LHC renamed to Halo
Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 3:31 pm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... lhc117.xmlForget about the yawn-inducing Large Hadron Collider.
The name "Halo" sounds much catchier and should adorn the £4.4 billion experiment, according to a poll organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London
The Large Hadron Collider does what it says on the tin, since hadron refers to the subatomic particles that the giant machine smashes together at a shade below the speed of light.
But this "fails to reflect the drama of its mission, or the inspiration it should be conveying to the wider public," says Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the Society.
The Society launched a competition to suggest an inspiring name for the 17 mile circumference machine, which is going to smash its first particles next week at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva, known by its French acronym Cern.
After sifting more than 2,500 responses, ranging from The Big Banger to Infinite Devil Machine and The Matter Splatterer, it has now selected a winner to rechristen the vast enterprise.
Fed up with "the contrived acronyms that plague the world of science," the RSC says it "picked a suggestion which is simple, memorable, and brings to mind the deserved grandeur of perhaps the most important experiment ever built."
"Halo conjures visions of radiant beauty, power and wisdom. The circle of light reflects the collider's form; it is a crowning achievement of science and engineering. It also gives more than a nod to the experiment's importance to religious debate.
The name Halo was by far the most popular entry. The winner was chosen at random from the hundreds of people who suggested it; Aaron Borges of Rhode Island, USA, who wins £500 ($892) .
The Society will be formally suggesting the new name to Cern and the Institute of Physics.
Some have suggested that this publicity stunt reflects how chemists are envious of physicists, a state of affairs that dates back to 1929 when Paul Dirac - Britain's answer to Einstein - declared to the world that he had figured out all of chemistry: "The general theory of quantum mechanics is now complete... The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known."
But the Society has dismissed the suggestion that it was suffering from "professional jealousy".
"Far from it. The RSC congratulates the physics community with nothing but admiration for their amazing project - it just has a very boring name."
Several other entries to the competition proved popular. Colliderscope garnered many votes, along with Black Mesa, the name of an ill-fated research facility in the game franchise Half-Life.
To reflect the endless quest to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything, some suggested Cern should name the experiment after the computer designed to do just that in Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Deep Thought.
Other favourites were:The Particrasher, E=M25, The Big Banger and Big Bang Two Point Oh, Collider-torus Rex, The Boffin's Bagel and Doughnut of Discovery.
Telegraph readers also rose to the challenge with several hundred suggestions. They came up with:
Ovid's Phaeton
The Magic Roundabout
The Genesis Engine
E42 - E for Energy, 42, from The Hitchhikers Guide
Adam Smasher
Hawkinator after Stephen Hawking
Puff The Magic Hadron
Bosonator
BOB - Biggest Of Bangs
Mr Twirly Beams
The One Ring
Stargate
