Phuck Yeah Physics
Because chemists can't top the hydrogen bomb.

Because chemists can't top the hydrogen bomb.
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  • macmankev
Where Do Old Colliders Go to Die? The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) got off to a famously troubled start last year as an electrical failure hobbled its launch. But a reboot is scheduled for this summer, and once the kinks are worked out, the LHC will finally earn the title of the world’s most powerful accelerator. Seven times more energetic than its predecessor, Fermilab’s Tevatron, this synchrotron will peer back in time to conditions that existed a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. With the LHC’s ascendancy also comes a seismic shift in the pecking order of particle physics as once-great colliders suddenly become also-rans…. Even when particle accelerators die (or get decommissioned), their internal organs can see a second life. Peer institutions or ongoing projects gather round and pick over the remains. Tevatron’s 770 or so dipole magnets, for instance, will stay in place for several years in case another use for them arises, perhaps even in future accelerators…. Some parts, though, never make it out of the accelerator site. Hazardous material may be stored for the eons, while other components may be left in place for lack of another purpose. The Stanford Linear Collider at SLAC sits in the same tunnel it occupied when it was shut down a decade ago, posing an increasing challenge as the people who built it become less and less available to take it apart knowledgeably. Disassembly requires considerable planning and informed decision making….

Where Do Old Colliders Go to Die?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) got off to a famously troubled start last year as an electrical failure hobbled its launch. But a reboot is scheduled for this summer, and once the kinks are worked out, the LHC will finally earn the title of the world’s most powerful accelerator. Seven times more energetic than its predecessor, Fermilab’s Tevatron, this synchrotron will peer back in time to conditions that existed a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. With the LHC’s ascendancy also comes a seismic shift in the pecking order of particle physics as once-great colliders suddenly become also-rans….

Even when particle accelerators die (or get decommissioned), their internal organs can see a second life. Peer institutions or ongoing projects gather round and pick over the remains. Tevatron’s 770 or so dipole magnets, for instance, will stay in place for several years in case another use for them arises, perhaps even in future accelerators….

Some parts, though, never make it out of the accelerator site. Hazardous material may be stored for the eons, while other components may be left in place for lack of another purpose. The Stanford Linear Collider at SLAC sits in the same tunnel it occupied when it was shut down a decade ago, posing an increasing challenge as the people who built it become less and less available to take it apart knowledgeably. Disassembly requires considerable planning and informed decision making….

higgsboson:

Independent Lens: The Atom Smashers

“Atom Smashers” examines 15 months at Fermilab as it scours the subatomic world for the Higgs boson particle.

Why Don’t We Know When the LHC Will Restart?

We’re all waiting for the LHC to restart. Current plans call for collisions later this year, but at lower energies than originally hoped.

Why is it so hard to say for sure? Here’s a nice article in the CERN Bulletin that lays out some of the difficulties.

Due to the huge amount of inter-dependency between different areas of work in the LHC, even a small change can necessitate a complete overhaul of the schedule. For example, something as simple as cleaning a water cooling tower - required regularly by Swiss law to prevent Legionella - has a huge impact on the planning: “When you clean the water tanks it means we don’t have water-cooling for the compressors, that means we can’t run the cryogenics, so the temperature starts to go up,” explains Myers. “If a sector gets above 100 K, then the expansion effects of heating can cause problems, and we could have to replace parts.”

That may be cold comfort (get it? cold comfort!), but it’s the real world. I have no strong opinions about the job CERN is doing, except to recognize that this is the most complicated machine ever built, so patience is probably called for. The particles and interactions are going to be the same next year as they were last year. (Or if they’re not, that would be even more interesting.)

A twenty-seven kilometer film

higgsboson:

For the past two weeks, Bram Conjaerts, a Belgian filmmaker, has been touring the CERN sites and surrounding countryside conducting research for his new documentary. The film will follow the entire 27 km length of the LHC ring, but unlike most documentaries about the LHC, it will take place mostly above ground!

While working towards his film degree in 2008, Bram Conjaerts won an award at the International Documentary Festival for his documentary “Henri and the Islands”, an anthropological documentary about the smallest village in Belgium. In an unlikely change of subject matter he decided to use the prize money to make a film about the LHC.

“With the money granted by the Flemish government, I wanted to create a documentary about something adventurous and something that I did not know about, ” explains Conjaerts. “I started doing research about the LHC and CERN and I came across the fantasy of black holes and all the conspiracies revolving around CERN.”

However, the proposed documentary will not focus on black holes. Conjaerts plans on taking a tour of the countryside under which the LHC ring is laid, in order to gain perspectives from those who inhabit the local surroundings. “We will follow the path of the ring above ground. So we’ll interview scientists, but also meet locals who have formed their own opinions about what is going on at CERN,” says Conjaerts. “We might also meet the priests of churches on the route, who have special ideas about religion and science. And also the Chateau Voltaire is near the top of the ring, so there are ideas about incorporating philosophical perspectives of science and the history of the chateau.”

Conjaerts, who is only beginning his career as a filmmaker, will be conducting research for three weeks before starting preliminary filming in September. The rest of the filming will be completed before December 2010.

High-Energy Particle Physics Demystified | Wired Science

With the Large Hadron Collider set to start up in November, a new book takes you inside the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.

Physicist Paul Halpern explores the past, present and intriguing future of high-energy particle physics in Collider. He explains what all the hubbub surrounding the LHC is about and why physicists are pretty much beside themselves with anticipation.

Wired.com spoke with Halpern about what the LHC may find and how the United States failed in its quest for its own giant collider.

higgsboson:

ATLAS Built in One Minute (via TheATLASExperiment)

Hyperdrive Propulsion Could Be Tested at the Large Hadron Collider

LHC to Finally Start Next Week, Again

CERN is reporting that the Large Hadron Collider could circulate particle beams through both of its pipes in just over a week. If all goes well, the first collisions would begin soon after that.

Large Hadron Collider | Cracked.com The Large Hadron Collider, built and mantained by the multiational laboratory CERN (which somehow stands for European Organization for Nuclear Research) is a “high-energy particle accelerator” that “collides opposing particle beams” of “protons” or “lead” “nuclei” at “99%” the “speed” “of” “light”. Ok, what. We here at Cracked are not, in fact, a team of thousands of brilliant scientists, so we requested the help of renowned physicist Remington Binary to break the LHC down in simpler terms for us to understand. According to his official definition, the Large Hadron Collider “isolates individual particles, like protons or electrons, accelerates them at almost the speed of light and smashes them together so we can observe theoretical super-tiny particles that result from the annihilation.” … Then we consulted our cousin’s cool friend, who told us that the Large Hadron Colliders makes huge explosions out of tiny things and has the possibility to create black holes. Fuck yes. He provied this helpful diagram so we could digest these extremely advanced particle theories more easily. It’s basically like when you were a kid, how you put Hot Wheels cars on the track and watched them crash into each other Except this time it shoots pure particles, costs billions of dollars, is miles long, and theoretically has the capability to end the world Whoa, dude

Large Hadron Collider | Cracked.com

The Large Hadron Collider, built and mantained by the multiational laboratory CERN (which somehow stands for European Organization for Nuclear Research) is a “high-energy particle accelerator” that “collides opposing particle beams” of “protons” or “lead” “nuclei” at “99%” the “speed” “of” “light”.

Ok, what. We here at Cracked are not, in fact, a team of thousands of brilliant scientists, so we requested the help of renowned physicist Remington Binary to break the LHC down in simpler terms for us to understand. According to his official definition, the Large Hadron Collider “isolates individual particles, like protons or electrons, accelerates them at almost the speed of light and smashes them together so we can observe theoretical super-tiny particles that result from the annihilation.”

…

Then we consulted our cousin’s cool friend, who told us that the Large Hadron Colliders makes huge explosions out of tiny things and has the possibility to create black holes. Fuck yes. He provied this helpful diagram so we could digest these extremely advanced particle theories more easily.

  1. It’s basically like when you were a kid, how you put Hot Wheels cars on the track and watched them crash into each other
  2. Except this time it shoots pure particles, costs billions of dollars, is miles long, and theoretically has the capability to end the world
  3. Whoa, dude
roomthily: A Blast at Last at Particle Collider - NYTimes.com

roomthily:

A Blast at Last at Particle Collider - NYTimes.com