Big Bang: First protons fired, world still safe

Scientists at the world's largest particle collider have fired the first protons into a 17-mile-long tunnel in science's next great step to understand the makeup of the universe.

Project leader Lyn Evans gave the go-ahead to send the protons into the accelerator below the Swiss-French border early Wednesday.

The $3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider was under construction since 2003. Scientists hope it will provide the necessary power to smash the components of atoms so that they can see how they are made.

The startup has been eagerly awaited by 9,000 physicists around the world who will conduct experiments here.

Some skeptics have said they fear the collisions of protons could eventually imperil Earth.
'It's nonsense,'' said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN, the host European Organization for Nuclear Research.

CERN is backed by leading scientists like Britain's Stephen Hawking in dismissing the fears and declaring the experiments to be absolutely safe.

Gillies told the AP that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel deep below the Swiss-French border.

And full power is probably a year away.

''On Wednesday we start small,'' said Gillies. ''What we're putting in to start with is one single low intensity bunch at low energy and we thread that around. We get experience with low energy things and then we ramp up as we get to know the machine better.''

He said a good result for Wednesday would be to have one beam going all the way around the tunnel in a counterclockwise direction. If that works, the scientists will then try to send a beam in the other direction.

''A really good result would be to have the other beam going around, too, because once you've got a beam around once in both directions you know that there is no show stopper,'' Gillies said. ''It's going to work.''

However, if there is some blockage in the machine, experts will have to go in and fix the problem, and that could take time.

The LHC, as the collider is known, will take scientists to within a split second of a laboratory recreation of the big bang, which they theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe.

The project organized by the 20 European member nations of CERN has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country which contributed $531 million. Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.

The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.

Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Less than 100 years ago scientists thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but in stages since then experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons and that there were other forces and particles.

The CERN experiments could reveal more about ''dark matter,'' antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle _ the Higgs boson _ believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

Some scientists have been waiting for 20 years to use the LHC. But even their younger colleagues are excited that startup has finally arrived.

''I think it's a very important project,'' said Katie McAlpine, 23, a Michigan State University graduate who made a rap video about the project.

''It's mostly out of scientific curiosity, what is the universe made of? How does it work? What are the rules? That's very exciting and it's important to advance our knowledge,'' she told Associated Press Television News.

She said she was surprised by the success of the video, which has had more than a million views on YouTube and which has received approval from CERN for its scientific accuracy, especially in its success with young people.

''I was really hoping that this would get taken into classrooms,'' McAlpine said. ''I don't imagine that elementary school and most middle school children will understand it very well, but a lot of parents have e-mailed me, saying I have a 9-year-old or a 7-year-old and showed them your rap and they really love it.

''If elementary kids can get excited about it, too, that's just great.''

India's condom ring tone a huge global hit

Guess which Indian ring tone is being downloaded the most all over the world? No, it is not the latest Bollywood chartbuster, but a public health message that goes 'condom, condom'.

Its makers are amazed by the popularity of the ring tone that was launched last month and aims to promote safe sex, the use of condom and to thus tackle the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country where about 2.5 million people are estimated to be living with it.

'It is a hit internationally. Nowhere in the world are we aware of a ring tone for a product,' said Yvonne MacPherson, country director of the BBC World Service Trust, the international charity of the BBC.

'The 'condom a cappella' ringtone is really innovative. What is amazing is that India has started the trend of a ring tone which carries a social health message. People are excited about this ring tone internationally and are looking to India for this,' MacPherson told IANS.

What has perhaps caught the imagination of the people is the fresh voice, sound and music, which are totally Indian.

'I think the ring tone has international appeal. It has quirky music and sound,' said MacPherson.

In the three weeks since its launch, the makers have already received 257,744 SMS requests for download and over two million hits on the website.

The ring tone can be downloaded by SMSing 'CONDOM' to 56887 (download charges apply) or free from anywhere worldwide on the website www.condomcondom.org. The ring tone has been composed by Rupert Fernandes and sung by Vijay Prakash, who is a professional singer, and has chanted the word condom more than 50 times.

'As it became international news, there has been demand for it from all corners of the globe,' said an excited MacPherson, who got calls from radio stations from across the US and Britain.

The ring tone marks the latest phase in the three-year intense mass media campaign to make condom use more socially acceptable. It was partially launched in Aug 8 but was nationally seen on television, cinema, radio and in print in Aug 22.

The campaign uses a multitude of youth friendly platforms such as website downloads, online games, mobile advertising and downloads, along with the TV and radio advertisements, MacPherson said, adding that the campaign is funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) is also using the ad to support its condom promotion efforts.

The objective is to connect with all age groups and across the socio-economic strata, MacPherson added.

In the advertisement, a wedding is shown where a mobile rings with the sound of 'condom, condom'. An embarrassed man holds the phone and looks for others' reactions. Then he finds the reactions smart and responsible. The tagline is 'jo samjha wohi sikander' ('the one who understands is a winner').

MacPherson said the ring tone has also scored big time as many have sent messages to them.

One of the messages they have received on their website is from Denmark and it reads: 'I have just read an article about this latest ring tone from you, i have heard it and i love IT!! you are tearing down the walls around this taboo.'

Another one from the US said: 'I found this and my sons overwhelmed and they love it. ...opened up a new dialogue regarding sexual health. Thank you for such a fun way to open up with my kids about HIV and AIDS.'

It is getting accolades from Indians too. 'Awesome, from today onwards this will be my mobile ring tone, it's a good effort to spread awareness...' a message from a man in Karnataka said.

MacPherson said: 'The objective was to make condom socially acceptable and to remove the taboo around it. Condoms are a health product and a life saving device to protect a person from HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.

'People feel embarrassed when it comes to protection so we have to first take care of this. This is how we would be able to check the epidemic nature of the disease. The shock value coupled with bringing the subject out in the open will also help in dispelling the myths,' MacPherson added.

According to Radharani Mitra, the creative director of the trust which is producing the advertisements, 'ring tones have become such personal statements that a specially created condom ring tone seemed just the right way of combining a health message in a fun way'.

How to live till 100

Want to live till 100 years of age? Well, do regular exercises, be married, wash hands and brush your teeth everyday.

That's what a new book, 'The Long Life Equation', by Dr Trisha Macnair suggests.

In the book, the author has listed activities that add years to your life.

Macnair said washing your hands adds two years, and good dental hygiene can add six more years in your life.

But smoking, fast food, no exercise and a stressful life can strip away 20 years.

"There's no doubt younger people take life and health for granted - more than any generation before, they idle time away watching TV or playing computer games, ignoring the activities that keep them healthy or develop meaning in their lives," Courier Mail quoted Macnair, as saying.

"As we get older and start to feel the years slipping away, we suddenly realise how precious it is.

"But by then we may have already established habits (smoking, drinking, obesity, lack of exercise, stressful occupations) which take their toll and are difficult to reverse.

"Still, it's never too late to change. Also, our attitudes to older age are changing so there is more freedom now to do things later in life if we are healthy and able," she added.

A 2006 study from University of California in Los Angeles showed that men and women live healthier, wealthier, happier and longer lives when they are in a stable partnership

The study confirmed that married couples were more likely to live to an old age than their divorced, widowed or unmarried counterparts.

A stable partnership can actually add on seven years to life.

Regular exercise also adds as much as two or more years to your life.

A Harvard Alumni Study, which took into account more than 71,000 men who had graduated from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania between 1916 and 1954, found that those men who regularly burned 8400kJ a week while exercising lived, on average, two years longer than sedentary types.

But cigarette smoking can actually reduce 8 years from your life

Tobacco smoke contains more than 4000 chemicals, many of which are highly toxic.

A divorce can also strip away 3 years from your life, as it takes longer-lasting, emotional and physical toll on former spouses than virtually any other life stress.

ecent studies indicate that divorced adults have higher rates of emotional disturbance, accidental death and death from heart disease.

The divorced also have higher rates of admission to psychiatric facilities and make more visits to doctors than people who are married, single or widowed. (ANI)

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Doom-mongers worry: end of world on Big Bang test day

If critics are to be believed, the end of the universe will begin coming Wednesday when a Welsh miner's son launches the world's biggest scientific experiment to know how the universe was born.


The well-known Welshman physicist, Lyn Evans, dubbed Evans the Atom, will this week switch on a giant particle accelerator designed to unlock the secrets of the Big Bang.


On Wednesday, Evans will fire up the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile-long doughnut-shaped tunnel that will smash sub-atomic particles together at nearly the speed of light.


Built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the collider lies beneath the French-Swiss border, near the institution's headquarters in Geneva, at depths ranging from 170 feet to 600 feet.


The aim of the 4.4 billion-pound (over $7.7 billion) experiment is to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang — the birth of the universe — and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life.

It will track the spray of particles thrown out by collisions in a search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical entity that supposedly lends weight, or mass, to the elementary particles. So important is this mysterious substance that it has been called the "God Particle".


Scientists also hope to shed some light on the invisible material that exists between particles - dubbed "dark matter" as no one knows what it really is - which make up most of the universe.


But a handful of scientists believe that the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could "eat" the planet from within, and they are launching last-ditch efforts to halt it in the courts.


One of them, Otto Rossler, a retired German chemist, said he feared the experiment may create a devastating quasar - a mass of energy fuelled by black holes - inside the earth. Jets emanating from it would grow and catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis would occur at the points they emerged from the earth.


"The weather will change completely, wiping out life, and very soon the whole planet will be eaten in a magnificent scenario - if you could watch it from the moon. A Biblical Armageddon. Even cloud and fire will form, as it says in the Bible."


He said that attempts were still being made in the European Court of Human Rights to halt the experiment on the grounds that it violated the right to life. The court has, however, already rejected calls for a temporary delay in the project.


Walter Wagner, an American scientist who has been warning about the dangers of particle accelerators for 20 years, is awaiting a ruling on a lawsuit he filed a fortnight ago in his home state of Hawaii.


Evans, however, is dismissive of the "doom-mongers".


"There are thousands of scientists around the world who have been preparing this machine and they know what they are talking about, unlike these guys," he is quoted as saying in the British daily Daily Mail.