After completely failing to destroy the planet with a miniature black hole, the mad scientists at CERN have done the next best thing and made an Android app. LHSee displays live data from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, allowing users live views of collisions and 3D models of LHC components. The free app is available now in the Android Market.
LHSee comes from developer Christopher Boddy, a member of the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics. The app is an impressive achievement, with plenty of information on the LHC and the scientific processes that go into its development and testing. The meat of the app is the “Stream 3-D Events” view, which shows a live look at the actual atomic collisions being performed in the CERN labs. The wireframe model and data points can be rotated and zoomed in and out with multi-touch gestures, just like Google Maps.
There’s also and extensive database of articles about the ATLAS experiment, one of the current full-time tasks of the LHC. It’s explained in plain English, and for the benefit of children (and professional bloggers) there’s animated diagrams as well. A mini-game called “Hunt the Higgs Boson” lets you take an interactive step into CERN’s research. The app is a fascinating look at one of the most sophisticated accomplishments of the scientific world, and if that’s where your interest are, it’s well worth the free download.
[via Slashdot]
