CERN - Hadron Supercollider - "God Particle" - News - Discussion - Updates - Found July 4, 2012?

[Judee]

Hadron Collider halted for months

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says.

Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.

But a Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.

The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

Section damaged

On Friday, a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.

Cern spokesman James Gillies said on Saturday that the sector that was damaged would have to be warmed up to above its operating temperature - of near absolute zero - so that repairs could be made, and then cooled down again.

While he said there was never any danger to the public, Mr Gillies admitted that the breakdown would be costly.

He said: "A full investigation is still under way but the most likely cause seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two of the magnets which probably melted, leading to a mechanical failure.

"We're investigating and we can't really say more than that now.

"But we do know that we will have to warm the machine up, make the repair, cool it down, and that's what brings you to two months of downtime for the LHC."

Setback

The first beams were fired successfully around the accelerator's 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring over a week ago.

The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. However, the fault appears to have ruled out any chance of these experiments taking place for the next two months at least.

The quench occurred during final testing of the last of the LHC's electrical circuits to be commissioned.

At 1127 (0927 GMT) on Friday, the LHC's online logbook recorded a quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between the Alice and CMS detectors.

The entry stated that helium had been lost to the tunnel and that vacuum conditions had also been lost.

The superconducting magnets in the LHC must be supercooled to 1.9 kelvin above absolute zero, to allow them to steer particle beams around the circuit.

As a result of the quench, the temperature of about 100 of the magnets in the machine's final sector rose by around 100C.

The setback came just a day after the LHC's beam was restored after engineers replaced a faulty transformer that had hindered progress for much of the past week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7626944.stm

[Divinorumus]

Mission successful!

[Judee]

Mission successful!

Was that your doing Cappy Div?

[WolfPa]

I can't say I'm sad to hear that. Didn't they say thier was only a slim chance of a quench?

[Judee]

October 01, 2008
Angel or Demon: Could the LHC Trigger a Bose Supernova?


You would be excused for getting the wrong impression from the above heading. We know that the Large Hadron Collider probably won’t suck us into an impromptu black hole, but new thoughts have suggested that the LHC could trigger a Bose supernova.

However, these supernovas have nothing to do with speakers that may be inhabiting your lounge room or car – though the idea for a fictional story is tantalizing – but rather with Bose Einstein Condensates.

Bose Einstein Condensate’s are matter that has become so cold, that their constituents occupy the lowest possible quantum state. Physicists have been experimenting with Bose Einstein Condensate, or BEC’s, since the early 1990’s, and have subsequently become quite adept at manipulating them in controlled conditions.

However in 2001, Elizabeth Donley and colleagues at JILA at the University of Colorado, Boulder, managed to cause a BEC to explode. These explosions, since labeled Bose supernovas, are a mystery to scientists, as they are entirely unsure how they occur.

This might not seem to be a problem for the LHC, which is all about smashing particles into each other, but for one little fact: superfluid helium is a BEC, and the LHC is currently housing some 700,000 liters of the stuff to bring the LHC down to requisite temperature. Add to that some of the most powerful magnets on the planet, and there is a small but marginally justifiable reason for worry.

Malcolm Fairbairn and Bob McElrath at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, have published a paper entitled “There is no explosion risk associated with superfluid Helium in the LHC cooling system.” In it they conclude that “there is no physics whatsoever which suggests that Helium could undergo any kind of unforeseen catastrophic explosion.”

However KFC at the physics arXiv blog notes, “That’s comforting and impressive. Ruling out foreseen catastrophies is certainly useful but the ability to rule out unforeseen ones is truly amazing.”

One can only really wait and hope that the LHC hasn’t accidentally stepped over that fine line between reasonable science and science that will blow us to kingdom come. So while it looks as if we can add superfluid Helium and BEC’s alongside black holes and strangelets, is there something that we haven’t come across?

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... -agai.html

[Divinorumus]

Well this makes me feel a whole lot better about all this. Never-before particles?

Big Bang experiment may throw up never-before particles
2 Dec 2008, 0258 hrs IST, Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey & Prithvijit Mitra, TNN

KOLKATA: If the big bang experiment finally happens at CERN this time, some completely unknown particles are expected to be created, not undiscovered particles, but those that have never before existed in the universe.

Scientists at two of the city's premier research institutes are working in tandem with those at CERN on the kind of particles that are likely to be created.

While theorists are working at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), scientists from the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics are busy fine-tuning instruments made by them at CERN.

The experiment at CERN is being conducted inside the Large Hadron Collider where an atmosphere similar to that of the pre-universe times has been created. Inside the LHC, proton beams are being made to collide at extremely high speed, as is thought to be the case at the beginning of the universe. The idea is that when they collide at such high speed, some parts merge, while others disintegrate and a new particle is created. However, Kolkata-based scientists hint that some of these particles are expected to be of a very different character, something that had not been thought of earlier.

...

(continued)

[earthist]

Wow, there are some pretty scary-sounding posts in this thread. Here's a FWIW. I'm not exactly in favor of the LHC, but I think it's good to know what's happening, and frankly, what they're doing here is every bit as amazing as the space program in its own way.

One of the advantages to living where I do is a thing called "Saturday Morning Physics" which is a weekly lecture/demo given by researchers at the U of Michigan. It's both fun and educational to get info from the "horse's mouth" so to speak. Anyway, U-M is heavily involved with both Fermi-Lab (the US's smaller collider outside Chicago) and with CERN's LHC. In October, we got a lecture on the LHC from that rarest of rare species: a research physicist you can actually understand without already having a degree in physics!

They usually tape the lectures, and now they've started putting them up on the web, so here's a link for anyone who's interested in having some of the mystery about the LHC reduced to bite-sized chunks.


http://lecb.physics.lsa.umich.edu/CW...esourceId=1284

When you get there, click on the red View Lecture button. The video pic itself is quite small, so I hope you can enjoy it even if you have a slow connection, but I don't know for sure. You can click the Next Slide button if something is boring you to tears; it'll move you to the poiint in the lecture where he changes slides, and that usually means a change in topics. However, if you can be patient, I recommend just letting it play through. I think he does a pretty great job of laying things out.

Also note that near the end, he actually mentions that they're hoping to create black holes! The public reaction seems to amuse him, and if you're on his wavelength, you can get a bit of "grandfatherly" assurance by listening to him, and seeing how 'safe' he seems to feel about it; or maybe not.

Still, I think it's good to understand as much as possible; it takes some of the 'boogeyman' aspect out of it.

[Divinorumus]

Still, I think it's good to understand as much as possible; it takes some of the 'boogeyman' aspect out of it.

Wasn't it scientists that introduced nukes to the world? They just might be the boogeyman.

[Alpha]

Wow, there are some pretty scary-sounding posts in this thread. Here's a FWIW. I'm not exactly in favor of the LHC, but I think it's good to know what's happening, and frankly, what they're doing here is every bit as amazing as the space program in its own way.

One of the advantages to living where I do is a thing called "Saturday Morning Physics" which is a weekly lecture/demo given by researchers at the U of Michigan. It's both fun and educational to get info from the "horse's mouth" so to speak. Anyway, U-M is heavily involved with both Fermi-Lab (the US's smaller collider outside Chicago) and with CERN's LHC. In October, we got a lecture on the LHC from that rarest of rare species: a research physicist you can actually understand without already having a degree in physics!

They usually tape the lectures, and now they've started putting them up on the web, so here's a link for anyone who's interested in having some of the mystery about the LHC reduced to bite-sized chunks.


http://lecb.physics.lsa.umich.edu/CW...esourceId=1284

When you get there, click on the red View Lecture button. The video pic itself is quite small, so I hope you can enjoy it even if you have a slow connection, but I don't know for sure. You can click the Next Slide button if something is boring you to tears; it'll move you to the poiint in the lecture where he changes slides, and that usually means a change in topics. However, if you can be patient, I recommend just letting it play through. I think he does a pretty great job of laying things out.

Also note that near the end, he actually mentions that they're hoping to create black holes! The public reaction seems to amuse him, and if you're on his wavelength, you can get a bit of "grandfatherly" assurance by listening to him, and seeing how 'safe' he seems to feel about it; or maybe not.

Still, I think it's good to understand as much as possible; it takes some of the 'boogeyman' aspect out of it.

Thanks for the link earthist. I certainly will check it out when I have a bit more time.

I tend to lean with Div on this one. Not everything that has been brought forward from science has been positive.

Personally I'd love to ask John Titor about this one

[earthist]

I agree, Div and Alpha. Let me reiterate the third sentence in my post above:

"I'm not exactly in favor of the LHC, but I think it's good to know what's happening, and frankly, what they're doing here is every bit as amazing as the space program in its own way."


I actually prefer calling us Homo Arrogans (arrogant man) rather than Homo Sapiens. I 'love' science, especially theoretical physics, and I've done my best to learn what I can from it. Of late, though, I am less than impressed. The best example I see is the field of genetic engineering. This particle banging stuff ain't too great either, but compared to genetic engineering, I don't think it's nearly as dangerous.

Still, whether it's good or bad, I think it's important to understand what's going on rather than going off blindly. JMO.

[Judee]

I agree, Div and Alpha. Let me reiterate the third sentence in my post above:

"I'm not exactly in favor of the LHC, but I think it's good to know what's happening, and frankly, what they're doing here is every bit as amazing as the space program in its own way."


I actually prefer calling us Homo Arrogans (arrogant man) rather than Homo Sapiens. I 'love' science, especially theoretical physics, and I've done my best to learn what I can from it. Of late, though, I am less than impressed. The best example I see is the field of genetic engineering. This particle banging stuff ain't too great either, but compared to genetic engineering, I don't think it's nearly as dangerous.

Still, whether it's good or bad, I think it's important to understand what's going on rather than going off blindly. JMO.

'Homo Arrogans' is a very good description earthist! And I would agree with you on the danger of our playing around with genetics. We are changing the very structure of plants, animals, and God knows - probably humans also! Nature has a way of biting back when fooled with!

[Project]

In my opinion, when a man and a woman have a baby they are doing some radical, experimental, no-way-to-know-the-outcome genetic engineering of the highest order. Lab work seems pretty tame in comparison.

[SquidInk]

I understand they've suffered a HELIUM LEAK AT THE COLLIDER.

In light of THIS RELATED SITUATION, I would be interested to know just how much helium was lost...