi $25 million, and apparently he considers the money very well spent: Space Adventures, the company that organized the junket, announced Tuesday that he has signed up for another trip, this one coming up sometime next spring.

Space Adventures had little else to say on the matter for now, save that Simonyi would be training … Read more

'60 Minutes': Inside the Collider

Build an $8 billion machine that forms a 17-mile circle 300 feet underground and that may reveal secrets from the origins of the universe, and you're bound to provoke curiosity.

The machine in question is the Large Hadron Collider, the goal of which is to reproduce the conditions from just fractions of a second after the Big Bang. It'll do so by slamming together subatomic particles at about the speed of light, with scientists poised for a glimpse at the results.

In Sunday night's season premiere of the CBS news program 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft talked to … Read more

'60 Minutes' preview: The 'Big Bang' machine

Dubbed the "Big Bang machine," the Large Hadron Collider could be the biggest science experiment in history--the goal of the scientists working there is to re-create what the universe was like just nanoseconds after it began.

The particle physics at the core of the LHC may be daunting for those of us who last reckoned with protons and neutrons in high school, but the real-world aspects are much more straightforward--if staggering in their own way. The project, 20 years in the making, has a price tag of $8 billion and involved the work of 9,000 physicists. The … Read more

LHC shut down until early spring

Professor Peter Higgs will have to wait at least a few additional seasons to find out whether his long-held theory on how matter has mass is right.

That's because officials announced Tuesday that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which could confirm the existence of a theoretical particle name after Higgs, will remain shut down until at least early spring.

The LHC, the world's largest particle collider, is located in a nearly 17-mile-long circular tunnel along the French-Swiss border about 330 feet underground. Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN), it promises to push forward theories … Read more

Endeavour put on standby as rescue spacecraft

It's not just a pretty picture. This NASA photo from Kennedy Space Center shows how, for the first time since July 2001, two shuttles are on launch pads at the same time. Atlantis is in the foreground on Launch Pad A, and Endeavour is behind it on Launch Pad B.

Endeavour was moved into position Friday so it could be on standby in the unlikely event that a rescue mission is necessary for the Atlantis' planned October 10 mission to repair NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the agency said.

Once Endeavour is cleared from its rescue spacecraft duty, it'… Read more

Helium leak forces two-month shutdown at LHC

The world's largest particle collider has been shut down for at least two months due to a large helium leak stemming from an incident Friday, officials said.

The Large Hadron Collider is a gigantic particle accelerator located in a nearly 17-mile-long circular tunnel along the French-Swiss border about 330 feet underground. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN.

The collider was officially launched on September 10 when the first particle beam was successfully sent around the full circuit. On the heels of an earlier malfunction due to a faulty transformer, CERN said … Read more

Large Hadron Collider downed by faulty transformer

Not long after the Large Hadron Collider was launched last week, the world's largest particle collider experienced a malfunction that affects its cooling operations.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, the organization that built the LHC, announced Thursday that a transformer that helps cool part of the collider had malfunctioned, forcing operations to be suspended.

As explained by CERN:

The transformer, weighing 30 tonnes and with a rating of 12 MVA, was exchanged over the weekend. During this process, the cryogenics system was put into a standby mode with the two sectors kept at around 4.5 … Read more

Casting call for YouTubers: $25k for green ideas

YouTube might be best known for videos of cute animals and teens dancing with light sabers. But one nonprofit wants to use it as an idea factory.

The X Prize Foundation, the same organization behind the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize to send private vehicles to the moon, said Tuesday that it has put together an eco challenge for YouTubers called "What's your crazy green idea?" Dream up a world-changing idea to stop global warming, post a two-minute YouTube video about it, and it could be worth $25,000.

That's a paltry sum compared to … Read more

CERN's big collider now in action

On Wednesday morning, the first particle beam was successfully sent around the full circuit of the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.

The new science resulting from this grand experiment will turn up in the coming weeks and months, but what Wednesday's event did prove was that the world's largest machine works. Part of that machine is the cathedral-size Atlas detector, one of two general-purpose detectors (the other is the Compact Muon Solenoid, or CMS) in the LHC.

Atlas' development and construction benefited from a great amount of U.K. involvement, particularly that of the Science & Technology Facilities Council, which held an event in Westminster, England to see, via video link, the LHC being initiated. There, event attendees watched the first successful beam circulation in the LHC, which took just less than an hour to complete.

"This is the biggest high of my career so far," said Professor Jon Butterworth of University College London, who heads up the United Kingdom's involvement in the Atlas detector. "I didn't think they'd do it so quickly and smoothly." … Read more

Don't panic: Large Hadron Collider won't spawn voracious black holes

Correction, 11:00 a.m. PDT: This story incorrectly reported the size of the particle accelerator. It has a circumference of 17 miles.

Remember the fear that the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb in 1945 might ignite the atmosphere? The Large Hadron Collider, a massive particle accelerator 17 miles in circumference that will begin operation Wednesday, comes with its own apocalyptic possibility: teensy black holes with gravitational appetites voracious enough to swallow the Earth.

But you can breathe easy, because some scientists believe that worry is just as baseless as the A-bomb's flaming atmosphere.

On Tuesday, the … Read more