Nice short Youtube about the LHC, beautiful but blurby

[Martin]

 

features Brian Cox, lots of shots of parts of LHC

 

a bit hyper

 

bubbling over with enthusiasm, but why not?

[DrDNA]

This might seem like a dumb question, but what's a LHC ?

[timo]

I find it kind of strange that almost all accelerator project are at least at some point advertized as being built to explain/research the early universe (which is often further simplified as "recreating a mini big-bang"). I rather tend to consider cosmology and astrophysics as a very potent asset to particle physics because:

- For Astro: High-energy processes do happen out there in the universe naturally. So if you read out their signals (e.g. Ice Cube) you might get insights into processes not recreatable (either in principle or at a reasonable cost) in labs on earth.

- For Cosmo: If standard cosmology is correct, then the biggest possible experiment at the highest-possible energy was already performed and we can get quite a bit of information if we correctly read-out the resulting final state (sidenote: To my experience, first constraints on new particle physics models actually often come from cosmo calculations).

 

Of course there is an interplay between particle physics and cosmology so my statement might be considered as just highlighting the other side of a symmetric co-existance. But personally, I think that cosmology is the only branch of physics that is even less relevant for any practical impact on our life than particle physics. Hence my surprise that the advertizing of extremely expensive particle physics experiments is done by shifting attention to an even less practically applicable related branch.

 

This might seem like a dumb question, but what's a LHC ?

A large hadron collider, more precisely the Large Hadron Collider at the european center for nuclear and particle research CERN near Geneva. Just look up the CERN homepage or the Wikipedia article for more information.

 

Btw, here's what Terry Pratchett sais about LHC (re-translation from german to english by me):

For a university it is always practical to have a Very Large Thing.

It keeps the young people occupied - to the great relief of the older

ones (especially when the VLT is a bit outside the center of the

faculty)' date=' and it uses up money that otherwise would just lie around

causing trouble or would be used up by the sociological faculty - or

perhaps even both. It also helps to push limits whereas it does not

play a role which limits, because as everyone knows: It is the pushing

that matters, not the limits.

 

It is also good when the Very Large Thing is bigger than the Very

Large Things of all the others. In this special case it was about

the Unseen University, the biggest magical university in the world.

And of course their VLT had to be bigger than that which the

bastards at the university of Braseneck were building.

 

"Theirs actually is just a QBT, a Quite Big Thing" Ponder Stibbons,

leader of the group for non-advisable applied magics, said. "They

had so many problems that it is probably just a BT". The old

wizards nodded approvingly. "And ours is surely bigger?" the older

shepherd [note: That translation is prolly crap'] asked.

"Yes", Stibbons confirmed. "As I could draw from my conversations

with the people in Braseneck, our VLT can push twice as big limits

three times as far."

"I hope you did not point that out to them", the lecturer for new

runes said. "We do not want them to build an EBT."

"A what?", Ponder asked politely in a tone saying: "I do have some

knowledge about these particular things and you should better not

actas if you also did."

"Err ... an Even Bigger Thing?", Rune replied and realized that he

was swimming in unknown territory.

"No Sir", Ponder said politely. "The next step would be a

Gigantically Big Thing, Sir. And the following has been postulated:

If we ever were capable of building a GBT, we would know the

thoughts of the creator."

[ecoli]

Great video... what an exciting time to be a European particle physicist.

[YT2095]

Cool!

 

it mentions that it will be done using Protons, does that mean Hydrogen (as it`s the richest source) and if not, how do they remove the electron?

I`m guessing that Hydrogen is made into a plasma and then some sort of charged plate system`s used???

 

any idea? Cheerz

 

I`m thinking Anode Ray Tube (like ART instead of CRT), but that`s just silly

[abskebabs]

Woohoo:-) ! One of my lecturers is on that video!

[Severian]

I find it kind of strange that almost all accelerator project are at least at some point advertized as being built to explain/research the early universe

 

But that is only because it is something the general public can understand, or at least that is the perception from the media. No-one who actually does LHC physics really thinks their motivation is undeerstanding the Big Bang.

 

Actually, I think a lot of physicists in the UK were rather ctritical of the programme because it gave far too much emphasis on astronomy and not enough on particle physics.

 

Great video... what an exciting time to be a European particle physicist.

 

That would be true if our governments would give us support rather than trying to undermine our work at every opportunity. See: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=30198

[thedarkshade]

That is the strangest thing I have ever seen!

 

Is there a certain time when the experiment will take place, or they're trying to do that all the time?

[5614]

The LHC is planned to start in May 2008.

 

I think they have run periods during which millions of particle-particle collisions will occur every seconds, producing more terrabytes of data than you can even imagine. Most of this data is automatically removed by a computer, which labels it as "not interesting". But a huge amount of data will still be sent to scientists who have to analyse it. As for how long a run "period" is I have no idea.

[Severian]

The LHC is what I do for a living by the way.

[iNow]

Here is a wonderful talk given at TED by Brian Cox. All I can say is, wow.

 

 

 

Rock star physicist" Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive complex and describes his part in it -- and the vital role it's going to play in understanding our universe.