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The Large Hadron Collider switches on. If it's the end of the world, it will be powered by GNU/Linux

Posted by scrubs on · 5 comments
Free Software Magazine; By Gary Richmond 		Mail this story
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You know a science story is big when an experiment gets first or second billing on the main evening news—and it’s not even a slow news day. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is up and running as I write and as far as I can tell I’m still here, so it looks like the doomsayers were a little premature. Unless I’m writing this piece from the far side of the singularity of a black hole in a parallel universe. The LHC is an huge experiment (a snip at $10 billion) to explore the very small and very energetic sub-atomic world to verify, amongst other things, if the Higgs Boson really exists. That will be a monumental triumph for science and the human spirit. I have always been fascinated by particle physics, despite by academic background in the Humanities and I will be following the progress at CERN with great interest. I am particularly pleased too because free software will be at the heart of this colossal human endeavour. GNU/Linux has been, is and will continue to power CERN’s efforts. This is a wonderful opportunity to tell the world that Windows doesn’t rule the roost. Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

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Comments (5)

jezuch ·
"Gimme a break. They're not even colliding yet." (http://xkcd.com/474/)

What they're doing now is launching test proton streams. Have you ever seen an instrument of this caliber that didn't need to be calibrated before first use? Well, duh.
number6x ·
The Earth gets bombarded daily by cosmic particles that have greater energy than the LHC can accelerate particles to.

The Universe is already creating everything we can create with the LHC when these cosmic rays hit the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere, and it does not result in black holes swallowing things:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0806.3381v1

We're going to be around for a few more years so relax.
rijelkentaurus ·
LOL, we'll die from the poisonous atmosphere before we're able to suck ourselves into a black hole!!!
gus3 ·
Nah, Buy 'N' Large is already building the spaceship to take us up, and the Wall*E units will clean the planet up while we're gone.

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