The Large Hadron Collider

[SteveThaiBinh]

Some scientists, on the other hand, went to the European Court for Human Rights to try to stop the collider being turned on. They fear it may create a black hole – which would certainly violate our rights by sucking the planet into... well we don't really know. Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Cern says: "The chance we produce a black hole is minuscule." Which is not all that reassuring. But he adds: "Even if we do, it can't swallow up the Earth." It would be too small, and disappear in moments. In any case, they will only send the hadrons in one direction this week. The collisions start in October. Until then, at least, we're not all doomed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/...cle-921540.html

 

When in operation, about seven thousand scientists from eighty countries will have access to the LHC. Physicists hope to use the collider to test various grand unified theories and enhance their ability to answer the following questions:

 

* Is the popular Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model realised in nature? If so, how many Higgs bosons are there, and what are their masses?

* Will the more precise measurements of the masses of the quarks continue to be mutually consistent within the Standard Model?

* Do particles have supersymmetric ("SUSY") partners?

* Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?[1] See also CP-violation.

* Are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?

* What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?

* Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces?

 

BBC Radio 4 is having a special Big Bang Day from CERN on September 10, the day it's switched on. There's also going to be a special radio episode of Torchwood.

[Moatilliatta]

They fear it may create a black hole

[Walsingham]

Best excuse for being anti-commitment ever.

[Checkpoint]

If we do get sucked into a black hole, will they be put to trial?

[Meshugger]

If we do get sucked into a black hole, will they be put to trial?

 

What if they don't realize that we've already been sucked into a blackhole without knowing it, and we're just in a parellel dimension, thus a mere permutation of the infinite of possibilities of the original earth? Are we then even real? What is reality? Can we sue a manifestation of an action of interdimensional proportions?

 

What if this collider really creates another black hole that causes this dimension to merge with the original earth and creates harmony in the einstein's time-gravitational space? Wouldn't it mean that by NOT starting this collider would be a human rights-violation by itself?

 

What would jesus do?

[Checkpoint]

Why, crucify them!

[Killian Kalthorne]

I would have set the LHC to go online December 21st, 2012 just to mess with people.

[Rosbjerg]

Are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?

 

Mist, anyone?

[Xard]

Are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?

 

Mist, anyone?

 

meh, string theory is bs

 

Anyway, I'd be more worried about Quantum Zeno Effect if Lawrence Krauss (one of top names in modern day physics) manages to overcome "safeguard" of gravity when we're Observing dark matter. If he does defeat that obstacle on his rather gloomy theorem we might be more screwed up than by any LHC paranoidisms

 

Thankfully that hasn't been apparently case but mere idea is creepy

Edited September 8, 2008 by Xard

[mkreku]

Aww. I read the title as "The Large Hardon Collider". I was expecting the gayest thread ever. I am disappointed

[SirPetrakus]

Aww. I read the title as "The Large Hardon Collider". I was expecting the gayest thread ever. I am disappointed

Yeah, you and me both, buddy. Such a let down.

[Killian Kalthorne]

Aww. I read the title as "The Large Hardon Collider". I was expecting the gayest thread ever. I am disappointed

I am disappointed with your disappointment.

[Kaftan Barlast]

The song is wickid though

[Gfted1]

Scientists in Switzerland to do the monster smash

 

Sep 9, 3:39 PM (ET)

 

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS

 

GENEVA (AP) - Scientists will launch an experiment in a tunnel deep beneath the French-Swiss border Wednesday, hoping to find evidence of extra dimensions, invisible "dark matter," and an elusive particle called the "Higgs boson."

 

And although leading physicists such as Stephen Hawking say the atom-smashing experiment will be absolutely safe, some skeptics fear the proton collisions could unleash microscopic black holes that would eventually doom the Earth.

 

The most powerful atom-smasher ever built will produce collisions of protons traveling at nearly the speed of light in the circular tunnel, giving off showers of particles that will provide more clues as to how everything in the universe is made.

 

In the $10 billion project - the most extensive physics experiment in history - the Large Hadron Collider will come ever closer to re-enacting the "big bang," the theory that a colossal explosion created the cosmos.

 

The project, organized by the 20 member nations of the European Organization for Nuclear Research - known by its French initials CERN - has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country that contributed $531 million.

 

The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, moving around the 17-mile tunnel at 11,000 times a second at full power.

 

Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the atom. Scientists once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons, and that there were other forces and particles.

 

The CERN experiments could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle - the Higgs boson - which is sometimes called the "God particle." It is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

 

The two beams of protons will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space. Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets - to guide the beams. The paths of these beams will cross, and a few protons will collide. The two largest detectors - essentially huge digital cameras weighing thousands of tons - are capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.

 

Some skeptics have said the collisions could result in tiny black holes - subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

 

"It's nonsense," said CERN chief spokesman James Gillies. Leading scientists like Hawking agree.

 

Gillies told The Associated Press that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the collider itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel. Full power is probably a year away.

 

"On Wednesday, we start small," Gillies said. "What we're putting in to start with is one single low intensity bunch at low energy and we thread that around. We get experience with low energy things and then we ramp up as we get to know the machine better."

 

Huge amounts of data will pour in - so big that the lab's computers can't sift through it all. So scientists, who will monitor the experiment at above-ground control centers, have devised a way to share the load among dozens of leading computing centers worldwide.

 

The result is the "LHC Grid," a network of 60,000 computers to analyze what happens when protons are hurled at each other. That computing power is needed if scientists are to find what they are looking for among the mountains of data.

 

"You can think of each experiment as a giant digital camera with around 150 million pixels taking snapshots 600 million times a second," said CERN's Ian Bird, who leads the grid project.

 

Sophisticated filters discard all but the most interesting data, still leaving some 15 petabytes to be analyzed. That's enough to fill 2 million DVDs.

 

The data will be sent to 11 top research institutions in Europe, North America and Asia, and from there to a wider network of 150 research facilities around the world for scrutiny by thousands of researchers.

 

Collaborating on such a large project has proved invaluable, said Ruth Pordes, executive director of the Open Science Grid at Fermilab in Chicago. The U.S.-government funded project is among the major contributors to the grid.

 

"We are doing things that are at the boundaries of science," Pordes said. "But the technologies, the methods and the results will be picked up by industry."

 

Scientists expect grid computing to become more widely used, for research ranging from new drugs to nuclear energy. Eventually, consumers will start seeing it in daily life to regulate traffic, predict the weather or help a flagging economy.

 

So even if the LHC experiment doesn't yield answers to the cosmic questions, historians may one day see it as a key step in developing networked computing.

 

It wouldn't be the first time that has happened at CERN. In 1990, a young British researcher there created a computer-based system for sharing information with colleagues around the world.

 

He called it the World Wide Web.

 

 

Wait a damn minute, Al Gore is British?

[taks]

gore invented the internet, not the the world wide web.

 

taks

[Laozi]

Scientists in Switzerland to do the monster smash

Some skeptics have said the collisions could result in tiny black holes - subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

 

"It's nonsense," said CERN chief spokesman James Gillies. Leading scientists like Hawking agree.

[/b]

 

 

 

The problem with this is that he has his opinion conferred by another scientist, we don't even hear what the pseudo-scientist think.

[Checkpoint]

I think it's another hyped up millennium-bug thing, but the assurances from all those scientists actually do sound kind of weak.

[thepixiesrock]

Yeah sure, it's easy to be one of those guys that says everything will be alright, because if it isn't it won't matter for long. The people that come forward and say "Hey wait a minute, this might not be such a good idea run the risk of living in a world where they sound foolish. I say, good for them for sticking to their guns.

[samm]

Just because they're scientists, it doesn't make them more certain about what will happen. In fact, chances are especially scientists will tend to be divided, until the Large Hadron Collider is up and running...

[Killian Kalthorne]

And really, people are just assuming that being sucked into a Black Hole is a bad thing.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

And really, people are just assuming that being sucked into a Black Hole is a bad thing.

 

I fail to see how it could be benficial for humans.

 

Enlighten me.

[samm]

Who knows what would happen? Being stretched/compressed alongside with time certainly makes for an interesting experience. Also, who says that a bad thing != benficial for humans?

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Well it certainly doesn't sound confortable.

[thepixiesrock]

Your face doesn't look comfortable!

 

OHHHHHHH zing!

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Well your mother is certainly uncomfortable.

 

BAH ZING