July 2008 Pluto in Sagittarius:

I made a prediction in the early '90s that between Nov 1995 and Nov 2008, while Pluto was still in Sagittarius, we will have some of the key discoveries about the space and galaxies and about the origins of the Universe itself. (Mass communication was also part of that prediction which materialized as the Internet from Nov 1995).  This happens once in about 246 years and this transit was also supposed to bring about major changes in religion, the judicial system, mass education (eLearning) and mass transportation and we have see most of that already. Knowledge about the aliens or life on other planets or stars was also part of this (Nov 2008 is still a few months away!).

Something extremely exciting is happening right now in Switzerland at Cern which is making that forecast come true and should take your mind completely away from the gas prices or whatever is bothering you.

The LHC is an international research project based at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists, engineers and support staff from 111 nations are combining state-of-the-art science and engineering in one of the largest scientific experiments ever conducted.

The LHC is the latest and most powerful in a series of particle accelerators that, over the last 70 years, have allowed us to penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of matter and further and further back in time. The next steps in the journey will bring new knowledge about the beginning of our Universe and how it works, as the  LHC recreates, on a microscale, conditions that existed billionths of a second after the birth of our Universe.

We are at the brink of discovering some of the deepest secrets of nature.

To give you a small idea about the scale of the Collider, one of its four detectors, Atlas, weighs as much as a hundred Boeing 747s. The tunnel around which particles will be accelerated to near light speed forms a circle of 27 kilometers. It has taken two decades and $10bn to construct, with several European countries collaborating to build it.

Once the Collider is operational, the Scientists hope to discover the ultimate composition of matter itself. Since the quantum theory was first postulated a century ago, many sub-atomic particles have been discovered. Neutrons and protons are made of up quarks, and these are known as up, down, and strange. When another quark was discovered in 1974, it was dubbed the charm quark to welcome its arrival. Binding quarks together are particles called gluons.

One of the biggest mystery in the universe is the composition of the invisible ‘dark matter’ which holds galaxies together, and constitutes the bulk of all matter. Some forty years ago, Peter Higgs proposed the existence of a particle — named the Higgs boson in his honor — that would be the missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics. However, if this particle is not found at the LHC, other theories will gain in stature. I personally don't believe in the ‘string theory’, a complex model that allows for the presence of an infinite number of parallel universes although whenever you get a deja-vu, you feel if there are two universes we are living in!

The questions surrounding the beginning of the universe have occupied theologians, scientists and philosophers for centuries. Step by step, physicists and mathematicians have pieced the jigsaw puzzle together, but a few pieces still remain. Perhaps the LHC will address the remaining questions.

By creating conditions that existed a billionth of a second after the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago *even the Big Bang is a total hypothesis!), the scientists at Cern hope to study what the universe looked like at the beginning of time. In order to accelerate sub-atomic particles to 99.9 per cent of the speed of light, the entire 27 kilometer tunnel is currently being cooled to near absolute zero, and air is being pumped out to create a vacuum. In fact, when it has reached its lowest temperature, the tunnel will be the coldest place in the universe. The particles will then be fired in opposite directions, and accelerated by super conducting magnets. When they smash into each other, the violent collisions will be recorded by four detectors monitored by over five thousand scientists.

In order to handle the incredible volume of data that will be generated by the LHC, a network of some 20,000 desktop computers distributed over 11 academic computing clusters will be connected to form a supercomputer of immense power. On the average day, the LHC will produce some 40,000 gigabytes of useful information.

Here is a link to some webcams from

http://www.cmsinfo.cern.ch/outreach/cmseye/index.html

and here are some links to the Movies which explain it more.

http://www.cmsinfo.cern.ch/outreach/CMSmedia/CMSmovies.html

 

  
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