Large Hadron Collider: Boon or Bane?

[dulpeks]

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try to read this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/sc...orld%22&st=nyt


what do you think of it??is it possible??


kinsay nakabasa na sa Angels and DEmons ni DAn Brown??mura2 og ani sa??

[cosplay]

The Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the miniscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.





Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.





There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe. For decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of understanding the fundamental laws of Nature, but it does not tell the whole story. Only experimental data using the higher energies reached by the LHC can push knowledge forward, challenging those who seek confirmation of established knowledge, and those who dare to dream beyond the paradigm.





When activated, it is hoped that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson — often dubbed the God Particle — the observation of which could confirm the predictions and 'missing links' in the Standard Model of physics, and explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would be a significant step in the search for a Grand Unified Theory which seeks to unify three of the four fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. The Higgs boson may also help to explain why the remaining force, gravitation, is so weak compared to the other three forces.

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Safety Concerns

As with previous particle accelerators, people both inside and outside the physics community have voiced concern that the LHC might trigger one of several theoretical disasters capable of destroying the Earth or even the entire Universe. This has raised controversy as to whether any such risks outweigh the potential benefits of constructing and operating the LHC.



Though the standard model predicts that LHC energies are far too low to create black holes, some nonstandard theories lower the requirements, and predict that the LHC will create tiny black holes, with potentially devastating consequences. The primary cause for concern is that Hawking Radiation - a postulated means by which any such black holes would dissipate before becoming dangerous, remains entirely theoretical. In academia, the theory of Hawking Radiation is considered plausible, but there remains considerable question of whether it is correct.






Other disaster scenarios typically involve the following theoretical events:

* Creation of strange matter that is more stable than ordinary matter
* Creation of magnetic monopoles that could catalyze proton decay
* Creation of a strangelet

CERN has pointed out that the probability of such events is extremely small. One argument for the safety of colliders such as the LHC states that if the Earth were in danger of any such fate, the Earth and Moon would have met that fate billions of years ago due to their constant bombardment from space by protons, other particles, and cosmic rays, which are millions of times more energetic than anything that could be produced by the LHC.

"Mycyleum infuses all landscapes. Grand molecular disassemblers of nature. We are most closely related to fungi than any other kingdom. we share the same pathogens. 8 miles of mycyleum cells can fit in a single square inch of soil. They are microfiltration membranes...essentially externalized stomachs and lungs. Extended neurological membranes. Mycyleum is the earth's internet - membranes broken will be repaired by the system. It is system sentient - if you walk a mycyleum field,it will leap up to capture debris after your path. The Internet, then, is a pattern built on a previous proven system."
Fungi gives off Oxalic acid, which crumbles rock, and creates soil...

Fungi, he suggests (and the fossil record seems to support) inherited the earth after the impact and extinction event - they use radiation as a source of energy, like plants use light. They grew over twenty feet tall (see above). Forests of fungi.
In Eastern Oregon, apparently, lives the world's largest mycyleum colony - 2200 acres in size and one cellwall thick...
Fungi are gateway species that open the door for other species - spores attract insects, insects lay eggs, larva are born, birds come, bring seeds and fertilize creating a green field...
We should save old growth forest as a matter of natural defense - the fungi that grow within house incredibly powerful anti-viral pathogens
We need to engage with mycyleum to save the world."

Quantum calculations presented in the CERN report predict that:

* Any black holes created by the LHC are not expected to be stable and will not accrete matter.
* Any monopoles that could catalyse the decay of matter will quickly exit the Earth.






Visit this official site for the countdown before activation...

[hobie]

I've read this one just this week gi feature sa yahoo page. Unsay website? If im not mistaken, and countdown would end by the month of August and all eyes would be on it before e start.

[cosplay]

4 days na lang actually to start. Naa sa taas ang link.

Up for the big news..

Click the "this" in the last sentence for the link.

[rodsky]

Perhaps the best "layman's explanation video" about LHC, by no less than Mr. Rock Star Physicist himself, Brian Cox...

YouTube - Brian Cox: What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider

...watch and learn, kids. Watch and learn.

-RODION

[cosplay]

Nice link ROD.

Brian Cox is a part of a band right?

[rodsky]

Brian Cox is a part of a band right?

Professor Brian Cox (B. E. Cox), born 1968, is an experimental physicist and Royal Society University Research Fellow. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester and also works at CERN as one of the spokesmen of an international working group tasked with studying ways to upgrade the ATLAS and CMS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 meters from the interaction points of the main experiments.[1]

In 1986, Cox was invited to join local rock band Dare as keyboard player. They subsequently recorded 2 albums and toured the world with Jimmy Page, Gary Moore, Europe and others. After a Spinal-Tap style fight in a Berlin bar, DARE split in 1992 and Brian left music to study Physics.

In 1993, while studying for his undergraduate degree,[2] Cox joined D:Ream who went on to have three top-ten singles in the UK charts, including a number one hit, New Labour election anthem 'Things Can Only Get Better',[3] before going their separate ways in 1997. By that time, Cox had earned a first class honours degree in physics from the University of Manchester. He went on to earn a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics from that same institution, based on work for the H1 experiment at the particle accelerator HERA, at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg.[4]

Cox has received many awards for his work in publicising science. In 2002, he was elected an International Fellow of the Explorers Club, an organisation whose members include Neil Armstrong and General Chuck Yeager. In 2006, Cox received the British Association Lord Kelvin award for his work in promoting science to the public. A frequent lecturer, he was keynote speaker at the Australian Science Festival in 2006. He was invited to speak at TED 2008 in Monterey, California.

Cox is also now known outside his profession through his involvement in science programmes for BBC radio and television, including In Einstein's Shadow [5], the Horizon series[6], and as a voice on the BBC's Bitesize revision programmes. He was the science adviser for the sci-fi movie Sunshine.

He was also featured on the Discovery Channel special 'Megaworld: Switzerland'.

He is married to TV presenter Gia Milinovich and has one son.

-RODION

[cosplay]

I read a bit about Robert Sawyer’s “Flash Forward”, a science fiction novel about the first time CERN used the LHC. It didn’t destroy the world, just pushed it 20 years into the future for about 40 seconds.

[cosplay]

up for everyone...

Update: (too bad they reset the timer. they really scheduled it on August..)

Knocking on the LHC’s door

On 24 May, a proton beam knocked on the door of the LHC. This is only the second time since 2004 that the beam has crossed from the SPS into the TI8 transfer line.

You can watch the video here.

Thanks to a huge collaborative effort the final commissioning of the transfer line TI8 has been successful. There was both excitement and relief as, after some unforeseen delays, the beam burst onto the monitors in the Control Room on Saturday 24th May. Although the beam is less intense (at around 5 thousand million protons per bunch) than will eventually be used in the LHC, this test represents an important milestone in the run-up to the switch-on of the accelerator.

The TI8 transfer line runs from the SPS towards the LHC, where it intersects just before point 8. The beam was extracted from the SPS, sent down the 2.8km transfer line and stopped just 15m or so from the LHC tunnel. This is done with a TED or ‘beam stopper’ that is physically placed in the path of the beam line to prevent the beam from taking the last step into the LHC.

Paul Collier, Head of the Operations Group, was satisfied with how the day went, and explains the delays: "Everything went to plan in the sense that we are more or less on time for our programme. We had some significant difficulties. For example, some of the elements that are there for safety were in a position where they were locked and they had to be released before we could withdraw them in order to send the beam."

The injection of the beam from the SPS to the transfer line requires extreme precision at very high speeds. The beam is travelling at essentially the speed of light and so the passage from one accelerator ring to the other has to be done in a matter of microseconds. In this case the deflection out of the SPS is principally achieved using ‘kicker’ magnets. "These are magnets where we can go from zero to maximum field very very quickly and in the case of the kickers in the SPS we are talking about a rise time of about 1 microsecond. As the beam is circulating in the SPS at a certain point you fire this kicker to make it go to the maximum field. When the beam passes it will see this field and it will be deviated out of the ring of the SPS and into the transfer line," says Paul Collier.

What comes next for the commissioning team? First, the second transfer line, TI2, will go through the same process in a couple of weeks’ time before the injector complex and the transfer lines are ready. After that is completed all the next steps are in the LHC. "At this point we have to continue the present activity of hardware commissioning in the sectors, but most importantly we have to finish the cool-down of the last two sectors," explains Paul.

Soon then, we hope, the LHC can open the door to its eagerly awaited guest.

[cosplay]

UK Home Page for the LHC said:

A date for the start up of the LHC is still to be announced.

As of the beginning of August 2008 we expect low energy proton beams to be injected into the LHC in early September.

This major milestone in the LHC project will be covered live by international broadcasters. UK media organisations will be at CERN and at a simultaneous media event in London.

Proton beams have already been delivered to within a few metres of the LHC itself, but beams will be injected for the first time on the official start up day. If everything proceeds according to plan the beam will circulate all the way around the 27 km long LHC. Only one beam, travelling in one direction, will be injected. Over the following months the LHC scientists and engineers will commission the LHC, running beams at higher energy and in both directions. Subject to everything proceeding as planned the LHC may begin collisions using relatively low energy (5TeV) beams towards the end of 2008.


What they have discovered so far:

When protons arrive in the LHC they are travelling at 0.999997828 times the speed of light. Each proton goes around the 27km ring over 11,000 times a second.


LHC Cooldown Status: