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Physics researchers are looking to the smallest of particles to try to answer some big questions about the universe, from why matter has mass, to whether or not string theory can truly explain the way the universe works. Later this year, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is scheduled to come on line. Scientists hope that this new collider, the most powerful in the world, will provide glimpses of particles and interactions that have so far been out of reach -- including the elusive Higgs boson, a particle thought to be responsible for matter having mass. Not everyone is excited about the work, however. A lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Hawaii arguing that high energy collisions produced by the research have the potential to produce unusual physical phenomena including 'strangelets' and miniature black holes that could put the planet at risk. Physicists say that while theory predicts that yes, 'miniature black holes' might be created in the collider, the same theories say that those black holes will have about as much energy as a mosquito, and will destroy themselves a fraction of a second later. In this segment, Ira talks with Frank Wilczek, 2004 Nobel Laureate in physics, about why he's looking forward to the stratup of LHC. In 1999, Wilczek and colleagues examined similar risk concerns surrounding the startup of the RHIC collider at Brookhaven National Lab. |
EVAL ERROR: Entity: line 1: parser error : Space required after the Public Identifier ^ Entity: line 1: parser error : SystemLiteral " or ' expected ^ Entity: line 1: parser error : SYSTEM or PUBLIC, the URI is missing ^ Code: line 1: package tmpevalpackage; line 2: sub doEval { line 3: my($parent); line 4: line 5: if($LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'SEGMENT.nickname'}) { line 6: $parent = $LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'SEGMENT.nickname'}; line 7: } line 8: elsif($LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'VIDEO.nickname'}) { line 9: $parent = $LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'VIDEO.nickname'}; line 10: } line 11: elsif($LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'DOCUMENT.nickname'}) { line 12: $parent = $LayoutManager::url_resolved_values{'DOCUMENT.nickname'} line 13: } line 14: line 15: if($parent) { line 16: my(@books) = &Database::SelectClause('BOOK',"parent = $parent"); line 17: if(!@books) { line 18: $parent = ''; line 19: } line 20: } line 21: line 22: if(!$parent) { line 23: my(@sel) = &Database::SelectClause('GLOBAL','record all ""'); line 24: if(@sel) { line 25: $parent = 'GLOBAL.' . $sel[0]; line 26: } line 27: $main::ENV{'reading_header'} = "FEATURED READING"; line 28: } line 29: line 30: = ''; line 31: line 32: if($parent) { line 33: my(@books) = &Database::SelectClause('BOOK',"parent = $parent"); line 34: 0 = 0; line 35: my $dots; line 36: foreach(@books) { line 37: my(%data); line 38: &Database::GetRow($_,'BOOK',\%data); line 39: my($status,$title,$author,$url,$image,$width,$height) = &SciFri::Schema::getAmazonItem($data{'isbn'}); line 40: if($data{'title'}) { line 41: $title = $data{'title'}; line 42: } line 43: if($data{'author'}) { line 44: $author = $data{'author'}; line 45: } line 46: if($status eq 'ok') { line 47: .= "<div class=\"box-2x1-item box-slide\" data-href=\"$url\">"; line 48: .= " <div class=\"box-2x1-item-photo\">"; line 49: .= " <div class=\"image-wrapper\" data-jsclass=\"imageWrapper\" data-align=\"right\">"; line 50: .= " <img src=\"$image\" data-width=\"$width\" data-height=\"$height\">"; line 51: .= " </div>"; line 52: .= " </div>"; line 53: .= " <h4>$title</h4>"; line 54: if($author) { line 55: .= " <p>by $author</p>"; line 56: } line 57: .= " <div class=\"box-2x1-more-button\"><a href=\"$url\"><img src=\"/images/v1/icon_text_more_white.png\" width=47 height=15 border=0></a></div>"; line 58: .= "</div>"; line 59: ++0; line 60: } line 61: } line 62: } line 63: if($parent eq "GLOBAL.1") { $main::ENV{'reading_header'} = "FEATURED READING"; } line 64: else { $main::ENV{'reading_header'} = "RELATED READING"; } line 65: }; line 66: &doEval(); line 67: 1;
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