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LHC - Top Science or Titanic Money Pit?
basic_tech
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Wiki on the LHC wrote:On 10 September 2008, the proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the LHC for the first time. On 19 September 2008, the operations were halted due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets. Due to the resulting damage and additional safety features being added, the LHC will not be operational again before the end of September 2009.
However, this wasn't the first failure.
Wiki on simple errors wrote:On 27 March 2007 a cryogenic magnet support broke during a pressure test involving one of the LHC's inner triplet (focusing quadrupole) magnet assemblies, provided by Fermilab and KEK. No one was injured. Fermilab director Pier Oddone stated "In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces". This fault had been present in the original design, and remained during four engineering reviews over the following years. Analysis revealed that its design, made as thin as possible for better insulation, was not strong enough to withstand the forces generated during pressure testing. Details are available in a statement from Fermilab, with which CERN is in agreement. Repairing the broken magnet and reinforcing the eight identical assemblies used by LHC delayed the startup date, then planned for November 2007
Considering the complexity of an immense installation like the Large Hadron Collider, is it possible in our quest for answers to fundamental physics concerning the nature of the universe that we've overestimated our engineering abilities?
Wiki rides again - LHC wrote:The size of the LHC constitutes an exceptional engineering challenge with unique operational issues on account of the huge energy stored in the magnets and the beams. While operating, the total energy stored in the magnets is 10 GJ (equivalent to one and a half barrels of oil or 2.4 tons of TNT) and the total energy carried by the two beams reaches 724 MJ (about a tenth of a barrel of oil, or half a lightning bolt).
Loss of only one ten-millionth part (10−7) of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet, while the beam dump must absorb 362 MJ, an energy equivalent to that of burning eight kilograms of oil, for each of the two beams. These immense energies are even more impressive considering how little matter is carrying it: under nominal operating conditions (2,808 bunches per beam, 1.15×1011 protons per bunch), the beam pipes contain 1.0×10-9 gram of hydrogen, which, in standard conditions for temperature and pressure, would fill the volume of one grain of fine sand.
All theoretical yadda yadda about black holes and stranglets aside, is modern man being too egotistical in trying to ride this lightning?
So far a year of delay has been incurred from what amounts to a bad solder joint on a transformer. Will the LHC, with a total cost of project going from 3.2 - 6.4 billion dollars, go down in history as an economic titanic?
Could this money, man and brain power be better spent elsewhere, on other scientific endeavours?
Discuss.
basic_tech on
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People need to think that science and discovery is necessary. That big is not bad. Otherwise we are going to end up choking to death on this rock, because people are god damned lazy. I hate the anti-intelligence sentiment that far far too many people seem to be partaking in.
/rant
What else would particle physicists be spending their time on? There isn't a generic Science! field that has interchangeable lab coats, working on vastly different projects because they're all polymaths. This is what they do. To pull them from the LHC and have them focus on genetics instead of subatomic particles would be the actual waste of manpower.
As far as spending the money more wisely, 6.4 billion spread across multiple rich nations really is not a princely sum. Sure, it'd be nice if they didn't screw things up in construction and it all went perfect as that'd be money in the bank for the ILC (which had better be located by Fermi/Argonne you bastards) but this is an incredibly complex facility and so you learn by doing.
perations and maintenance $179.8 Bil. +9.5%
Military Personnel $125.2 Bil. +7.5%
Procurement $104.2 Bil. +5.3%
Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation $79.6 Bil. +4.1%
Military Construction $21.2 Bil. +19.1%
Family Housing $3.2 Bil. +10.3%
Resolving and Management Funds $2.2 Bil. -18.5%
Total Base Spending $515.4 Bil. +5.7%
All so we can fight a war against people living in caves and fighting with garage made bombs.
I rather they spend 6.4 billion dollars on the defense budget and spend $515.5 billion on science and education.
If the LHC ever works, it may well explain why things have mass. This is about as fundamental of a question as there is. And I think it's worth paying a few billion dollars to find out.
Especially if we get repulsorlifts out of this baby.
if you want to rant on military spending i suggest you make a thread about that instead.
as it stands, the LHC is pretty cheap yes.
So far. The ILC might be more crazy when they finish designing it over the next few years.
Maybe.
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Either that or destroy the world.
Seriously though, there is no way anything that can further scientific research and understanding of our world can possibly be detrimental. Hell, even if they don't discover why things have mass, I'm sure they'll find all sorts of cool new stuff that can be applied elsewhere.
What is the current theory on why things have mass?
m theory?
Overlappings in dimensions causing supergravity?
There is a type of sub-atomic particle called the Higgs boson, and it has mass.
It's about as helpful as defining dark matter.
Though seriously, I'm basically for all really big, really neat, really theoretical science experiments.
Your momma.
yeah, eliminating a theory just adds information to make a new theory.
The theory and the Standard Model of particle physics are incorrect, and smart folks need to start trying to figure out what it is and why all our electronics still work.
I believe the Higgs field is, but not specifically the Higgs Boson.
That's nice.
God damnit Obs. Is there a single thread you aren't going to fuck up with your jackassery. You especially need to watch the video in my sig.
Or I could be on crack. This is entirely possible.
Which is just how nuts our vast sum of knowledge truly is. For all our technological advancement, we're still just groping in the dark.
yeah but when's the last time you saw something that was literally unexplainable?
our knowledge may be a drop in the bucket, but our 'applied knowledge' of everyday events and phenomenon has pretty much leveled out at 99.99999%
This thread isn't fucked up. I'm just saying I don't particularly believe they will find a Higgs Boson. It's a perfectly possible possibility. Isn't it?
If they don't find the Higgs Boson this would actually tell us more about how the universe works than if they did. Because it would be fundamentally rewriting rather a lot of the Standard Model.
Check back in the thread after watching the video in my sig or reading something about the LHC that has not been filtered through Rush Limbaugh's drug-addled kidneys.