It is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it.

Hackers infiltrate Large Hadron Collider systems and mock IT security

"Hackers have mounted an attack on the Large Hadron Collider, raising concerns about the security of the biggest experiment in the world.

As the first particles were circulating in the machine near Geneva where the world wide web was born, a Greek group hacked into the facility, posting a warning about weaknesses in its infrastructure.

Calling themselves the Greek Security Team, the interlopers mocked the IT used on the project, describing the technicians responsible for security as "a bunch of schoolkids."

However, despite an ominous warning "don't mess with us," the hackers said they had no intention of disrupting the work of the atom smasher.

"We're pulling your pants down because we don't want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes," they wrote in Greek in a rambling note posted on the LHC's network.

The scientists behind the £4.4 billion "Big Bang" machine had already received threatening emails and been besieged by telephone calls from worried members of the public concerned by speculation that the machine could trigger a black hole to swallow the earth, or earthquakes and tsunamis, despite endless reassurances to the contrary from the likes of Prof Stephen Hawking.

The website - www.cmsmon.cern.ch - can no longer be accessed by the public as a result of the attack.

Scientists working at Cern, the organisation that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12500 tons, measuring around 21 metres in length and 15 metres wide/high.

If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider, "it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it."

Fortunately, only one file was damaged but one of the scientists firing off emails as the CMS team fought off the hackers said it was a "scary experience".

The hackers targeted the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, or CMS, one of the four "eyes" of the facility that will be analysing the fallout of the Big Bang."

The God Particle

This is a quick post to to commemorate the switching on the the Large Hydron Collider in Cern, Switzerland. What a cool piece of kit they've built. All to try and find the elusive Higgs Boson particle, also known as the God Particle.

I can't wait to see what they find!

"Nestling in the foothills of the Alps is Europe's largest laboratory, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, or Cern.

With its vast labyrinth of tunnels and equipment stretching for miles, the complex has the feel of a cathedral to science.

And now the scientists here have embarked on their biggest experiment ever, the hunt for a particle which gave the universe its form.

Its scientific name is the Higgs Boson, but because it is so fundamental in shaping the universe, others have called it the God particle.

It is a particle that is supposed to endow other fundamental particles with mass. Without it there would be no gravity, no universe as we know it - no "let there be light" moment.

No-one has seen it, but physicists have invoked it because it is the simplest explanation for how the universe evolved.

Most physicists are instinctively drawn towards theories with a simple elegance.

Reverend Sir John Polkinghorne used to be a theoretical physicist and worked with Professor Peter Higgs, after whom the God particle was named.

Professor Polkinghorne went on to become an Anglican priest. He believes the equations which describe the way sub-atomic particles interact contain a natural beauty in which some find a spark of divinity.

He said: "Physicists are deeply impressed with the order of the world. It is rationally beautiful and structured, and the feeling that there is a mind behind it is a very natural feeling to have."

It is not the first time that a scientific study of the universe has inspired awe and wonder.

The crew of Apollo 8 were so moved by their experience, they felt moved to read passages from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve in 1968.

US physicists Richard Feynman and George Smoot both described their Nobel Prize-winning insights into the behaviour of subatomic particles and the detection of the Cosmic Background Radiation as looking "unto the face of God".

Professor Polkinghorne understands why such glimpses into the underlying reality of the universe can provoke such reactions.

He said: "I think the feeling of wonder, which is very fundamental to the experience of physicists - the way they see structure in the world - is fundamentally a religious experience, whether people recognise it as such or not.

"And I think it is actually a tacit, sometimes explicit, worship of the creator."

Many of the physicists here are not religious and would disagree with Professor Polkinghorne's view.

For them their buzz is an intellectual rather than religious one. "

Engerineered

Sometimes its not just the fantastic images from space and science that amaze. Sometimes it's the devices man has build to see and explore that amaze also. Click to enlarge.

1.Why do objects have mass? To help find out, Europe's CERN has built the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator yet created by humans. Pictured above, a person stands in front of the huge ATLAS detector, one of six detectors being attached to the LHC.

2. An intricate network of lighting plays across the 130 foot high Rotating Service Structure (RSS) in this dramatic night view of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A. Small human figures visible in silhouette emphasize the structure's enormous scale.

3. The imposing structure in the foreground houses the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), on Mount Graham, Arizona. Inside, the two 8.4 meter diameter mirrors of the LBT really are side-by-side on a common mount, an arrangement mimicking the design of more modest optical equipment usually carried around the neck. While not exactly portable, the benefits of the large scale binocular configuration adopted include an increase in sensitivity over a single mirror telescope and high resolution imaging for faint objects over a relatively wide field of view.

4. The International Space Station (ISS) has been equipped with a powerful new scientific laboratory. The Space Shuttle Atlantis delivered the Columbus Laboratory to the ISS and installed the seven meter long module over the past week. Columbus has ten racks for experiments that can be controlled from the station or the Columbus Control Center in Germany. The first set of experiments includes the Fluid Science Laboratory that will explore fluid properties in the microgravity of low Earth orbit, and Biolab which supports experiments on microorganisms. Future Columbus experiments include an atomic clock that will test minuscule timing effects including those expected by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

How to destroy the Earth, part 2

2. Fissioned

You will need: a universal fission machine (e.g. a particle accelerator), an unimaginable amount of energy

Method: Take every single atom on planet Earth and individually split each one down to become hydrogen and helium. Fissioning heavier elements to become hydrogen and helium is the opposite of the self-sustaining reaction that powers the Sun: it requires you to put energy in which is why the energy requirements here are so vast.

Earth's final resting place: While Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are gas giants composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, they are massive enough to actually hold on to their tenuous atmospheres. The Earth is not; the gases would dissipate away. You'd get a wispy mess of gas where there should have been a planet.

Feasibility rating: 2/10. Technically possible, but, again, hopelessly, mind-bogglingly inefficient and time-consuming. You're looking at billions of years minimum, folks.

Source: This method suggested by John Routledge.