Interversal

4

"Alex," Amy said in a very loud whisper.

Startled she turned back toward the camera, only then noticing that the other reporters were again speaking into their cameras. The confidence she'd built suddenly vanished and a wave of heat poured over her.

She faltered, trying to find the words she was supposed to say next, but eventually managed to stammer, "There you have it Kurt." Amy caught her eye. She was holding out the pad again, and this time the words read, "clock." Alex twisted back toward the big screens, where a digital countdown had appeared and was ticking toward zero from one hundred and eighty seconds.

"Now that the timer has begun, we'll want to focus on those screens," she said, pointing. "The far right pair will show the collision progress, and things will move pretty quickly from here. Almost immediately after the photons are fired from the first accelerator, ionized particles will enter the first ring."

Alex went on explaining the process that was now taking place, finding her groove once more. Before she knew it the master clock reached zero and a bell chimed marking the end of the first cycle. A split second later, the screens came alive with graphics, meaning the particles had exited the first accelerator, a linear tube called LINAC 4.

Shortly after that two graphic circles, one red and one blue, appeared on screen indicating that the opposing beams had entered the first and smallest ring. The graphics pulsed and spun to indicate movement, making Alex wonder what it actually looked like inside the vacuum tube.

Very bright, she guessed.

The vacuum in use at CERN was extremely powerful, meaning that inside there was only the scantest trace of friction to slow the speeding particles. The tube was so well built, so perfectly engineered, it was more vacuous than the deepest, emptiest corners of space. Particles moved through the space with nothing to slow them down, allowing them to accelerate closer and closer to the speed of light.

The countdown clock started over, this time at twenty seconds, as the particles were sent into the second ring.

"Okay we can see from the monitors that the photon clusters have entered the second ring," she said. The room was alive with noise again, mostly from the clacking of fingers on keyboards and small conversations between the busy technicians. Behind the camera crews, reporters typed away at their computers while radio teams narrated the events live. Those who weren't working were transfixed by activity on the big monitors, adding to the sense of awe that had qfilled the space.

The clock hit zero as Alex finished explaining in brief detail how the second collider worked. Once again the graphics on the oversized monitors changed as the particles entered the third ring. The clock reset yet again, this time to sixty-three seconds.

"The beams are being pushed by fifty Mega-electron volts of electricity, as they accelerate inside the third ring," Alex said. "Once the particles reach top speed, a valve will open and they'll enter the fourth ring, the seventeen mile tube that makes the Large Hadron Collider the biggest in the world."

Her voice stayed calm as it broke the air between words. "At top speed, the system will draw five hundred thousand teraelectron volts, more energy than has ever been accessed by humankind for any purpose, all thanks to NASA's proprietary cold fusion reactor system in use here in Geneva."

GNT viewers were now being shown a side-by-side shot of the two large screens. On set in New York, everyone from Kurt Abramson to the most junior production assistants watched in synchronized awe. And then the countdown clock struck zero for the third time.

"The beams have entered the fourth and final ring," Alex said again breaking the silence. "Now the LHC will accelerate each beam far beyond the limits set by previous experiments, while harnessing what NASA scientists say is just around ten percent of the potential energy accessible through the fusion reactor."