Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot

Astronomer Carl Sagan – we are here, the Pale Blue Dot. Our Planet is just a point of light, a lonely pixel.

“ The Earth is a mere point in the vast, encompassing Cosmos. We are too small, on the scale of Worlds, humans are inconsequential.

A thin film of life on the obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal. That dot that’s here, that’s Home – that’s us.

On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, every human being who ever was lived out their lives.

Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there. The Earth is a very small stage in the vast Cosmic arena – a fraction of a dot.

Our tiny world, the pale blue dot.” – Carl Sagan

Science of Tomorrow CERN LHC Atom Smasher or Doomsday

CERN and the Large Hadron Collider Atom Smasher – Is it an investigation into the makeup of the universe — or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.

The multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and come close to reenacting the big bang, the theory that a colossal explosion created the universe.

National Geographic reports – 1 in 50 Million Chance to End World – I like my chances

And AP Associated Press has this video out with scientists saying the atom-smasher Won’t bring Armageddon.

Smashing Atoms at 99.9 % The Speed of Light – The Largest Scientific Test in History. Best of Success

 

Update: The world’s biggest physics experiment, the Large Hadron particle collider has begun 9-10-08 in a 17-mile tunnel below the French-Swiss border, producing so much data that even the massive computing power at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, can’t handle it all. The LHC Grid, a network of 60,000 computers, will analyze what happens when protons are hurled at each other inside the collider.

Particle physicists celebrated on Wednesday after the long-awaited startup of the Large Hadron Collider, designed to expose secrets of the cosmos, passed its first test with flying colors. Cheers  and champagne marked the breakthrough, rather than the cataclysmic suck of a black hole, as doomsayers had feared.

The mission aims at resolving some of the greatest enigmas in physics: whether a so-called “God particle” exists that would account for the nature of mass; an explanation for “dark matter” and “dark energy” that account for 96 percent of the cosmos; and whether other dimensions exist in parallel to our own. It’s about acquiring knowledge for humanity about the behaviour of fundamental matter.

The LHC took nearly 20 years to complete and at six billion Swiss francs (3.76 billion euros, 5.46 billion dollars) is one of the costliest and most complex scientific experiments ever attempted.

It was a historic day for CERN and mankind’s thirst for knowledge. Stay tuned.