Hadron Collider Update

Thanks for the update, Boss.

Swooshing aside the curtain of ignorance -

I'm fascinated by this sort of thing--and given how little i know of "hard science," i need articles like this to keep in touch.

Did it create any mini black holes ?

Me also.

I hope NOVA produces a program about this science advance. I'm very interested in it because I have so much curiosity about how things turn out before I die.

BBB

Why does real science take so long. I want instant gratification. Where's that Boson?

I got one right here in my pocket . . . i'll ship it right off to ya . . . oops . . . musta left it in my other pants . . .

Damn those bosons are always getting lost. Sometimes I wonder if they even exist. What we need is a big ass expensive freakin science gizmo to nail em down.

That's right . . . screw that social welfare **** . . . we need a collider as big as Texas ! ! !

Damn right. And all we need to do to fund it is to call it a "circular GUN" and then put it in the military budget, where it will vanish into insignificance compared to the other expenses.

That's brilliant ! ! ! Hell the cost overruns on a new jet fighter would dwarf it . . .

it's a conundrum fer sure, as mankind took it's first step on the moon millions of people as well as the planet itself suffered extreme degradation and yet immensely important knowledge was gained.

Exactly. And even better, the military could then say they have a giant "ray gun" in their arsenal. That's gotta be worth a few macho points at least.

Why don't you think about the relationship of that knowledge to wealth and power...The government pays for that research and gives it away to the wealthy, and we can benefit from it if we pay, but most of it is a real danger to us, and to humanity because we have no social controls over it... The reason primitives had democracy was not because it was fun, or easy... Having no modern technology they were required to manage their resources and control their behavior unless they were going to see their individuals or their enemies destroy them all...

Ah yes, the "noble savage" song and dance. Fido, you're an idiot.

No! You're an efin dumass... I hold no romantic notions like the noble savage... Savages may have been honorable, moral, Democratic, and a law unto themselves, but other than that, they were no different from us... You hear all the time that the Greeks invented democracy... The Democracy of the Greeks was faded, and on the point of failure, and they did not invent it, for it was a natural form... It came with the Family, the clan, the tribe, and the nation, and when wealth divided them, the equality of democracy was a thing of the past... And we can recreate the failed versions of democracy all we want, but if we do nothing to preserve our economic equality our political equality is doomed... We are going to have to reform this society, and if we want a democracy to endure we are going to have to find the nerve to remove the wealth from the rich and return it to the commonwealth, and if we find some reason to allow wealth in private hands we must make certain it serves a public good, and in the end is returned to the commonwealth... The difference that mattered between savages and ourselves is this: Having little technology to help them control their environment, they were forced to practive self control and live in highly organized societies... We think technology allows us anarchy... Division and anarchy will destroy us...

I would love to see NOVA produce something easily intellectually digestible about this project.

Thanks EB for the update.

Antimatter Breakthrough Could Lead to Starships, Says Scientist
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372994,00.asp

Scientists at CERN, the research facility that's home to the Large Hadron Collider, claim to have successfully created and stored antimatter in greater quantities and for longer times than ever before.

Researchers created 38 atoms of antihydrogen – more than ever has been produced at one time before and were able to keep the atoms stable enough to last one tenth of a second before they annihilated themselves (antimatter and matter destroy each other the moment they come into contact with each other). Since those first experiments, the team claims to have held antiatoms for even longer, though they weren't specific of the duration.

While scientists have been able to create particles of antimatter for decades, they had previously only been able to produce a few particles that would almost instantly destroy themselves.

"This is the first major step in a long journey," Michio Kaku, physicist and author of Physics of the Impossible, told PCMag. "Eventually, we may go to the stars."

For now, scientists are interested in producing antimatter in these relatively large quantities because it could lend insight into fundamental physical laws. It's generally believed in the scientific community that at the universe's creation, both matter and antimatter existed but not in the same quantity, so when the two annihilated each other, only matter remained. That could be because antimatter behaves differently than the regular variety.

"It's a fundamental tenet of physics that antimatter and matter behave very similarly although not exactly," said Lawrence Krauss, physicist and author of The Physics of Star Trek, in an interview. "And in order to really test that, you need anti-atoms. Being able to test the properties of antimatter at a whole new level of precision is obviously important."

Further into the future, Kaku believes we may be able to use antimatter as the "ultimate rocket fuel," since it's 100 percent efficient – all of the mass is converted to energy. By contrast, thermonuclear bombs only use about 1 percent.

"One of the main uses of antimatter would be a starship," said Kaku "Because you want concentrated energy. And you can't get more concentrated than antimatter."

Producing large quantities of antimatter is impossible today, Kaku admits. But with the right developments, he thinks it could become a reality: "These machines were not specifically designed to create antimatter. These machines are all-purpose machines. But with time, price goes down, mass production, better technology, and dedicated machines we could reduce costs considerably."