LHC Particle Masher thread... (Quest for "Theory of EVerything")

[FaT_tONle]

This thread is for the latest updates of the Giant particle masher that will be running starting from tomorrow... if we got any theoretical physicists in the house... I am a nut for this stuff... trying to read as many books as I can and I just started recentley so I don't know a whole lot. I have only taking Physics at the general levels but anyone can feel free to join the discussion of course...

Cern's Large Hadron Collider powers up

The world's largest machine will switch on for the biggest scientific experiment of the 21st century shortly after 8.15am, BST, on Wednesday

A few minutes after 8.15am, British Summer Time, on Wednesday, scientists at Cern will turn on the Large Hadron Collider — if all goes to plan.

The world's most powerful particle accelerator to date, the system is designed to recreate the conditions that existed a millionth of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, or the birth of the universe. By smashing particles together at unprecedented — in man-made terms — energies, the scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) hope to answer questions such as why some subatomic particles are heavier than others, and how particles were formed in the first place.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is the world's largest machine, is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel located 100m under the Alps, straddling the Swiss-French border. Wednesday will see the first attempt to circulate a particle beam around the entire ring, but no attempt will be made to create collisions on this date. Rather, the work towards that goal with the LHC and its detectors will continue after this event.

One specific particle that the scientists want to detect is the 'Higgs boson'. The confirmation of the existence of this as-yet-unobserved particle would validate much of what is currently believed to be true about physics.

The LHC is the world's largest cryogenic installation. In preparation for Wednesday's initiation, 37,000 tonnes of equipment had to be cooled down by 300°C to 1.9° above absolute zero (-271°C), using the world's most advanced superconducting magnet technologies. LHC's conception and construction involved 10,000 people from 500 institutes in 50 countries.

Elements of the LHC system were successfully tested in August to ensure exact synchronisation, and Cern staff are confident that the final initiation will go according to plan.

Cern's first particle accelerator, the proton Synchro-Cyclotron, was built in 1957. The LHC, by contrast, will be seven times more powerful than any existing particle accelerator today. Within the next few years, Cern hopes to be colliding particles at 30 times the intensity of older particle accelerators.

The UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has invested more than half a billion pounds in the project. This includes the UK's subscription to Cern and the funding that has gone into the UK institutes that were involved in the construction of the LHC's detectors. It also includes the GridPP, the UK's contribution to the grid computing network established to handle the vast amounts of data that will be generated by the project. Through GridPP, the UK is providing 15 percent of the computing power in that network.

"We are trying to find out what everything is made of; what we are made of; the smallest pieces inside us; every atom," Peter Watkins, professor of the University of Birmingham's School of Physics and Astronomy, said in a statement.

"We're also trying to understand how the universe started," Watkins continued. "We're trying to understand what happened shortly after the Big Bang, and we need to look at these tiny particles to understand that better. However, to achieve this, when we study things at the Large Hadron Collider, we need equipment which challenges technology and industry to the limit. And we push electronics and computers right to the leading edge of the subject."

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/misc/print/0,1000000169,39486094-39001108c,00.htm

Hawking bets CERN mega-machine won't find 'God's Particle'

Tue Sep 9, 3:56 PM ET


Renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet 100 dollars (70 euros) that a mega-experiment this week will not find an elusive particle seen as a holy grail of cosmic science, he said Tuesday.
In the most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be switched on Wednesday, accelerating sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light before smashing them together.
"The LHC will increase the energy at which we can study particle interactions by a factor of four. According to present thinking, this should be enough to discover the Higgs particle," Hawking told BBC radio.
"I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of 100 dollars that we won't find the Higgs," added Hawking, whose books including "A Brief History of Time" have sought to popularise study of stellar physics.
On Wednesday the first protons will be injected into a 27-kilometre (16.9-mile) ring-shaped tunnel, straddling the Swiss-French border at the headquarters of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).
Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with this idea: there must exist a background field that would act rather like treacle.
Some scientists were however more optimistic.
Hubert Reeves, the French astrophysician, told the Swiss daily Le Matin that the invention could bring "unexpected results" that would change the world of particle physics forever.
"This machine will probably bring unexpected results that could turn particle physics on its head," Reeves said.
"It's a really impressive tool. It can go as deep underground as the length of a cathedral," he said.
Particles passing through it would acquire mass by being dragged through a mediator, which theoreticians dubbed the Higgs Boson.
The standard quip about the Higgs is that it is the "God Particle" -- it is everywhere but remains frustratingly elusive.
While questioning the likelihood of finding Higgs Bosons, Hawking said the experiment could discover superpartners, particles that would be "supersymmetric partners" to particles already known about.
"Their existence would be a key confirmation of string theory, and they could make up the mysterious dark matter that holds galaxies together," he told the BBC.
"Whatever the LHC finds, or fails to find, the results will tell us a lot about the structure of the universe," he added.
Hawking, the 66-year-old Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, was diagnosed with the muscle-wasting motor neuron disease at the age of 22.
He is in a wheelchair and speaks with the aid of a computer and voice synthesiser.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/science...g&printer=1;_ylt=AlcYiWoEc.Ldi4v2DbOLxPGGOrgF

The world will not end this week

Posted: 03:21 PM ET
The Large Hadron Collider control room, near Geneva, Switzerland


Scientists are about to fire up the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator. The 13-mile long circular tunnel runs through Switzerland, and a bit of France. The object of the game (the $8 billion game, by the way) is to smash protons into each other, replicating the conditions an instant after the Big Bang.
The practical applications for this? None.
The prize? Possibly answering a key question about everything. The search for the Higgs boson, a particle that’s not yet discovered, but theorized. Physicists believe that the Higgs — sometimes called the “God Particle” — is what creates mass.
Sadly, there’s been a mild media frenzy (including CNN, which published an AP story on the topic last June) focused not on the potential for discovery, but on concerns that there’s a theoretical chance that smashing these two proton streams together at nearly the speed of light will create tiny black holes that will unite, swallow up the Large Hadron Collider, then swallow up Switzerland, France, Earth, and the rest of the solar system.
As I understand it, there’s a universe of difference between the massive black holes of space that swallow up matter, and the tiny ones that would be generated in the LHC, each with a lifespan of a tiny fraction of a nanosecond.
That hasn’t stopped a wave of online protests, and a lawsuit in US court to stop the project (the US Department of Energy is a participant in the collider experiment).
Okay, it should be clear by now that particle physics is not my strong suit. Botany isn’t either, and Walter Wagner, the guy who filed the lawsuit, is a card-carrying botanist. He also filed a similar suit against the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which has been operating at Brookhaven National Labs since 2000, with no apparent impact to Life As We Know It.
I’d love to hear your take on all this. If you share Mr. Wagner’s concerns, please get your comments in by 3:30AM ET Wednesday. If not, take your time. I’m pretty sure the world will still be here tomorrow, when testing begins, or through the next month as the tests complete and they try out the Real Thing. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy every one of you a nice lunch. But I’m pretty sure we’ll go back to destroying the world the slow, methodical, hard way, and not in a flash while you’re sleeping tonight.

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/


What youtube predicts will happen to the Earth...

 

[Victarion]

Sorry if my opinion offends ye faT_tONle, but I think this is one more point chalked up to pure human ****ery. If it works and I'm still here, I'll retract this.

 

[The Battousai]

^ Why?

 

[FaT_tONle]

Sorry if my opinion offends ye faT_tONle, but I think this is one more point chalked up to pure human ****ery. If it works and I'm still here, I'll retract this.

Not 100% sure what ya mean... SHH isn't the place to be talking science I get that... but you got to test these things eventually. The theories behind them are quite compelling. It's not going to make sense to everyone of course.

 

[bored]

Isn't this thing supposed to create a small black hole and kill us all ?

 

[Morg]

*waits for the kaboom*

 

[Jennifer Walters]

Scientists shouldn't even **** with things like this.

 

[Victarion]

Not 100% sure what ya mean... SHH isn't the place to be talking science I get that... but you got to test these things eventually. The theories behind them are quite compelling. It's not going to make sense to everyone of course.

I'm not going to argue that the ideas behind the machine aren't compelling. It just seems like something that could easily go wrong. But I'm more into microbiology myself so I wouldn't know too much about the machine to begin with.

Basically, I'm saying that this thing seems so delicate--the procedure--that it could blow up in their faces. If the kind of blackhole this thing can generate could swallow the Earth or whatever, I pretty much value my hide over new discoveries.

 

[FaT_tONle]

I'm not going to argue that the ideas behind the machine aren't compelling. It just seems like something that could easily go wrong. But I'm more into microbiology myself so I wouldn't know too much about the machine to begin with.

Basically, I'm saying that this thing seems so delicate--the procedure--that it could blow up in their faces. If the kind of blackhole this thing can generate could swallow the Earth or whatever, I pretty much value my hide over new discoveries.

I'm a Molec Bio major... but I try to acclamate myself in every discipline. I try to at least get the basics down... I am sure these people know what they are doing... by the looks of it... the top physicists predict they'll find nothing major. But again you have to test it... this blackhole stuff is nonsense. I posted that video because I knew 90% of the people posting here needed something to joke about.

 

[FaT_tONle]

Scientists shouldn't even **** with things like this.

I'll take it your not a scientist...

 

[Jennifer Walters]

No, but I think for being some of the smartest people in the world, they want to **** with some dangerously stupid ****, like nuclear power and this thing.

 

[The Battousai]

Scientists shouldn't even **** with things like this.

You clearly don't know a thing about it

 

[FaT_tONle]

No, but I think for being some of the smartest people in the world, they want to **** with some dangerously stupid ****, like nuclear power and this thing.

I think they are better judges of that than you are... besides... how else do you prove the theories of the big bang? Recreate the universe in its primordial conditions... I think it's a little more complicated than how you made it out to be... equating this to million H bombs going off is obviously not a fair analogy.

 

[The Battousai]

I'm not going to argue that the ideas behind the machine aren't compelling. It just seems like something that could easily go wrong. But I'm more into microbiology myself so I wouldn't know too much about the machine to begin with.

I think it would help to actually READ about a topic before forming an opinion on it

Basically, I'm saying that this thing seems so delicate--the procedure--that it could blow up in their faces. If the kind of blackhole this thing can generate could swallow the Earth or whatever, I pretty much value my hide over new discoveries.

If that was at all likely, then they wouldn't have been building this machine for decades

 

[Danalys]

A few minutes after 8.15am, British Summer Time, on Wednesday, scientists at Cern will turn on the Large Hadron Collider — if all goes to plan.

so is that 8:18 or 8:19? what's with the not giving us the time.

 

[The Apocalypse]

I hear the Scientists doing this have only a minor in Physics and there is a better chance of a black hole then you winning the lottery. Just saying....

 

[Lunar_Wolf]

''Some critics say the experiment will create "black holes" of intense gravity that could implode the Earth, or that it will open the way for beings from another universe to invade through a "worm hole" in space-time.''

Aliens Vs Human...AVH BRING IT ON!!!!

 

[Yerzrinot]

Isn't this thing supposed to create a small black hole and kill us all ?

Scientists shouldn't even **** with things like this.

The odds of them creating a black home are infinitesimally small. Even if they were to create one it would be so small it would annihilate itself before it could do any damage.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hawking_radiation

 

[The Apocalypse]

''Some critics say the experiment will create "black holes" of intense gravity that could implode the Earth, or that it will open the way for beings from another universe to invade through a "worm hole" in space-time.''

Aliens Vs Human...AVH BRING IT ON!!!!

I'm sure Aliens wouldn't even bother messing with us. We aren't worth it.

 

[Bunker]

The odds of them creating a black home are infinitesimally small. Even if they were to create one it would be so small it would annihilate itself before it could do any damage.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hawking_radiation

Ballin'.

 

[Jennifer Walters]

Only 5 more minutes correct?

 

[Mike_D202]

It goes online (in fact its probably on right now), theres NO testing right now. Not yet, so we're safe.

 

[Arcturus]

Excellent read, thanks for posting up the article, FaT_tONle. I've been following up on the LHC Particle Masher for quite some time now. I can't wait for the results.

Regardless;

I heavily doubt anything will go wrong, and hey, at least we have Gordon Freeman to save us.

 

[Yerzrinot]

Ballin'.

Huh?

 

[Dew k. Mosi]

maybe they will create a teeny weeny big bang and then there will be a tiny universe and tiny galaxies and tiny planets and tiny people on them! That would be awesome.