The ATLAS experiment is one of the five particle detector experiments
being constructed at the Large Hadron Collider, a new particle
accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. It will be 45 meters long,
25 meters in diameter, and will weigh about 7,000 tons. The project
involves roughly 2,000 scientists and engineers at 151 institutions in
34 countries. The construction is scheduled to be completed in 2007.
The experiment is expected to measure phenomena that involve highly
massive particles which were not measurable using earlier lower-energy
accelerators and might shed light on new theories of particle physics
beyond the Standard Model. ATLAS is designed as a general-purpose
experiment, so that regardless of what is produced by the collision of
the accelerator's proton beams, the results can be measured as
accurately as possible.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS_experiment
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1034:
Malcolm II of Scotland died. Duncan, the son of his second daughter,
instead of Macbeth, the son of his eldest daughter, inherited the
throne to become the King of Scots.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth_of_Scotland)
1795:
Stanisław II August Poniatowski, the last King of Poland, was forced
to abdicate after the Partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia and
Russia.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaus_II_Augustus_Poniatowski%2C_King_of_…)
1960:
The Mirabal sisters, who opposed the dictatorship of military
strongman Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, were
beaten and strangled to death.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabal_sisters)
1984:
Band Aid: 36 leading pop musicians of Britain and Ireland gathered in
a Notting Hill studio to record the song "Do They Know It's Christmas"
to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_Aid_%28band%29)
1992:
Velvet Divorce: Legislators in Czechoslovakia voted to split their
country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, effective January 1,
1993.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Divorce)
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Wikiquote of the day:
"Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future."
-- Ba Jin
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ba_Jin)