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The LHC

Shapeshifter

New Member
arg-fallbackName="Shapeshifter"/>
A quick search for "lhc" revealed no results, so I thought I'd post a few links on the work done in Geneva . Too bad they were set back one year because of an incident. But they're adding more safety and monitoring features:

From wikipedia:
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, intended to collide opposing particle beams, of either protons at an energy of 7 TeV per particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV per nucleus.

The Large Hadron Collider was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) with the intention of testing various predictions of high-energy physics, including the existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson[1] and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetry.[2] It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as much as 175 metres (570 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.[3]

On 10 September 2008, the proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the LHC for the first time.[4] On 19 September 2008, the operations were halted due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets.[5] Due to the time required to repair the resulting damage and to add additional safety features, the LHC is scheduled to be operational again no sooner than September 2009.[6]

The official LHC homepage
With cool down status monitor and lots of scientific data

The other official LHC page
More "media friendly" information. A good read.

A youtube video from google talk
About Supersymmetry, Extra Dimensions and the Origin of Mass, presented by a scientist working on ATLAS at the LHC. Describes the whole thing and puts a focus on computing technology used at LHC.

A couple of really nice pictures of the LHC
And over 4000 redundant comments on how black holes will kill us all. :roll:

Here's the latest news:
The 39th and final repaired dipole magnet was lowered into Sector 3-4 and installed on Thursday 16 April. This is the last of the LHC's easily recognizable 15-metre-long blue superconducting dipoles required for the 3-4 repair. Only two more Short Straight Sections (SSS) remain to be installed in 3-4.

Since the start of the repair work in Sector 3-4, the Vacuum Group have been cleaning the beam pipes to remove metallic debris and soot created by the short circuit last September. Firstly all 4800 m of the beam pipes in Sector 3-4 were surveyed cm by cm to document the damage before the cleaning work started. The cleaning process involves passing a brush through the pipe to clean the surface mechanically, followed by a vacuum to remove any debris both inside and outside the beam pipe. This procedure is repeated ten times, followed by a final check with an endoscopic camera. So far 68% has been completed.

Work to install the new pressure release ports has now started in the areas outside the arc sections, in particular on the inner triplets (the focusing magnets either side of the collision point). The ports have been slightly modified to fit the geometry of these magnets.

A new test has been developed to measure the electrical resistance of the connection joining the 'busbars' of the superconducting magnets together. The busbar consists of a superconducting cable surrounded by a larger copper block known as a 'stabilizer'. The copper helps to conduct electricity in the event that part of the superconducting cable becomes normally-conducting (for example during a quench). The new test allows the electrical continuity of this copper part to be checked. This provides another important quality control safety check for the electrical connections.

---

I'm really looking forward to see some results. I find this work very exciting and I'm glad there is such a thing, and that scientists all over the world are still striving for knowledge to understand the universe. Great project. I'm always disappointed when I look at how little is invested in science in comparison to pretty much pointless things like war. (LHC: "The total cost of the project is expected to be $4.2-8.5 billion.", Iraq War: "The financial cost of the war has been more than ,£4.5 billion ($9 billion) to the UK,[312] and over $845 billion to the U.S., with the total cost to the U.S. economy estimated at $3 trillion."). This almost makes me cry.

In any case, hope you're as excited about this as I am.
 
arg-fallbackName="Josan"/>
I definitly am! I was so dissapointed when the malfunction was reported, and a reparation time of 1 year?! =O

Ah well, it's soon go-time again and I'm really excited again. Some people claim that this will never work, but I seriously doubt that, as nearly all tests run so far have been nothing but promising and only 1 malfunction when they fired it up? Sounds great to me! And they already have several particle colliders aswell, so the LHC isn't something completely new, it's just on a much larger scale than a previous one, that's one thing fundamentalists seem to get wrong all the time.
Shapeshifter said:
A couple of really nice pictures of the LHC
And over 4000 redundant comments on how black holes will kill us all. :roll:

And that's not all, I read a few of them, so funny. For example:
4322.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
(Genesis 1:1 RSV)
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."
(Psalms 14:1a, 53:1a)
---+++++++
Read it an weep; Geniuses!!!

4393.
3 questions
will this thing create black holes in scotland?
in what year is it going to show us the beginning of earth?
how can we see the beginning of earth?

And lastly, this is a great one:
4372.
I think there might be enough material in these posts for a Ph.D. thesis in abnormal psychology.



If anyone are a bit worried about this, let me just tell you, don't be. While it is true that a black hole might form, that's exactly what they are hoping for, a micro black hole they can observe would be a great scientific breakthrough, and it would evaporate imeadiatly due to hawking radiation. If there was any chance at all that a micro black hole that destroyed the world was created, we wouldn't be here, as countless black holes are created when cosmic particles collide with the edge of our atmosphere all the time.
 
arg-fallbackName="Master_Ghost_Knight"/>
I'm specialy interested in theresults as I myself have beenpart of the project, well not a big part, I have done small work on instrumental quality control of the Tile calorimeter. I actualy held cintilating tiles, WLS optical fibers and photomultipliers. It was prety interesting because the analises intrumentations was a bit made on the spot with a bit of help from the ductape, but realiable none of the less.
 
arg-fallbackName="Zerosix"/>
I was disappointed when the LHC broke down but It's going to be worth waiting the year for it to be fully repaired.

One thing that puzzle me though. I remember listening to an SGU podcast awile back where they had an interview with a LHC scientist. He was saying the LHC might be too small to create the Higgs Boson.

Apparently, to create a Higgs Boson you need a Super Collider. Which is something they had permission to build in America several years ago but was it later cancelled by the US government. I can' remember the exact figures but I think that they were given $1m to dig a hole for the super colider, but the permission to build it was retracted so they were given another $1m to fill the hope up!

I hope that I've got that figure wrong or else we could already had the findings of the LHC and lot more. Not to mention the wasted $2m that was used to dig a hole!
 
arg-fallbackName="yarps"/>
Zerosix said:
One thing that puzzle me though. I remember listening to an SGU podcast awile back where they had an interview with a LHC scientist. He was saying the LHC might be too small to create the Higgs Boson.

Apparently, to create a Higgs Boson you need a Super Collider. Which is something they had permission to build in America several years ago but was it later cancelled by the US government. I can' remember the exact figures but I think that they were given $1m to dig a hole for the super colider, but the permission to build it was retracted so they were given another $1m to fill the hope up!

I hope that I've got that figure wrong or else we could already had the findings of the LHC and lot more. Not to mention the wasted $2m that was used to dig a hole!

Based on a little Googling, over 2 billion dollars had been spent on the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) when it was cancelled. I don't think they every filled in the tunnels, though.

As for the LHC and it's ability to produce the Higgs boson, it's almost guaranteed to produce the Higgs (or something, at least). There does seem to have been a spate of models in the last few years that would not produce anything new at the LHC, which would be embarrassing, but they all seem to involve various intricate ways to hide the new physics. I would say that most people in the field expect the LHC to produce something we haven't seen before, but it's possible it might be hard to find it.
 
arg-fallbackName="CupOfWater"/>
CERN has it's own Youtube channel, where they posts updates every now and then.
http://www.youtube.com/user/CERNTV
 
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