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Physicists destroy the world shocker!

  
  

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Quantum
09:20 / 01.09.08
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) goes online in a matter of weeks, their website is here, here's an article and here's the wikipedia link.
The first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire LHC is scheduled for 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled, on 21 October 2008

This thing is huge. It cost five billion Euros, each one of it's four detectors has more iron in it than the Eiffel Tower, it has enough superconducting filaments to stretch more than 5 times to the sun and back... what's it all for?

Well, those crazy scientists might find the Higgs Boson (and thus explain mass), Monopoles which are just sci-fitastic, micro black holes and all kinds of crazy stuff which will contribute toward a grand unified theory of everything.Do you care? Here's a picture of some giant futuristic tech if you don't - look at the little man and the giant magnets!

  
 
Quantum
09:23 / 01.09.08
It's like that bit in Terminator 3-

  
 
Quantum
09:28 / 01.09.08
 
 
Closed for Business Time
09:48 / 01.09.08
My, we are excited aren't we? Ti-hi...
But, yes, this thing is great for many reasons, not the least that it might finally shut up Lubos Motl. On the downside it could lead to a world of Motls, sucking up reason and empathy like human black holes.
 
 
Quantum
14:51 / 01.09.08
SCIENCE IS EXCITING! Also I did have several cups of coffee before posting, and I do feel the lab could do with some excitement, poor thing.
 
 
Quantum
14:53 / 01.09.08
Sorry, who is that Motl? the site was so tedious I simply could not read more than a paragraph of it, and frankly anything labelled '...from a conservative physicist's viewpoint' can suck my zero-point laser satellite.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
15:45 / 01.09.08
Lubos Motl is a climate change sceptic and defender of ex-Harvard prez Larry Summers' controversia remarks on the dearth of women in physics and such like. He's also famous for being a to the bone supporter of string theory (which might or might not be falsified by the LHC) and troll-like Interweb foe of Peter Woit (who blogs here).
 
 
Poke it with a stick
16:07 / 03.09.08
The team from CERN want to tell you what the LHC does... Through the medium of rap. And it's very funny.
 
 
Quantum
16:29 / 03.09.08
"C to the E to the R to the N"...and that's why physicists should never rap.
 
 
grant
20:05 / 03.09.08
Is MC Hawking really involved with that? McAlpine isn't... she isn't bad, actually.

(I can feel Flyboy tearing at my soft parts even now. But still.)
 
 
DecayingInsect
08:09 / 05.09.08
frankly anything labelled '...from a conservative physicist's viewpoint' can suck my zero-point laser satellite

I don't like Motl's political stances at all, but I find his physics blogging lively. I thought his rebuttal of the "LHC Alarmists" was very apposite.

He's also famous for being a to the bone supporter of string theory (which might or might not be falsified by the LHC) and troll-like Interweb foe of Peter Woit (who blogs here).

Indeed. I like to think of him as the anti-John Baez.

Meanwhile, in other HEP news, the Tevatron claims a notable scalp here.
 
 
Ticker
14:54 / 08.09.08
CERN in 2 days to either make everything grey goo, setup a great tentacles from beyond moment, or make scientists giddy with SQUEE.
 
 
Quantum
15:33 / 08.09.08
It'll be just like the beginning of Hellboy.



COME TO ME, HIGGS BOSON! ARIIIIISE FROM YOUR DUNGEON DIMENSIONS!
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
04:17 / 09.09.08
Grigori Rasputin masters HEP physics, you're saying?
 
 
+#'s, - names
17:19 / 09.09.08
I read this story before, it was in the Phantom Stranger Secret Origins. From wikipedia:

Another was a proposal that the stranger is a remnant of the previous universe. At the end of the universe the Phantom Stranger approaches a group of scientists studying the event, warning them not to interfere in the natural conclusion of the universe. The story concludes with the Phantom Stranger passing a portion of himself to a scientist, the universe is reborn, and the scientist from the previous universe is the Phantom Stranger in the new universe. In relation to this origin, it has also been suggested that the character Pariah from DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths series was to become the Phantom Stranger.
 
 
grant
18:18 / 09.09.08
Is it on yet? Is it on yet?
 
 
Ticker
18:44 / 09.09.08
few more hours, they should have provided a ticker.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
09:22 / 10.09.08
So it must be on now.
 
 
Evil Scientist
09:25 / 10.09.08
It's running!

They took just 55 minutes to steer the beams round the full circuit (it took them half a day to do that on LHC's predecessor). They're going to run it clockwise round as many times as possible and then, hopefully, later today they'll go counter-clockwise.

I raise my glass to CERN, or would if they let me drink booze in the lab, a mug of cold coffee will have to do.
 
 
Quantum
09:56 / 10.09.08
'Big Bang' experiment starts well

No beers at the LHC-
While working on the LHC's predecessor, a machine called the Large-Electron Positron Collider, engineers found two beer bottles wedged into the beam pipe - a deliberate, one-off act of sabotage.

55 minutes? That seems a long time for something to travel 27km when it's supposed to be travelling at a large percentage of the speed of ight, did the proton packets stop for coffee on the way round?
 
 
Spaniel
10:29 / 10.09.08
Okay, someone please explain to me how this thing makes money. It went around £3.7bn over budget, yes, and much of extra capital came from bank loans. How the crikey is CERN planning on paying that lot back? Also, what do individual European governments get in return for their investment? Isn't data generated by the LHC going to be beamed to labs around the world?

Note, I'm as excited about all this as the next New Scientist buying geek.
 
 
jentacular dreams
10:44 / 10.09.08
Death rays are a product the market is just crying out for!

I'd be surprised if the mere building of the thing didn't result in a few patentable ideas, and now the on switch has been thrown there will presumably be additional IP (though international patent law is a labyrinth I'm grateful I don't have to know more about).

Google once again comes through with this (not exactly facinating) pdf regarding the tranfer of technology, information, patents and skills from CERN to investing bodies.

I didn't think the 55 minutes was for the protons to do a lap, more for the time taken the optimising of the supermagnets (I'll include an 'etc.' here to cover my general and deplorable ignorance of high level physics) to get the stream to bend right.
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:59 / 10.09.08
55 minutes? That seems a long time for something to travel 27km when it's supposed to be travelling at a large percentage of the speed of ight, did the proton packets stop for coffee on the way round?

I think it was more a matter of getting everything lined up properly to ensure the beam was channelled the whole way round. They've been firing particles down it already I think, just not the whole way round.

Think of it like bouncing a light beam with mirrors.
 
 
Quantum
12:02 / 10.09.08
Sorry, I was joking, I didn't really think it took the protons that long. Here's today's xkcd by way of an apology



how this thing makes money

It doesn't, it's not a commercial venture- pure science baby! It will result in loads of new stuff, but that's kind of a side effect of the search for pure knowledge.
 
 
Spaniel
13:40 / 10.09.08
If it doesn't make money how is CERN supposed to pay off hundreds of millions of pounds worth of bank loans?

From the Beeb

"Cern had to borrow hundreds of millions of euros in bank loans to get the LHC completed"

Are governments/other bodies covering the loan repayments, in return for the aforementioned transfers of skills, information, etc...?
 
 
Red Concrete
17:23 / 10.09.08
http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/
 
 
gridley
20:29 / 10.09.08
Webcam footage of the test: http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
 
 
astrojax69
02:46 / 11.09.08
a mug of cold coffee will have to do.

shouldn't be a problem - the thing is cooled down to a chilly 1.9K (-217C)...

's cold, that. not much likelihood of a hot chocolate then.
 
 
Quantum
13:20 / 11.09.08
It's the coldest thing in the universe (unless some aliens have built something colder).
 
 
grant
16:16 / 11.09.08
I have a science question.

Yesterday, the LHC was fired up for the first time. Physicists sent a proton beam for a "full lap" around the chamber.

But -- was it actually colliding with another beam? Or was it just, you know, proving that everything worked so they *could* fire it at another beam and actually collide some large hadrons at a later date?
 
 
jentacular dreams
17:46 / 11.09.08
They've test-fired clockwise and anticlockwise beams, but not both at the same time. That's waiting for the official opening on the 21st of october.
 
 
Quantum
11:08 / 12.09.08
More scaremongering macros-

  
 
Ruobhe
20:06 / 20.09.08
Internal damage in the LHC delays the proyect for at least two months.
 
 
Ticker
18:45 / 22.09.08
Yeah they had to take it offline to fix that tentacle problem in section 9.
 
 
grant
15:15 / 23.09.08
I, uh, made a song. About the collider. I'm not entirely happy with the rhythm part, but the actual bit where the collider comes on line fell into place nicely.
 
  

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