There’s big news coming out of Europe today. After 16 years and $10 billion, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is finally beginning to collide subatomic particles. If you’re wondering what this all means, let me turn your attention to a yearlong course that we’re offering in Stanford’s Continuing Studies program (my day job). New Revolutions in Particle Physics is taught by Leonard Susskind, one of the world leading physicists, and it takes a deep look at new theories in particle physics that emerged during the 1970s, and how they’re now being tested by the LHC. The first course overviews the basic concepts, and you can watch it on YouTube or iTunes. (The first lecture appears above.) The second course will be soon made available online. The third course is just getting underway in the classroom (you can enroll here if you live near Stanford), and we’ll eventually post that course online as well. You can find more physics courses in the Physics section of our large collection of Free Online Courses.
UPDATE: As Maria, aka @brainpicker notes in the comments, CERN (which runs the LHC) hosts an archive of lectures, movies and collision videos, including some of this morning’s successful tests. More here.
Great stuff. Speaking of the LHC and free video, CERN have their our archive of lectures, movies and collision videos, including some of this morning’s successful tests.
And check out the Atlantic Wire’s “Why the Large Hadron Collider Experiment Matters”: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Why+the+Large+Hadron+Collider+Experiment+Matters-3044