What a Diabolical particle!
The LHC to Shut Down... Again?
http://news.discovery.com/space/the-lhc ... again.html
A particle so evil that it's very existence threatens manki
CERN normally operates their particle accelerator during the Spring, Summer and Fall then shuts down during the winter months. They had a big meeting early this year and decided to for go the normal Winter shutdown during the Winter of 2010-2011. They plan to continue normal operations, operating basically at half power, until the Winter of 2011-2012 at which time they will shutdown for a major upgrade. These upgrades will allow full power operations once completed.
They hinted that the reason for this schedule change was equipment and parts availability. Since these components must be built and will take a long time to build and test, the lack of components would limit any benefit from upgrades that could be completed during a normal Winter shutdown for this year. They therefore decided to run through the winter this year doing half power science (which is still much more power than any other accelerator) then, when everything became available, shut down for as long as it takes to upgrade to full power capability.
This somewhat cautious approach is of course motivated by the early on disaster after initial start up. As pointed out in the article, the LHC is after all a one-off item. It is the prototype and final product combined. The upgrades, IMO, are more likely retrofitting of necessary but unforeseen design features to (hopefully) insure safe and reliable operation at full power. I read that one feature installed or to be installed is a new automated monitoring and safety system to insure graceful shut down in the event of a repeat of the initial disaster. This go around, I expect that CERN will err on the side of caution and am optimistic that good science will result.
They hinted that the reason for this schedule change was equipment and parts availability. Since these components must be built and will take a long time to build and test, the lack of components would limit any benefit from upgrades that could be completed during a normal Winter shutdown for this year. They therefore decided to run through the winter this year doing half power science (which is still much more power than any other accelerator) then, when everything became available, shut down for as long as it takes to upgrade to full power capability.
This somewhat cautious approach is of course motivated by the early on disaster after initial start up. As pointed out in the article, the LHC is after all a one-off item. It is the prototype and final product combined. The upgrades, IMO, are more likely retrofitting of necessary but unforeseen design features to (hopefully) insure safe and reliable operation at full power. I read that one feature installed or to be installed is a new automated monitoring and safety system to insure graceful shut down in the event of a repeat of the initial disaster. This go around, I expect that CERN will err on the side of caution and am optimistic that good science will result.
Aero
Aero wrote:CERN normally operates their particle accelerator during the Spring, Summer and Fall then shuts down during the winter months. They had a big meeting early this year and decided to for go the normal Winter shutdown during the Winter of 2010-2011. They plan to continue normal operations, operating basically at half power, until the Winter of 2011-2012 at which time they will shutdown for a major upgrade. These upgrades will allow full power operations once completed.
They hinted that the reason for this schedule change was equipment and parts availability. Since these components must be built and will take a long time to build and test, the lack of components would limit any benefit from upgrades that could be completed during a normal Winter shutdown for this year. They therefore decided to run through the winter this year doing half power science (which is still much more power than any other accelerator) then, when everything became available, shut down for as long as it takes to upgrade to full power capability.
This somewhat cautious approach is of course motivated by the early on disaster after initial start up. As pointed out in the article, the LHC is after all a one-off item. It is the prototype and final product combined. The upgrades, IMO, are more likely retrofitting of necessary but unforeseen design features to (hopefully) insure safe and reliable operation at full power. I read that one feature installed or to be installed is a new automated monitoring and safety system to insure graceful shut down in the event of a repeat of the initial disaster. This go around, I expect that CERN will err on the side of caution and am optimistic that good science will result.
My explanation is funnier.
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CaptainBeowulf
- Posts: 498
- Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am
Maybe it is down to lazy journalism. I thought I heard somewhere that they were going to "run continuously" for an extended period, and nothing was mentioned about "run continuously [not counting maintenance breaks]". But as Brian Cox says, we know how lazy and/or sensaitionalist the press can be. "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" seems to be the mantra of many of them.
Funnily enough, just last night, I had this dream: Now understand that I have discovered, by meticulous study, that if I dream something then it means it won't come true. My dreams are like anti-preminitions! So what I dreamed was that I was talking to a physcisit of some Northern Germany University who was telling me how they feared finding what they termed the "z-particle". It was a particle that theoretically might pop up and that would cause some sort of meson disruption to surrounding matter that would also release z-particles. That is to say, under sufficiently high densities it would cause a chain-reaction destruction of matter for as long and as far as 'high' [normal, non-gaseous] density matter was contiguous (viz. would destroy the planet on which the experiment was sitting, and everything else sitting on it).
The argument about whether the z-particle was a risk or not came down to some "paradigm" issues;
A) Science has never seen the z-particle, and therefore it doesn't exist.
Now you should, hopefully, be able to see the immediate flaw in the paradigm! It is similar to the other dogmatic paradigm of science:
B) If an experiment worked yesterday, then it is always going to work tomorrow.
..Neither of which satisfactorily exclude the possibility of the generation of a z-particle.
Funnily enough, just last night, I had this dream: Now understand that I have discovered, by meticulous study, that if I dream something then it means it won't come true. My dreams are like anti-preminitions! So what I dreamed was that I was talking to a physcisit of some Northern Germany University who was telling me how they feared finding what they termed the "z-particle". It was a particle that theoretically might pop up and that would cause some sort of meson disruption to surrounding matter that would also release z-particles. That is to say, under sufficiently high densities it would cause a chain-reaction destruction of matter for as long and as far as 'high' [normal, non-gaseous] density matter was contiguous (viz. would destroy the planet on which the experiment was sitting, and everything else sitting on it).
The argument about whether the z-particle was a risk or not came down to some "paradigm" issues;
A) Science has never seen the z-particle, and therefore it doesn't exist.
Now you should, hopefully, be able to see the immediate flaw in the paradigm! It is similar to the other dogmatic paradigm of science:
B) If an experiment worked yesterday, then it is always going to work tomorrow.
..Neither of which satisfactorily exclude the possibility of the generation of a z-particle.
I may be missing something here... if the LHC wont wort so it wont produce such particles, then how can we have much higher energy collisions all over the universe?????
All of these energetic collisions should stop happening because they are "damaging time", needless to say, the universe would be QUITE different.
All of these energetic collisions should stop happening because they are "damaging time", needless to say, the universe would be QUITE different.
Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future
We are tampering with the fabric of TIME!
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/man-arr ... -49305387/A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.
We are tampering with the fabric of TIME!
How do you know it's not?AcesHigh wrote:I may be missing something here... if the LHC wont wort so it wont produce such particles, then how can we have much higher energy collisions all over the universe?????
All of these energetic collisions should stop happening because they are "damaging time", needless to say, the universe would be QUITE different.
Aero
I like the bit at the end where he disappears from his cell. Quite cute.Diogenes wrote:Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the futurehttp://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/man-arr ... -49305387/A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.
We are tampering with the fabric of TIME!
Wandering Kernel of Happiness
Well his name is Eloi Cole, so he is obviously descended from the main character in 12 Monkeys... now that I've read the original article, where he claims the future has no national borders, limitless energy, and free Kit-Kats for everyone, which he calls a "communist chocolate hell hole" which he intends to stop.Stoney3K wrote:Given the abundance of tweed on his outfit, I can conclude that his cell was bigger on the inside.I like the bit at the end where he disappears from his cell. Quite cute.WizWom wrote:We are tampering with the fabric of TIME!
Or he had some help from River Song.
Just what the connection is between Higgs Bosons and free energy is not explained (or with chocolate).
Tweed is not always a Dr. Who material (Christopher Eccleston, the 9th doctor, wore a leather jacket and black jeans, while David Tennant, the 10th doctor, primarily wore a blue suit).
While not definitive, evidence points toward truth in his claim of future habitation. Forensic specialists searching his cell looking for clues to his escape, have identified a very prolific and hardy parasite previously uncatalogued. Genetically, this insect is only distantly related to the known species. One baffled genetic scientist muttered, "Its like they are many generations descended from the common bedbug.
Aero
The standard get-out is that high-energy collisions happen every day so LHC collisions can in any case be nothing new. This is stronger than the "we can't see how it could be dangerous" one.chrismb wrote:Maybe it is down to lazy journalism. I thought I heard somewhere that they were going to "run continuously" for an extended period, and nothing was mentioned about "run continuously [not counting maintenance breaks]". But as Brian Cox says, we know how lazy and/or sensaitionalist the press can be. "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" seems to be the mantra of many of them.
Funnily enough, just last night, I had this dream: Now understand that I have discovered, by meticulous study, that if I dream something then it means it won't come true. My dreams are like anti-preminitions! So what I dreamed was that I was talking to a physcisit of some Northern Germany University who was telling me how they feared finding what they termed the "z-particle". It was a particle that theoretically might pop up and that would cause some sort of meson disruption to surrounding matter that would also release z-particles. That is to say, under sufficiently high densities it would cause a chain-reaction destruction of matter for as long and as far as 'high' [normal, non-gaseous] density matter was contiguous (viz. would destroy the planet on which the experiment was sitting, and everything else sitting on it).
The argument about whether the z-particle was a risk or not came down to some "paradigm" issues;
A) Science has never seen the z-particle, and therefore it doesn't exist.
Now you should, hopefully, be able to see the immediate flaw in the paradigm! It is similar to the other dogmatic paradigm of science:
B) If an experiment worked yesterday, then it is always going to work tomorrow.
..Neither of which satisfactorily exclude the possibility of the generation of a z-particle.
Most of these high energy cosmic ray collisions will occur in the upper atmosphere where by premise this chain reaction would not happen. However some high energy cosmic rays do impact at ground level, so the question then becomes how does the integrated cross-section for the z-particle from such events compare with the LHC cross-section.
I guess you'll find the answer if you look at the LHC safety analyses:
LSAG-report wrote: As seen in Fig. 1, the highest-energy cosmic rays observed attain energies of around 1020 eV, and the total flux of cosmic rays with energies of 1017 eV or more that hit each square centimeter of the Earth’s surface is measured to be about 5x10–14 per second [5]. The area of the Earth’s surface is about 5x1018 square centimeters, and the age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years. Therefore, over 3x1022 cosmic rays with energies of 1017 eV or more, equal to or greater than the LHC energy, have struck the Earth’s surface since its formation. This means [6] that Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth already – and the planet still exists.
Other astronomical bodies are even larger. For example, the radius of Jupiter is about ten times that of the Earth, and the radius of the Sun is a factor of ten larger still. The surface area of the Sun is therefore 10,000 times that of the Earth, and Nature has therefore already conducted the LHC experimental programme about one billion times [6] via the collisions of cosmic rays with the Sun – and the Sun still exists.
Tom
Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... gs-rumors/
“The bottom line though is now clear: There’s something there which looks like a Higgs is supposed to look,” wrote mathematician Peter Woit on his blog, Not Even Wrong. According to Woit, there are rumors of new data that would be the most compelling evidence yet for the long-sought Higgs.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... gs-rumors/
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —
— Lord Melbourne —