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

[Ghostvirus]

*runs to the near death experience thread.*

 

[Ahura Mazda]

Well i live in Geneva and nothing is wrong so far...

 

[Colossal Spoons]

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.

Bull****. Let's science it up!

 

[Nirvana]

Wasn't there a book that featured CERN doing an experiment very similar?

 

[chamber-music]

Wow I never thought the world could end from a bunch of geeks experiments.

 

[Danalys]

Protons have made their first complete lap of the world’s most powerful accelerator to cheers and high fives from assembled physicists.

At 1025 (local time) scientists sent a single beam of protons in a clockwise direction around the full 27 kilometres of the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

The journey began at 0930 when LHC project leader Lyn Evans and his team launched protons into the ring. Progress was made in short steps of a few kilometres, so that physicists could learn how to steer the beam, which is travelling at 99.9998% the speed of light.

Steering particles
The LHC's tunnel is filled with devices called collimators, which steer the beam every few kilometres. Evans and his team opened the collimators one by one when they were sure that they could steer the protons precisely.

The machine worked better than anyone expected. It took only 55 minutes for physicists to steer beams around the full 27km, and the LHC worked on its first go, far better than anyone dared to hope.

Earlier Evans said that he did not know how long it would take his team to circulate the beam.

"It took us 12 hours to circulate a beam around the Large Electron Positron Collider," says Evans. The LEP Collider was the LHC's predecessor that was shut down in 2000.

Giant freezer
Physicists working on two of the giant experiments – CMS and ATLAS – have seen sprays of particles in their detectors as protons smashing into the collimators next to the detectors.

The day was not without its dramas, however. During the night, part of the cryogenic system that keeps the ring chilled to 1.9 kelvin (just above absolute zero) failed.

The ring has to be cold for the powerful magnets to work. Physicists managed to fix the problem overnight and started the day's tests on schedule.

Evans hopes initially to circulate the beams many times in the clockwise direction. The team will attempt to repeat the test later today, but sending protons around in the opposite direction.

However, it will be several weeks before physicists accelerate two proton beams travelling in opposite directions to their full energy of 7 teraelectronvolts, and smash them head on.

so for you people expecting black holes you'll have to wait several weeks

 

[FaT_tONle]

So far so good...

Largest particle collider conducts successful test By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
57 minutes ago



The world's largest particle collider successfully completed its first major test by firing a beam of protons around a 17-mile underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.

After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:36 a.m. indicating that the protons had traveled the full length of the $3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider.

"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.

Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where contributing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite. Physicists around the world now have much greater power than ever before to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to see how they are made.

"Well done everybody," said Robert Aymar, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to cheers from the assembled scientists in the collider's control room at the Swiss-French border.

The organization, known by its French acronym CERN, began firing the protons — a type of subatomic particle — around the tunnel in stages less than an hour earlier.

Now that the beam has been successfully tested in clockwise direction, CERN plans to send it counterclockwise. Eventually two beams will be fired in opposite directions with the aim of recreating conditions a split second after the big bang, which scientists theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe.

The start of the collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history — comes over the objections of some skeptics who fear the collision of protons could eventually imperil the earth.

The skeptics theorized that a byproduct of the collisions could be micro black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

"It's nonsense," said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN, before Wednesday's start.

CERN is backed by leading scientists like Britain's Stephen Hawking in dismissing the fears and declaring the experiments to be absolutely safe.

Gillies told the AP 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 accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel.

Nothing of the sort occurred Wednesday, though accelerator is still probably a year away from full power.

"On Wednesday we start small," said Gillies. "A really good result would be to have the other beam going around, too, because once you've got a beam around once in both directions you know that there is no show-stopper."

The project organized by the 20 European member nations of CERN has attracted researchers from 80 nations. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country which contributed US$531 million. Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.

The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.

Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Less than 100 years ago scientists thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but in stages since then 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 — believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

Some scientists have been waiting for 20 years to use the LHC.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080910/ap_on_sc/big_bang&printer=1;_ylt=AlAjyBx5W25AvX.18ElkYTpxieAA

 

[Comicfilmer]

"Peter, what have we been talking about for the last hour and a half? This is my life's work. I certainly know the consequences of the slightest miscalculation."

Uh-huh...


t:

 

[Nirvana]

So far so good...


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080910/ap_on_sc/big_bang&printer=1;_ylt=AlAjyBx5W25AvX.18ElkYTpxieAA

I was just reading this on Yahoo. This is very exciting, science has come a long way. I'll be watching this news story very closely.

 

[Ahura Mazda]

It will ba at least 18 months before we know of anything. I talked to a freind of mine who works at Cern and told me it would be quite a while before any real results.

 

[Avangarde]

So this will teach them more about Anti-Matter, one more step towards powering starships

 

[chamber-music]

So this will teach them more about Anti-Matter, one more step towards powering starships

Or opening a gate way to hell 'Event Horizon' style

 

[Avangarde]

Or opening a gate way to hell 'Event Horizon' style

God will protect us

 

[DeaDheaD]

http://www.cracked.com/article_16583_5-scientific-experiments-most-likely-end-world.html

I say, who hasn't wanted to ride a block hole?....

 

[04nbod]

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

just what I think. We're Ok without this information, I'm happy to live a full life in ignorance.


by the way I love sky news, their report says 'Despite fears the experiment on the French Swiss border would produce black holes which could damage the planet, the world -so far-has not ended.'

 

[The Lizard]

Wasn't there a book that featured CERN doing an experiment very similar?

I believe you're thinking of Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.

A&D was the book before The Da Vanci Code, where protagonist Robert Langdon hooks up with a beautiful Italian physicist from CERN, as opposed to the beautiful French cryptographer he hooked up with in the TDVC.

 

[Nirvana]

I believe you're thinking of Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.

A&D was the book before The Da Vanci Code, where protagonist Robert Langdon hooks up with a beautiful Italian physicist from CERN, as opposed to the beautiful French cryptographer he hooked up with in the TDVC.

Yes you are right! It's been awhile since I've read either book. Interesting how eight years ago they were talking about this in fiction.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Or opening a gate way to hell 'Event Horizon' style

That's what I'm afraid of

 

[Trainwreck2100]

The bad stuff can't happen until they fires a second beam to collide with this one

 

[Symbiotic]

If Stephen Hawking says there's nothing to worry about, ...I'm gonna go with his opinion.

 

[Trainwreck2100]

If Stephen Hawking says there's nothing to worry about, ...I'm gonna go with his opinion.

what if he wants to die

 

[Carcharodon]

just what I think. We're Ok without this information, I'm happy to live a full life in ignorance.

Well, that just says it all, doesn't it?

 

[JLBats]

I don't want to die because of a large hard on collider

 

[Symbiotic]

I don't want to die because of a large hard on collider

Well believe me, neither do I.t:

 

[chamber-music]

If Stephen Hawking says there's nothing to worry about, ...I'm gonna go with his opinion.

what if he wants to die

I'm sure Hawkins could find an easier way to die than wait for the worlds most expensive and complex machine to turn on.