PC Pals Forum
General Discussion => Science & Nature => Topic started by: sam on August 06, 2008, 14:52
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some stunning photos here...
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer (17 mile) long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September - and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C (-456.25 F). Here is a collection of photographs from CERN, showing various stages of completion of the LHC and several of its larger experiments (some over seven stories tall), over the past several years.
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Can't wait for it to be run :woot: !
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Nice find Sam. :) We are having a talk on it in October by one of the guys involved with it. Sadly I will be away on holiday at the time. :bawl:
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Nice find Sam. :) We are having a talk on it in October by one of the guys involved with it. Sadly I will be away on holiday at the time. :bawl:
oh the one that you thought was going to be on aliens? :laugh: :laugh:
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:pmsl:
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loads of people here at Birmingham are heavily involved in it... I think the 2nd and 3rd floors are all full of tense particle physicists...
continuing on this theme... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/08/04/what-will-the-lhc-find/
With the Large Hadron Collider almost ready to turn on, it’s time to prepare ourselves for what it might find. (The real experts, of course, have been preparing themselves for this for many years!) Chad Orzel was asked what we should expect from the LHC, and I thought it would be fun to give my own take. So here are my judgments for the likelihoods that we will discover various different things at the LHC — to be more precise, let’s say “the chance that, five years after the first physics data are taken, most particle physicists will agree that the LHC has discovered this particular thing.” (Percentages do not add up to 100%, as they are in no way exclusive; there’s nothing wrong with discovering both supersymmetry and the Higgs boson.) I’m pretty sure that I’ve never proposed a new theory that could be directly tested at the LHC, so I can be completely unbiased, as there’s no way that this experiment is winning any Nobels for me. On the other hand, honest particle phenomenologists might be aware of pro- or con- arguments for various of these scenarios that I’m not familiar with, so feel free to chime in in the comments. (Other predictions are easy enough to come by, but none with our trademark penchant for unrealistically precise quantification.)
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oh the one that you thought was going to be on aliens? :laugh: :laugh:
Yes, slight change of topic. ;D
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Now that this particular genie is out of the bottle perhaps you had better take a look at this:
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/230 :)x
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lol... I think we have a case for a nice sci-fi action film there...
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Indeed! ;D
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Amazing photo's, Sam. :thumbs:
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Earth will turn into a black hole on September 10th.
LINK (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080807170639.4ezeiioi&show_article=1) :nerves:
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Does that mean I shouldn't bother renewing the car tax?
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At least we won't have to pay those massive energy bills! ;D
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Well, you pensioners get half on it paid for you! :devil:
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Just £200 that's all! :bawl:
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'That's all' is better than f*** all! ;D
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technically the CERN upgrade has cost every EU citizen 40 Euros... well that's what I'm told...
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Do I get to press a few buttons now? ;D
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God help us, we're all doomed! :)x
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Will it microwave my cold mug of tea?
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I don't think it's that powerful Gill! ;D
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Pity. I was hoping for something coming out of all this expenditure which might be useful.
Still, it's all very exciting and interesting in its own right.
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Pity. I was hoping for something coming out of all this expenditure which might be useful.
Still, it's all very exciting and interesting in its own right.
dont worry all the technology that will come out of it will pay for it.... just like the internet did in the past.
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If it works doesnt that mean that they find the so called god particle ?
So if they find that they can then prove the big bang theory was an actual event.
This will prove that theres no such thing as creation, or intelligent design and it should finally convince all the religous people that there isnt a god.
This means that once people realise that there isnt really any such thing as a god, then world peace has a chance to finally happen, doesnt it :dunno:
That sounds very useful to me Gill :)
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Oh, if they can find it (and I believe it'll take them about five years to work out if it's there) then everything will be worthwhile. If they can't find it, then what? That might be an even more interesting scenario.
Incidentally, I understand the particle they're looking for is known as the 'Higgs boson'. If that's the 'god' particle, it's funny but I never imagined that god would be called 'Higgs'.
Gotta go and finish my cup of tea. It's probably gone cold by now.
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Yeah its the Higgs boson, and is the particle that is missing from the standard model that they have built up. If found it will prove their model and mean that we might truly understand particle physics. If it is not found, then indeed, it will be much more interesting.
I don't think it will not prove the big bang though, but proves the particle physics that could have gone into it. The term "God particle" is, like most things, a media invention... though I think the particle physicists don't mind it too much as it gives them some publicity.
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In 1993, the UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave, challenged physicists to produce an answer that would fit on one page to the question 'What is the Higgs boson, and why do we want to find it?' One of the winning entries taken from Physics World Volume 6 Number 9, was by a friend of mine who now works at at Swansea University. If you would like to read it HERE (http://www.phy.uct.ac.za/courses/phy400w/particle/higgs5.htm) it is.
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Fascinating, Clive, and very informative for this numpty.
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Fermilab says: "Hey wait, we're in the Higgs hunt, too!"
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=fermilab-says-hey-wait-were-in-the-2008-08-08&sc=rss
It looks like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may have some competition in its search for the much-anticipated Higgs boson, the source of mass.
Yesterday CERN, the European particle physics lab, announced that on September 10 it would begin shooting protons around the full 27 kilometers (17 miles) of the circular LHC—the most powerful particle accelerator ever built—building up to collisions with a second, opposing beam in subsequent months.
Researchers don't know much concentrated energy it takes to make the Higgs particle pop out, but they are confident that the sheer number of high-energy particle collisions the LHC was designed to produce ought to generate lots of Higgs bosons, enough to spot them from among other collision debris.
But the LHC isn't the only machine with the potential for finding the Higgs. At a conference this week, researchers working on the Tevatron [above, background] at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill.—still the top particle accelerator for a few months more—have finally collected enough data that they can start to rule out the Higgs along portions of the energy range the LHC will also explore.
Combined results from the CDF and DZero experiments indicate that the Higgs most likely does not exist at 170 giga electron-volts (GeV). (A GeV is one billion electron-volts, which are the units of energy associated with subatomic particles.)
Tevatron researchers have been hard at work these past months squeezing every bit of sensitivity from their data to identify enough Higgs-like particle collisions to see if there's an excess suggesting the possible presence of the Higgs.
The finding "marks the start of an expanding region both below and above 170 GeV where the Higgs will be excluded as we collect more statistics and refine our analysis," Fermilab director Pierre Oddone said in a statement. "Even more exciting, if the Higgs is anywhere nearby, we should then see evidence for it with the full data sample in the next two years."
Physicist Gordon Watts, a DZero team member, notes on his blog that this is the first time a particle physics experiment has entered the Higgs range since CERN's LEP collider in the 1990s, which told researchers that the Higgs had to possess an energy greater than 114 GeV.
The LHC will need a few years to complete its own Higgs hunt, as indicated in this provisional timeline, circulated at April's meeting of the American Physical Society. Of course, the machine will be looking for other particles besides the Higgs. Check out Cosmic Variance for a run-down of what's theoretically possible.
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Physics Nerds Rap About the LHC - http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/12/0036245&from=rss
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Oh that's VERY good Sam. 8-)
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Either it forms a black hole, or it sterilizes half the continent. Nice pictures though sam.
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or it sterilizes half the continent.
Maybe they should have built it in Africa or in the Indian sub continent, then it would be a good result either way and reduce those countries overpopulation problems :)
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Oh Sandra - that's not very PC. :rockon:
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Either it forms a black hole, or it sterilizes half the continent.
neither will happen.
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The world's largest particle accelerator has tasted its first protons.
On 8 August, physicists injected a few billion protons into a section of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The accelerator will eventually drive trillions of protons into each other at energies high enough to perhaps generate new kinds of particles.
The small beam tested the synchronization between the LHC and a booster accelerator. “I must say I was very pleased,” says Lyn Evans, LHC project leader at CERN. “It went extremely smoothly.”
Further tests will be carried out in coming weeks, with a view to having protons running laps around the 27-kilometre LHC ring by 10 September.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080813/full/454815a.html?s=news_rss
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The scientists must have caught Olympic fever, wanting to see their athletic little protons running laps :) .
It's nice to hear the project's still chugging away. :thumbs:
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Talking of which, The Sun predicts the end of the world in nine days!
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/article1630897.ece
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that Professor they quote hasn't obviously done basic physics courses.. :)x :)x
and
But CERN, which includes several UK scientists, say their work is vital to unlock the secrets of matter that forms everything known in the universe.
several... I think they mean hundreds to thousands...
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The Sun predicts the end of the world in nine days!
The Sun will be there. ;D
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;D
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Isn't it great when scientists say exactly what they mean in terms that laymen can understand? Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University leaves nobody in any doubt as to his views on the safety of the LHC:
"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."
:laugh:
Daily Telegraph article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml).
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;D
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"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."
I like Brian Cox and have a lot of time for him. He is also the reason the labour government got in, in the first place... he was in a certain band... :bawl:
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At least things got better for him.
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Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed The World Yet?
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
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Been nice knowing some of you ..bye for now :laugh:
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its just the power up today... they wont be doing the "big bang"esq stuff for a few months yet...
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That took place half an hour ago and we are still h...
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That took place half an hour ago and we are still h...
:o :o
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Goodbye cruel world... :scoot:
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I'm not staying online very long. With the LHC fired up, there's every chance we'll have a power cut. Come to that, it's a risk every time the traffic lights in the town centre change colour.
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Croatia 1 England 4
So it did generate a black hole which we slipped through into a parallel universe.
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In that case, can we leave football there and fill in the hole? ;D
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Big Bang experiment makes girl suicide
September 10, 2008, 10:53 am
* Doomsday fears come with territory, scientists sayDoomsday predictions surrounding the start-up of Europe's Large Hadron Collider come as little surprise to physicists.
A teenage girl in India has killed herself after fearing the Big Bang experiment in Switzerland may cause the world to end.
Local Indian authorities said the 16-year-old girl from Madhya Pradesh drank pesticide and was rushed to the hospital but died later.
Physicists around the world celebrated the first tests on Wednesday of a huge particle-smashing machine they hope will simulate the creation of the universe.
Experiments using the underground Large Hadron Collider, the biggest and most complex machine ever made, could revamp modern physics and unlock secrets about the universe and its origins.
The girl, named Chayya, killed herself after watching doomsday predictions made on Indian news programmes, her father said.
"In the past two days, Chayya had asked me and other relatives about the world coming to an end on September 10," he told local television in India.
"We tried to divert her attention and told her she should not worry about such things, but to no avail."
Physicists brushed off suggestions that the experiment could create tiny black holes that could cause problems with the planet.
"The worries that scientists had were nothing to do with being swallowed up by black holes and everything to do with technical hitches or electronic failure," Jim al-Khalili, a physicist at Britain's University of Surrey, said.
"Now, after a collective sigh of relief, the real fun starts," al-Khalili said.
"No matter what we find, we will be unlocking the secrets of the universe."
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/newshome/5007823
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What a waste of a life. :dunno:
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especially since it hasn't even done the stuff that these doomsday people suggest could end the world... wait till they start firing the beams against each other - that's when the fun stars!
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Hackers fool Hadron Collider computers
September 13, 2008, 9:52 pm
Hackers claim they have broken into the computer system of the Large Hadron Collider, the mega-machine designed to expose secrets of the cosmos, British newspapers reported.
A group calling itself the Greek Security Team left a rogue webpage mocking the technicians responsible for computer security at the giant atom smasher as "schoolkids", the Times and Daily Telegraph reported.
The hackers vowed they had no intention of disrupting the experiment at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the Swiss-French border, they just wanted to highlight the flaws in the computer system's security.
"We're pulling your pants down because we don't want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes," they wrote, according to the Daily Telegraph.
The hackers claimed to have gained access to a website open to other scientists on Wednesday as the LHC passed its first test with flying colours, the reports said.
They appear to have tried to gain access to the computer system of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, one of the four detectors that will be analysing the progress of the experiment.
James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, told the Times: "We don't know who they were but there seems to be no harm done. It appears to be people who want to make a point that CERN was hackable."
Scientists hailed the success of the start of the experiment on Wednesday in the Large Hadron Collider, the 27-kilometre circular tunnel in which parallel beams of protons will be accelerated to nearly the speed of light.
Superconducting magnets will then steer the counter-rotating beams so that strings of protons smash together in four huge laboratories, fleetingly replicating the conditions that prevailed at the "Big Bang" that created the universe 13.7 billion years ago
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:doh:
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I'm not convinced about that article... no one here is seemingly worrying.
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It's not really surprising that someone would try this, but I doubt they would be successful.
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if they got in, then it would be to an unsecured desktop machine that would not be connected to anything important.
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I'm not convinced about that article... no one here is seemingly worrying.
Oh come on Sam. If it's in the newspapers then it MUST be true! ;D
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What really happened last week...
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html :horror:
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LHC electrical failure will keep it down for 2+ months
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7626944.stm
Looks like an electrical connection between two magnets shorted out, causing a failure which allowed about a ton of liquid helium to escape. The helium is what cools the magnets to near absolute zero, and without it the magnets lose their superconducting ability.
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What really happened last week...
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html :horror:
Is that real? I came across that last week sometime, I think, I didn't think it was real, but a joke. :dunno:
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I think it's probably a joke, MB. The only black hole created last week was by the banking industry. ;)
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Thanks Simon. I'm glad I didn't make a complete twit of myself by posting it then. :o: ;)
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its a very good joke... also if that had happened, which it wont... by the time I wrote this post bye bye planet.
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That's very reassuring, Sam. :o ;D
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you could always try: http://largehardoncollider.com/
The LHC is expected to become the world's largest and highest energy penile accelerator ever assembled. Expected to penetrate new areas, the LHC will produce high speed, head-on collisions between beams of yonic and phallic particles.
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:haha:
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;D