tagged w/ Particle Accelerator
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French scientists have devised a method of analysing valuable old bottles of wine to test if they are fake or genuine.
Using a particle accelerator, more associated with unlocking the secrets of the Universe than those of red wine, physicists at the Centre for Scientific Research in Bordeaux have teamed up with some of the great wine producing chateaux of the region and a wine merchant specialising in rare wines.
"We wanted to find some objective scientific method for analysing the wine and authenticating it in cases where it's not entirely clear if the bottle is genuine," says Stephen Williams of The Antique Wine Company, which bank rolled the VinCert project to the tune of £100,000.
The secondary trade in fine wine, with vintages dating back many decades or even centuries, now exceeds £1bn a year.
Mr Williams got the idea after purchasing a case of old wine from a house in the south of France, including a bottle of 1900 Chateau Margaux, worth in the region of £10,000.
The record auction price for a single bottle of wine is £96,000 ($156,000) for a 1787 Chateau Lafite, which was reputedly once owned by America's third President and author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.French scientists have devised a method of analysing valuable old bottles of wine to... more
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"The world's largest particle collider malfunctioned within hours of its launch to great fanfare, but its operator didn't report the problem for a week.
"In a statement Thursday, the European Organization for Nuclear Research reported for the first time that a 30-ton transformer that cools part of the collider broke, forcing physicists to stop using the atom smasher just a day after starting it up last week.
"The faulty transformer has been replaced and the ring in the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border has been cooled back down to near zero on the Kelvin scale — minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit — the most efficient operating temperature, said a statement by CERN, as the organization is known.
"When the transformer malfunctioned, operating temperatures rose from below 2 Kelvin to 4.5 Kelvin — extraordinarily cold by most standards, but warmer than the normal operating temperature."
[Click link for rest]"The world's largest particle collider malfunctioned within hours of its launch to... more
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This is what people are paranoid will happen when the CERN particle accelerator is turned on. This is what people are paranoid will happen when the CERN particle accelerator is... more
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As a researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, Bugorski used to work with the Synchrotron U-70, the largest Soviet particle accelerator. On July 13, 1978, Bugorski was was leaning over checking a malfunctioning piece of equipment when an accident occurred due to failed safety mechanisms while his head was in the path of the proton beam. He claims having seen a light "brighter than a thousand suns", but felt no pain. The beam measured about 200,000 rads when it entered Bugorski's skull, and about 300,000 rads when it exited after irradiating the inside of his head.
The left half of Bugorski's face inflamed and over the next several days started peeling off, showing the path that the proton beam had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath. As it was believed that about 500 to 600 rads is enough to kill a person, Bugorski was taken to a hospital in Moscow where the doctors could oversee his predicted death. However, Bugorski survived and even completed his Ph.D. There was virtually no damage to his cognative abilities, but the fatigue of mental strain increased dramatically. Bugroski lost all hearing in the left ear and only a constant hum remained. The left half of his face was petrified, due to the destruction of nerves, and does not age. He is able to function normally, save the fact that he stuggles with ongoing bouts with petit mal seizures and very rarely grand mal seizures.As a researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, Bugorski used to... more
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The GRID and the largest and most expensive particle accelerator ever:
"The Times online reported recently that a data communications grid built to transfer data from the world's largest particle accelerator may be able to function as an alternate Internet, with speeds about 10,000 times faster than an average broadband connection. This network - referred to in the article simply as “the grid” - was built with modern fiber optic technology and currently has 55,000 servers connecting the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland with eleven locations internationally. The grid was built to house the data coming from CERN's newest project: the world's largest particle accelerator. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is designed to study the inner workings of matter and perhaps even discover the elusive Higgs Boson particle. Internet history buffs may recall that Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while researching at CERN."
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Concerning adverse reactions:
"One of their concerns is that the mini-black holes generated by this machine could eventually coalesce into a larger black hole that would then begin absorbing matter. Another possibility is that new combinations of quarks could come into existence, creating a stable, negatively-charged strangelet which could turn everything it touches into strangelets as well – plunging us into a parallel universe of stable, negatively-charged strangelets. Yet another theory is that high-energy collisions in the LHC could result in massive particles that only have one magnetic pole, rather than the typical north-south pole magnetism with which we are familiar. Critics worry that such particles could start a huge chain reaction, converting atoms into different forms of matter."
The GRID and the largest and most expensive particle accelerator ever:
"The Times... more
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Walter Wagner is pressing for a lawsuit to keep CERN from using their 8 billion dollar Large Hadron Collider to create a scenario of what it was like a trillionth of a second after the big bang, for fear of a tiny black hole or conversion of Earth into strange matter. However, scientists have deemed such scruples insignificant. Let's hear from you: Is Wagner a "crackpot," or is this a genuine problem?Walter Wagner is pressing for a lawsuit to keep CERN from using their 8 billion dollar... more
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Two men, Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho, filed a lawsuit in the federal court in Hawaii, contending that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) played down the chances that a giant particle accelerator could create a tiny black whole (which could eat Earth) or "it could spit out something called a 'strangelet' that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called 'strange matter.'
World physicist have spent billions of dollars building a this giant particle accelerator, called Large Hadron Collider, in which "colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature."
This lawsuit touches on an ongoing issue: How do scientist assess/ estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments, and who decides whether or not to go ahead?
Any suggestions?
(check out the article for more details :)
Two men, Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho, filed a lawsuit in the federal court in... more
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