Short Science, February 17, 2013

World's richest men open research centre

Carlos Slim and Bill Gates, the world's two richest men, opened a new agricultural research centre outside Mexico City. The two tycoons, who have donated millions of dollars to help bolster global food security, cut the ribbon at new laboratories at the headquarters of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre. Reuters

Higgs boson collider closes for revamp

The particle collider that gave scientists a glimpse of what may be the Higgs boson shut down for a two-year revamp that will allow it to pursue the quest with renewed vigour. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), straddling the border of Switzerland and France, has been working non-stop for three years to find the elusive particle that scientists believe can explain the mystery of mass. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern), which operates the collider, said its crew began winding down the vast facility on Thursday. It later went completely offline. "We have every reason to be very satisfied with the LHC's first three years," said Cern's director general Rolf Heuer. "The machine, the experiments, the computing facilities and all infrastructures behaved brilliantly, and we have a major scientific discovery in our pocket." The LHC smashes subatomic particles together to better understand the micro-moment after the creation of the universe 14 billion years ago. British physicist Peter Higgs theorised in 1964 that the boson could be what gave mass to matter as the universe cooled after the big bang. Located in a 26.6-kilometre circular tunnel, the LHC was the scene of an extraordinary discovery announced last July. Cern's scientists said they were 99.9 per cent certain they had found the Higgs boson AFP

Pentagon stands by controversial batteries

The Pentagon said it would continue using lithium-ion batteries on the new F-35 fighter jet despite problems with similar batteries that have grounded the Boeing 787 airliner and caused Airbus to rethink their use on its A350 jet. Joe DellaVedova, the spokesman for the Pentagon's US$396 billion F-35 programme office, said the lithium-ion batteries used on the radar-evading fighter were made by different manufacturers than those used on the 787. He said that the battery systems on the jet had been rigorously tested. Reuters