LHC questions that i can't find anywhere

[Obba]

Ok. Here we go;

 

1) What did they do with the 'old' lep, besides remove it?

1a) The questions get harder..

 

2) The LHC will start (from what i have read), from energies of 5Tev's, with the projected 7-10Tevs' as "nominal". Although the LHC 'may be pushed to 12-15Tevs.

The question is; Haven't most (top end), physicists said that to find the Higgs Boson particle will need 20-25Tevs?

 

3) Bearing in mind that some of the technologys used since the commission of the HLC were not even invented at the time: The Lead Tungstate crystals used (from Russia and China), have already been surpassed as in Light properties recently.

The question is; How would this 'month to month' improvement in technology create better/more accurate results if the HLC was built 5 years from now?

 

3a) Or, as these improvments occur, is the LHC upgradable in its modules?

 

4) Would a 'ring' of greater circumference make any difference, considering that bigger, more powerfull magnets would allow a smaller ring (no matter the Kelvin temp), to obtain the same results?

 

5) How much has Russia (in percentage of monetary funds, infrastucture and technical information), contributed to the LHC?

 

6) There are various 'collectors' and 'Detectors' in the CERN ring (can't recall them now, but one just does Iron ions).

The question is; How and where do they exactly 'Inject' the 'food' to be used?

6a) What is it (The injected material), made of and where is it made?

6b) When (if), they decide (after prepping everything), to find the Higgs Boson particle, what 'material' will they be using?

 

7) Stephen Hawkings, has made another of his famous $50 bets in regards to not finding the Higgs Boson particle. My belief is that (as great as he is/or was), there are now more 'knowlagble' people out there now.

The question is; Is he 'with it' anymore, or are 'wannabe' people getting in on the publicity and funds issue?

 

8) STS 125 is due for launch in October. It is carrying a (don't quote me), a new Spectral Imager, that is 5 times more sensitive than the original.

The question is; If we can afford and get into place in high Earth orbit, instruments that are 5x better, where does the future 'economical' (if possible), upgrading of the HLC come into financial feasability?

 

Cheers,

Alan.

[Gilded]

5) How much has Russia (in percentage of monetary funds, infrastucture and technical information), contributed to the LHC?

 

Over 700 Russian scientists have contributed to the LHC program, but I'm guessing Russia hasn't funded the project that much since they're not a member state of CERN. I couldn't find any actual funding figures though.

[timo]

2) I don't think so. The tenor I've heard is that if there is a Higgs boson, LHC will confirm it.

 

3) "Accurateness" of the results at LHC is strongly dependent on electronics, software and analysis algorithm. For the electronics part, many critical parts were constructed explicitely for LHC. I would not be surprised if today's top-level electronics developed elsewhere was inferior for LHC usage than the parts specifically designed for it (it's not that the LHC parts were developed in some backyard garage, there's whole research groups at universities dedicated to building parts of LHC. For the software and analysis methods: You throw away most of the data (~90% I think) coming from the detectors. What is thrown away at this stage is gone for good. If your criteria for keeping data - which must be fixed before building the detector (they are so-called "hardware triggers", i.e. built into the detectors)- were bad then you might miss crucial data. For the data kept at this level at least some part (still a huge amount of data) is saved. So if at some later stage you come up with some idea, say something like "there should be a new particle which should have shown up on LHC", you could in principle just reanalyze the data.

 

3a) I would assume at least parts are interchangable. I would assume that overall the design is mostly fixed, though.

 

4) I think the problem is not that magnets you have are not sufficiently powerful to guide the beam around a bend but that by guiding a beam around a bend the beam loses energy; the more curved the bend the more energy lost. The next collider planned ILC won't have any bends but will just accelerate the particles in a straight line, btw.

 

5) Dunno. But I guess it's not much.

 

6b) Higgs particle is searched for in proton-proton collisions as are all searches for new particles.

 

8) Dunno STS 125. But I think you might be heading towards the statement that LHC wanted to create/investigate conditions at the big bang. The whole "recreate (condition at) the big bang" is, in my opinion, mostly a commercial slogan to get people interested in the project.

[big314mp]

4) I think the problem is not that magnets you have are not sufficiently powerful to guide the beam around a bend but that by guiding a beam around a bend the beam loses energy; the more curved the bend the more energy lost. The next collider planned ILC won't have any bends but will just accelerate the particles in a straight line, btw.

 

The problem is known as synchrotron radiation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation

 

By accelerating a charged particle in a magnetic field (here the acceleration is from going around in circles) the particles produce radiation, and therefore lose energy.

 

ILC is an electron-positron collider. Since the particles used are lighter, the speed to get the proper amount of energy is also higher. Thus, radiation losses become excessive, and it becomes easier to just build the thing in a straight line.

 

I read that LHC would eventually use lead ions (currently using protons) to get all the way up to 14 TeV, so they may use that to look for the higgs.

 

http://lhc-commissioning.web.cern.ch/lhc-commissioning/commissioning-ions.htm

[timo]

I read that LHC would eventually use lead ions (currently using protons) to get all the way up to 14 TeV, so they may use that to look for the higgs.

LHC has a proton-proton mode and a lead-lead mode. As I said, all new elementary particles are looked for in the proton-proton mode which is targeted for 14 TeV center-of-mass energy. The lead-lead mode is kind of a seperate experiment (also having its own detector, if I remember that correctly) and operates at a cms energy way above the 14 TeV (something like 1000 TeV I think, but the correct number should be rather easy to find).

[Severian]

1) I imagine it is stored in a bug shed at CERN, for historical reasons if nothing else. The old bubble chambers they used to use are now museum pieces.

 

2) The nominal LHC energy is 14TeV. At that energy the peak of the gluon spectrum (the proton is mainly gluons) is about 600GeV, so really it has a reach of a few TeV or so (> 1TeV due to the tails in the distribution). Most likely the Higgs is < 190GeV and it is certainly < 700 GeV, so this is plenty of energy.

 

3) There are two proposed upgrades, the VLHC (Very Large Hadron Collider) and the SLHC (the Super LHC). The VLHC is a proposed upgrade on the energy while the SLHC is a proposed upgrade of luminosity. Most people think the SLHC would be better, but it really depends on what the LHC finds.

 

4) Yes it would, but it is more likely that the next machine will be a linear collider. Since there are no bends, no sychrotron radiation.

 

5) Already answered. I personally know lots of good Russian physicists working on the LHC, but I am not sure how much they government has contributed.

 

6) The protons are injected from the previous High energy rings (the SPS - Super Proton Sychrotron). This in turn is injected from smaller rings. At the source, the protons come from Hydrogen gas.

 

7) Hawking is a cosmologist. What does he know?

 

8) The economic feasibility of the next collider after the LHC depends entirely on what they find.

[Obba]

Severian, thank you for your reply (and the others). You answered them very neatly. I liked the answer to No7

 

My replies:

 

1) The LEP has lots of power, for other uses/ but i guess 'a buyer' would have to build a 27km ring to use it. It's a wonder the Russians or Chinese don't buy it - it would have to be going cheap - Maybe Iran would put a bid in?

 

2) As in 1, i thought the most powerful Linear Collider so far (not to be built for another 2 years), was only 0.5Tev?

And i thought the Nominal LHC was 7TeV and maybe 'could' be pushed upto 14TeV?

 

3) I did not know of those upgrade paths. Thank you for that.

 

4) So with bends there is no getting away with sychrotron radiation. I did some reading on that, interesting.

 

5) I was sure that Russia would have contributed a lot, and i read that they have provided many of the lead Crystals. - Yet better luminosity ones have been made - probably for reviewing in the SLHC.

 

6) Ok. Dumb question time: Are these protons, actualy 'injected' as via air pressure, or does someone simply press a button to turn a valve and the 'injecti', gets dropped into the ring and then 'carried away'?

Or is the 'injecti' brought up to speed in the SPS, then a valve opens and it's 'swooshed' into the main ring?

 

7) I actually thought his offical title was Physicist aka Mathematician.

 

8) I wonder what the TNG collider will be. If you're correct, and 14TeV (

), is enough to find the Higgs Boson, then why do we need another collider?

 

Regards,

Alan.

[Severian]

2) As in 1, i thought the most powerful Linear Collider so far (not to be built for another 2 years), was only 0.5Tev?

And i thought the Nominal LHC was 7TeV and maybe 'could' be pushed upto 14TeV?

 

LEP (after the upgrade) was about 208GeV, which is why the Higgs limit is 114GeV (it was supposed to be produced together with a Z-boson, which has mass 91.2GeV, so the maximum Higgs mass they could reach was 208GeV - 91.2GeV - a couple of GeV to see the particles = 114.2GeV).

 

But the most powerful linear collider was the SLC at SLAC, which was tuned to the Z mass, 91.2GeV.

 

6) Ok. Dumb question time: Are these protons, actualy 'injected' as via air pressure, or does someone simply press a button to turn a valve and the 'injecti', gets dropped into the ring and then 'carried away'?

Or is the 'injecti' brought up to speed in the SPS, then a valve opens and it's 'swooshed' into the main ring?

The protons start as hydrogen in a cylinder. They are ionized and put in a small accelerator, accelerated a bit and passed into a bigger accelerator and so on until they are passed into the LHC.

 

8) I wonder what the TNG collider will be. If you're correct, and 14TeV (

), is enough to find the Higgs Boson, then why do we need another collider?

To investigate all the other great things we will find with the LHC of course!

[Tsadi]

I bet 100 pounds, twice as much, that the Higgs will not be found.

 

If anyone here is willing to double it, on you go.

[Severian]

I bet 100 pounds, twice as much, that the Higgs will not be found.

 

If anyone here is willing to double it, on you go.

 

You will have to define what you mean by "the Higgs" first.

[insane_alien]

i call one of my friends 'the higgs'(last name higgins, not very imaginative i know but still) i found her ages ago. money please.

[Tsadi]

i call one of my friends 'the higgs'(last name higgins, not very imaginative i know but still) i found her ages ago. money please.

 

 

I don't think so.

 

Also, my bet bases this on definite proof.

 

Throughout the year, we have had quite a few detections of certain particles, such as the mysterious axion -- but there seems to have been a lot of controversy surrounding its possible detection.

 

The Higgs Boson must also have no controversy.

[Severian]

But you still haven't defined what you mean by the Higgs boson. The SM Higs boson? Any spin 0 object which couples proportionately to mass? A fundamental scalar? What?

 

Also, by definite proof, I presume you mean a 5 sigma discovery? But a 5 sigma discovery of what? Is a resonance enough, or do we need to test all the couplings?

[Tsadi]

Where abouts in scotland do you live severian?

[insane_alien]

that doesn't answer his question at all.

[Tsadi]

I do beleive, observing couplings would suffice.