Weird Facts About the Hadron Collider

Now that the Large Hadron Collider is up and running again, Ross Bonander of AskMen unearths 5 scientific tidbits:

• It's really, really cold: The system's magnets are cooled to -456°F, a bit chillier than deep outer space.
• It's really, really hot: After those magnets do their stuff, the resulting collisions of proton beams create temperatures about 100,000 times hotter than the core of the sun. For all of a trillionth of a second.

• Stephen Hawking theory: If the collider were to produce a mini black hole (it's unlikely) and die as a result, it would confirm a 1974 theory put forth by Hawking and almost certainly earn him a Nobel Prize.
• Einstein rules: The collider relies on the E=mc² equation, though it's inverted here to m=E/c², which you probably already knew.

For more, click here. (More Large Hadron Collider stories.)