The chase for the 'God particle' now has an app... an Android app
by: Hannah Devlin
From: The Australian October 10, 2011 10:00AM
theaustralian.com.au
A woman walks near the world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN)'s Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland. Source: AFP
THE HUNT for the so-called "God particle" has so far eluded the Large Hadron Collider, but for those gripped by the thrill of the chase, scientists have launched a smartphone app, giving minute-by-minute updates on their progress.
The LHSee app can be downloaded to any Google Android smartphone or tablet and beams collisions that take place at the particle accelerator to mobile devices in real time.
The software, which was developed by the University of Oxford and the Atlas experiment at CERN, also includes 3-D graphics explaining how the detector works and includes a game called Hunt the Higgs in which users have to identify different types of collision.
"The graphics are a bit like an 1980s video game," said Alan Barr, a particle physicist at Oxford who developed the app. "Zooming in on the collisions is a bit like zooming through the death star in Star Wars."
The app is aimed at improving public understanding of the experiment and the scientists have trialled it at a local school in Oxford. "The pupils still preferred Angry Birds, but it went down well," said Dr Barr.
The app will be free to download from the Google Android marketplace from today and is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Swedish. |
