tagged w/ Large Hadron Collider
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The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
This incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility later this month, but exposes yet another vulnerability of the what might be the most complex machine ever built. With freak accident after freak accident piling up over at CERN, the idea of time traveling particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery is beginning to seem less and less far fetched.The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot... more
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The Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Geneva has been fired up for the first time since its high-profile failure last year.
The huge particle accelerator successfully powered some protons and lead ions around short sections of its 17-mile ring on Friday, and everything seemed to be working correctly.
Engineers and scientists have been warily putting it through its paces for the first time since its catastrophic breakdown, or “quench”, which happened when two of the LHC’s huge superconducting magnets suffered a short circuit within hours of it powering up.
Scientists will study the impacts of two beams crossing and hitting each other, and hope the resulting breakdown of matter will reveal insights into the nature of matter and the conditions in the seconds after the Big Bang.
In particular, it is hoped that it will reveal the theoretical particle the Higgs Boson, which is believed to give other particles mass.The Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Geneva has been fired up for the first time since... more
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What if all the Large Hadron Collider's recent woes are more than bad luck and technical problems? Two noted physicists speculate that the future may be pushing back on the LHC to avert the disaster of observing the Higgs boson.
The quest to observe the Higgs boson has certainly been plagued by its share of troubles, from the cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider in 1993 to the Large Hadron Collider's streak of technical troubles. In fact, the projects have suffered such bad luck that Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto wonder if it isn't bad luck at all, but future influences rippling back to sabotage them. In papers like "Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal" and "Search for Future Influence From LHC," they put forth the notion that observing the Higgs boson would be such an abhorrent event that the future is actually trying to prevent it from happening.
(more at link)What if all the Large Hadron Collider's recent woes are more than bad luck and... more
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Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself from the future? That's the suggestion of a couple of reasonably distinguished theoretical physicists, which has received a fresh airing in the New York Times today.
Actually, it's the Higgs boson that is doing the sabotage. Apparently, among the many singular properties of the Higgs that the LHC is meant to discover could be the ability to turn back time to stop its cover being blown.
Or as the New York Times puts it:
"the hypothesized Higgs boson... might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather."
That is the ultimate reason, suggest the duo - Danish string theory pioneer Holger Bech Nielsen and the Japanese physicist Masao Ninomiya - why Congress stopped the funding for the USA's Superconducting Super Collider in 1993, and why the LHC itself suffered such an embarrassing meltdown shortly after starting up last year.
Reading the first paper from a couple of years ago and the follow-up last week, it's not quite clear to me how or why the Higgs contrives to influence the minds of Congressmen, or cause LHC magnets to overheat from its point of discovery some time in the future. Even trying to consider how it would achieve such feats makes my own magnets overheat.
The authors clear up some of the mystery by describing their model as starting with "a series of not completely convincing, but still suggestive, assumptions".
Some more excitable corners of the physics blogosphere have been considerably less polite about the theory.
Even more fun is Nielsen and Ninomiya's suggestion of how their theory might be tested: with a card game.
First, take a million or so cards, each scribbled with a future fate for the LHC. Make them overwhelmingly read "carry on", but add just one or two saying "shut the thing down".
If you pull one of the "shut down" ones at random, you have pretty good proof that the Higgs is trying to tell you something from the future.
I don't know what happens if you disobey the warning: perhaps that's where the thing with the black holes that eat the world come in.
I'm not sure anyone in charge needs my advice on this, but I'd be tempted to go ahead with the LHC restart anyway, just on the off-chance Nielsen and Ninomiya are wrong.
If the thing keeps on failing to work, at least you have the perfect excuse: it wasn't me, it was the Higgs.Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself from the future? That's the... more
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"MEXICO CITY - Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
Or is it?
Definitely not, the Mayan elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."
It can only get worse for him. Next month, Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.
At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.
"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."
Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan, ideas.
A significant time period for the Maya does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years."
One ridiculous theory I heard was that the Earth and the Sun will align with the black hole in the center of the galaxy. The problem is there are no black holes! 2012 is just part of the diversification of fear tactics, such as Man-made Global Warming, the Large Hadron Collider, Hurricane Katrina (surprisingly missed thousands of oil rigs), Swine Flu, and of course, you can't forget the greatest staged fear event ever, 9/11.
2012, Global Warming, LHC are all events seemingly out of our control, but will be used as covers for the real plan...terror, terror, terror; fear, fear, fear. Is this how you want to live your life?"MEXICO CITY - Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic... more
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Police has arrested a 32-yo physicist at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, linking him to an Al Qaeda terrorist group. Just fraking great. As if we didn't have enough with the morons predicting Apocalypse and the thing failing on its own.Police has arrested a 32-yo physicist at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, linking him to... more
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yepyep
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1 month ago
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The world's largest particle accelerator sits down for a one on one with Larry King.
From SuperNews! an animated sketch comedy series airing on Current TV every Friday night at 10p/9c.
So set your DVRs and TIVOs. Like... now.
For more SuperNews! go to www.current.com/supernewsThe world's largest particle accelerator sits down for a one on one with Larry King.... more
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Hanks was at CERN promoting his new film Angels & Demons, in which he plays Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, who is investigating a plot to annihilate the Vatican with 0.25 grams of antimatter stolen from CERN. His co-star Ayelet Zurer, who plays a brilliant CERN physicist, and the film's director Ron Howard, were also present at the unusual junket.
"I asked Hanks if he'd like to come back for the switch-on and he said 'yes'," says Steve Myers, CERN's director of accelerators and technology, after giving him a guided tour of the LHC's 7,000-tonne ATLAS experiment on 13 February.Hanks was at CERN promoting his new film Angels & Demons, in which he plays Harvard... more
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I made this in high school for a physics project on the history of physics.
The video and sound quality is poor because it was filmed in 2002 and recorded onto VHS, which I then later converted to digital to upload.
I made the video one afternoon with a couple of classmates, one holding a stereo playing the instrumental to Still DRE by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, and another filming. We filmed at various locations in San Francisco. We submitted this as our final honors physics project, and received an A!
The lyrics:
Putn the sic back in physics
Aristotle was one of the first great physicists
Defining an objects motion and its limits
The primary theory of motion that he professed
Is that the natural state of an object is at rest.
That notion held from 350 BC to approximately 1603,
When Galileo reasoned creatively
He discovered after much scientific devotion
That a moving object tends to stay in motion
Likewise, how one stopped will stay in that position
And that Aristotles object tendency was really friction.
On to the modern way of scientific thought
Came another progeny of the human imagination—
Newtons Law of Universal Gravitation.
Boyle formulated gas laws within the 17th centurys duration.
Huygens challenged the theory of light in his day
When in 1690 he said its composed of waves.
Bernoulli, the first mathematical physicist
Anticipated the kinetic theory of gases
a century before Dalton invented it.
The first two laws of thermodynamics
Were developed in 1850 by Kelvin and Clausius.
-CHORUS-
I be representn for the physicists all across the ages
Flipn through my physics books pages
Taken time to measure lights speed
coz I still got love for the P
H-Y-S-I-C-S
Farady invented the concept of the field
To explain how magnets yield electric generation
Maxwell continued in 1856, discovering electromagnetic radiation.
J. J. Thomson with his physics ability
Refuted the notion of an atoms indivisibility
In experimenting with a cathode ray, he supposed
That atoms, from electrons, are composed.
Thus, shattering the notion of matter
What it is and what it isnt
And on came the birth of modern physics.
With the discovery of radiation and x-rays
The classical view failed to explain
How a positive nucleus surrounded by electrons, stays.
Then the conflict presented by Michelson and Morley
The ether concept explained poorly,
But in came Einsteins brilliant mind
And with Minkowski, altered our notion of space-time
With ideas that are difficult for most to grasp
Like the speed of light is the limiting speed of all things with mass.
-CHORUS-
Then Bohr, using Plancks quantum theory
Proved Rutherfords nuclear atom clearly.
-So on we move to the age of quantum physics-
Lawrence invented the cyclotron—to accelerate particles
And re-produced radioactive things by means artificial.
Meitner discovered nuclear disintegration
She named it fission and gave its physical explanation.
Fermi, Oppenheimer, and Seborg
Made the hydrogen bomb all that and even more.
The antiproton was discovered in 1955
And then came quarks, of which weve found six types.
Transistors were also invented by physicists
Same with the laser—whose implications are limitless.
-CHORUS-
Today, one may ask, Where is physics to go?
I answer, Any place you take it.
Is there a fourth fundamental force, gravitiation?
Nowdays with gluons and tau-nutrinos
Ask yourself—who will experiment if we dont?
We are the chosen ones—we hold the mic.
This is now your song—this is your verse to write.
-CHORUS-I made this in high school for a physics project on the history of physics.
The... more
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So by blasting gold targets with lasers, researchers are creating antimatter.
But the question begs, what can come from antimatter besides the mutual destruction of matter.
This isn't the large hadron collider we've all been reading about, this is another method.
Up until recently antimatter was a theory and it was the stuff of comic books, crucial in sustaining multiple universes. So what is next? The Cosmic treadmill?
One of these days, one of these anti-matter experiments are going to blow up in our faces, quite literally.So by blasting gold targets with lasers, researchers are creating antimatter.
But... more
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When the LHC first went down, it was believed that repairs could get the system up and running by April 2009. Then we saw repairs pushing the timeline back to summer 2009. But now, CERN has arrived at a fork in the road regarding LHC repairs.
According to spokesperson James Gillies, the complicated repairs can be simplified into modest Plan A and Plan B approach.
Plan A is a quick and dirty fix, getting the particle accelerator online as quickly as possible (late summer 2009) at the cost of operating at lower power. In this scenario, 3 of 8 pressure relief-system segments are replaced (only the broken ones) with the other 5 getting upgraded at unsaid maintenance dates in the future.
Plan B is the more extensive but also more delayed approach, requiring the complete redesign and replacement of the LHC's entire pressure-relief system. Under this scenario, the LHC wouldn't go online until 2010 at the earliest, though at that time the system could operate at full power.
As of right now, the team is moving ahead with Plan A in the interest of getting data as soon as possible. Since we have absolutely no way of knowing which course of action is best, we'll just support whatever the crazy physics geniuses decide.When the LHC first went down, it was believed that repairs could get the system up and... more
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GENEVA - Fixing the world's largest atom smasher will cost at least $21 millionand may take until early summer, its operator said Monday.
An electrical failure shut down the Large Hadron Collider on Sept. 19, nine days after the $10 billion machine started up with great fanfare.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research recently said that the repairs would be completed by May or early June. Spokesman James Gillies said the organization know as CERN is now estimating the restart will be at the end of June or later.
"If we can do it sooner, all well and good. But I think we can do it realistically (in) early summer," he said.
The organization has blamed the shutdown on the failure of a single, badly soldered electrical connection.
The atom smasher operates at temperatures colder than outer space to get maximum efficiency and experts needed to gradually warm the damaged section to better assess it, he said.
"Now the sector is warm so they are able to go in and physically look at each of the interconnections," Gillies told The Associated Press.
more at link....
Fix the LHC faster! I want to see what happens next...GENEVA - Fixing the world's largest atom smasher will cost at least $21 millionand may... more
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Paddy Power, a betting agency, is accepting bets as to whether or not God exists. The odds? 4-1, in favor of the big guy in the sky. So far, £5,000 has been laid down. The books opened at the same time the Large Hadron Collider was switched on. The odds opened at 20-1, then moved to 33-1. Interest has sparked especially since bus ads launched in London reading "there's probably no God". If scientific proof emerges to justify religious belief, Paddy Power could lose £50,000.Paddy Power, a betting agency, is accepting bets as to whether or not God exists. The... more
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Everyone's been hearing about the Large Hadron Collider in the news recently, but what may have slipped past your perception is the fact that its aging predicessor, the Tevatron Parricle Accelerator in Illinois, has produced an unexplained result from a collision test that some people think may hint towards the existance of dark matter.
The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) monitors the particles that spew from collisions between protons and anti-protons that are smashed together by the Tevatron Accelerator, and this time while looking for bottom quarks and bottom anti-quarks that decay into two charged particles called muons, the CDF found way more muons than expected, including many that appeared to have formed outside the Accelerator.
Since scientists are unable to explain how these muons were formed, some theorists are pointing towards the existence of dark matter. Nothing has been confirmed yet, as the results are still being studied, but did Tevatron beat LHC to the punch?Everyone's been hearing about the Large Hadron Collider in the news recently, but what... more
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Stevox
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1 year ago
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A 3 min tour of CERN and its research facilities
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Only a person lacking a soul could fail to marvel at the technological mastery and intellectual audacity that have together created, deep beneath the lush meadows of the Franco-Swiss border, the world’s largest sub-atomic rollercoaster.
The Large Hadron Collider, which was officially unveiled yesterday but started work last month, is not merely the most elongated scientific instrument, but an engineering feat of such mind-boggling scale and intricacy that one cannot help wondering whether it was constructed not by the self-effacing geeks who scurry around the site with their dodgy ties and dodgier hairstyles, but by an intergalactic collaboration of Vulcans and Jedis.
The purpose of this 27km (16.7 mile) super-tube is every bit as fantastical as the plot of Star Wars: to replicate the moments after the big bang by colliding two streams of protons at close to the speed of light.
Physicists believe that it may provide insights into the origins of mass and why antimatter has disappeared from view and it may even reveal the elusive Higgs boson, which, when you think about it, makes light sabres seem altogether passé. I could not make up my mind whether to be exhilarated or terrified that the fabric of reality – real reality, not sci-fi reality – is so quiveringly weird. Only a person lacking a soul could fail to marvel at the technological mastery and... more
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The is the "Director's Cut" of our coverage of the Large Hadron Collider, now with more interviews and kitsch.The is the "Director's Cut" of our coverage of the Large Hadron Collider, now with... more
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GENEVA (Reuters) - A technical glitch has forced scientists to shut down the huge particle-smashing machine built to simulate the conditions of the "Big Bang" for at least two months, they said on Saturday.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said there had been a major helium leak on Friday into the tunnel housing the biggest and most complex machine ever made.
Just 10 days ago, scientists had celebrated the successful start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under the Swiss-French border, hoping it would revamp modern physics and unlock secrets about the universe and its origins.
In order to fix the problem, the machine will have to be warmed up from its operating temperature of minus 271.3 degrees Celsius (minus 456.3 degrees Fahrenheit), spokesman James Gillies said.
"Because the LHC is a superconducting machine that works at very low temperatures, in order to get in and fix it we've got to warm it up, then we go and fix it, and then we cool it down again, and that's a process that's likely to take two months," he said.
The organization said strict safety regulations had ensured there was no risk to people from the malfunction.
The project has had to work hard to dismiss suggestions by some critics that the experiment could create tiny black holes of intense gravity that could suck in the whole planet.
GENEVA (Reuters) - A technical glitch has forced scientists to shut down the huge... more
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- The $10 billion "big bang" particle collider has been damaged worse than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said on Saturday.
On Thursday, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said the collider — the world's largest — malfunctioned within hours of its launch to great fanfare, but its operator didn't report the problem for a week.
CERN spokesman James Gillies said Saturday that experts have now gone into the Large Hadron Collider to examine the damage.
- The $10 billion "big bang" particle collider has been damaged worse than previously... more
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