Where can you find the world’s largest refrigerator, the world’s fastest racetrack, the hottest spot on Earth, and the emptiest space for thousands of light years? CERN’s Large Hadron Particle Accelerator lays claim to each of these records. Propelled by 9300 super-cooled magnets (-271.3°C), a particle will travel 26,658m at speeds of 99.99% the speed of light through a vacuum whose pressure is 10^-13 atm’s. Two colliding beams of particles will collide with energies of 14 Tev which will generate temperatures 100,000 times the temperature of the center of the sun.

The LHC will be conducing six experiments: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, TOTEM, and LHCf. The ALICE experiment (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) will attempt to recreate the earliest conditions predicted by the big bang. This will be achieved by colliding lead ions at speeds of 99.99% the speed of light. The collision will separate the ions into protons and neutrons, and under temperatures 100,000 times the heat of the sun, should further break down into a quark-gluon plasma, scientists hope to observe this plasma as it cools and recreates known particles.

On September 10^th at precisely 10:28 am, the first step towards experimentation and hopefully discovery was taken, as a test beam successfully traveled the nearly 27,000 m tunnel. For CERN this was a moment of triumph as they observed their marvel of engineering come to flawless life. But their 20 year journey was not without pain, as CERN even had to battle a doomsday scenario lawsuit.

On March 21, 2008 Walter Wagner, founder of Citizens Against The Large Hadron Collider, filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Energy, Fermi lab, the National Science foundation, and CERN. The goal of the lawsuit was to put a time restraint on the activation of the LHC while safety issues were evaluated. The safety issues Wagner is concerned about include miniature black holes, and strangelets. Wagner fears that if the LHC creates miniature black holes, they would fill their tremendous appetites by feasting on the Earth. Defendants of the LHC say that this is of no concern because any black hole that does form would have a lifespan of about 10^-23 seconds. Wagner also fears that if strangelets are formed they will transform the entire planet into a lump of exotic matter.

Once the experimentation has begun, and Wagner can once again sleep through the night, the LHC hopes to prove or disprove a major theory, discover new subatomic particles, search for extra dimensions, discover what causes the formation of mass, and explore the mysteries of dark matter. Whether or not all or even one the goals are achieved, one thing is for certain; the LHC will expand our knowledge and provide us with a clearer image of the universe in which we live.

As of September 2008 a total of 309 extrasolar planets have been discovered. So far only massive gas giants, like Jupiter, have been detected, although some as small as Neptune. No terrestrial, or earth like planets, have been discovered yet. This is because of the current limitations on the technology, or the method, used to detect planets. However, this will hopefully be changing soon.

Currently it is difficult to locate earth-sized planets because they are very small, and do not give off much reflected light from their stars. So far no planet has been bright enough on its own to be detected by our telescopes. We can only detect planets by the small gravitational effects these planets have on their host stars. Planets do not have much mass compared to stars but the little mass they have exerts a pull on their stars; it makes them wobble slightly. We can use the Doppler effect to measure this wobble. The Doppler effect makes it so that the light from the star is bluer when moving toward us, and redder when moving away from us. So when watching a star with a planet around it, the pull from the planet as it orbits the star causes this shift in the observed light from the star, thus we know the planet is there. However, the mass of earth-sized planets is too small to create any noticeable wobble.

However, progress is definitely being made. The Subaru Telescope, located atop mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii, has an 8.2-meter mirror and has recently started scanning nearby stars looking for planets. There are eight innovative cameras and spectrographs at Subaru optimized for various astronomical investigations in optical and near-infrared wavelengths. One of these cameras is called HiCIAO, or High Contrast Instrument for the Subaru Next Generation Adaptive Optics. It is designed to block out the harsh direct light from a star, so that nearby faint objects such as planets can be viewed. The new adaptive optics system uses 188 actuators behind a deformable mirror to remove the atmospheric distortion from its view, allowing Subaru Telescope to observe close to its theoretical performance limits. The Subaru Telescope hopes to be the first to directly observe a planet outside our solar system.

Now even though Subaru hopes to be the first to direct image a planet, it still cannot detect an earth-sized planet. NASA was planning on launching a space telescope for this purpose called the terrestrial planet finder. This would consist of two observatories planned to not only detect these types of planets but also even study their characteristics such as size, distance from star, and even atmospheric components. However, due to budget cuts at NASA the project has been postponed indefinitely. I think until this project, or a similar one is funded and launched, we will continue to be limited by our current earth-based telescopes, and earth-like planets will remain outside our view.

I couldn’t help but pay attention to all the hullaballoo surrounding the inaugural firing up of the Overlord of Disaster, the Proton Punisher, the Gaping Black Maw of the Apocolypse….the one…the only… LAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGEEEEEEE HADRON COLLIDER!  The time signature of this humble entry may be adduced as proof the world most certainly has not been swallowed up Jonah-style by black holes unleashed by LHC.  Having sufficiently quelled my nerves with mint herbal tea and a hearty helpin’ of “One Day At A Time” episodes from season 1, I feel confident in my ability to maintain my composure long enough to ignore my Schopehauer series for one more week.  That is unless Julie runs away again with that van-driving, Meatloaf-looking lout of a boyfriend.  She’s got to start living smarter not harder!

Scientists typically don’t like philosophers.  Anyone who thinks otherwise need only visit a few science forums to get a sense of the disdain to which philosophy is subjected.  Personally, I think the bad blood first spilled when Hume suggested that what we know to be causes and effects are merely perceptive habits and rituals. Regardless, I’ll speak my peace.  As I continue to follow the events unfolding in Switzerland, a couple of practical and timely concerns have come to the fore:

1)  The Big Bang has fundamental problems stemming from a litany of ad hoc hypotheses and departures from observational data.  Should an experimental environment as important and costly as the LHC be hinged on the assumption the Big Bang correctly describes our universe?  Is referring to the Big Bang as “the best model we have so far” sufficient reason to devise an experiment to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model?  If the Big Bang is the best model we have at the moment, then we probably should change statements like “WHEN the Big Bang occurred” to “IF the Big Bang occurred”.

2)  In light of concern 1, is moving forward and assuming the validity of the Big Bang despite its evidentiary flaws indicative of a greater problem plaguing science, namely too great a reliance on inductive methods of research.  The LHC seems to be more a product of “If a theory is broke, we can build an experiment to fix it.” which the philosopher in me recognizes as an inductive process and a product of curious logic.

When the Bush administration started handing out non-compete contracts to the likes of Halliburton and KBR, my first thought was “Really?  Aren’t we going to get ripped off?”  Now I see an impressive, multi-billion dollar experiment moving forward on an assumption that doesn’t possess the criteria necessary for generating a consensus.  Aren’t we going to get ripped off, cosmologically speaking?

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission became the first satellite to take a close-up photograph of a rare E-Type asteroid on September 5th. There are several types of asteroids found in the asteroid belt which is located between Mars and Jupiter. The E-type asteroids are located on the inner portion of the ring, or at about 2.2 AU’s. The E-type asteroids contain high amounts of silicate, and have a relatively high albedo of approximately .3. Because terrestrial planets such as Earth also contain large amounts of silicates it can be assumed that E-type asteroids formed from the mantle of a differentiated asteroid. These asteroids are relatively small; rarely have diameters greater than 25km.

S-type asteroids are also located around 2.2 AU’s and are composed mainly of Iron and Magnesium-Silicates. With a slightly less albedo than the E-type asteroids, S-type shine with an albedo of approximately .22. S-type asteroids come in a variety of sizes–with the largest, 15 Eunomia, having a diameter of 330km wide.

M-type asteroids are responsible for the inner section of the asteroid belt. They are found between 2.2 and 2.7 AU’s. Many of these asteroids are composed of Nickel and Iron; because this is the composition of terrestrial planet’s cores, it is thought that the M-type asteroids are left over chunks of iron core from differentiated asteroids. These asteroids have albedo’s in a range from .1 to about .2.

C-type asteroids make up 75% of the known asteroids and are located around 2.7 AU’s. These Asteroids are rich in Carbonates and have very dark albedo’s in a range from .03 to .1. These asteroids also have the spectral signature which suggests water is present within the minerals. Located just beyond the C-type asteroids is the asteroid belts rim which is composed of the very dark D-type asteroid.

When Rosetta photographed the rare E-type asteroid called 2687 Steins, it captured a diamond shape body measuring in at 5.9 by 4km. Its surface reveals a violent past as it is pocketed with 23 craters having diameters larger than 200m, and a large crater with a diameter of 2km. Surrounding the larger crater is a chain of small craters. Such crater chains have been observed on the moon and are thought to be formed by the showering debris of a large impact.

Stein is only the first asteroid flyby scheduled in the Rosetta mission. On July 10^th 2010, Rosetta will fly by the asteroid 21 Lutetia. Lutetia is an M-type asteroid which is 100km in diameter. Scientists are interested in Lutetia because it doesn’t fit the spectral characteristics of other M-type asteroids. Instead of bearing the spectral signature of nickel-iron, it resembles a carbonaceous signature which is characteristic of C-type asteroids.

After leaving Lutetia, Rosetta will drop a lander onto the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. The landing will occur during the comet’s apogee when measurements can be made on the stable nucleus. For the following 2 years Rosetta will follow the comet/lander on a 100,000km/hr chase into the inner solar system Rosetta will be able to make measurements of the comet’s corona. Hopefully Rosetta’s exciting journey will provide insight to the formation of the early solar system.