A Trip Inside The "Big Bang Machine"

60 Minutes Visits One Of The Biggest Science Experiments Ever, The Large Hadron Collider

(CBS)  For the past seven years, Stanek has been a transatlantic commuter of sorts, spending three weeks in Switzerland for every one week back home in Chicago, where, as his hard-hat suggests, he's a die-hard Bears fan.

Asked why scientists are interested in recreating what the universe was like a nanosecond after the Big Bang, Stanek tells Kroft, "It's in humans' interest to know everything, right? And why wouldn't you want to know that?"

"Well, you'd want to know it but, you know, spending eight billion dollars to find out, it must be important," Kroft remarks.

"So, let me ask you this question: because we've studied the interactions of photons and electrons and elementary particles, we can understand how to take the light that bounces off of me and you into that camera and take that signal and put it into mom and pop's living room. Now, imagine, in 10 years, 20 years, will we be able to take, instead of our photons, me and you and put them in mom and pop's living room? So, you tell me, is that worth it?" Stanek asks.

"Transport people?" Kroft asks.

"You tell me. Is that worth it? Is that worth eight billion dollars?" Stanek asks.

Asked if he thinks that could happen, Stanek replies, "I don't know enough right now. But I can't say it can't happen."

The collider itself is a marvel of precision engineering. Two beams of invisible hydrogen protons will be driven around the tunnel in opposite directions inside ultra-high vacuum tubes propelled and guided by super conducting magnets, chilled with liquid helium to a temperature of minus 271 degrees Celsius, colder than deep space. As the two beams approach speeds of 186,000 miles per second, they will smash into each other at four different parts of the collider.

At the heart of the machine are four massive detectors where the actual collision of the subatomic particles takes place. One of them is seven stories tall - nearly 8,000 tons of lead, steel, wires, plastic and magnets that capture and record everything that's going on inside.

"So you can race these little…protons around this 17-mile track at the speed of light, smash 'em in together in a beam that's the width of a hair. And you can measure what happens in a billionth of a second?" Kroft asks Stanek.

"Billionth of a second, actually 25 nanoseconds. So set the scale," Stanek says. "Here to there is 25 feet. Turn my flashlight on, by the time that beam reaches that wall, is the time that we have to have recorded all this information."

A 60 megapixel camera inside the detector captures what's going on at 40 million frames a second. And the digital data detected by layers of sensors can be converted into pictures the human eye can understand. The information goes to super-fast computers, then out to laboratories and universities all over the world for analysis. There are so many sensors monitoring so many collisions that in just one year, the collider is expected to generate ten times more data than all of the information now on the Internet. To make sure the results are valid, the two main detectors are entirely different.

Stanek says the detectors were created by different teams of scientists, with "different criteria, different motivation and so on."

Asked if there's much competition between the two teams, Stanek tells Kroft, "Friendly competition. But, you know, when we hear those guys are behind, we all laugh a bit, and I'm sure they do the same thing. But, you know, at the end, they both have to work."

[tipsyinct]

You atheists will actually believe in something called "The Big Bang" (sounds like something a kindergartner could come up with), yet you call Christians stupid and mythological.

Now that''''s classic.

You believe everything came from, that''''s right...NOTHING....and yet you have the gall to call others delusional.

You don''''t even realize how insane you sound and how much of a minority you really are.
Posted by StopSocialis at 11:51 PM : Sep 29, 2008

Science and God are not mutually exclusive. It IS possible to belive in god and still be curious about the universe he created. Why can''t you believe in the big bang and also believe that this was god''s way of creating the universe? Why must people blindly follow a god who works behind the scenes? I say the purpose behind our very existence is to gain knowledge of god''s creation(which was not just us), to celebrate it by knowing as much as we can about it.

[troglobyte]

Let those among us who wish to learn the nature of God and the Universe, leave the others who live in the dark ages behind to burn each other at the stake.

[displeased]

You atheists will actually believe in something called "The Big Bang" (sounds like something a kindergartner could come up with), yet you call Christians stupid and mythological.
Now that''''s classic.
You believe everything came from, that''''s right...NOTHING....and yet you have the gall to call others delusional.
Posted by StopSocialis

Rick, the big bang is a theory, based on observations so far from our limited technology and knowledge. I think the big bang theory will be revised or abandoned as new evidence surfaces. The difference between scientists and fundamentally religious folks like you is, when scientists don''t know the answer to something, they keep looking. You religious folks claim God snapped his fingers and it was done, and that must be the answer...no questions asked. I find that behavior delusional and immature. However, that''s only my humble opinion...

[stuarthud77]

"Can you imagine the trillions of dollars we could save in this country is everyone simply trusted in God, our Creator, and stopped wasting money on programs like this trying to figure out where life came from and how it all began?

Posted by StopSocialis"

I bet if born 500 years ago you would have been amongst the mobs demanding scientists like Copernicus and explorers like Columbus be burnt at the stake for suggesting the earth isn''t flat and the center of the universe like it states in the bible.

If Spain hadn''t "wasted" money on an expedition which the Bible states should have seen Columbus fall off the edge of the earth then America would never even have been discovered!

Thankfully some people are intuitive enough to think for themselves and try to uncover facts rather then blindly accepting what they are told without question (as religion demands).

[displeased]

Dude that scientist must be really, really old. What''''s his name again?
He sure has observed MILLIONS of years of science, hasn''''t he?
Posted by StopSocialis

Rick, scientists understanding of the universe is constantly growing and the information that is discovered builds from previous ideas that go back to the Greeks. The reason modern science traces its roots to the Greeks is because the Greeks were the first to develop models of nature based on REAL observations. If their models didn''t pass tests, they were abandoned or revised. Same basis with modern day science.

Please educate yourself by picking up a book other than the bible...

[lochlan-2009]

First of all, the Big Bang is a joke. Hubble seeing the dopler effect on galaxies that are further away having red shift is due to the energy of these waves being spread out over a larger and larger area. It''s a lot like a rock being dropped in a pond. The waves close to the center are tight (wavelength blue), as you get further from the center the wave energy spreads out and the wavelength lengthens (wavelength red). There is NO beginning, and there is NO end. There was NO Big Bang. It amazes me how many people get on the science channel, being considered an authority on things like relativity, and don''t even understand the concept, describing it completly wrong.
I sure hope they are correct and there is not enough matter grabbed as it speeds through Earth, for these possible (but unlikely) created black holes to get stuck (this is like shooting a stellar blackhole through a galaxy and hoping it doesn''t get caught). The blackhole only needs the same amount of mass to go into orbit and get caught like a cancer in the planet, even if it is moving at the speed of light.

Determinism is the true science, and religion.

The other thing that pisses me off about the media was all the "we''re still here" comments we heard when they sent the particles around the loop in one direction, with no smashing. Of course we are, they didn''t smash anything.

[u2bgone]

A very scary assessment of the "intellectual" community who are on the precipice of possibly causing catastrophic consequences which could destroy the world as we know it. The portrayal of this experiment to be one where a small controlled number of protons are managed along miles of this cylindrical tube and crashed into the other to produce a re-creation of what they "assume" will provide them with scientific data is absurd. There is no way they can determine the number of protons which could possibly detonate into one another at the time of impact event. The resulting collisions of these protons could at a minimum cause considerable seismic activity resulting in anything from earthquake activity around the world to the unexpected consequence of an explosion, one of which this world has yet to experience, and capable of an impact so enormous, it could replicate the direct hit of a meteor large enough to dislodge the planet from its axis. I''m not against scientific experimentation for the advancement of mankind, but something built on this large a scale for a "first" of its kind experiment with admittedly unknown results/consequences, should and could be conducted in a much smaller and protected prototype. After all, we are only talking about smashing a couple of protons into one another...aren''t we?

[pica_pole]

What the heck are they trying to say:

"...Bob Stanek believes the collider will go down in history, and not for swallowing the earth."

If Earth is swallowed, the collider won''t be going down in history because all of the historians will be swallowed, too. Unless there are historians elsewhere in the universe...

[displeased]

1200 of the scientists were from the US.

[displeased]

This is a european endeavo dummy, the us had no part in it..
Posted by ghm1

Although this is housed in Europe, 2000 scientists from all over the world have contributed to this project.

[G H M]

This is a european endeavo dummy, the us had no part in it..

[G H M]

StopSocialis, Displeased, troutfisher4 what??
I think your the same person.

[displeased]

Can you imagine the trillions of dollars we could save in this country is everyone simply trusted in God, our Creator, and stopped wasting money on programs like this trying to figure out where life came from and how it all began?
Posted by StopSocialis

Could you imagine the trillions of dollars this country would save if we stopped supporting wars based on your mythical creator?

[displeased]

Only liberal "scientists" would waste this much money, time, and effort trying to devise their own version of their secularized version of history.
Posted by StopSocialis

Scientist''s version of history is based on actual observations. Not myths and and supernatural fairy tales that your god is created from.

This reminds me of man going to the moon. Nobody cared about going to the moon just the money that got pass around while they were doing it is all that mattered.

[matter77]

You''re ALL wrong. Go back and read everything from several years ago about the Supercollider and read the statements from members of Congress and scientists, too! Opposition was strong from all directions. This was not a case of the gov''t wasting money on other imperialistic ventures instead, with no money left over for Science. Quit spewing that lie. The American Science community is in shambles, and that is as big a problem as the money. Do you think the public supported the Supercollider? Not even alternatives. They don''t understand it and they don''t care about it. Now they read about CERN and say, "gosh, why didn''t we buy one of those?".

Quit spewing this lie about not building the Supercollider because of the Iraq War or the Bailout and everything else. You don''t have any idea what you are talking about.

[ch5d]

This discovery is not just credited to Peter Higgs. In addition to Higgs, five others are credited with this discovery (Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble, Brout, and Englert). In their 50th anniversary celebration, Physical Review Letters, where the original papers were published, just credited and recognized all these papers for this milestone discovery.

http://prl.aps.org/50years/milestones

It is unfortunate that 60 Minutes did not recognize all these theorists %u2013 especially as you were noting the American contributions.

[ch5d]

This discovery is not just credited to Peter Higgs. In addition to Higgs, five others are credited with this discovery (Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble, Brout, and Englert). In their 50th anniversary celebration, Physical Review Letters, where the original papers were published, just credited and recognized all these papers for this milestone discovery.

http://prl.aps.org/50years/milestones

It is unfortunate that 60 Minutes did not recognize all these theorists %u2013 especially as you were noting the American contributions.

[seahagen]

Isn''t this most intersting. Dr. Carl Richard Hagen, University of Rochester, and his colleague Dr. Gerald Guralnik, Brown University, were two of the theoretical physicists who discovered this theory, who made this all possible, from the USA were not even mentioned in this story. You all should do your research and recognize our own.

[beartalker]

Interesting that 60 Minutes broadcast the three stories it did this evening, each of which mentioned how much money the US was spending... So let me see if I can get this right: $700 billion to bail out greedy, power-hungry financial institutions on Wall Street; $120 billion a year in Iraq, a war started by greedy, power-hungry politicians under the guise of fighting terrorism when everyone knows a) that the terrorists were in Afganistan, and b) that it was really all about oil; or $8 billion on a super-collider purely to advance human knowledge. If knowledge truly is power, then I''d say the $8 billion is a really good deal!