Large Hadron (Proton) collider operational!

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Large Hadron Collider Sets World Record

CERN announced early Monday that the Large Hadron Collider has become the world's highest-energy particle accelerator. The LHC pushed protons to 1.18 TeV (trillion electron volts), surpassing the previous record of 0.98 TeV held by Fermilab's Tevatron.
mechanical failure just a week after it fired up for the first time in September 2008. Now, 10 days after it turned on again, scientists are celebrating with their fingers crossed that the machine is safely on its way to the physics experiments they plan to begin next year when the LHC has reached its target energy of 7 TeV.

"We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is going," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer in a press release Monday. "However, we are continuing to take it step by step, and there is still a lot to do before we start physics in 2010. I'm keeping my champagne on ice until then."

The first beam was injected on November 20, and two beams sped around the 17-mile ring in opposite directions three days later. All four of the LHC's detectors recorded data from the collision of those two beams.

The first to announce the record may have been the scientists running the CMS detector through their Twitter feed:

@CMSexperiment: World Record!! Tonight at about 22:00 the LHC accelerated a beam of protons to 1180 GeV - a new record energy!
Next, the intensity of the beams will be increased for about a week, and then collisions to calibrate the machine will be carried out through December.
Image: CERN

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@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;116876 wrote:

Wired Science News for Your Neurons
Large Hadron Collider Sets World Record

CERN announced early Monday that the Large Hadron Collider has become the world's highest-energy particle accelerator. The LHC pushed protons to 1.18 TeV (trillion electron volts), surpassing the previous record of 0.98 TeV held by Fermilab's Tevatron.
mechanical failure just a week after it fired up for the first time in September 2008. Now, 10 days after it turned on again, scientists are celebrating with their fingers crossed that the machine is safely on its way to the physics experiments they plan to begin next year when the LHC has reached its target energy of 7 TeV.

"We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is going," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer in a press release Monday. "However, we are continuing to take it step by step, and there is still a lot to do before we start physics in 2010. I'm keeping my champagne on ice until then."

The first beam was injected on November 20, and two beams sped around the 17-mile ring in opposite directions three days later. All four of the LHC's detectors recorded data from the collision of those two beams.

The first to announce the record may have been the scientists running the CMS detector through their Twitter feed:

@CMSexperiment: World Record!! Tonight at about 22:00 the LHC accelerated a beam of protons to 1180 GeV - a new record energy!
Next, the intensity of the beams will be increased for about a week, and then collisions to calibrate the machine will be carried out through December.
Image: CERN

I have been waiting for this all my life...No...Wait...That was a train wreck... Sorry; but that is cool anyway...

1 Reply

@Fido,

More on the largest machine made by man!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/in-search-of-the-god-particle-805757.html

"The reason it's exciting is that I'm interested in a unified theory of forces, in particular quantum gravity," Professor Higgs said.
Although long retired from research, he still possesses a child-like wonder of the world which we cannot see but which is so critical to some of the most important questions at the centre of our understanding of creation, the universe and the end of time.

Professor Higgs was speaking to the press yesterday after spending much of the weekend seeing the LHC for the first time, before it is sealed in preparation for the switch-on in summer. It was the first time he had been to Cern since 1985, and the first time he had spent any appreciable time there since a short research project in 1976.

"The sheer scale of the detectors is overwhelming. It's far more impressive than anything you get out of photographs," he said. The detectors in question are four huge underground instruments, some as big as a gothic cathedral, which will act as microscopes to identify a Higgs particle in a fraction of the split second it takes to make an appearance before it disappears once more.

Professor Higgs said he is 90 per cent certain the LHC will find his particle when it reaches its full working potential, perhaps in a year's time. If the machine does find the Higgs, it will cap an extraordinary career for the Bristol-born mathematician, given that he first proposed the idea more than 40 years ago when he was a young theoretical physicist at the University of Edinburgh.

It will also solve one of the most pressing problems in science because the Higgs bosOn lies at the heart of matter itself. In particular it is supposed to explain why objects have mass and while some phenomena - such as light - do not.

Professor Higgs was the first to propose the theory that the reason why objects have mass is because they interact with an invisible field, now called the Higgs field. Heavier particles interact more strongly, whereas photons (light particles) do not interact at all. Without this Higgs field, everything - from proton to planet - would be as insubstantial as a light beam.

When Higgs first came up with the idea, few people took him seriously and even
the then editor of a leading physics journal - who was based at Cern - thought it was too conjectural to be published. "At the time I started this work, it was rather an unfashionable thing to be interested in, certainly on this side of the Atlantic ... my colleagues thought I was a bit of an idiot," Professor Higgs recalled.

"A colleague told me that at Cern they didn't see what I was talking about had much to do with particle physics. So I added on a few extra paragraphs [to the original scientific paper] and sent it off across the Atlantic to [the journal] Physical Review Letters, which did accept it," he said.

Four decades later, Cern is in pole position in the race to be first to find the Higgs although its advantage has been eroded. The LHC should have opened three years ago but, as with all big engineering and construction projects, it was dogged by delays.

Meanwhile, another atom smasher at the Fermi Laboratory in the United States may have come close to solving the problem. Professor Higgs said the Fermi Lab scientists may have already done it, but may not yet be in a position to prove it because the critical evidence may still locked up in data obscured by background noise.

Professor Higgs said that it's not something he's going to mention to the people at Cern. "It's a possibility. I think the race is a very close thing. Fermi Lab are obviously trying very hard, they have a disadvantage compared to LHC when it starts, in terms of lack of luminosity, comparatively speaking - so it's for them to find it," he said. "But it could be there in their data, but not just found in the analysis, yet. They are certainly hoping that they'll get their first indication before the LHC gets going."

But time is running out for the Fermi Lab, as the giant, supercooled magnets at the LHC are being prepared for their task of keeping the particle beams swirling round the tunnel with pin-point accuracy at the rate of more than 22,000 times a second.
Just the amount of supercooling involved is stupendous - enough deep freeze to keep 140,000 kitchen fridges just above absolute zero, which is -273C. In fact, when it is fully operational, the LHC will be the coldest place in the known universe.

There are enough supercooled cables in the LHC to go around the equator 6.8 times, and enough filaments in the cable strands to stretch to the sun and back five times - and enough left over for a few return trips to the moon.

The immense energies involved in making the atomic collisions happen have already generated unwelcome publicity for the LHC. Some scientists have suggested that they may generate mini black holes, which have led others to suggest that these black holes could somehow merge to form a larger, destructive entity that could swallow up the entire earth.

"The black hole business has become rather inflated," said Professor Higgs, irritated by the suggestion that the LHC could become an unwitting doomsday machine. "Even the theorists who are suggesting that mini-black holes are things that could be produced are not predicting black holes large enough to swallow up chunks of the universe. I think the publicity has rather got out of hand and some people have misunderstood it," he said.

Hysteria aside, Professor Higgs seemed pleased that so many people outside the rarefied world of particle physics and cosmology are taking an interest in what will happen at Cern in the coming few years. He for one is certain that something awesome is about to happen, even if his particle is not found - although he thinks that is unlikely.

"I'd be very puzzled if it wasn't discovered ... If you don't have something like a Higgs bosOn ... if it's not that, what the hell is it? If it's not found, I no longer understand what I think I understand," he said.

And if it is found? "I shall open a bottle of something."

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

I dont think the fear is unreasonable. We all know how small insignificant events can quickly become catastrophic. Black holes feed at a proportion of their size ,as their size increases so does their hunger increase, proportionally. What instigates black holes in space, advanced humanoids experimenting with nature.

2 Replies

@xris,

xris;120777 wrote:

I don't think the fear is unreasonable. We all know how small insignificant events can quickly become catastrophic. Black holes feed at a proportion of their size ,as their size increases so does their hunger increase, proportionally. What instigates black holes in space, advanced humanoids experimenting with nature.

How about we put it in a context that is a little easier to comprehend?

Our sun is no closer to creating a harmful black hole for us than we are of creating one that would cause us problems.

We know that our sun does not have enough mass to end it's sun life resulting in a black hole. You really think smashing two protons is going to produce enough mass to cause problems?

I bet more protons smash together in natural space that don't form black holes. We just don't get the opportunity to see them, but I know it happens. You might be shocked to know that but it does happen.

What happens when the remnants of two super novas collide? You mean to tell me that those protons are not traveling near the speed of light? Their combined impact force would be near what the collider will replicate.

It is sad that the only time when these kinds of experiments get any attention is when some crazy story gets attached to it. Hmm that makes you wonder if the whole thing is purposely made up to bring attention to the experiment. We all know no one slows their car down to check out the beautiful scene on the side of the road, but as soon as you change that beautiful scene into a flipped car and broken glass people just can't help but look.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;120789 wrote:

How about we put it in a context that is a little easier to comprehend?

Our sun is no closer to creating a harmful black hole for us than we are of creating one that would cause us problems.

We know that our sun does not have enough mass to end it's sun life resulting in a black hole. You really think smashing two protons is going to produce enough mass to cause problems?

I bet more protons smash together in natural space that don't form black holes. We just don't get the opportunity to see them, but I know it happens. You might be shocked to know that but it does happen.

What happens when the remnants of two super novas collide? You mean to tell me that those protons are not traveling near the speed of light? Their combined impact force would be near what the collider will replicate.

It is sad that the only time when these kinds of experiments get any attention is when some crazy story gets attached to it. Hmm that makes you wonder if the whole thing is purposely made up to bring attention to the experiment. We all know no one slows their car down to check out the beautiful scene on the side of the road, but as soon as you change that beautiful scene into a flipped car and broken glass people just can't help but look.

I dont know the science but those who are making the claims that its possible are well known scientists, are they not, am I wrong in that assumption?

1 Reply

@xris,

xris;120793 wrote:

I dont know the science but those who are making the claims that its possible are well known scientists, are they not, am I wrong in that assumption?

It is possible*. Just as it is possible that the particles that bombard the earth every day could create the same reaction.

*possibly

0 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

You want to know what I think is worse than the possibility of creating a black hole that destroys the earth? There is one thing worse than that and that is, that absolutely nothing happens after they smash those protons. That to me would be more devastating than destroying the planet. I can see all the science bashers having a field day with that.

0 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

I've posted this before, but I think it bears watching again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JYkMhQ9gf8&NR=1
My guess is we've already been absorbed by a black hole, and this whole forum
is just an elaborate illusion created by aliens who came down a minute too late
to save the human race, and now they're trying to reconstruct our world
by using our scattered consciousnesses.

1 Reply

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan;120837 wrote:

I've posted this before, but I think it bears watching again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JYkMhQ9gf8&NR=1
My guess is we've already been absorbed by a black hole, and this whole forum
is just an elaborate illusion created by aliens who came down a minute too late
to save the human race, and now they're trying to reconstruct our world
by using our scattered consciousnesses.

Can I get the maker of that camera? A camera that can survive a black hole is the kind of camera I need.

2 Replies

@Krumple,

Krumple;120842 wrote:

Can I get the maker of that camera? A camera that can survive a black hole is the kind of camera I need.

Sorry. This was a direct feed to the aliens.
The camera, as well as you and I, were destroyed.
All that remains is a slowly decaying electron echo.
The aliens are trying to reassemble us, but it's going to
take some time.

0 Replies

@xris,

xris;120777 wrote:

I dont think the fear is unreasonable. We all know how small insignificant events can quickly become catastrophic. Black holes feed at a proportion of their size ,as their size increases so does their hunger increase, proportionally. What instigates black holes in space, advanced humanoids experimenting with nature.

It is unreasonable, because leading scientists have provided good reason to believe no black holes will develop.

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

achtphasen | weblog - CERN LHC and Black Holes : Fact or Fiction? Im just saying its not unreasonable to be concerned.

1 Reply

@xris,

xris;120850 wrote:

achtphasen | weblog - CERN LHC and Black Holes : Fact or Fiction? Im just saying its not unreasonable to be concerned.

Latest news on the Large Hadron Collider

The world's largest atom smasher's first experiment went off today without a hitch, paving the way toward the recreation of post-big bang conditions.

The Large Hadron Collider fired a beam of protons inside a circular, 17-mile (27-kilometer) long tunnel underneath villages and cow pastures at the French-Swiss border.

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Inside the control room, physicists and engineers cautiously shot the beam down part of the tunnel, stopping it before it went all the way around.
"Oh, we made it through!" one person cried as the beam made it through a further section of the tunnel.

One hour after starting up, on the first attempt to send the beam circling all the way around the tunnel, it completed the trip successfully-bringing raucous applause.
"First of all, I didn't believe it," said Verena Kain, a European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) engineer.

"I had to see it a second time, and I thought, Oh, wow, it actually worked!"
"Things can go wrong at any time, but luckily this morning everything went smoothly," said Lyn Evans of CERN, who oversaw the building of the accelerator.
(Also see "Large Hadron Collider Rap Video Is a Hit" [September 10, 2008].

Birth of the Universe
The collider "was first proposed more than 20 years ago," said Django Manglunki, an accelerator physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), on Tuesday. "We've been preparing that beam for more than ten years."

0 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

For many years I only thought of infinity in 3 dimensions [ my error] Does this mean we may see a 4th dimension soon?

0 Replies

@Krumple,

yeah but they won't discover many more if any new particles

1 Reply

@north,

north;142277 wrote:

yeah but they won't discover many more if any new particles

How the heck can you express the above as a statement of fact?

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

Quote:
Originally Posted by north

http://www.philosophyforum.com/images/PHBlue/buttons/viewpost.gif

yeah but they won't discover many more if any new particles

Alan McDougall;142328 wrote:

How the heck can you express the above as a statement of fact?

I didn't express my thinking as fact

just intuition

1 Reply

@north,

north;142360 wrote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by north
yeah but they won't discover many more if any new particles

I didn't express my thinking as fact

just intuition

Sorry I should have understood that your post was just a prediction Smile

0 Replies

Large Hadron (Proton) collider operational!

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