Numbers game

Prof David Newbold, from the University of Bristol, works on the CMS experiment. He said the new energies present new technical challenges.

"When you accelerate the beams they actually get quite a lot smaller - so the act of actually getting them to collide inside the detectors is really quite an important technical step," Prof Newbold told BBC News.

"13 TeV is a new regime - nobody's been here before."

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32809636

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/05/first-images-collisions-13-tev

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2) Islamic State seizes Syria's ancient Palmyra

….Many questions will now be asked in Damascus and Baghdad - and above all in Washington - about how the militants have managed to score major advances in both Iraq and Syria this week despite all the efforts to stop them.

IS was supposed to be on the defensive in Iraq, where the prime minister announced weeks ago the launching of a campaign to drive the militants out of Anbar province. Now he's lost its capital, Ramadi, just days before they took Palmyra in Syria.

The Western coalition's bombing campaign has clearly hurt IS where it could. But it could never compensate for ground forces which are not competent, equipped or motivated enough to stand firm and hit back.

…. 'World's battle'

Syria's head of antiquities, Maamoun Abdul Karim, said on Wednesday that hundreds of Palmyra's statues had been moved to safety but that large monuments could not be transferred.

"This is the entire world's battle," Mr Abdul Karim warned.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32820857

Religion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyra#Religion

Right to left : Bel, Yarhibol, Aglibol and Baalshamin.

The Palmyrene deities belonged mostly to the Northwest Semitic pantheon, in addition to the Mesopotamian and Arab pantheons.^[241] The city's pre-Hellenistic chief deity was Bol,^[242] whose name is an abbreviation of Baal, the Northwest Semitic title for chief deity.^[243] Due to the influence of the Babylonian cult of Bel Marduk,^[242] Bol's name became Bel, however, the change did not indicate the replacing of Bol with a Mesopotamian deity, but was a mere change in the name.^[243]

….

With the spreading of Christianity across the Roman empire, Palmyra's pagan religion was replaced and a bishop is attested in the city by 325.^[96] Most of the temples were turned into churches, while the temple of Al-lāt was destroyed in 385, by the orders of Maternus Cynegius, the Praetorian prefect of the East.^[96] Following the Arab conquest in 634, Islam gradually replaced Christianity and the last attested bishop of Palmyra was consecrated in 818.^[167]

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Home to a UNESCO world heritage site, Palmyra is famous for its 2,000-year-old towering Roman-era colonnades. Before the war, thousands of tourists a year visited the remote desert outpost, also known as the “Bride of the Desert.”

The takeover raised fears that the extremists would destroy the majestic ancient ruins that are one of the region’s most renowned historical sites.

Known as Tadmor in the Bible, tradition holds the city was first fortified by the Israelite King Solomon over 3,000 years ago.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-state-takes-most-of-palmyra-as-syrian-troops-withdraw/

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Palmyra is still called Tadmur/Tadmor today as in the Bible in which “Solomon went to Hamath-zobah and captured it. He built Tadmor in the wilderness and all the storage cities which he had built in Hamath. He also built upper Beth-horon and lower Beth-horon, fortified cities with walls, gates and bars …” (2 Chronicles 8:3-5)

Before the arrival of Christianity in the second century, Palmyra worshiped the trinity of the Babylonian god Bel, as well Yarhibol (the sun) and Aglibol (the moon).

So now it is expected that treasures could be plundered or destroyed as we have seen the archaeological sites overrun by the jihadists in Iraq.