The London Daily Telegraph reports: “The Large Hadron Collider has taken a step closer to unlocking the secrets of dark matter as the atom smasher recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons.

The collisions happened as the collider was put through test runs in preparation for full operations next year, according to Christine Sutton of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN.

Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and ultimately the Big Bang thought to have created the universe billions of years ago.

Two beams of circulating particles traveling in opposite directions at 1.18 trillion electron volts (TeV) produced the collisions.

The Atlas, one of four major detectors in cathedral-sized rooms in the collider’s underground tunnel at Geneva, had part of its equipment turned on and could register collisions.

‘They recorded a handful of collisions, and one of them looks quite nice, so it’s on their web site,’ Dr Sutton said.

Dr Sutton said the collisions occurred when the machine was ramped up briefly to 1.18 TeV.

That same level set a world record for proton acceleration in November, when Geneva’s particle beams traveled with 20 percent more power than Fermilab near Chicago, which previously held the record.

The operators plan many more collisions at lower energies so the experiments can calibrate their equipment and prepare for more advances ahead…” (This experiment could cause untold damage as the greatest explosive blast in history occurs. Many scientists are alarmed and fearful. “…avoid… oppositions of science falsely so called” – I Timothy 6:20.)

The Times Online reports: “Tantalizing hints of dark matter – the mysterious substance thought to make up a quarter of the Universe – have been picked up for the first time, in an American laboratory buried half a mile underground.

Scientists working on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), in the disused Soudan iron ore mine in Minnesota, announced last night that they had detected two events with the signature of the weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that are thought to make up dark matter.

If the signals are confirmed by further observations that will begin next year, they would rank as one of the most important recent advances in physics and understanding of the cosmos.

The CDMS researchers stressed, however, that they were not claiming to have discovered dark matter because there is a good chance that the events were caused by something else.

The probability that the signals were caused by ordinary radioactive decay or cosmic rays is about one in four, they said. A one in 1,000 chance of a random event would be needed to confirm that dark matter has finally been seen.

‘In the new data set there are indeed two events seen with characteristics consistent with those expected from WIMPs,’ the CDMS team said in a statement. ‘However, there is also a chance that both events could be due to background particles.

‘Scientists have a strict set of criteria for determining whether a new discovery has been made, in essence that the ratio of signal to background events must be large enough that there is no reasonable doubt…” (As Christ is about to return “knowledge shall be increased” – Daniel 12:4. This includes space events and spectacular signs.)

The Guardian.co.uk reports: “A man who was partially blinded when ammonia was squirted in his eye during an attack 15 years ago has regained his sight after receiving a pioneering stem cell treatment.

Russell Turnbull, 38, suffered massive damage to his right eye when he was caught in a scuffle after a night out in Newcastle in 1994. On the bus home, Turnbull had tried to intervene in a fight between two men but was injured when one of them began squirting passengers with ammonia.

The chemical severely scarred Turnbull’s cornea, the clear membrane that covers the front of the eye, and destroyed stem cells that usually help keep the cornea healthy.

‘I was in unbearable pain. It burned my eye shut,’ Turnbull told the Guardian. ‘I was in hospital for two weeks and eventually I was able to open the eye again. It was like looking through scratched perspex.’

Turnbull was left with ‘limbal stem cell deficiency’ (LSCD), a condition that seriously impairs sight, and was in pain every time he blinked or saw bright lights.

In an experimental treatment devised by doctors at the North East England Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle, stem cells were taken from Turnbull’s healthy eye and grown on a layer of amniotic tissue, which is routinely used as a burn dressing. The NHS banks amniotic sacs donated by women who have had a Caesarean section.

When the cells had covered the membrane, a piece the size of a postage stamp was transplanted onto Turnbull’s damaged eye. Two months later the membrane had broken down, leaving his damaged eye with a fresh supply of healthy stem cells, which repaired the cornea.

Eye tests six months after surgery showed that Turnbull’s vision was nearly as good as it had been before the attack…” (We are on our way to Christ’s millennial rule upon earth “when the eyes of the blind shall be opened” – Isaiah 35:5.)

The Detroit News reports: “Every year, Paul Hagen travels from Wisconsin to Clinton Township to pay respects to his father, one of 94 frozen corpses that one day may outsmart death.

The father and son were tight. They spoke every day. And Hagen wants to continue those conversations in the future, when they’re reanimated by yet-invented technology and come back to life. Maybe forever.

Sounds crazy?

Not to Hagen or hundreds of other members at The Cryonics Institute, which is housed in a nondescript industrial park off Interstate 94. Dismissed by mainstream science, some religions and much of the public, cryonics followers don’t believe this lifetime is long enough and want to come back from the dead.

And business is good.

‘If there’s any possible chance that I might be able to speak with my dad again, I’d like to do that,’ said Hagen, 45, who recently became a member at the Cryonics Institute. ‘What’s the worst that could happen? If I am buried or cremated, I know I am gone. There is a possibility, however remote, that this may actually pan out, and I may speak with my family members again.’

Robert Ettinger, a former Wayne State University professor and Clinton Township resident, founded the institute more than 30 years ago. Unable to persuade scientists to preserve bodies at low temperatures after death in hopes of rejuvenation by yet-invented technology, Ettinger did it himself. The Cryonics Institute opened in Detroit in 1976 before moving in 1993 to Clinton Township.

For years, membership was in the single digits, but it has exploded 500 percent since 2000 to 830 worldwide folks who want to preserve themselves, DNA or pets. The facility has preserved 64 animals, mostly dogs and cats, but a few birds and a hamster.

Some credit the Internet for the growth. Others chalk it up to contemporary advances in science, including research into aging and disease, resuscitation after deep cooling and regenerative medicine.

Joseph Kowalsky likens cryonics to ‘an ambulance to the future’ and thinks of it this way: Most people would have considered someone dead in the 1800s if they had dropped to the ground of a heart attack.

But defibrillators and other technologies have evolved to normalize the heart and allowed many people to live.

‘The whole question of cryonics is, when does somebody die?’ said Kowalsky, an Oak Park resident who is a board member of the Cryonics Institute. ‘If you can hold someone in stasis, stop decomposition so that we can find out later with medical technology if the person is really dead. It may be that person needed some form of medication, gene therapy, things we may not have even heard of yet.’

But most regard cryonics as science fiction…

Though cryonics has been around since the late ’60s, it was in the spotlight after the 2002 death of baseball legend Ted Williams, whose family was involved in a legal battle over whether to preserve his body at Alcor.

Experts, however, say the science is just not there. Currently, it is possible to store human cells for therapeutic uses such as banked blood or sperm or embryos created by barren couples through in vitro fertilization, according to cryobiologists who study how to store cells or small tissues at low temperatures for an extended period of time.

‘All the scientific data we have today indicates that it is not possible to successfully store at low temperature relatively large tissues, much less organs (and) large whole bodies,’ said John K. Critser, president of the Society for Cryobiology…” (The above headline is not possible. When one dies his or her body enters the Glories of Heaven instantly, or the regions of the lost – Hell – II Corinthians 5:8; Luke 11:23.)