CERN scientists will begin attempting to cross the beams at LHC tomorrow morning | Hacker News Reader

CERN scientists will begin attempting to cross the beams at LHC tomorrow morning

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Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.

Dr. Peter Venkman: What?

Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?

Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.

Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?

Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

So it started @ 3am EST time. First 2 tries failed to get the beam up. They expect to try again after resetting the machine @ 5am EST or about 1.5 hours from now.

You can also follow them via twitter @CERN http://twitter.com/cern

Also a working link to the camera is http://webcast.cern.ch/lhcfirstphysics/

I was amused to find this bit of awkwardly worded text in the article:

"...the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe."

I believe that would be 8:30AM CEST which is 11:30PM PST TONIGHT, or in just a few hours from now.

It looks like it will be Webcast here: http://webcast.cern.ch/lhcfirstphysics/

Live webcam: http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc4.swf

Collapse of the beams. Particles starting to collide. Now the final stage of the experiment beginning.

Exiting!

CERN is also testing if, given enough exclamation marks, Twitter will collapse onto itself and become a black hole: http://twitter.com/cern :)

from http://twitter.com/cern

"Experiments are collecting their first physics data - historic moment here! Watch the webcast, look at the photos - all live!"

Possibly the second coolest thing that CERN has ever done.

Collision is now set for 13:15 CET.

CET or CEST? Us central Europeans transitioned to DST Last Sunday.

We Central Europeans: I'm 250km away from you, in Prague! :-)

It's been nice knowing you all.

Well obviously it hasn't worked yet.

Looks like the world might have not exploded, HORAY! I was almost nervous about that.

I know I'm going to get voted down, but I hope the results aren't like this.

http://bornandbreded.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/crossed.jpg

That's okay. I lol'd. I was going to say something like "Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light." - So I voted you up.

I know I'm going to get voted down, but ...

Saying "I know I'm going to get voted down" and not being a complete troll: best way to ensure that you don't get voted down?

Possibly, or it could be an attempt to soften the negative reaction one might have by viewing the following statements.

It's kind of like a disclaimer for stupidity.

I consistently vote down comments that say things like "I know I'm going to be voted down for this, but ..." unless they are exceptionally interesting or insightful. (They never are.)

"Disclaimer for Stupidity?" I think you might have something there! What about a registry for provable journalistic incompetence (so limited to factual errors of misunderstanding of science) disguised as a sympathetic organization of mercy?

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