bascule Posted July 7, 2008 Posted July 7, 2008 I found this neato realtime countdown to LHC's activation: http://www.lhcountdown.com/ 31 days, 7 hours to go! For those living in a cave: LHC is the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. It's hoped it will spot the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle responsible for mass and predicted by the standard model. Observing the Higgs particle would be a major breakthrough in physics. It's also hoped that LHC will observe so-called "sparticles" which would provide proof of an idea called supersymmetry.
ydoaPs Posted July 7, 2008 Posted July 7, 2008 We're all gonna die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! /me runs frantically
CDarwin Posted July 7, 2008 Posted July 7, 2008 Apparently a time-traveling wormhole (since the LHC will let you do that), has already eaten up the bandwidth on that website's server.
Pangloss Posted July 7, 2008 Posted July 7, 2008 We're all gonna die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/me runs frantically Rofl. Take deep breaths, because the atmosphere catches fire in 31 days!!!!
DJBruce Posted July 9, 2008 Posted July 9, 2008 Here is just a question I know the LHC becomes operational very soon but is there any ideas when we might see some results from this. I mean are we going to see things a month after it starts or in a few decades.
Cap'n Refsmmat Posted July 9, 2008 Posted July 9, 2008 (edited) Collisions won't start for several weeks after it fires up, and you'll probably see the first experiments being completed several months after that, and it'll take another few months to analyze the data, and another few to get the paper through review... so I'd wait a year or two before expecting anything major. Of course, if they see anything really spectacular they may announce it rather quickly. Edited July 9, 2008 by Cap'n Refsmmat
bascule Posted July 9, 2008 Author Posted July 9, 2008 Collisions won't start for several weeks after it fires up Techically, it's "firing up" (i.e. cooling down) in a few days. If I understand it correctly they need to bring certain parts of it down to ~5K, at which point it will be ready to use. This countdown, I believe, is when it's first ready to use, i.e. after the hot parts of it have been cooled to sufficiently cold temperatures.
Kyrisch Posted July 9, 2008 Posted July 9, 2008 ZOMG ISN'T THIS THING GONNA LYK MAKE SUPERMASSIVE SUPERDANGEROUS SUPERBLACKHOLSE [/troll] (Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system... I saw an article in the newspaper whose gist could be summed up by the above statement. I do despise the sensationalism of the media.)
John Cuthber Posted July 9, 2008 Posted July 9, 2008 I think it must all be a scam anyway. You can't have a large hadron colider because there are no large hadrons- they are all tiny.
ecoli Posted July 9, 2008 Posted July 9, 2008 I think it must all be a scam anyway. You can't have a large hadron colider because there are no large hadrons- they are all tiny. It's just like the heavy ion scam at RHIC.
Kyrisch Posted July 9, 2008 Posted July 9, 2008 And the best part is that this article, printed in the Science section of the local paper, insisted on calling the thing the 'atom-smasher'. In the headline, in the caption, and everywhere it was referenced in the article it was given this ridiculous nickname. I think the only place where "Large Hadron Collider" was printed in the article was within the quotes of the interviewed scientists.
Pangloss Posted July 9, 2008 Posted July 9, 2008 Some headlines from a Google News search: The end of the world as we know it? Massive bosons blew my unit Launch Of Atom Smasher Sparks Apocalyptic Fears Questions, Quirky Quarks Quase Earth-Quashing Quakes of Fears Over LHC Atom-smasher And my personal fave, from the Christian Science Monitor: Could the Large Hadron Collider destory Earth? (sic)
ecoli Posted July 9, 2008 Posted July 9, 2008 Could the Large Hadron Collider destory Earth? (sic) yes, the LHC is actually a story snatcher. It removes printed works and erases the memories of storytellers. It's the largest attempt at de-storification the world has ever seen. Ray Bradbury's predictions are coming true!
bascule Posted July 10, 2008 Author Posted July 10, 2008 It's pretty stupid how all the reporting on it is for a doomsday scenario that won't even happen, when the real story should be the potential scientific benfits. But those don't play in Peoria... baseless doomsday scenarios do!
antimatter Posted July 11, 2008 Posted July 11, 2008 Techically, it's "firing up" (i.e. cooling down) in a few days. If I understand it correctly they need to bring certain parts of it down to ~5K, at which point it will be ready to use. I believe they mainly need to cool the magnets, though I'm probably wrong.
insane_alien Posted July 11, 2008 Posted July 11, 2008 and you need to pump all the air out of the system. so much so that the pressure will be lower than the outside of the ISS.
foodchain Posted July 13, 2008 Posted July 13, 2008 I am worried because some of the software used for it is written in java.
Gilded Posted July 13, 2008 Posted July 13, 2008 (edited) I am worried because some of the software used for it is written in java. At least it's not operating on Vista. Edited July 13, 2008 by Gilded
honestdude14 Posted July 14, 2008 Posted July 14, 2008 Just imagine how much that would suck if it yielded nothing useful.
iNow Posted July 14, 2008 Posted July 14, 2008 Often, in science, we learn the most when things don't happen as we expected.
bascule Posted July 14, 2008 Author Posted July 14, 2008 Just imagine how much that would suck if it yielded nothing useful. If it doesn't it would likely indicate theory surrounding the Higgs Boson is incorrect
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