Tag: switzerland

Hadron Collider breakthrough as beams collide

Posted by Nexus – 30/03/2010

[via cnn.com]

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider managed to make two proton beams collide at high energy Tuesday, marking a “new territory” in physics, according to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The $10 billion research tool has been accelerating the beams since November in the LHC’s 17-mile tunnel on the border of Switzerland and France.

The beams have routinely been circulating at 3.5 TeV, or teraelectron volts, the highest energy achieved at the LHC so far, according to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

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Switzerland to ban violent games?

Posted by Nexus – 23/03/2010

[via bit-tech.net]

The Swiss parliament has reportedly passed a law to ban any violent videogames from going on sale within the country, with further proposals in the pipeline which could see all first-person shooters for adults being banned specifically.

Specifically the law calls for a ban on any videogame which “requires cruel acts of violence against humans and human-like creatures for in-game success“, according to GI.biz.

The new law was initially put forward last month and has just been passed into law, though the government is still in the process of deciding the specifics of how the law will operate and what exactly will and won’t be allowed. You’d think they’d establish that before that passed the motion though…

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Mars Over the Allalinhorn

Posted by Nexus – 09/03/2010

[via APOD]

What’s that bright object in the sky? A common question with answers that vary by time and season, the quick answer just after sunset in middle of last month, from the northern hemisphere, was Mars.

The above picturesque panorama, taken during a ski trip from the Alps in Switzerland, shows not only Mars, but much more. Pine trees line the foreground, while numerous slopes leading up to the snow covered Allalinhorn mountain are visible in the distance.

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Record-breaking collisions

Posted by Nexus – 07/02/2010

[via mit.edu]

Workers examine a new Quench Protection System at CERN in January. Image courtesy of CERN

In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record for highest energy particle collisions.

This week, team led by researchers from MIT, CERN and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest, Hungary, completed work on the first scientific paper analyzing the results of those collisions. Its findings show that the collisions produced an unexpectedly high number of particles called mesons — a factor that will have to be taken into account when physicists start looking for more rarer particles and for the theorized Higgs boson.

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Large Hadron Collider to jump to maximum energy

Posted by Nexus – 03/02/2010

[via newscientist.com]

The Large Hadron Collider is going to skip medium-energy proton collisions, jumping straight to its maximum energy in 2013, after it finishes collecting lower-energy data and has its circuitry upgraded.

The particle accelerator, located outside Geneva, Switzerland, has recovered from its 2008 accident. And in 2009 it broke the world record for particle collision energy when its two oppositely directed proton beams each reached 1.18 TeV, for a total energy of 2.36 TeV.

That made it slightly more powerful than its US competitor, Fermilab, which has been colliding particle beams with energies of 1 TeV, adding up to a total energy of 2 TeV.

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