Large Hadron Collider to be switched on 10th Sept

[petra10]

Doomsday starts on 10th September! or so all the scarmongers are afraid of.

In eight days time the power dial will be switch all the way up to 11 and smashed atoms will be flying around.
So will it answer all the questions be answered.

Will the existance of multi-dimentions be proven.

Will it show us how the universe came into being.

Will it help us understand Dark Matter.

Will they create a Black Hole.


Will they discover new forms of fuel.

Does anyone think any of these questions will be answered? I am hoping for something exciting to be discovered.

[CrikeyBobs]

I am definitely looking forward to the scientific results. I hope many things conclusive result from this incredible machine. I don't suppose I will understand much of it, but it is exciting to imagine that we may be on the cusp of a new understanding of our Universe.

BTW. When it gets switched on can everyone shout "Caboooom!!!" at the same time? Really put the wind up the naysayers!

"To the most beautiful moment in life. Better than the deed, better than the memory, the moment of anticipation. " - Jacques (Simpsons - Life on the Fast Lane)

[Arthur Denton]

Well, I think that despite the fact that it may cause this sort of mayhem, we ordinary people won't be able to postpone the use of such installation forever, and also, I think that it won't generate a black hole because the amounts of energy are great but the mass is too little, and it is far much more likely that it will lead to more discoveries than to disgrace.

If it ends as a disgrace, though, we are powerless. What can we do against a black hole? Sit back and watch ourselves get drained.

[Kuko 4000]

I've understood that ALICE can create supermicro black holes, but they will last only a few femtoseconds. Can anyone confirm this or give more details, is ALICE the only one that can / will generate black holes? What can "we" learn about them?

[sol invictus]

I've understood that ALICE can create supermicro black holes, but they will last only a few femtoseconds. Can anyone confirm this or give more details, is ALICE the only one that can / will generate black holes? What can "we" learn about them?

It is highly unlikely that either Alice or the main proton collider will create black holes. I'm not sure which is more likely to do so - I'd have to take a look at the numbers.

However it must be remembered that in the theories in which black hole production is possible, the holes will be so hot and so small that they will evaporate in a tiny fraction of a second, long before they have any chance of absorbing anything and growing. In fact they're so small that even if they didn't evaporate or escape into space, so that they fall down and oscillate back and forth through the center of the earth, it would take thousands of years before they interact with even a single atom.

[andyandy]

Given that the day for switch on has been pushed back again and again, I remain sceptical as to whether it will actually happen :)

expect some last-minute excuses as one of the magnets fail, and a new start date chalked up for the New Year. A little like those perpetual motion machines. :D

[dudalb]

I am scared. Remember what happened at Black Mesa.........:D

[Jontg]

That isn't even funny anymore. [SOME GROUP I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF] averages one LHC thread per week, and fifty Half-life jokes per thread.

[leon_heller]

BBC Radio 4 has called it "Big Bang Day" and has a lot of special programmes about the LHC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/

Leon

[Kuko 4000]

It is highly unlikely that either Alice or the main proton collider will create black holes. I'm not sure which is more likely to do so - I'd have to take a look at the numbers.


Thanks sol, I was going purely by this:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2884322&userid=98756

3) What did the universe look like a few femtoseconds after the big bang? ALICE will be smashing nature's elementary hambeasts together to answer this. In ALICE lead ions will collide at nearly the speed of light, unleashing so much energy in such a small space that temperatures and conditions close to the big bang will be brought about. This is where the blackholes come in. At these energies, temperatures, and pressures it may be possible to spontaneously create supermicro black holes. Will they absorb the earth? No. They will live for no more than femtoseconds, and the only way we'll be able to detect them is by the minute effects they will have on the surrounding particles they either decay into, or disrupt minutely in their path.


I looked it up again and found a bigger, more recent thread by the same guy where he now says in the first post:

The LHC is going to produce things physicists have never before seen, but in a lot of cases we hope it will produce things we've predicted. Recently a number of somewhat unsavoury attention whores have misled the media and general public with a campaign based on the possibility that we may produce something truly dangerous. There have been numerous arguments against these 'doomsday scenarios', all from physicists a good deal smarter than me. Here is my take on the subject though:

It was originally considered that the LHC may produce micro black holes. These would be black holes smaller than atoms. Of course, knowing that a black hole is not something you want to get too close to, this drew a lot of scaremongering. The truth is that black holes must be produced at a certain size before they are capable of growing on their own by attracting more matter. That size was estimated in a recent paper to be larger than the mass of our sun. Anything smaller and they just sit there evaporating until they are no more. The smaller the hole, the faster the evaporation. We expected anything the LHC could have produced to live for a few femtoseconds before disappearing. As it turns out, another recent paper provides convincing proof that black holes are not likely to be produced at the LHC at all....

There are other supposed dangers, namely magnetic monopoles and strangelets. In both cases the theory on which these exotic forms of matter have been based is a little crackpotish, and numerous conterarguments have been put forward. To paraphrase Prof. Frank Close of Oxford University's High Energy Physics dept, "The LHC isn't going to end the world. If it does, you can sue me."


Black Hole related:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.1938

[Pixel42]

BBC Radio 4 has called it "Big Bang Day" and has a lot of special programmes about the LHC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/

Leon
I particlularly enjoyed the Q&A by Professor Brian Fox: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/asktheexpert.shtml

The LHC has absolutely no chance of destroying anything bigger than a few protons, let alone the Earth. [...] I am in fact immensely irritated by the conspiracy theorists who spread this nonsense around and try to scare people. This non-story is symptomatic of a larger mistrust in science, particularly in the US, which includes intelligent design amongst other things. The only serious issue is why so many people who don't have the time or inclination to discover for themselves why this stuff is total crap have to be exposed to the opinions of these half-wits.

[linusrichard]

Here's what my friend told me to allay my fears: (He's a scientist, but by no means a physicist.) The LHC can't create matter, so if it creates a black hole, it does so by taking matter that's already there, and turning it into a black hole. Gravity is not a function of density, but a function of mass. Since the mass will be unchanged, the gravitational force will also be unchanged. So we don't have anything to worry about. Does this make sense?

[Cuddles]

Er, there's a rather important point people are missing here. 10th September is when they will first try to circulate a beam around the whole ring. There won't be any collisions, and the energy will be less than 1/10 of the final operating energy.

[GreyICE]

I, for one, welcome our new black hole overlords.

[sol invictus]

Given that the day for switch on has been pushed back again and again, I remain sceptical as to whether it will actually happen :)

That's not true at all. Why would you say that?

Way back in 2003 the schedule was that the machine would be ready in the last quarter of 2007. Instead, it was ready by July 2008. For a project of this scale that's remarkably little delay.

[Skwinty]

I think that the LHC will produce all the predicted particles because that is the nature of these endeavours.Particles tend to be predicted before actual observation.
It will also produce somethings that haven't been predicted and give the theoretical physicist's something to work on

[IXP]

I think that the LHC will produce all the predicted particles because that is the nature of these endeavours.Particles tend to be predicted before actual observation.
It will also produce somethings that haven't been predicted and give the theoretical physicist's something to work on
Highly unlikely that it will produce all predicted particles. The supersymmetric particles predicted by string theory and other supersymmetric theories should have shown up a long time ago, and they keep disappointing. I would not be surpised if none are found once again.

IXP

[Arthur Denton]

I am scared. Remember what happened at Black Mesa.........:D

That isn't even funny anymore. [SOME GROUP I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF] averages one LHC thread per week, and fifty Half-life jokes per thread.

Steam forums, anyone? I bet they're saying "LOL, dude, wtf, like lollz, there be stuff in some colidger thingie that will pop up like space invaderzzz loll OMG 111!!! and like we all become da freeman then LOLZ!" all over that place.

I think that the LHC will produce all the predicted particles because that is the nature of these endeavours.Particles tend to be predicted before actual observation.
It will also produce somethings that haven't been predicted and give the theoretical physicist's something to work on

Yes, as expected. But it is interesting to see how people get focused on disgraces rather than the scientific advancement. Pity.

[petra10]

I am looking forward to it, 7 days to go.Although I will probably not understand most of it.Professor Brain Fox is really good at making me understand it a bit better. He uses words that I can understand.I will certainly be on the his website to monitor whats going on.


Not a great deal is mentioned in the mainstream news at the moment, they will probably wait till the big switch on before getting all excited.

[dudalb]

Steam forums, anyone? I bet they're saying "LOL, dude, wtf, like lollz, there be stuff in some colidger thingie that will pop up like space invaderzzz loll OMG 111!!! and like we all become da freeman then LOLZ!" all over that place.

Sadly, that is the level of literacy at most Gaming sites.
I was trying to poke fun at the idiocy of some of paranoia about the LHC.

[Zarathustra]

Scientist: There is a .00000000000000000001 percent possibility that this device will spontaneously rip a hole in the fabric of space-time, destroying the very substance of the Universe.

Layman: You mean there's a CHANCE?!!!!!!

[Lennart Hyland]

Well wikipedia says this:
Initial particle beam injections were successfully carried out on 8-11 August, 2008,[2][3] the first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire LHC is scheduled for 10 September 2008,[4] and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled, on 21 October 2008.[5]

So its actually in October the protons will collide and the earth be swallowd by a black hole..

[sol invictus]

Scientist: There is a .00000000000000000001 percent possibility that this device will spontaneously rip a hole in the fabric of space-time, destroying the very substance of the Universe.

Layman: You mean there's a CHANCE?!!!!!!

Best counter: there is also a chance that not turning on the LHC will destroy the world. Provide good evidence that one chance is significantly larger than the other and we can talk.

[Skwinty]

The LHC induced spacetime rip may be possible but is it probable? At 0.000000000001% it is not probable and therefore :
"ready, aim and fire in the hole"

[geni]

Steam forums, anyone? I bet they're saying "LOL, dude, wtf, like lollz, there be stuff in some colidger thingie that will pop up like space invaderzzz loll OMG 111!!! and like we all become da freeman then LOLZ!" all over that place.

Could be slashdot. I understand they have crowbars at the ready.

[Arthur Denton]

Could be slashdot. I understand they have crowbars at the ready.

Crowbars can be handy. Duuude! Like that time in Half Life... (kidding).

[I Ratant]

I hope the mini-black hole this thing makes takes enough time for those of us on the left-coast to appreciate the oncoming destruction of the world.

[dudalb]

I hope the mini-black hole this thing makes takes enough time for those of us on the left-coast to appreciate the oncoming destruction of the world.

I will have my guns ready to start shooting Head Crabs as they move west.......

[Spud1k]

Er, there's a rather important point people are missing here. 10th September is when they will first try to circulate a beam around the whole ring. There won't be any collisions, and the energy will be less than 1/10 of the final operating energy.

Awwww... guess I'm going to have to pay this month's credit card bill after all.

[dudalb]

Meanwhile the nutjobs help clog the legal system in both the US and Europe:

From Wikipedia:

On 21 March 2008, a complaint requesting an injunction to halt the LHC's startup was filed by a group of seven concerned individuals against CERN and its American collaborators, the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, before the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii.[12][1] The plaintiffs include Walter L. Wagner who notably was unable to obtain an injunction against the much lower energy RHIC for similar concerns. The plaintiffs demanded an injunction against the LHC's activation for 4 months after issuance of the LHC Safety Assessment Group's (LSAG) most recent safety documentation, and a permanent injunction until the LHC can be demonstrated to be reasonably safe within industry standards.[30] The US Federal Court scheduled trial to begin 16 June 2009.[40]

The LSAG review, issued on 20 June 2008 after outside review, found “... no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced by the LHC”.[5] The US Government, in response, called for summary dismissal of the suit as against the government defendants as untimely due to the expiration of a six-year statute of limitations, since funding began by 1999 and has essentially been completed already, and also called the hazards claimed by the plaintiffs "overly speculative and not credible".[13] According to a spokesman for the US DOE, the court set 2 September 2008 for a hearing on the government's motion to dismiss, with further briefs and depositions expected to be filed by both sides before that date. In the meanwhile, the defendant CERN has defaulted on its appearance in court, and a request for entry of default against CERN is pending. The plaintiffs have until 24 September 2008 to respond to the government's motion to dismiss. First collisions at the LHC are expected to occur in October or November 2008.[41]

On August 26, 2008, suit was filed against CERN in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg alleging the Large Hadron Collider poses grave risks for the safety of the 27 member states of the European Union and their citizens.[42][43] The request for an injunction was summarily rejected on the 29th, leaving the case that it violates the right to life still pending

CERN did make a mistake in missing the court date;that is not a good idea no matter what.
Wagner, the plantiff in the Hawaii case, seems like a classic crackpot with a history of idiotic lawsuits like this.

[alfaniner]

Pah... In no time at all we'll all be sporting Portable Hadron Colliders.

[bickerer]

Even as a non-scientist, non- physicist, it's mostly uncomprehensible brainy people speak, I am stupidly excited for ALICE to be switched on to full power (can't get that durn CERN rap out of my head...) and what's truly wonderous to me is that the things that they DON'T find may be just as important as those that they do.

[Piscivore]

Will it give us superpowers?

[Zarathustra]

Will it give us superpowers?

Not unless you want to be "Super Lymphoma Man."

[GreyICE]

Scientist: There is a .00000000000000000001 percent possibility that this device will spontaneously rip a hole in the fabric of space-time, destroying the very substance of the Universe.

Layman: You mean there's a CHANCE?!!!!!! Actually that does bring up an interesting point - what is an acceptable chance of accidentally destroying the planet/galaxy/universe?

Honestly, if I didn't know what the subject was, I'd be inclined to side with the Layman in the above.

[DanishDynamite]

Can't wait for it to happen!

Hope they discover all we hope, and much more.

[TrueSceptic]

I particlularly enjoyed the Q&A by Professor Brian Fox: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/asktheexpert.shtml
Anyone watch the Big Bang progs on BBC4 last night? Brian Cox (not Fox) featured a lot. Interesting stuff, especially where Cox said that if the LHC doesn't give the answers we want, anything bigger won't either.

And to test the validity of the string theory, we would need a collider the size of the galaxy (gulp)! :jaw-dropp

[Kuko 4000]

Anyone watch the Big Bang progs on BBC4 last night?


Are they available online somewhere?

[TrueSceptic]

Are they available online somewhere?
Can you use iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dccnr/)?

I can't find any torrents yet. I suppose it's too specialized.

[Kuko 4000]

Can you use iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dccnr/)?

I can't find any torrents yet. I suppose it's too specialized.


Thanks but:

Currently BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only..

:(

[TrueSceptic]

Thanks but:

:(
I thought that might be the case. I'll let you know if I see it anywhere else.

[alfaniner]

I suddenly have the urge to read Thrice Upon a Time and The Light of Other Days again. It's quite exciting to know we'll be learning something never known before.

[Furi]

I thought that might be the case. I'll let you know if I see it anywhere else.

It may be listed on the listen again list, it's a real media stream (*Fluffs up fur in protest*) but if you use a crapware free version should be ok

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

[TrueSceptic]

It may be listed on the listen again list, it's a real media stream (*Fluffs up fur in protest*) but if you use a crapware free version should be ok

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml
Different thing. I'm talking about BBC 4 (Four) TV, not BBC Radio 4.

[Furi]

Different thing. I'm talking about BBC 4 (Four) TV, not BBC Radio 4.

That would explain why I haven't heard any of the programs yet.

*Moron Moment, I has it*
http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/fail-owned-secret-fail.jpg

[Undesired Walrus]

I was utterly lost in at least three quarters of the Brian Cox show. Does the Higs (?) field they wish to uncover act as a sort of anti-ether (I.e, everything slows down when it passes through aside from photons which avoid the field?)?

Expect a lot of theists to repeat the phrase 'Scientists have found the God Particle'.

[Hellbound]

I was utterly lost in at least three quarters of the Brian Cox show. Does the Higs (?) field they wish to uncover act as a sort of anti-ether (I.e, everything slows down when it passes through aside from photons which avoid the field?)?

Expect a lot of theists to repeat the phrase 'Scientists have found the God Particle'.

Depends on which Higgs field :)

But, one of the Higgs fields is expected to be involved in inertia, which roughly corresponds to what you're saying and is likely what they are looking for. It acts on things that attempts to change their motion, i.e.-accelerated matter and/or particles. This field is theorized to have been involved in the early universe, and the inflationary models of cosmology rely on the Higgs field for some of the effects (IIRC).

NOTE: I an not an expert, just a well-read layman. Take the above with a grain of salt, etc. It is simply my understanding which may, admittedly, be wrong and is certainly incomplete.

[Confuseling]

...It's quite exciting to know we'll be learning something never known before.

You don't know that, man. What if the ancients were, like, colliding hadrons with massive henge technology?

[petra10]

Oh no, my daughter and her friends came home from school today saying " the worlds gonna end on Wednesday". The teacher was trying to explain it to them but they being drama queens could only focus on that part of the explaintion.

At least they are getting excited about science :)

I have promised them a treat if we are all still alive on Thursday.

[YeahDude]

Oh no, my daughter and her friends came home from school today saying " the worlds gonna end on Wednesday". The teacher was trying to explain it to them but they being drama queens could only focus on that part of the explaintion.

At least they are getting excited about science :)

I have promised them a treat if we are all still alive on Thursday.

Maybe you should have told her that she doesn't have to do her homerwork wed. night(If the world ends who wants to be stuck doing homerwork) in exchange if the world doesn't end she will have to do her homework RIGHT after school everyday!

[andyandy]

That's not true at all. Why would you say that?

Way back in 2003 the schedule was that the machine would be ready in the last quarter of 2007. Instead, it was ready by July 2008. For a project of this scale that's remarkably little delay.

To me a year is a long time, I guess it just goes to show that time is relative ;)

[MG1962]

Can't wait for it to happen!

Hope they discover all we hope, and much more.

Yes like who shot JFK, and what did John Lennon find attractive about Yoko, thats bugged me for years.

[Confuseling]

They might even bring back Elvis.

[CapelDodger]

Pah... In no time at all we'll all be sporting Portable Hadron Colliders.

No doubt, but the battery-chargers will be equilateral triangles nine miles on a side.

[petra10]

Maybe you should have told her that she doesn't have to do her homerwork wed. night(If the world ends who wants to be stuck doing homerwork) in exchange if the world doesn't end she will have to do her homework RIGHT after school everyday!

Great idea YeahDude, I put that to her and she now agrees with me :D. She is still wanting her whole weeks pocket money instead of my offer to only give her enough till Wednesday.

[Rasmus]

Great idea YeahDude, I put that to her and she now agrees with me :D. She is still wanting her whole weeks pocket money instead of my offer to only give her enough till Wednesday.

You need to make a better offer there, kinda like the homework one:

Three week's pocket money now in exchange for 5 or 6 weeks without should the world fail to end for another month or two.

[TrueSceptic]

I thought that might be the case. I'll let you know if I see it anywhere else.
'The Guardian' had a supplement (http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/jun/30/thebigbangmachine/cern) that covers much the same ground as the BBC prog. Well worth a read.

[alfaniner]

Here's what a portion of Switzerland is going to look like in a few days...

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/17148c30df3bd6dc.jpg

[CapelDodger]

Here's what a portion of Switzerland is going to look like in a few days...

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/17148c30df3bd6dc.jpg

Skateboard heaven.

[porch]

Skateboard heaven.


I've heard of "Skate and Destroy" before; This is more like Skate in Destroy. Dropping in to the bottomless bowl . . .

[porch]

Speaking of Brian Cox . . .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml


Scientists working on the world's biggest machine are being besieged by phone calls and emails from people who fear the world will end next Wednesday, when the gigantic atom smasher starts up. . . . Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University, adding: "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a t---."


As far as the t-word is concerned, I have no idea wat the other 3 letters could possibly be.

[Confuseling]

There'd be a CERN boffin riding one of the superconducting magnets in, waving a cowboy hat around;

"Waaaahoooooooooooo!"

[porch]

Did you see that?! Dude just pulled a frontside grab Cosmic Yoga, followed with a 720 Spaghettificator!!!

[Aitch]

Nice example of British calm, from the Astronomer Royal in the Telegraph piece:
My book has been misquoted in one or two places. I would refer you to the up-to-date safety study.

[dahduh]

If you're looking for an oracle on what the LHC will discover, consult the markets! The Intrade Higgs market (http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/common/c_cd.jsp?conDetailID=622296&z=1220778869386) is currently trading at 50.1 that the Higgs will be discovered before the end of 2009, and 74.0 that it will be discovered before 2010 - those figures translate directly into a percentage probability, by the way. Willing to bet, anyone?

[Tubbythin]

If you're looking for an oracle on what the LHC will discover, consult the markets! The Intrade Higgs market (http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/common/c_cd.jsp?conDetailID=622296&z=1220778869386) is currently trading at 50.1 that the Higgs will be discovered before the end of 2009, and 74.0 that it will be discovered before 2010

Aren't before the end of 2009 and before 2010 exactly the same thing?

[Aitch]

Aren't before the end of 2009 and before 2010 exactly the same thing?

Time dilation effects? :boggled:

[Undesired Walrus]

Speaking of Brian Cox . . .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml





As far as the t-word is concerned, I have no idea wat the other 3 letters could possibly be.

Twat or Twit.

[Undesired Walrus]

Depends on which Higgs field :)

But, one of the Higgs fields is expected to be involved in inertia, which roughly corresponds to what you're saying and is likely what they are looking for.


So when sub-atomic particles like protons pass through the Higgs Field, they encounter inertia and thus do not travel as fast as photons? Does this inertia essentially give everything mass, and is thus the reason energy is mass?

It acts on things that attempts to change their motion, i.e.-accelerated matter and/or particles.

Not understanding you with this.

This field is theorized to have been involved in the early universe, and the inflationary models of cosmology rely on the Higgs field for some of the effects (IIRC).

Inflationary as in the time when the universe accelerated faster than today? Is the field the potential answer for the unanswered acceleration of the universe?

I'm still baffled about the antimatter part of the experiment, and what part that has to play in the test. I thought antimatter was just from Star Trek.

[Aitch]

Twat or Twit.

From what I've seen/heard of Prof Cox, it wasn't 'twit'. :cool:

Anyway, while CERN are spending more money than I can comfortably imagine, over on the UK, they are searching for dark matter at the bottom of a potash/salt mine: Observer story (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/07/particlephysics.darkmatter).

Go Cleveland! That's the county, not the city. :)

[malbui]

I was chatting to a couple of CERN guys yesterday afternoon and they were saying that some of the workstreams are behind schedule on their testing and not at all certain to be finished by Wednesday. They reckoned it would still be switched on, though, as whatever happened the results would be interesting.




I will be flying out of Geneva on Tuesday evening for a couple of weeks.

[sol invictus]

So when sub-atomic particles like protons pass through the Higgs Field, they encounter inertia and thus do not travel as fast as photons? Does this inertia essentially give everything mass,

Yes, that's a reasonably good summary.

and is thus the reason energy is mass?

Well.... it's not so much that energy is mass as that mass is energy. That is, energy can take many forms, and the mass of a particle is only one of them.

Inflationary as in the time when the universe accelerated faster than today? Is the field the potential answer for the unanswered acceleration of the universe?

There were (probably) two stages of accelerated expansion in the history of the universe: one that started and ended at very early times, and one that started "recently" and will probably continue forever. Neither is due to the Higgs field as far as anyone knows.

I'm still baffled about the antimatter part of the experiment, and what part that has to play in the test. I thought antimatter was just from Star Trek.

No, antimatter is very real. Every particle accelerator creates is - in fact, most are proton-antiproton or electron-positron (that's an anti-electron) colliders, rather than proton-proton colliders like the LHC.


I will be flying out of Geneva on Tuesday evening for a couple of weeks.

Because you're afraid of the LHC??

[OnlyTellsTruths]

Not having a collision for a month or two after switch on I understand, yet somewhere I heard that it will take several months to get results from said collision. I don't quite understand the latter, any help?

[TrueSceptic]

Speaking of Brian Cox . . .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml

As far as the t-word is concerned, I have no idea wat the other 3 letters could possibly be.
Somehow I think Brian would say "twit" rather than the obvious alternative, but then why censor it? :D

[TrueSceptic]

I will be flying out of Geneva on Tuesday evening for a couple of weeks.
Why does that sound ominous, or even scary? Just how fast will you be flying? ;)

[TrueSceptic]

Not having a collision for a month or two after switch on I understand, yet somewhere I heard that it will take several months to get results from said collision. I don't quite understand the latter, any help?
There is a huge amount of data processing.

[plumjam]

A respected school of thought predicts that when the Collider reaches full speed the whole of Switzerland will spontaneously form itself into a ....ing massive Cukoo clock.

[OnlyTellsTruths]

There is a huge amount of data processing.

Do you have any more details on this?

[sol invictus]

Do you have any more details on this?

LHC will produce around 700 megabytes of data per second. So about one full CD each second. In one year, that would be 30 million CDs worth of data.

It takes a while to sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak...

[TrueSceptic]

Do you have any more details on this?
I'm sorry. :o

It is perhaps a popular misconception that a machine like this is started up and the results appear on screens in a nice simple, obvious way. This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHC_Computing_Grid) and this (http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/) give an idea of the volume of data involved.

[TrueSceptic]

LHC will produce around 700 megabytes of data per second. So about one full CD each second. In one year, that would be 30 million CDs worth of data.

It takes a while to sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak...
There seem to be various figures quoted, and it is not always clear whether bits or bytes are the units.

The LHC Grid's home page (http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/) quotes 15 PB/year (1 PB = 10^15 bytes). Comparison: Google processes about 20 PB/day.

15 PB/year = about 500 MB/s.

[I Ratant]

The Higgs boson....
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/lexx-higgs-boson/1153780870

[Wallmott]

Why is everyone worrying about 10 September?

From what i have read they will just shoot a beam through the tunnel to see if it works and not even att maximum power. So they wont be doing anything that has not been done before? And the collisions will take place some weeks/Months later?

Or am i wrong?

[sol invictus]

The LHC Grid's home page (http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/) quotes 15 PB/year (1 PB = 10^15 bytes). Comparison: Google processes about 20 PB/day.

15 PB/year = about 500 MB/s.

Those figures don't necessarily conflict with the one I quoted, as they might be taking into account downtime.

Google might process that much data, but it doesn't store it. And the processing it does is probably much less computationally expensive than the processing LHC has to do. IANACS, but my understanding is that at least in some respects the quantity of data LHC will produce and the processing necessary to handle it is unprecedented.

[OnlyTellsTruths]

LHC will produce around 700 megabytes of data per second. So about one full CD each second. In one year, that would be 30 million CDs worth of data.

It takes a while to sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak...

I haven't read TrueSceptics links yet, but wouldn't the collisons be rather quick. If the collision only takes a few seconds, it wouldn't seem like it would take a year to analyze 700mbps of information.

Also, can't they increase computational or man power to get faster results?

[OnlyTellsTruths]

Ah, I see from the first link they are already using distributed computing (though not exactly like SETI does or that search for primes), so I guess nevermind on the second question.

[EGarrett]

Uh, these photographs don't look like what they told us they were building...

http://blogs.venturacountystar.com/dennert/archives/WagnerRay.jpg

[OnlyTellsTruths]

More like when they're all chanting "suck" at the vacuum cleaner ship on Spaceballs :)

[ladyattis]

All I can say is this in regards to the LHC: SEXY!

[sol invictus]

I haven't read TrueSceptics links yet, but wouldn't the collisons be rather quick. If the collision only takes a few seconds, it wouldn't seem like it would take a year to analyze 700mbps of information.

The collisions are more than just "quick" - they only take 10^-27 seconds or so. The issue isn't waiting for any given collision, it's waiting long enough to accumulate enough data from many of them to say anything.

Almost all the collisions will result in something boring we already knew about - only a tiny tiny fraction will be interesting. So one has to wait for enough of those interesting collisions to occur before saying anything with any confidence.

[alfaniner]

I just saw on a Discovery Channel show that a testing lab has a high-speed camera that takes "100 million frames per second". Even with several Crays at their disposal I find that hard to conceive. I'm sure Adam and Jamie would love a toy like that.

[malbui]

Because you're afraid of the LHC??


It was an attempt at humour. I really must stop doing that.

[Wallmott]

Why are all the people who are saying that the world might end so worried about September 10th? The experiment wont even start then and they will just shoot a beam att "low" energy levels around the ring to see if it works? And no collision so there would be no possebilety that something might go wrong.

Or am i wrong?

[sol invictus]

It was an attempt at humour. I really must stop doing that.

Yeah, stop immediately! It's very bad for you.


(Sorry - it's hard to tell sometimes on the interwebs.)

[Aitch]

Oh, and as part of the Big-Bang Day celebrations, BBC Radio 4 is doing a one-off radio-only edition of Torchwood (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/torchwood.shtml).

[TrueSceptic]

Those figures don't necessarily conflict with the one I quoted, as they might be taking into account downtime.

Google might process that much data, but it doesn't store it. And the processing it does is probably much less computationally expensive than the processing LHC has to do. IANACS, but my understanding is that at least in some respects the quantity of data LHC will produce and the processing necessary to handle it is unprecedented.
I agree. It's just that these numbers get so large that they become meaningless.

I did the calc to agree (approx) with your figure, not to dispute it. :D

[Wallmott]

[QUOTE=Aitch;4017608]Oh, and as part of the Big-Bang Day celebrations, BBC Radio 4 is doing a one-off radio-only edition of

But why are everyone and the media calling the 10th the big bang day? They are not doing any collisions that day, they will just shoot a beam trough the ring and not att full power. No collisions. Just to see if it works?

[Aitch]

But why are everyone and the media calling the 10th the big bang day? They are not doing any collisions that day, they will just shoot a beam trough the ring and not att full power. No collisions. Just to see if it works?

Don't knock it - it means that we get several hours of science programmes in one week, rather than the usual 45 minutes of sensationalist rubbish. :cool:

[Hellbound]

There were (probably) two stages of accelerated expansion in the history of the universe: one that started and ended at very early times, and one that started "recently" and will probably continue forever. Neither is due to the Higgs field as far as anyone knows.

Hmmm. I thought the current expansion was theorized to be caused by the negative pressure (and thus, negative gravity) of the Higgs field as space expanded?

And my mistake about the inflationary period. That's the inflaton field, which had some similarities to the Higgs field but was different, right?
(I'm just reading up on this subject, so I'm still fuzzy :)).

[Wallmott]

Don't knock it - it means that we get several hours of science programmes in one week, rather than the usual 45 minutes of sensationalist rubbish. :cool:

Everyone of the "Doomsayers" and all over their Website it says that the 10th is the day to fear, but in reality its not even the day that the experiment takes place.

Im just wondering if i gotten it all wrong and they will start the experiment on the 10th? or isnt the collisions to start in several weeks?

[Confuseling]

Everyone of the "Doomsayers" and all over their Website it says that the 10th is the day to fear, but in reality its not even the day that the experiment takes place.

Im just wondering if i gotten it all wrong and they will start the experiment on the 10th? or isnt the collisions to start in several weeks?

I suppose the point is if the doomsayers don't have any particular reason to say doom, they can pick any darn date they want.

LHC to destroy the planet: Christmas 1987. There you go. :D

[Wallmott]

I suppose the point is if the doomsayers don't have any particular reason to say doom, they can pick any darn date they want.

LHC to destroy the planet: Christmas 1987. There you go. :D

So i am right that the experiment wont start the 10th? And that it will start some weeks later?

It shows that the doomsayers dont really know what they are talking about since there wont be any collisions on the 10th, right?

[Confuseling]

Personally, I have no idea. I heard it said that the original schedule called for a gradual power up, but they've now fast-tracked it to an extent, and intend to go straight for the big red button. Whether that means they'll be colliding immediately, I wouldn't like to guess.

ETA: And in my experience of flat-pack furniture, they'll have a screw or two left over, and just be hoping they weren't really necessary. They will be: it was ever thus.

[Wallmott]

On Cerns Web page it says :

On 10 September, a first beam of protons will circulate in the LHC. The first moments in the life of the LHC will be an exciting time for the CERN staff, and will be captured by more than 250 media organizations from all over the world.

10 September: The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV).

So does this mean that there wont be any collisions this day? So the real experiment wont start on the 10th?

Does anyone know? I would really like to know.

[Evilgiraffe]

On Cerns Web page it says :

On 10 September, a first beam of protons will circulate in the LHC. The first moments in the life of the LHC will be an exciting time for the CERN staff, and will be captured by more than 250 media organizations from all over the world.

10 September: The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV).

So does this mean that there wont be any collisions this day? So the real experiment wont start on the 10th?

Does anyone know? I would really like to know.

There will be no collisions on the 10th September. It is just as the CERN website says, an attempt to circulate protons all the way around the ring.

It is interesting that this test is to be conducted at 450GeV. This is the highest energy that can acheived by the Super Proton Synchrotron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Proton_Synchrotron), the pre-accelerator for the LHC. ie, they're not going to increase the proton energy at all inside LHC beam-pipe.*

I assume that the purpose of the test is to ensure that all of the bending and focussing magnets work as they're supposed to.

*However, they may have to give the protons a slight boost on each lap to prevent them slowing down by emission of synchrotron radiation

[DanishDynamite]

Yes like who shot JFK, and what did John Lennon find attractive about Yoko, thats bugged me for years.
Not understood.

[sol invictus]

Hmmm. I thought the current expansion was theorized to be caused by the negative pressure (and thus, negative gravity) of the Higgs field as space expanded?

No, it's not the Higgs field that's causing the current acceleration. Probably the best way to think about it is just to note that the characteristic energy scale associated with the Higgs is enormously larger than the energy causing the acceleration. That's why we need to build such a gigantic accelerator to even have a chance of producing a few Higgs particles.

Dark energy has a density equivalent to around one proton per cubic meter. That's about 60 orders of magnitude smaller than the characteristic energy density associated with a condensate of the Higgs field. In fact, the huge discrepancy between those two numbers (or between dark energy and any particle physics scale) is called the "cosmological constant problem", and is considered one of the most difficult and profound questions facing modern physics.

And my mistake about the inflationary period. That's the inflaton field, which had some similarities to the Higgs field but was different, right?

They are probably both fundamental scalars. But we know very little about the inflaton, so it's hard to say more.

[DanishDynamite]

Why is everyone worrying about 10 September?

From what i have read they will just shoot a beam through the tunnel to see if it works and not even att maximum power. So they wont be doing anything that has not been done before? And the collisions will take place some weeks/Months later?

Or am i wrong?
No one sane worries about September 10, or any future date as far the LHC is concerned. In fact, the sane and educated will be celebrating Sept 10.

[dahduh]

ALERT! September 10 start-up delay as French workers strike until Italian camembert expunged from CERN cafeteria.

[MG1962]

ALERT! September 10 start-up delay as French workers strike until Italian camembert expunged from CERN cafeteria.

They want to make sure there is no deCERNable trace of the offending cheese? :jaw-dropp

[OnlyTellsTruths]

The collisions are more than just "quick" - they only take 10^-27 seconds or so. The issue isn't waiting for any given collision, it's waiting long enough to accumulate enough data from many of them to say anything.
Surely they can detect when a head-on collision occurs? So I assume you mean they need multiple head-on collisions for clairity?

Almost all the collisions will result in something boring we already knew about - only a tiny tiny fraction will be interesting. So one has to wait for enough of those interesting collisions to occur before saying anything with any confidence.

Yes, I realize the majority of collisions with be skims, as opposed to head-on.

[Tubbythin]

Surely they can detect when a head-on collision occurs? So I assume you mean they need multiple head-on collisions for clairity?


Yes, I realize the majority of collisions with be skims, as opposed to head-on.

The majority of collisions will produce non-exotic particles that we know about and don't particularly care about. Thats why they are non-exotic. The exotic particles are exotic precisely because they're difficult to make. Hence we need lots and lots of collisons just to have a few that identifiably produce the exotic ones they're looking for (eg the Higgs).

[DanishDynamite]

Less than 12 hours to go!

[SimonD]

Almost there now. I'll be asleep for the first test. We will still need to wait two weeks for the full test.

[Wallmott]

Almost there now. I'll be asleep for the first test. We will still need to wait two weeks for the full test.

How do you know its 2 weeks we have to wait for the first collision? I have not read any dates about it.

[bellonax]

How do you know its 2 weeks we have to wait for the first collision? I have not read any dates about it.

Wikipedia states that the first "proper" collision tests will take place on the 21st of October.

[SimonD]

How do you know its 2 weeks we have to wait for the first collision? I have not read any dates about it.

This was on Australian television last night

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/

Then select the interview with Professor Brian Cox.

He was saying that the first test would be on 10th. It would just be them running up everything and then there would be the 'real thing' in about two weeks. He may have been generalising

[TMiguel]

I'm sorry to disappoint everyone but the machine has already made test runs. I see that many people are extremely paranoid whit the possibility of it destroying the world (or this portion of the galaxy for that matter, don’t worry you wouldn’t feel a thing).
Although I have participated in quality control for the tile calorimeter (and has so a greater insight then the vast majority of the people), the concept of wipe out the world is brand new to me and most probably a misunderstanding of some ones quote, part of it also fueled by folklore belief and the impression on their minds of the shear size of the machine.

Here are some facts that you might want to consider:
1. The vast majority of the machine is passive, basically it just stands there waiting for something to hit it and trigger a set of events that ultimately end whit an electronic signal sent to a computer.
2. The active part of the machine simply accelerates particles in order to acquire energy and then focus the particle beam in to condition that are expected to maximize the collision event within the current capability of technology (yes collisions are extremely rare within the machine, but whit several attempts and all that it will eventually be successful).
3. The particles in game are hadrons, subatomic particles whit neglectable mass compared to the scale of the world we live in (In fact you are currently being pierced by those sorts of particles has you read this). Although the machine is gigantic the volume of event is measured in width of atoms.

Most of this are useless information for what follows.

1. Some believe that the machine will create a massive explosion destroying our solar system.
This is basically nonsense because of something called “CONSERVATION OF ENERGY”. Being the input known lets see what we can tell. Knowing that the particles travel near to the speed of light (being the speed of light the speed limit), accounting the kinetic energy plus the energy of mass itself given by Einstein equation what do we have?
The energy is smaller then a falling snowflake. Yeah c is a eight figure constant and c square a 16 figure constant, but you still have to multiply by to mass to get the energy. If you get a periodic table and look at the mass of hydrogen or helium (from witch we make the protons to put in the machine) its about 1, 2grams per mol, being the Avogadro number a 23 figure constant and grams 3 figures bellow the standard mass unit, in the end you are still missing 8 figures to make a single joule.

2. It will create a micro black hole that will feed from the surroundings and eventually consuming the Earth.
First of all for such thing to happen we would have to consider that for some reason the energy put into play does not shower in multiple particles but instead gobbles up into a massive particle and that particle must have really strange properties that for some reason we made a mistake in not being able to predict it (which should suggest that our theory is wrong and the machine may not even work in the first place).
Our current understanding of black holes, especially due to the contribution of the Stephen Hawkins we know that black holes radiate and eventually consume a great deal of it’s mass.
If we discard that, the other laws of physics are not suspended and has so gravity is still getting dimmer has you move away. The reason it can become a micro black hole is not so much for the fact that it is massive, but because he is incredibly small, being the force of gravity described has an inverse square of the distance, the ability of being able to put something really close, shooting the value sky-high (if you know math lim[x->0](k/x)=inf). For comparing reasons if we consider the strength of gravity at a distance of an atom, it won’t be stronger then that of an atom of Carbon (assuming that we are using helium 2+). You may think that eventually it will feed of subatomic particles until it gets big enough, but before that you will have to explain what happened to the other forces that are by far much much stronger then gravity, and that for what magic reason did the electric charge of protons simply gone that it can not poise a barrier to any atomic element to get close in the first place.
Of course we can be wrong about this, but it doesn’t seam likely, the chance of the machine not even work is much greater.

[TrueSceptic]

Stephen Hawking is betting $100 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7598000/7598686.stm) that the LHC won't find the Higgs boson. Of course, he's hoping this because its absence means the Standard Model is wrong and we will have to start again. I don't think he actually believes it. I don't think anyone likes the Standard Model. It depends on too many long, ugly, equations and a small number of elegant ones would be most welcome. :)

[SimonD]

The Six Billion Dollar Experiment is now showing on SBS television (Australia) if anyone is intrested. Has Professor Brian Cox (as mentioned above - though he is a Doctor in the documentary)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6553030919624041877 - this is a short for it

[Spud1k]

Although I have participated in quality control for the tile calorimeter (and has so a greater insight then the vast majority of the people), the concept of wipe out the world is brand new to me and most probably a misunderstanding of some ones quote, part of it also fueled by folklore belief and the impression on their minds of the shear size of the machine.

Fair enough, but did you get issued with a crowbar just in case? ;)

Sorry, sorry, I'm being very silly now. In my opinion the doomsday scenario is by now much bigger as an internet meme than any kind of real theory that is taken seriously by anyone. It's only natural that the biggest science experiment the world has ever seen is going to be the focus of all the contemporary technology-fearing hoopla and no amount of rationality is ever going to change that.

[Spud1k]

Stephen Hawking is betting $100 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7598000/7598686.stm) that the LHC won't find the Higgs boson. Of course, he's hoping this because its absence means the Standard Model is wrong and we will have to start again. I don't think he actually believes it. I don't think anyone likes the Standard Model. It depends on too many long, ugly, equations and a small number of elegant ones would be most welcome. :)

Stephen Hawking has been known to make bets against himself on previous occasions (that way, winning the bet would be consolation against him being wrong), so I don't tend to read much into his wagers.

Regarding the standard model, the grand unified theory may actually turn out to be a single, really elegant equation that relies on really awful mess-with-your-head operators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything). Much in the same way that QED reduces Maxwell's four equations into one simple 4D gauge theory equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics#Mathematics) that most people (me included) have trouble getting their head around.

[TrueSceptic]

Stephen Hawking has been known to make bets against himself on previous occasions (that way, winning the bet would be consolation against him being wrong), so I don't tend to read much into his wagers.

I know what you mean, but in this case isn't he betting the wrong way? BTW do we know who the bet is with?


Regarding the standard model, the grand unified theory may actually turn out to be a single, really elegant equation that relies on really awful mess-with-your-head operators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything). Much in the same way that QED reduces Maxwell's four equations into one simple 4D gauge theory equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics#Mathematics) that most people (me included) have trouble getting their head around.
Thanks. Interesting stuff there. :)

[sol invictus]

Hawking, while he did make some important contributions to general relativity and quantum gravity in the 70's and 80's, was never a particle physicist and isn't particularly productive these years in any area. I wouldn't take his guesses about the LHC very seriously.

If there is no Higgs boson, there must be some kind of strong coupling physics that takes its place (technicolor was the nicest possibility, but it's ruled out by precision data - however there are other somewhat less appealing models that do work).

If there's neither a Higgs boson nor anything else comparable, then not only is the standard model wrong, so is essentially everything we know about quantum mechanics and particle physics. Probability would not be conserved.

[Overman]

I'm just so excited about this! I heard that if they do find the Higgs boson it could lead to new technologies such as 'tractor beams' as we find new ways to manipulate matter.

Things like this are huge leaps!

[Storm Warning]

This was one of the topics on Coast 2 Coast this morning. I sometimes listen on my way into work because shaking my head and yelling at the radio usually helps me stay awake. Anyway, I just caught the last 20 minutes or so. I never did hear the name of the guest talking about it, but got the impression that he's a writer of some kind - definitely not a physicist.
When asked what physicists thought of the LHC, his response was that (paraphrasing, not quoting) Stephen Hawking was enthusiastic about it, but that doesn't mean anything because he doesn't keep up on modern physics. The next question was what Einstein would have thought about it. The answer was that he would "definitely be against it".
Just before the end of the show, the guest gave his opinion that he would warn NASA that they should alter the ISS orbit so that it wasn't overhead when the LHC was turned on :confused:

[Hellbound]

I'm just so excited about this! I heard that if they do find the Higgs boson it could lead to new technologies such as 'tractor beams' as we find new ways to manipulate matter.

Things like this are huge leaps!

I'm wanting things like inertial dampeners and reactionless drives. If we can directly manipulate the Higgs field, both of these should be possible, as well.

Interstellar travel, here we come!

:D

[Rasmus]

Just before the end of the show, the guest gave his opinion that he would warn NASA that they should alter the ISS orbit so that it wasn't overhead when the LHC was turned on :confused:

Yeah. I'm sure nobody at NASA is aware that a thing like the LHC even exists. They will appreciate the call.

(Out of mere curiosity, is the ISS planned to be above the LHC at all?)

[TMiguel]

Interesting, not long after I have gave my (semi-)professional opinion on why there is nothing to worrie about in the first place, paranoia kicks back in a couple of posts later. The worst case scenario that I would bet my money on is that they won't find the Higgs boson and they end up whit a over expensive piece of useless equipment.

[Spud1k]

Yeah. I'm sure nobody at NASA is aware that a thing like the LHC even exists. They will appreciate the call.

(Out of mere curiosity, is the ISS planned to be above the LHC at all?)

Its orbit is inclined to 51.6 degrees and LHC is somewhere at around 46 degrees, so the ISS can't not pass over every once in a while.

The really amusing thing is that things in space get exposed to cosmic particles all of the time which are more energetic than what they'll ever create at the LHC. I'm really curious to know what they think is going to happen...

[Spud1k]

Interesting, not long after I have gave my (semi-)professional opinion on why there is nothing to worrie about in the first place, paranoia kicks back in a couple of posts later. The worst case scenario that I would bet my money on is that they won't find the Higgs boson and they end up whit a over expensive piece of useless equipment.

I recall one of the scientists who originally theorised the Higgs boson said in a recent interview that he considers experimental verification of it as nothing more than 'unfinished business'. There are a whole cartload of other results that he said he was itching to see from it.

[Storm Warning]

I'm really curious to know what they think is going to happen...
That's the question that I wanted answered too, but being the ace interviewer that he is, George Noory never thought to ask it. :rolleyes:

[Tubbythin]

Interesting, not long after I have gave my (semi-)professional opinion on why there is nothing to worrie about in the first place, paranoia kicks back in a couple of posts later. The worst case scenario that I would bet my money on is that they won't find the Higgs boson and they end up whit a over expensive piece of useless equipment.

Even if it doesn't find the Higgs there's plenty of other things it will help with. Eg, vastly improve measurements of the top quark mass, study CP violation and test the unitarity of the CKM matrix, and look at quark-gluon plasmas.

[Toblerowned]

In my opinion the doomsday scenario is by now much bigger as an internet meme than any kind of real theory that is taken seriously by anyone.

I take it very seriously. You see, this is way that civilization works. We will evolve to a certain point, the point where we can smash particles together to find out the secrets of the universe, and we get punished for our ignorance by making a black hole and destroying everything. So even if we get this information, it's useless because we won't be around to spread it. This has probably happened to every civilization that has existed.

/fearmongering

But seriously though, it's a test that has never been done before in human history, and it's quite amazing that we'll be around to witness it. I am excited for it, in either outcome. Either we find something that fits neatly into all of our theories and scientific models, or we find nothing, and the models could be wrong. Either way, it's a big moment.

[petra10]

Ok some trivia before the "the big bang"

Prof Brian Cox, while a student at uni, was a member of the pop group D-Ream. Their famous hit was "Things can only get better", which Tony Blair's labour party adopted as their song for new labour.

Another guy in the group at the same time, whos name I cant remember, I think it was Robert something, is a professional streaker. He has streaked at many sporting events especially football games. :D

[MG1962]

Another guy in the group at the same time, whos name I cant remember, I think it was Robert something, is a professional streaker. He has streaked at many sporting events especially football games. :D

Hence the natural gravitation towards an interest in black holes huh? :p

[dahduh]

Some believe that the machine will create a massive explosion destroying our solar system... [snip] ...The energy is smaller then a falling snowflake.

Yes, but what if this just serves as a trigger to kick the Higgs field into a lower energy vacuum state, releasing gazillions of Joules per cc in the process? Huh? HUH? :eek: Explain that, Mr. smarty-pants!

[petra10]

Yes, but what if this just serves as a trigger to kick the Higgs field into a lower energy vacuum state, releasing gazillions of Joules per cc in the process? Huh? HUH? :eek: Explain that, Mr. smarty-pants!

eerrmm it wont :D

[Spud1k]

Ok some trivia before the "the big bang"

Prof Brian Cox, while a student at uni, was a member of the pop group D-Ream. Their famous hit was "Things can only get better", which Tony Blair's labour party adopted as their song for new labour.

Another guy in the group at the same time, whos name I cant remember, I think it was Robert something, is a professional streaker. He has streaked at many sporting events especially football games. :D

OT, but I only recently found out that Brian Cox used to lecture a PhD student I supervise while he was an undergrad. Small world...

[jsiv]

Oh no, my daughter and her friends came home from school today saying " the worlds gonna end on Wednesday". The teacher was trying to explain it to them but they being drama queens could only focus on that part of the explaintion.
You have to speak their language!

j50ZssEojtM

[technoextreme]

Its orbit is inclined to 51.6 degrees and LHC is somewhere at around 46 degrees, so the ISS can't not pass over every once in a while.

The really amusing thing is that things in space get exposed to cosmic particles all of the time which are more energetic than what they'll ever create at the LHC. I'm really curious to know what they think is going to happen...
Perhaps they are confusing the reality. I've been told the beam has a tremendous amount of power. Enough so to punch through a lot of earth (Hence the reason why it's underground). Perhaps they think it could shoot off into space like PHD's depiction.:)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

[bokonon]

Did anyone else feel that?

[Pixel42]

Here's a useful site:

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

[SimonD]

Did anyone else feel that?

Well we are all still here. It's payday tomorrow, so I for one, am glad.

[lionking]

I haven't read this whole thread, so apologies if this has been said before, but the over-the-top "what if..." media coverage of the collider has at least have my children, who normally don't give a toss about science, talking about dark matter, bosons etc.

[CaveDave]

This was one of the topics on Coast 2 Coast this morning. I sometimes listen on my way into work because shaking my head and yelling at the radio usually helps me stay awake. Anyway, I just caught the last 20 minutes or so. I never did hear the name of the guest talking about it, but got the impression that he's a writer of some kind - definitely not a physicist.
When asked what physicists thought of the LHC, his response was that (paraphrasing, not quoting) Stephen Hawking was enthusiastic about it, but that doesn't mean anything because he doesn't keep up on modern physics. The next question was what Einstein would have thought about it. The answer was that he would "definitely be against it".
Just before the end of the show, the guest gave his opinion that he would warn NASA that they should alter the ISS orbit so that it wasn't overhead when the LHC was turned on :confused:

I heard the first 10 or so minutes of that, and I understand it was Dr. Walter L. Wagner (Citizens Against LHC), one of the ones responsible for the lawsuit to halt the project.

He didn't say anything that impressed me.

Dave

[Kuko 4000]

Live-Blogging the LHC Startup:

http://cosmicvariance.com/

[Darat]

I've got a stinking headache and it came on about 8.30 this morning! Coincidence? I think not!

[malbui]

I just popped round to the post office and got vox popped by one of the national TV stations who were asking residents (our village is right on top of the LHC, so to speak) if we were concerned about all of this. I spoke clearly and enthusiastically about the importance of such fundamental research and how the risks were hopelessly exaggerated - I bet my contribution will have been wiped from the tape before it even gets to an editor.

[TrueSceptic]

The BBC are giving over a lot of time to the LHC this week on Radio 4 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/programmes.shtml). You can listen here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/) if you're out of radio range.

[Ocelot]

OK then can any of you actually prove 100% that the world DIDN'T just end. Huh? Can you? Can you?

[TrueSceptic]

Those new to all this might not know that the USA planned a similar but larger collider, the SSC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider). It was partly built before being cancelled in 1993. It was 87 km vs the 27 km of the LHC.

[Ocelot]

The BBC are giving over a lot of time to the LHC this week on Radio 4 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/programmes.shtml). You can listen here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/) if you're out of radio range.

"As the Large Hadron Collider is switched in CERN Womans Hour looks at what switches women on..."

[malbui]

"As the Large Hadron Collider is switched in CERN Womans Hour looks at what switches women on..."


And just wait to see how "You & Yours" can make a fascinating subject tedious.

[TrueSceptic]

This was one of the topics on Coast 2 Coast this morning. I sometimes listen on my way into work because shaking my head and yelling at the radio usually helps me stay awake. Anyway, I just caught the last 20 minutes or so. I never did hear the name of the guest talking about it, but got the impression that he's a writer of some kind - definitely not a physicist.
When asked what physicists thought of the LHC, his response was that (paraphrasing, not quoting) Stephen Hawking was enthusiastic about it, but that doesn't mean anything because he doesn't keep up on modern physics. The next question was what Einstein would have thought about it. The answer was that he would "definitely be against it".
Just before the end of the show, the guest gave his opinion that he would warn NASA that they should alter the ISS orbit so that it wasn't overhead when the LHC was turned on :confused:
Strangely enough, the American equivalent to the LHC, the SSC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider), was cancelled because it competed for funds with the ISS and the ISS won. :)

[TrueSceptic]

Ok some trivia before the "the big bang"

Prof Brian Cox, while a student at uni, was a member of the pop group D-Ream. Their famous hit was "Things can only get better", which Tony Blair's labour party adopted as their song for new labour.

Another guy in the group at the same time, whos name I cant remember, I think it was Robert something, is a professional streaker. He has streaked at many sporting events especially football games. :D
What a strange world this is. I thought you were kidding but it seems not (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)).

The streaker is Mark Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Roberts).

[Gravy]

Ok some trivia before the "the big bang"

Prof Brian Cox, while a student at uni, was a member of the pop group D-Ream. Their famous hit was "Things can only get better", which Tony Blair's labour party adopted as their song for new labour.

Another guy in the group at the same time, whos name I cant remember, I think it was Robert something, is a professional streaker. He has streaked at many sporting events especially football games. :D
...Speaking of Cox, the streaker is Mark Roberts (http://www.thestreaker.org.uk/). Also my name, btw. We're also of similar age and body types. I started my TAM presentation by apologizing for not being him.

[FireGarden]

I've got a stinking headache and it came on about 8.30 this morning! Coincidence? I think not!

I was woken up by a loud BANG! Coincidence?

It happened at around 5.
That's the same time as 8.30 if you take into account the anti-time generated by the LHC's black hole and the time transference effects of dreaming.

[Spud1k]

Gravy:

If it's any comfort, I heard of you before I heard of your namesake. I generally take more interest in 9/11 debunking than I do in D-Ream or naked men.

I'd also heard of the-other-Hannibal-Lecktor (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004051/)Brian Cox before the physicist as well. I don't know what that implies about which I take more seriously out of being a scientist or a film buff...

[ohms]

Here's a useful site:

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Hehe, check the page source code ;)

[leon_heller]

It's circulating protons:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7604293.stm

Leon

[Undesired Walrus]

For those who may have missed the radio show 'Physics Rocks' on BBC Radio 4, I highly recommend downloading the podcast of the show. Alan Alda and a host of British comics talk about their love for science.

Yet the most incredible moment in this pre-recorded show was when Brian Cox and the Irish Comic Dara O'briain talked of the scientific answer to homeopaths, hynoptherapists, priests etc.

Brian Cox: "So basically what you are asking is how big would you have to build a particle accelerator in order to detect Bull....?"

It was uncensored. The BBC, a candle in the dark. Hooray for Radio 4!

[TMiguel]

I've been told the beam has a tremendous amount of power. Enough so to punch through a lot of earth (Hence the reason why it's underground).

The energy at stake is equivalent to a falling snow flake.

No so much the overall quantity that it is important, but that and it’s concentration. A person standing right next to the thing won't suffer any effect at all on any of the scenarios.
The reason that it is underground is not because it could punch a hole and damage anything, but because there is less cosmic noise, and that the structure to support the all thing are more easily placed in proper conditions.

1. You are currently being bombarded whit cosmic particles, which any of them can be falsely detected. They are still getting noise there but its much less then they would get at the surface.
2. Building at the surface would implicate a massive support in order to sustain the railings over a radius of kilometres and do it good enough so it doesn’t curve due to structural stress (totally not good).

[UnrepentantSinner]

This was one of the topics on Coast 2 Coast this morning.

I have a feeling George knows nothing dangerous will come of the LHC experiments. Not because he's a scientist, but because he's convinced December 21st 2012 is "the big day".

[Ocelot]

A person standing right next to the thing won't suffer any effect at all on any of the scenarios.


I thought that the acelerated charge of the protons meant that the thing kicked out microwave radiation that would fry anybody standing in the tunnels when it's running. At least that was what I was told about the old electron positron colider at CERN.

[Gravy]

For those who may have missed the radio show 'Physics Rocks' on BBC Radio 4, I highly recommend downloading the podcast of the show. Alan Alda and a host of British comics talk about their love for science.

Yet the most incredible moment in this pre-recorded show was when Brian Cox and the Irish Comic Dara O'briain talked of the scientific answer to homeopaths, hynoptherapists, priests etc.

Brian Cox: "So basically what you are asking is how big would you have to build a particle accelerator in order to detect Bull....?"

It was uncensored. The BBC, a candle in the dark. Hooray for Radio 4!Thanks for the rec. I don't see the podcast available, but here's the link to listen online:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00d9yz5

[DC]

It's circulating protons

and here in Basel no Black holes yet :D

[Evilgiraffe]

I thought that the acelerated charge of the protons meant that the thing kicked out microwave radiation that would fry anybody standing in the tunnels when it's running. At least that was what I was told about the old electron positron colider at CERN.

Synchrotron radiation is emitted by both electron/positron and proton accelerators, however the power of emission scales as the inverse fourth power of the mass of accelerated particle.

ie. the proton synchrotron puts out less radiation than an electron synchrotron by a factor of (1/1837)4 = 8.8 x 10-14 times less radiation.

That ratio is for the whole power spectrum. I suspect that the electron and proton emission spectra will peak in different places, with the electron peak being at shorter wavelength.

If, as you say, the LEP gave out dangerous levels of microwaves then I would expect the LHC to give out much lower levels of longer wavelength (radio) waves.

[Ocelot]

Synchrotron radiation is emitted by both electron/positron and proton accelerators, however the power of emission scales as the inverse fourth power of the mass of accelerated particle.

ie. the proton synchrotron puts out less radiation than an electron synchrotron by a factor of (1/1837)4 = 8.8 x 10-14 times less radiation.

That ratio is for the whole power spectrum. I suspect that the electron and proton emission spectra will peak in different places, with the electron peak being at shorter wavelength.

If, as you say, the LEP gave out dangerous levels of microwaves then I would expect the LHC to give out much lower levels of longer wavelength (radio) waves.

Fair enough. Thanks for that.

[Dancing David]

Yay, it moves. Could have been the USA that detroyed the world but Nooooo we had to let CERN do it.

[Evilgiraffe]

You're welcome :D


[self-pedantry]
should be "only 8.8 x 10-14 times as much radiation", rather than "8.8 x 10-14 times less radiation".
[/self-pedantry]

The original expression doesn't really make much sense

[DC]

Yay, it moves. Could have been the USA that detroyed the world but Nooooo we had to let CERN do it.

yes Switzerland is doing this in a peacefull way :D
page one on the biggest swiss newpaper, "What if we creat a black hole..."
fearmongering :)

[TMiguel]

I thought that the acelerated charge of the protons meant that the thing kicked out microwave radiation that would fry anybody standing in the tunnels when it's running. At least that was what I was told about the old electron positron colider at CERN.

You shouldn't belive in everything they tell you, specialy if it comes from folklore sources.

[technoextreme]

Yay, it moves. Could have been the USA that detroyed the world but Nooooo we had to let CERN do it.
Hey you aren't giving us enough credit. This whole ******** doomsday scenario started in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Heavy_Ion_Collider

[Arthur Denton]

Are we dead yet?

[Checkmite]

I like Google's home page graphic today:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c159/jk_mellifera/googleLHC.jpg

[Darat]

Probably all about to die - they've called in Torchwood (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/torchwood.shtml)!

[leon_heller]

I just heard an update by Andrew Marr on BBC Radio 4: they now have protons circulating in both directions.

Leon

[NobbyNobbs]

Where's the "kaboom"? There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering "kaboom".....

[TrueSceptic]

I have a feeling George knows nothing dangerous will come of the LHC experiments. Not because he's a scientist, but because he's convinced December 21st 2012 is "the big day".
I happened to mention the nonsense about the Mayan Long Count to a colleague then saw this post.

Spooky or what? :eek:

[DC]

I happened to mention the nonsense about the Mayan Long Count to a colleague then saw this post.

Spooky or what? :eek:

ppfff planet X?

we will shoot down that planet X with our LHC :D

[Spud1k]

ppfff planet X?

we will shoot down that planet X with our LHC :D

Too right. The LHC owns planet X.

[andyandy]

It's great to see that science is getting so much media and popular attention, it's just a shame that it's going to be a bit of a letdown when it hasn't destroyed the earth, and takes several months for any results to be interpreted :)

I especially enjoyed the radio four Livelink. 15 minutes of Andrew Marr filling space before "and they've done it!" The studio seemed a little disappointed there weren't any black holes.

[Furi]

I especially enjoyed the radio four Livelink. 15 minutes of Andrew Marr filling space before "and they've done it!" The studio seemed a little disappointed there weren't any black holes.

He could have had a little fun, and at given a countdown, terminating in a sudden birst of static cutting off and stangled scream, before total silence from all parties involved, maybe just a forlorn Greenwich time signal slowly lowering in tone and volume whilst and elongating the pulse width.

[Cuddles]

No so much the overall quantity that it is important, but that and it’s concentration. The reason that it is underground is not because it could punch a hole and damage anything,

Technoextreme is correct, it could very easily punch a hole in things. The LHC is different from most synchrotrons in having a fairly complex, multi-magnet beam dump mechanism because simply turning of the RF power, which is the usual way of losing beam in an electron machine, would result in the beam drilling a hole several metres through the wall. This is actually by the far the biggest danger in operating the LHC, since the system can only tolerate a single kicker magnet failure before being unable to dump the beam safely.

Edit: Just to put some numbers to this - at nominal energy and intensity, each beam will contain 583MJ. An absorber almost 1km away from the ring (to allow the beam to spread out) having the beam swept across it, with scatterers to dilute the beam, will reach over 2000oC. We're not talking small amounts of energy here.

As for synchrotron radiation, TMiguel is correct. The LHC will lose about 3.7kW to synchrotron radiation, which is fairly insignificant (for health issues, it's very significant for cooling cryogenic systems) when spread over 27km. However, there are two problems. Firstly, although the synchrotron radiation itself is not a threat, it will gradually irradiate the ring. Most of the vacuum chamber will not be a problem, but areas that experience the majority of the losses are likely to become significantly radioactive. Secondly, syncrotron radiation is not the main problem for health physics, particle losses are. For example, in the accelerator I work in, beamlines exist solely to take synchrotron radiation from the ring into experimental areas, and do so quite happily with people in them. If the electron beam we use, which is many orders of magnitude less energetic than the LHC, were to accidentally get sent down a beamline, it would instantly kill anyone in the experimental area.

[Lennart Hyland]

webcast if you have missed it:
http://webcast.cern.ch/index.html

[TMiguel]

Technoextreme is correct, it could very easily punch a hole in things. The LHC is different from most synchrotrons in having a fairly complex, multi-magnet beam dump mechanism because simply turning of the RF power, which is the usual way of losing beam in an electron machine, would result in the beam drilling a hole several metres through the wall. This is actually by the far the biggest danger in operating the LHC, since the system can only tolerate a single kicker magnet faliure before being unable to dump the beam safely.

Are you stating that you know more on the subject then the actual people working whit it?

If a bunch of magnets fail, and the beam is shot straight, it won't punch a hole in the wall, it most probably passes trough the wall whiteout even touching it.
You are saying?

[Cuddles]

Are you stating that you know more on the subject then the actual people working whit it?

If a bunch of magnets fail, and the beam is shot straight, it won't punch a hole in the wall, it most probably passes trough the wall whiteout even touching it.
You are saying?

No. I am saying you know less than the people working on it. You have already said that this is your semi-professional opinion. This is my entirely professional opinion supported by the many papers produced by other professionals.

Edit: That said, I don't believe that is your semi-professional opinion at all. You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. The idea that a particle beam containing several hundred megajoules could magically pass through a wall with no effect is absolutely ridiculous, and no-one with even a tiny bit of experience in accelerator physics would claim something like that.

[TMiguel]

No. I am saying you know less than the people working on it. You have already said that this is your semi-professional opinion. This is my entirely professional opinion supported by the many papers produced by other professionals.

Edit: That said, I don't believe that is your semi-professional opinion at all. You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. The idea that a particle beam containing several hundred megajoules could magically pass through a wall with no effect is absolutely ridiculous, and no-one with even a tiny bit of experience in accelerator physics would claim something like that.

Ok now you are in fact stating that you know more then some one working on it. Did you know that beams are subatomic particles? Did you know that atoms are almost empty? Did you that to prove that and that atoms have a core the exact experiment was to shot a beam trough an extremely dense wall? And did you know that even whit an extremely dense beam the hit rate was almost exclusively null?
What I find absolutely ridiculous is a person that of what we are talking about in the first place could make a statement on how it is supported by other papers or professionals, where in fact there is none.

[Ocelot]

You shouldn't belive in everything they tell you, specialy if it comes from folklore sources.

Folklore? Whatever gave you that idea. No, I was told it during a tour of Oxford University, by a research physicist who worked at CERN.

[Dancing David]

Get the pocorn!

[Arthur Denton]

Are we dead yet?

[Soapy Sam]

It DID create a black hole- and the Earth WAS destroyed, but that was in the universe three over.

[Stankeye]

Two things I learned on the History Channel last night about the LHC.

1. No one is allowed in the tunnel when they fire it. They said radiation.

2. They said if you were hit by the particles you would not explode - just die.

See all the controversy is solved by TV!

[Tubbythin]

What will the peak wavelength of synchrotron emission be?

[Quote]
You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. The idea that a particle beam containing several hundred megajoules could magically pass through a wall with no effect is absolutely ridiculous, and no-one with even a tiny bit of experience in accelerator physics would claim something like that.


A neutrino beam could.

[Zeuzzz]

The best thing that could happen is that we get results completely different than are predicted by the theory that no-one has a clue about. That would be real exciting, we'd have to go back to the drawing board and re-write some fundamental physics concepts.

Imagine if it all just worked exactly as expected by our current models? how amazingly boring would that be.

[Zeuzzz]

Yet the most incredible moment in this pre-recorded show was when Brian Cox and the Irish Comic Dara O'briain talked of the scientific answer to homeopaths, hynoptherapists, priests etc.

Brian Cox: "So basically what you are asking is how big would you have to build a particle accelerator in order to detect Bull....?"

It was uncensored. The BBC, a candle in the dark. Hooray for Radio 4!


Yeah I heard that bit too. Made me LOL :)

[Ashles]

I think it is silly everyone keeps referring to Half-Life when faced with this staggering scientific achievement.

Surely Dan Brown's Angels and Demons is far more appropriate?

[Ashles]

He could have had a little fun, and at given a countdown, terminating in a sudden birst of static cutting off and stangled scream, before total silence from all parties involved, maybe just a forlorn Greenwich time signal slowly lowering in tone and volume whilst and elongating the pulse width.
I reeeaaally like that. :)

[TMiguel]

Two things I learned on the History Channel last night about the LHC.

1. No one is allowed in the tunnel when they fire it. They said radiation.

2. They said if you were hit by the particles you would not explode - just die.

See all the controversy is solved by TV!

If they prevent yo ufrom geting into the acelarator tunnel is not because of radiation, but more because of the powerfull superconducter magnets.

You are currently being hit by particles has you read this, they go trough and trough your body, yet you are still here. (an over concetration of such may not be good for you, but yet again if they escape they are mostly harmless)

[technoextreme]

If they prevent yo ufrom geting into the acelarator tunnel is not because of radiation, but more because of the powerfull superconducter magnets.

You are currently being hit by particles has you read this, they go trough and trough your body, yet you are still here. (an over concetration of such may not be good for you, but yet again if they escape they are mostly harmless)
True but fortunately for me I have CERN and IEEE on my side.
http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/components/beam-dump.htm
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug08/6558/2
Holy crap. The beam is capable of going through 40 meters of copper in 86 microseconds!!! The beam sets the graphite to blazing high 750 degrees Celsius. Now tell me again how that is harmless? I'll be honest in saying that I could be wrong about it being underground but Im defiantly not wrong about the destructive power the beam has.

[patchbunny]

I just heard an update by Andrew Marr on BBC Radio 4: they now have protons circulating in both directions.

Leon

The updates make it sound more like news coverage of the latest Los Angeles police chase.

''Larry, we can see the protons now. They're weaving in and out of traffic and... Oh! They just missed a school bus! Now they're taking the exit onto southbound 405, and we can see a cruiser waiting with spike strips. And.. they've hit the strips! Two tires are flat, and the protons have crashed! Police are swarming the vehicle... yes, it looks like the two protons are now in custody. This pursuit is over."

[TMiguel]

Yeah true, but that is an high dense beam, even so it still needs a big volume in order to stop it. If the majority hit the surface you probably could have done the same job whit much less material. Those beams go straight trough the material, because mostly they don't hit them. Ofcours I can be mistaken, after all I'm just at quality control.

[INRM]

The only thing that I am concerned about is: How many of these high energy collisions will be going on?

It's obvious one will not produce a black hole, but a lot of them I'm wondering might be able to do it, and over and over again a couple of small black holes might be able to aggregate before they evaporate eventually producing one stable black-hole...

I could be wrong, and probably am, but still I felt like making that comment.


INRM

[patchbunny]

It's obvious one will not produce a black hole, but a lot of them I'm wondering might be able to do it, and over and over again a couple of small black holes might be able to aggregate before they evaporate eventually producing one stable black-hole...
INRM

Getting serious for a moment (what? With my posting history?), IIIRC any BHs were only supposed to last fractions of a second. I wouldn't think they'd be able to cluster and grow.

[TMiguel]

The only thing that I am concerned about is: How many of these high energy collisions will be going on?

It's obvious one will not produce a black hole, but a lot of them I'm wondering might be able to do it, and over and over again a couple of small black holes might be able to aggregate before they evaporate eventually producing one stable black-hole...

I could be wrong, and probably am, but still I felt like making that comment.


INRM

Collisions are rare; it is extremely hard to get a successful collision whit our current technology that is what they send a stream of particles and not just one. Eventually one will hit and produce results. We don’t know if it can even produce one (it appears that it is not likely at all), much less have cluster of it. Then there is the problem for tem to be formed almost exactly in the same location for them to have any significant influence on that aspect, then we have to admit that they don’t evaporate (for some reason that is completely unexpected) and still have to explain how would it collect the other elements to feed of whit that size and what happens whit the electric charge that for some reason has to disappear in order for gravity to overcome the electromagnetic force (if gravity is even applicable at those scales).
I wouldn’t bet on it.

[petra10]

Great links on this thread, thanks guys.

The BBC's coverage on radio and Tv has been good.Now we have to wait until the middle of October for the major collision and then months before all the info is analysed.Still good things come to those that wait.



As sang by D:Ream "Things can only get better"

[Soapy Sam]

My washing machine produces quantum black holes all the time.
There's some sort of wormhole between all washing machines. It's where missing socks go and where the holes in new shirts come from. I once found a pair of six-legged underpants in my laundry- gave it a short spin cycle- gone. What is the LHC but a super spin drier?

[dudalb]

My washing machine produces quantum black holes all the time.
There's some sort of wormhole between all washing machines. It's where missing socks go and where the holes in new shirts come from. I once found a pair of six-legged underpants in my laundry- gave it a short spin cycle- gone. What is the LHC but a super spin drier?

Wow, I think I have the same black hole in my washer. There must be another galaxy, on the other side of the black hole, where socks are the most common form of matter.

[alfaniner]

It's fine to joke about how ridiculous the fears are, and then something like this happens.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26641652/

[patchbunny]

It's fine to joke about how ridiculous the fears are, and then something like this happens.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26641652/

As sad as it is (and she certainly picked a horrible way to go), I always wonder if people like that wouldn't just have easily found something else to worry themselves to death over.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geez, this is such a sordid example of public misunderstanding of science. The "Big Bang Machine." Cripes.

~~ Paul

[Soapy Sam]

Dark socks, obviously, dubalb.

Very sad about that girl, but I suspect patchbunny is right. Anyone so easily disturbed might be pushed over the edge by almost anything.

[negativ]

As sad as it is (and she certainly picked a horrible way to go), I always wonder if people like that wouldn't just have easily found something else to worry themselves to death over.

True. A Tralfamadorian test pilot could panic and press the wrong button.

[Corsair 115]

Where's the "kaboom"? There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering "kaboom".....I just hope they're not really trying to create wormhole weapons. Because if they are, they're going to have the Peacekeepers, Scarrans, and Scorpius chasing after them...

[patchbunny]

True. A Tralfamadorian test pilot could panic and press the wrong button.

Ok, I had to look that one up. :o

[Tubbythin]

Collisions are rare; it is extremely hard to get a successful collision whit our current technology that is what they send a stream of particles and not just one.

If by rare, you mean one collision every billionth of a second then yes, they are rare.

ETA: Hmm. Just re-read this and now thing my comment was completely misplaced. The collision rate is large but only because of the proton flux, not the cross-section for a given reaction.

[jhunter1163]

Well, I sure hope the world comes to an end soon, because I've maxed my Visa card and the collection calls are starting to get annoying.

[technoextreme]

It's fine to joke about how ridiculous the fears are, and then something like this happens.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26641652/
Whose fault is that though..... It's the ****ing medias fault for believing every single piece of stupid crap that comes across them. They misconstrued the facts. They lie. I swear to god shut the hell up. Someone should slap though up their collective heads because the media coverage is insanely stupid. I mean come on. Science has all ready been misconstrued to the point where it was actually reported that we created a black hole. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. There isn't a strong enough adjective in the world to feel my regard for new stations towards

[Dancing David]

It's fine to joke about how ridiculous the fears are, and then something like this happens.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26641652/

Well, people who are unstable, and I am not saying that this girl was , they tend to follow the technology. Spitits and demons, voices in the flue, voices in the gas lines, voices in the steam pipes, voices in the furnace ducts, voices in the power lines, etc...

The spirits are watching, the flue is watching,..., the power lines are watching...

When you are stressed and psychotic you gravitate to the trend od the time, Ceasar is satan, the King is satan,napoleon is satan, Stalin is satan, GW Bush is satan...

Plowing will destroy the land, tractors will destroy the land, furnaces will make you sick, electricity gives you cancer, the Internet will kill you, the LHC will destroy the world...

[MattusMaximus]

Whose fault is that though..... It's the ****ing medias fault for believing every single piece of stupid crap that comes across them. They misconstrued the facts. They lie. I swear to god shut the hell up. Someone should slap though up their collective heads because the media coverage is insanely stupid. I mean come on. Science has all ready been misconstrued to the point where it was actually reported that we created a black hole. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. There isn't a strong enough adjective in the world to feel my regard for new stations towards


A colleague of mine calls it "filling the news hole" - it certainly stinks :rolleyes:

[MattusMaximus]

Btw, just in case you're curious, here is a fun little rap video by workers at the LHC...

j50ZssEojtM

[Redtail]

Btw, just in case you're curious, here is a fun little rap video by workers at the LHC...

j50ZssEojtM


... Now... See... You don't see Outkast trying to run the LHC.... Why..

[INRM]

Do you think the LHC will find the theory to everything? What will it find?

INRM

[CaveDave]

It's fine to joke about how ridiculous the fears are, and then something like this happens.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26641652/

But in deeply religious and superstitious India, fears about the experiment and the minor risks associated with it spread rapidly through the media.

In east India, thousands of people rushed to temples to pray and fast while others savored their favorite foods in anticipation of the world's end.

And, of course, the prayers and fasting saved the world.

Sheesh!

Dave

[sillyhead]

I was wondering where these jokes were...

http://largehardoncollider.com/

sorry lol I had to.

[UnrepentantSinner]

I happened to mention the nonsense about the Mayan Long Count to a colleague then saw this post.

Spooky or what? :eek:

It gets worse. On the way home after work I was listening to a local guy talk show and while discussing LHC the took a call where the guy said the 50 months it would take to get the final experiments were Dec 2012. And one of the idiot show hosts actually pronounced baktun correctly! :eek:

[Dave Rogers]

It DID create a black hole- and the Earth WAS destroyed, but that was in the universe three over.

According to an e-mail to Radio 2 this morning, it transported us into a parallel universe. The evidence is that England beat Croatia 4-1 last night.

Dave

[catbasket]

Do you think the LHC will find the theory to everything? What will it find?

INRM

Bit of an outsider, maybe, but I'm cheering for the big hoson.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I really don't understand what everyone is worried about. So they create a black hole and suck in the entire universe. Poof! we're gone. Where's the pain and suffering?

~~ Paul

[catbasket]

I really don't understand what everyone is worried about. So they create a black hole and suck in the entire universe. Poof! we're gone. Where's the pain and suffering?

~~ Paul

This was explained by a panellist on the BBC's Mock The Week - apparently the mini black hole is the worst kind. We'd all get sucked s-l-o-w-l-y into it ... each week we would be sucked 3ft closer to Switzerland ;)

[Cuddles]

Ok now you are in fact stating that you know more then some one working on it.

Liar. Unless you mean you're the janitor or something.

Did you know that beams are subatomic particles? Did you know that atoms are almost empty? Did you that to prove that and that atoms have a core the exact experiment was to shot a beam trough an extremely dense wall? And did you know that even whit an extremely dense beam the hit rate was almost exclusively null?

I work at a particle accelerator. I have quoted figures from design papers for the LHC. You have no idea what you are talking about and every post you make arguing with me makes you look more and more stupid.

What I find absolutely ridiculous is a person that of what we are talking about in the first place could make a statement on how it is supported by other papers or professionals, where in fact there is none.

http://oraweb.cern.ch/pls/epac08/toc.htm
http://epaper.kek.jp/e92/PDF/EPAC1992_1545.PDF
http://proj-lhc-software-analysis.web.cern.ch/proj-lhc-software-analysis/subsytem/dump.htm
http://proj-lbds.web.cern.ch/proj-lbds/documents/Discussions/LHC%20disaster%20scenarios.pdf
http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/components/beam-dump.htm

Now stop arguing with people who actually know what they're talking about and just admit that you are so completely and utterly wrong that it's gone through funny and out the other side.

[Lennart Hyland]

http://lhc-live.com/

:D

[catbasket]

http://lhc-live.com/

:D

Thanks! Big, big grin :D

[DC]

http://lhc-live.com/

:D

LOL
:jaw-dropp
RUNN

[INRM]

So, this thing is to find the Higgs Boson, The Theory of Everything or Both?

INRM

[leon_heller]

There are several experiments. Why don't you look at the CERN web site?

Leon

[INRM]

Where's the CERN website?

[Moochie]

Bit of an outsider, maybe, but I'm cheering for the big hoson.

Are you sure that's not the bog bison, the one that likes wetlands?


M.

[DanishDynamite]

So, this thing is to find the Higgs Boson, The Theory of Everything or Both?

INRM
My understanding is that if the Higgs boson is not found by the LHC when it is running at full power, then the theory of the Higgs boson (as the particle which gives rise to mass) goes south and dies. It is my understanding that the energy range within which the Higgs should exist as predicted by theory, would be covered by the energy range of the LHC. Hence if the LHC at full power doesn't find it, it doesn't exist.

Once again, though, that is just my understanding of the situation. Could any contributing particle phycist here confirm or deny this?

[MattusMaximus]

Do you think the LHC will find the theory to everything? What will it find?

INRM


If we already knew what it would find it'd kind of defeat the purpose of running it in the first place, wouldn't it? That's why it's called an experiment.

ETA: One thing they're looking for is the Higg's Boson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson). Another is dark matter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter). Who knows what else they could find?

[MattusMaximus]

Where's the CERN website?


http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

[MattusMaximus]

I really don't understand what everyone is worried about. So they create a black hole and suck in the entire universe. Poof! we're gone. Where's the pain and suffering?

~~ Paul


Aw, that'd be kind of a shame. I mean, what's death and the afterlife without a little pain & suffering on the way?

[Tubbythin]

My understanding is that if the Higgs boson is not found by the LHC when it is running at full power, then the theory of the Higgs boson (as the particle which gives rise to mass) goes south and dies. It is my understanding that the energy range within which the Higgs should exist as predicted by theory, would be covered by the energy range of the LHC. Hence if the LHC at full power doesn't find it, it doesn't exist.

Once again, though, that is just my understanding of the situation. Could any contributing particle phycist here confirm or deny this?

I'm not a particle physicist, but I believe the above is correct.

[DanishDynamite]

I'm not a particle physicist, but I believe the above is correct.
Thanks for your wonderful input. :)

Still, I would appreciate confirmation from an authority.

[bokonon]

Well we are all still here. It's payday tomorrow, so I for one, am glad.
Yeah, and I suppose the swarm of 6.0+ earthquakes in Asia and Iran were just "coincidence"...

[sol invictus]

My understanding is that if the Higgs boson is not found by the LHC when it is running at full power, then the theory of the Higgs boson (as the particle which gives rise to mass) goes south and dies. It is my understanding that the energy range within which the Higgs should exist as predicted by theory, would be covered by the energy range of the LHC. Hence if the LHC at full power doesn't find it, it doesn't exist.


It's not quite as simple as that. While I belive it is true that in the standard model (the simplest theory of particle physics we know that is consistent with all current data) the Higgs will be found, there are various slightly more complicated theories where it will be difficult or impossible to see with the LHC. Of course, they are not very natural - people constructed them after they knew the LHC would be built, basically to prove it's possible. But it is possible.

[JoeyDonuts]

Didn't Aperture Science build a LHC not too long ago that was designed to do nothing but make delicious and tasty cake?

[Mashuna]

Do you think the LHC will find the theory to everything? What will it find?

INRM

Will it find my car key?

[Dancing David]

Will it find my car key?


It might create a virtual key and anti-key pair but then they will anihilate each other.