Total solar eclipse triggers Big Bang! NASA to launch rockets, CERN to smash protons

A historic total solar eclipse is scheduled to occur across many cities in the United States on April 8, 2024. On Monday, April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will cross North America, passing over Mexico, the United States, and Canada. From Texas to Maine in the United States, millions of people will witness a total solar eclipse. A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth and for a short time, completely blocks the face of the sun.

However, solar eclipse will not be an isolated natural phenomenon on April 8. NASA and the ‘God Particle’ renowned CERN institute have chosen April 8 as the day to conduct some unique scientific experiments.

NASA Rockets

NASA will launch three sounding rockets during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, to study how Earth’s upper atmosphere is affected when sunlight momentarily dims over a portion of the planet.

This NASA project is termed as Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP). The APEP sounding rockets will launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to study the disturbances in the ionosphere created when the Moon eclipses the Sun.

The sounding rockets will launch at three different times: 45 minutes before, during, and 45 minutes after the peak local eclipse. These intervals are important to collect data on how the Sun’s sudden disappearance affects the ionosphere, creating disturbances that have the potential to interfere with communications.

CERN Collisions

According to Daily Mail, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator is set to smash protons together on April 8 to search for invisible particles secretly powering our universe.

CERN website news report also talks about, “Collisions for physics at 6.8 TeV are expected to take place on 8 April.”

Back in 2012, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, came into the spotlight after the discovery of ‘God particle’. The particle was finally discovered on July 4, 2012, by researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the most powerful particle accelerator in the world — located at the European particle physics laboratory CERN, Switzerland.

The CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. The beams inside the LHC are made to collide at four locations around the accelerator ring, corresponding to the positions of four particle detectors – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb.

Interestingly, following a spirited debate in the working group, GOD was discarded on account of unfortunate echoes of the “God particle” – the controversial name accidentally given to the Higgs boson in 1993.

The next total solar eclipse over the US is not until 2044, so these scientific experiments are a rare opportunity for scientists to collect crucial data.