Build your own Big Bang: CERN’s Large Hadron Collider turns on September 10, 2008

At 5.30 pm AEST next Wednesday 10th September, scientists will hit the big green button on the world's largest experiment, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The huge energies given to tiny particles in this experiment will take us closer to the Big Bang than we have ever been before and propel us towards answering questions of Life, The Universe and Everything.

One of the thousands of scientists holding his breath is Dr Kevin Varvell from the School of Physics University of Sydney. "At last we can test some of our ideas about what we are made of!" he says. "Some ideas are very solid, some such as mini-black holes less so."

At a public talk next Wednesday evening Dr Kevin and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki will be giving the low down on the Large Hadron Collider, colder than deep space, and buried 100 m in the ground in a tunnel 27 km long under the French-Swiss border - as well as streaming live video from CERN.

The Speakers
Dr Kevin Varvell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics. After being fascinated by the subatomic world as an undergraduate in Perth, he obtained a DPhil in the subject in the UK and has since then been chasing the secrets of the fundamental building blocks of matter through experiments at CERN, Fermilab and KEK.

The Speakers:

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has degrees in Physics and Maths, Biomedical Engineering, Medicine and Surgery and has worked as a physicist, tutor, film-maker, car mechanic, labourer, and as a medical doctor at the Kids' Hospital in Sydney.

In 1995 he took up the position of the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at Sydney University, spreading the good word about science and its benefits.

RSVP: 9351 3472 or outreach (at) physics.usyd.edu.au by 5pm Tuesday 9th September

Official Website: http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/about/news_items/news_item1.shtml