This machine is an incredible feat of engineering, and perhaps the single most inspirational thing man has done so far this century. I hope the relevant people can do the sensible thing and use this as a way of making science more popular in schools and colleges. Maybe that's too much to ask.

Did you know that the chamber containing the ATLAS detector is so massive (35m high) that it actually has buoyancy in the Earth's crust?! It rises at a rate of 0.02mm per year, and so the floor had to be set to a 5m thickness to prevent warping.

I'm a bit of an LHC geek, despite having only a basic grasp of the physics...

This new atom smasher will allow us (yes, we are in this deal together) to see things that we could not see before. A principle of problem solving: When you can see enough of the problem, a solution will show itself. Thus, I hope solutions will show themselves.

It's not all about particles. There is a structure to our universe. There is energy, there is a flux between our 4-space and that which is outside of our 4-space. We have much to learn and it's going to be exciting.

I don't know whether the Higgs Boson exists but it really doesn't matter (ha ha.) It's about gravity. Gravity. What is gravity? Is it a property of matter or is it an interaction with our universe or just what is it? Can it be worked with? Yes, it can. There is a relation between electromagnetics and gravity.

Well, I would tell more but I don't want to alert the black helicopters and have them come empty out The Reg offices.

http://largehardoncollider.com/

(yes, the spelling *is* correct)

Most odd. If they wanted evidence of a black hole then they would just need to take a close look at Labours spending plans. However, today is the day to max out your credit cards because the bailiffs won't be popping round to relieve you of your Mary Poppins films. And do something you have always wanted to do today because there's no chance you'll have the opportunity tomorrow.

Wouldn't it be funny (not) if we all woke up tomorrow morning and a corner of France had been turned into a glass dish?

Paris because there is no icon of Britney to choose, and Paris is about as close as I can get.

Don't some of the pictures look rather like a crudely engineered Stargate?

Get a burst of protons going through that, each with the kinetic energy of an aircraft carrier in a hurry, and it's going to ruin Johnny Alien's whole day.

Is that not tad bit gay.

sooooo..... when can I get one of these fitted to my flying car?

For those not afraid of writeups in papery form, please check out this one at the Arxiv:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.4268

...the original Big Bang millions years ago when someone did the same trick....

<Cue the event millions Years ago> Watch this (Flick switch) "Oooops!"

It was in the footwell of my car on the passenger side, buried under M6 Toll receipts and empty cigarette packets. To be fair, my wife found it, after tidying the car up a bit. She almost missed it too - it's pretty small. 180 GeV sounds like a lot but it really isn't. It nearly got thrown out with the rubbish.

BIRDBOOT Where's Higgs?

MOON I replace him tonight.

MOON AND BIRDBOOT Where's Higgs?

MOON Every time.

BIRDBOOT What?

MOON It is as if we only existed one at a time, never appearing together but combining to achieve continuity. I keep space warm for Higgs. My presence defines his absence, his absence explains my presence, his presence excludes mine....When Higgs and I walk down this aisle together to claim our common seat, the oceans will fall into the sky and the trees will hang with fishes.

BIRDBOOT [He has not been paying attention, looking around vaguely, now catches up] Where's Higgs?

MOON Seeing me with a critic's ticket is enough. The streets are impassable tonight, you know why? It's because the country is rising and the cry goes up from hill to hill --Where--is--Higgs? [Small pause] Perhaps he's dead at last, or trapped in an elevator somewhere, or succumbed to amnesia, wandering the land with his pockets stuffed with ticket. [BIRDBOOT regards him doubtfully for a moment.]

Paris, because even she knows Higgs is really hiding under the sofa.

For anyone who remembers the intro to the game Another World.

For those that don't:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgkf6wooDmw

Just hope they will not be doing any experiments during a lightning storm. :)

Paris icon coz she is from Another World.

that A: Egon says crossing the streams is bad

and B: Dr Evil is so going to be after that machine to hold the world to ransom, is also a mega cool looking machine that fits right into the evil world conquering genius must have section.

Plus I want cold fusion or some other cool way to save on my leccy bill

I thought the same yesterday when I read that Hawking had said he 'wasn't holding his breath' that he'd be proven right about Hawking radiation. I'm hoping that's just because he expects them to observe nothing evaporating and not because he expects to be pulled wheels first to Geneva.

And kudos el Reg for getting the facts right - the beeb keep trying to say they'll be colliding things today. How hard is it for them to get their facts straight - or is getting a beam of protons to circulate a 70km ring consisting of 2000 superconducting magnets first time just not awesome enough for them?

Not

Don't worry fellow humans, I'm a time traveler from 2343 a.d. and I just wanted the worried people out there to know that this experiment is harmless. After eight months in operation, a new exotic particle will be found (no, not Higgs Boson, which BTW, doesn't really exist). No black holes whatsoever, at least not right now (these were created and destroyed in lab for the first time in 2157 a.d., and all went well too). BTW, instead of wasting so much time in theoretical physics, just conjuring theories, you might want to change your approach and worry more about direct observations of reality instead of theorizations. Also, you should revise some misconcepts that you have, specially some very basic ones about how electricity works and the relationship between magnetism and "gravity" (or as we call it today, "graviticity"). A hint:study the stuff that Edward Leedskalnin has left behind, and no, his "Sweet Sixteen" is not a girl, it's a symbolic reference to the key concept in electrodynamics.

That's as much as I can say without changing the future... or making it too easy =)

looks distinctly like Doc Brown to me.

Leon Lederman wanted to call it the "God damn particle", but his editor wouldn't let him. Or so says Higgs in an interview with The Grauniad:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/higgs.boson.cern

Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, right? So I'm a proton whizzing round this circular tunnel at nearly the speed of light. Without warning I spot a fellow proton whizzing round in an opposite direction doing the same speed. And it's coming straight at me.

So the closing speed is nearly twice the speed of light? That's impossible!

Scott me up beamy.

"you might want to change your approach and worry more about direct observations of reality instead of theorizations."

Uh, so we should stop just theorising about what may be the cause of inertial mass and build something so we can SEE a particle that could cause MASS but be undetectable because it is of such high energy it cannot exist except as a virtual particle?

OK.

I suggest we engineer something where we can get the energy concentration necessary to make these virtual particles exist for a detectible amount of time. This is probably best done by putting kinetic energy into particles and then getting them dense enough to create the right conditions.

To make them steerable, we should chose a charged particle. Protons maybe. Some sort of charged hadron anyway.

And if we shoot them about in opposite directions when the occasional one wollops into another one, the energy density should therefore be enough for our purposes.

Since this will be expensive, we need several countries involved. Best, from a political standpoint, to put the device in a suitably inoffensive "neutral" country with borders near to lots of other countries, so they all feel like they get involved. Switzerland should do. And CERN could work it, after all, they have some experience.

Can someone make such a device, please.

If your looking for a simple version of events they've released an instructional rap....!

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

I think you will find that this is not a typo, "as fast as speed as possible, It is factually incorrect.

Chuck Norris can run faster than protons in the LHC.

Some of us know that the true purpose of this endeavor is to create new compounds which do not naturally occur in our space neighborhood- such as element 115, the product of a binary star system (beta 1 & 2 reticuli ). This element was pointed out by robert lazar, who encountered it while back-engineering an exotic aerial craft at groom lake, nevada. These types of pursuits are what fuels such projects which exist on the fringes of science fiction & reality !!!

you missed a chance to promote the LHC rap!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

A bit silly, but marginally edjukashunul

Einstein solved that one - he analyzed the inconsistency and ended up with the famous e=mc^2 (energy equals mass times speed of light squared) equation. Basically subjective time for the protons 'slows down' so that they 'see' the other proton approaching at less than the speed of light. Read up on special relativity if you want to more details...

Has anyone noticed how the Wackypedia stresses that a Japanese scientist who webt to an AMERICAN university ALSO thought about the Higgs Boson?

And that Higgs' was "working FROM the ideas of" an AMERICAN scientist (and presumably also from Newton's, eventually). Furthermore some AMERICANS were the first to apply the Higgs mechanism to the electroweak theory.

So all this work in France and Switzerland is really AMERICAN...