A máquina de criar "mini Big Bangs"

Luis França

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Vai já entrar em fase de testes em 2007 para experimentar o Large Hadron Collider:

SNIP....

Machine readied to create ‘mini-Big Bangs’
Large Hadron Collider likely to shed light on dark matter, dark energy

By Jeremy Lovell
Updated: 3:29 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2006

NORWICH, England - Deep underground on the Franco-Swiss border, someone will throw a switch next year to start one of the most ambitious experiments in history, probing the secrets of the universe and possibly finding new dimensions.

The Large Hadron Collider — a 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) circular particle accelerator — at the CERN experimental facility near Geneva will smash protons into each other at unimaginable speeds, trying to replicate in miniature the events of the Big Bang.

"There is also something called dark energy, and that is an even bigger question. It makes up about 70 percent of the energy in the universe but again we have absolutely no idea what it is.

"It is an incredibly exciting machine. It will be turned on next year and run for at least a decade and probably 20 years, and the first results — if the machine behaves itself — should start coming out within a year," he added.

Tiny black holes
If the theories are correct, the machine will create tiny black holes that evaporate, and possibly even find particles indicating that the three dimensions known to mankind are just a fraction of those that actually exist.
"For the first time in many decades we have built a machine that exceeds our powers of prediction. New processes are bound to be discovered," he added. "We are truly journeying into unknown territory."

Cox dismissed worries that by adventuring into the unknown and creating tiny black holes, the machine could even threaten to destroy the planet.

"The probability is at the level of 10 to the minus 40," he said. ...SNIP

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14717643/ - artigo completo