The world’s highest-energy particle accelerator

The Large Hadron Collider at Cern experienced its first collision a week ago and, as the BBC reports, in the early hours of this morning it officially became the world’s highest energy particle accelerator by accelerating its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV – breaking the previous world record of 0.98 TeV, held by the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Tevatron collider since 2001. There’s an elongated Cern video report here. First physics due early 2010 …

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Should Monica resign..?

PETE’S already noted the launch of the consultation paper on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland, in which it becomes quickly apparent that the Government has basically thrown out most of the advice from the NI Human Rights Consortium for straying beyond its remit, lack of regard to the national and international contexts (ie, stuff already in place or about to be), unrealistic expectations, and so on. The NIHRC says it “will now carefully consider the Government?s proposals before …

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