The LHC - 1 Ton of Liquid Helium hits the floor, delayed for at least 2 months

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  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited May 2007
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    I'd think that the pros of being able to observe thousands of these interactions every day would mitigate the lack of control.

    I imagine it would be more like trying to study the acoustics of a single human voice in the middle of Grand Central Station.

    Not that I know a damn thing about quantum physics that I didn't read in a John Gribbin book.

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • evilbobevilbob RADELAIDERegistered User regular
    edited May 2007
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    Agem wrote: »
    It's not a "fib." We're talking about the difference between tera-electronvolts and... what, zeta-electronvolts? They're not even comparable. Either the collisions can cause a stable black hole that will destroy the earth, or they can't. If they can, the cosmic rays bombarding the earth easily would have created one by now - they're at extremely high energy levels. We haven't even approached them yet.

    The kind of things we're colliding is more or less irrelevant in this discussion. I don't know what makes you think an ion is more likely to destroy the world than a proton - particularly when the ions will be at lower energies due to greater mass - or why antiparticles are somehow special here. They're not. They have the same mass and will reach the same maximum energy in the LHC as "normal" particles.

    And what would happen if a stable black hole was generated? The damn thing would be traveling so fast that it would escape the earth's gravity entirely and fly off into space. And because of its tiny size it would take it hundreds of hours just to grab another particle. The risk of it hurting us in any way is about as near-zero as we could hope for. The LHC and its experiments are a hell of a lot safer for mankind than the pollution created as a result of generating the electricity needed to run it.

    If all this is true, then what's the point of building a nifty new accelerator at all? If these things are happening at ridiculously high energy levels millions of times per day in the upper atmosphere, why not just build something to observe the collisions that are already occuring, rather than spending billions to create sad imitations thereof?
    Because its kinda hard to observe something thats happening on such an incredibly small scale unless you know exactly where its going to happen.

    evilbob on
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  • GorakGorak Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Feral wrote: »
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    I'd think that the pros of being able to observe thousands of these interactions every day would mitigate the lack of control.

    I imagine it would be more like trying to study the acoustics of a single human voice in the middle of Grand Central Station.

    Pretty much. There's a reason most physics labs are in the basement.

    Gorak on
  • EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    edited May 2007
    Didn't they prove the existence of cosmic rays way down in old mines?

    edit: nope.
    Then, in 1912, Victor Hess carried three Wulf electrometers (a device to measure the rate of ion production inside a hermetically sealed container) to an altitude of 5300 meters in a free balloon flight. He found the ionization rate increased approximately fourfold over the rate at ground level. He concluded "The results of my observation are best explained by the assumption that a radiation of very great penetrating power enters our atmosphere from above." Hess received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936 for his discovery of what came to be called "cosmic rays".

    Echo on
  • HooraydiationHooraydiation Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    So did this happen yet?

    Hooraydiation on
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  • GorakGorak Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    So did this happen yet?

    Yes. You missed it. We're all dead.

    Gorak on
  • OctoparrotOctoparrot Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Octoparrot wrote: »
    Agem, I agree with the sentiment that the experiment is harmless. Back when the fundamentalists were protesting RHIC being built for the same reasons, I checked the stuff out.

    Phew, thanks for checking it out for us. What are these fundamentalists you speak of fundamentalist.. in?

    The general fear-mongering kind.

    And you're welcome.

    Octoparrot on
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Octoparrot wrote: »
    Agem, I agree with the sentiment that the experiment is harmless. Back when the fundamentalists were protesting RHIC being built for the same reasons, I checked the stuff out.

    However, despite the higher energies in isolated cosmic ray collisions, they intend to get results in the lab these collisions won't produce.

    RHIC and LHC are both trying to produce copious quark-gluon plasmas that don't occur in our atmosphere. Nor do cosmic rays cause particles to condense from the Higgs field (if it exists/ possible/ whatever).
    Which are still going to be overall lower energy per particle. The LHC - large HADRON collider - is intended to collide protons. Protons contain 3 quarks so each individual fundamental particle is only going to pick up about a 1/3 of that energy when it's accelerated.

    Your other points don't actually prove much, because you're talking about collisions we can't observe. Cosmic rays might be producing the Higgs particle all the damn time - we have no idea what it would look like but we do know that it's probably pretty short lived (like just about everything else coming out of a particle accelerator). Seeing as these things happen a couple of kilometers up in the atmosphere, we don't know what happens but it is a lot more problematic when the collision involves at least one pair which is a fundamental particle because all that energy is focussed onto one point and thus energy / particle increases.

    electricitylikesme on
  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited May 2007
    Gorak wrote: »
    So did this happen yet?

    Yes. You missed it. We're all dead.

    In a parallel universe

    FyreWulff on
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    So I'm totally going to have an End of the Universe party the day of.

    Evil Multifarious on
  • SoonerManSoonerMan Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Dammit, this is scaring the shit out of me. Is this legit?

    SoonerMan on
    Rah, Oklahoma! Rah, Oklahoma! Rah, Oklahoma~! O-K-U!
  • Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    This totally reminds me of y2k. I'm not getting fooled again.

    Regina Fong on
  • ÆthelredÆthelred Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    jeepguy wrote: »
    This totally reminds me of y2k. I'm not getting fooled again.

    Y2K never happened because doomsdayers warned us it would happen. It's a type of paradox the name of which I forget.

    Æthelred on
    pokes: 1505 8032 8399
  • CrimsonKingCrimsonKing Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Next they'll be making naked singularities.

    CrimsonKing on
    This sig was too tall - Elki.
  • PorkChopSandwichesPorkChopSandwiches Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Link baby

    Obviously the people building this thing don't think it will destroy all matter as we know it, because they're already planning to make it bigger.

    This reminds me of the atom bomb - there was a contingent that though the a-bomb would ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life as we know it.

    Incidentally, the iPhone will destroy all life as we know it.

    PorkChopSandwiches on
  • PorkChopSandwichesPorkChopSandwiches Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    I also enjoy the fact that one of the Wikipedia searches that redirects to the original page is a search for the Large HARDON Collider. Sounds like a good film.

    PorkChopSandwiches on
  • Target PracticeTarget Practice Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Pfft

    So we'll move to Gliese 581 c

    (Incidentally, does anybody else find it infuriatingly difficult to find articles on that? Google News provided almost nothing but editorials. )

    Target Practice on
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  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    jeepguy wrote: »
    This totally reminds me of y2k. I'm not getting fooled again.

    Y2K never happened because doomsdayers warned us it would happen. It's a type of paradox the name of which I forget.

    Y2k was a very real problem. Just like 2036 is a real problem.

    What's 2036? It's when NTP time goes "whoops, 1900" and we get to panic again.

    MKR on
  • Target PracticeTarget Practice Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Echo wrote: »
    I think it's more of a goatse image.

    Or octuple-penetration.

    Target Practice on
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  • OctoparrotOctoparrot Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Octoparrot wrote: »
    Agem, I agree with the sentiment that the experiment is harmless. Back when the fundamentalists were protesting RHIC being built for the same reasons, I checked the stuff out.

    However, despite the higher energies in isolated cosmic ray collisions, they intend to get results in the lab these collisions won't produce.

    RHIC and LHC are both trying to produce copious quark-gluon plasmas that don't occur in our atmosphere. Nor do cosmic rays cause particles to condense from the Higgs field (if it exists/ possible/ whatever).
    Which are still going to be overall lower energy per particle. The LHC - large HADRON collider - is intended to collide protons. Protons contain 3 quarks so each individual fundamental particle is only going to pick up about a 1/3 of that energy when it's accelerated.

    Your other points don't actually prove much, because you're talking about collisions we can't observe. Cosmic rays might be producing the Higgs particle all the damn time - we have no idea what it would look like but we do know that it's probably pretty short lived (like just about everything else coming out of a particle accelerator). Seeing as these things happen a couple of kilometers up in the atmosphere, we don't know what happens but it is a lot more problematic when the collision involves at least one pair which is a fundamental particle because all that energy is focussed onto one point and thus energy / particle increases.

    We need the higher energy density in a lab to get these effects.

    Regarding higher Kinetic Energies: A fundamental particle like a lepton receiving the energy from a collison will slough it off as EM or spit out a couple pions, which will just do their thing for a minute and decay.

    Physicist think the most promising routes for Higgs detection are observing quark interactions from large hadrons, and not protons or leptons which are most constituents of cosmic rays. But I don't know if that's because of accelerator design limitations.

    Octoparrot on
  • SoonerManSoonerMan Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    MKR wrote: »
    jeepguy wrote: »
    This totally reminds me of y2k. I'm not getting fooled again.

    Y2K never happened because doomsdayers warned us it would happen. It's a type of paradox the name of which I forget.

    Y2k was a very real problem. Just like 2036 is a real problem.

    What's 2036? It's when NTP time goes "whoops, 1900" and we get to panic again.

    So what provisions are in place for this one?

    SoonerMan on
    Rah, Oklahoma! Rah, Oklahoma! Rah, Oklahoma~! O-K-U!
  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    edited May 2007
    I never understood how modern computers knew they weren't invented until the 1960s

    Fencingsax on
  • ÆthelredÆthelred Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    My 1997 copy of Microsoft Works actually has the Millennium Bug; if you enter a date like 27th May 07 then it turns it into 1907. No plane-crashing though..

    Of course, we'll be hit by the UNIX time problem in 2038, just two years after the 2036 NTP one.

    Æthelred on
    pokes: 1505 8032 8399
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    This is all related to that "lol seconds since 1960" deal isn't it/

    electricitylikesme on
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    MKR wrote: »
    jeepguy wrote: »
    This totally reminds me of y2k. I'm not getting fooled again.

    Y2K never happened because doomsdayers warned us it would happen. It's a type of paradox the name of which I forget.

    Y2k was a very real problem. Just like 2036 is a real problem.

    What's 2036? It's when NTP time goes "whoops, 1900" and we get to panic again.

    I don't understand what you mean here.

    Evil Multifarious on
  • AbsoluteZeroAbsoluteZero The new film by Quentin Koopantino Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    The Cat wrote: »
    it'll be worth it just so I never see threads like this again.

    There are other ways to accomplish this.

    Anyways... I'm not too afraid of the LHC destroying anything. They would have to actually get it to work first.

    AbsoluteZero on
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  • DisrupterDisrupter Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Guys, guys...im from the future. This thing works. I was just chilling in the future when this son of a bitch sucked me back in time.

    ABC already has the rights to a sitcom based on my story. It was strange watching this sitcom in the future thinking "hey that guy looks like me, wierd. This show is dumb, that could never happen." I can tell you already, its a terrible show.

    Also, Lost doesnt ever go anywhere. And Spiderman 4 rocks.

    Disrupter on
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  • KwornKworn Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    So did anyone in the UK see this Episode on Horizon last night at 9pm?

    I missed I was out for a meal with the misses.

    Any pointers to the program on youtube or something?

    Kworn on
  • ÆthelredÆthelred Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    I haven't watched Horizon since about 2003 when it went from being a decent science programme to being about the end of the world, every single week.

    Æthelred on
    pokes: 1505 8032 8399
  • KwornKworn Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    I haven't watched Horizon since about 2003 when it went from being a decent science programme to being about the end of the world, every single week.

    Shit, you have a point there.

    Oh well it gets them viewers.

    Kworn on
  • TiemlerTiemler Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    FyreWulff wrote: »
    Gorak wrote: »
    So did this happen yet?

    Yes. You missed it. We're all dead.

    In a parallel universe

    grigstarfighter.jpg

    "Death is a primitive concept. I prefer to think of them as battling evil..."

    "In another dimension!!!"
    In all seriousness, though. Good riddance. I was tired of Parallel Tiemler, lording his cowboy hat over me.

    Tiemler on
  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    The reason why we cant just use cosmic rays is because...

    a) Cosmic rays do not have a defined energy, or one which can be tested before they interact. So we don't know enough about starting conditions.

    b) Cosmic rays do not hit other cosmic rays travelling in the opposite direction. Rather than creating huge amounts of mass and particles in an experiment, they just send the other particles flying off really quickly (admittedly they make some mass, but not as much as the LHC will)

    c) Fact b) also means cosmic ray interactions are hard to observe, the products have a huge amount of KE in the lab frame and effectively just zoom straight out of any detector. A particle moving that fast is almost impossible to identify, since you cant steer it with a magnetic field.

    d) Cosmic rays, although producing an enormous total flux through the earth, produce a comparatively low flux per unit area compared to the beam from the LHC, since the LHC beam is a pulsed beam focused onto a few nm of space.

    The concern here is not truly that a mini black hole will be created, mini black holes are created an evaporate all the time in all kinds of interactions. The concern is that if enough QGP (quark gluon plasma) can be created its core will become more stable than normal matter. This means it will begin to convert normal matter into itself, i.e. quarks as protons and nuetrons will be heavier than quarks as the QGP and will turn into more QGP. This is thought to be possible since long range colour nuetrality (like in a QGP) is thought to possibly be more favourable for the quarks than short range colour neutrality.

    However this is clearly a pile of horse manure. The only way a QGP can be more stable is if it is totally non-interacting, i.e. it is infinate in size. Otherwise the edge regions are continually hadronizing since they can 'realise' they are colour charged and must decay. There is also no evidence of changing quark mass in the QGP unbound state from RHIC.

    Seriously, this is not something to worry about.

    tbloxham on
    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • KwornKworn Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    tbloxham wrote: »
    The reason why we cant just use cosmic rays is because...

    a) Cosmic rays do not have a defined energy, or one which can be tested before they interact. So we don't know enough about starting conditions.

    b) Cosmic rays do not hit other cosmic rays travelling in the opposite direction. Rather than creating huge amounts of mass and particles in an experiment, they just send the other particles flying off really quickly (admittedly they make some mass, but not as much as the LHC will)

    c) Fact b) also means cosmic ray interactions are hard to observe, the products have a huge amount of KE in the lab frame and effectively just zoom straight out of any detector. A particle moving that fast is almost impossible to identify, since you cant steer it with a magnetic field.

    d) Cosmic rays, although producing an enormous total flux through the earth, produce a comparatively low flux per unit area compared to the beam from the LHC, since the LHC beam is a pulsed beam focused onto a few nm of space.

    The concern here is not truly that a mini black hole will be created, mini black holes are created an evaporate all the time in all kinds of interactions. The concern is that if enough QGP (quark gluon plasma) can be created its core will become more stable than normal matter. This means it will begin to convert normal matter into itself, i.e. quarks as protons and nuetrons will be heavier than quarks as the QGP and will turn into more QGP. This is thought to be possible since long range colour nuetrality (like in a QGP) is thought to possibly be more favourable for the quarks than short range colour neutrality.

    However this is clearly a pile of horse manure. The only way a QGP can be more stable is if it is totally non-interacting, i.e. it is infinate in size. Otherwise the edge regions are continually hadronizing since they can 'realise' they are colour charged and must decay. There is also no evidence of changing quark mass in the QGP unbound state from RHIC.

    Seriously, this is not something to worry about.

    But there is still possibility it might happen?

    Kworn on
  • Cerpin TaxtCerpin Taxt Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.



    20 times in a row.


    So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.

    Cerpin Taxt on
  • KwornKworn Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.



    20 times in a row.


    So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.

    The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!

    Kworn on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Kworn wrote: »
    The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.



    20 times in a row.


    So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.

    The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!

    We didn't know that there were planets outside our solar system back in the '80s. We were pretty sure they were there, and had a good way of detecting them. Now we know of hundreds, and are on the brink of getting a clear look at an earthlike planet.

    The nice thing about science is that we can know enough to say "Yeah, it's probably true, and here are some likely possibilities ordered by probability..." without actually knowing for sure.

    I'm not saying it's likely to happen, but it is possible to come up with chances for different possibilities by understanding the science behind the theory(ies).

    MKR on
  • ScikarScikar Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Kworn wrote: »
    The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.



    20 times in a row.


    So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.

    The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!

    It's "possible" in almost the same way it's "possible" that you could spontaneously disappear in a shower of subatomic particles at any moment.

    Scikar on
    ScikarSig2.png
  • JohannenJohannen Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    BOOM!! ...Gotya!

    Johannen on
  • KwornKworn Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Scikar wrote: »
    Kworn wrote: »
    The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.



    20 times in a row.


    So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.

    The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!

    It's "possible" in almost the same way it's "possible" that you could spontaneously disappear in a shower of subatomic particles at any moment.

    Spontanious combustion?

    Kworn on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Kworn wrote: »
    Scikar wrote: »
    Kworn wrote: »
    The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.



    20 times in a row.


    So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.

    The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!

    It's "possible" in almost the same way it's "possible" that you could spontaneously disappear in a shower of subatomic particles at any moment.

    Spontanious combustion?

    Spontaneous disintegration.

    Combustion leaves leftovers. :P

    MKR on
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