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

Because chemists can't top the hydrogen bomb.
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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….

Exploring the standard model of physics without the high-energy collider Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, have performed sophisticated laser measurements to detect the subtle effects of one of nature’s most elusive forces - the “weak interaction” Along with gravity, electromagnetism and the strong interaction that holds protons and neutrons together in the nucleus, the weak interaction is one of the four known fundamental forces. It is the force that allows the radioactive decay of a neutron into a proton - the basis of carbon dating - to occur. However, because it acts over such a short range - about a tenth of a percent the diameter of the proton - it is almost impossible to study its effect without large, high-energy particle accelerators. Theorists had predicted that the weak interaction between an atom’s electrons and its nucleus could be quite large in Ytterbium (element 70 in the periodic table). To actually see this interaction, though, Dmitry Budker and his group at UC Berkeley had to carefully perform delicate measurements based on fundamental quantum mechanical effects and systematically eliminate other spurious signals. The effect Budker and his colleagues see in Ytterbium is about 100 times bigger than what has been seen in Cesium, the atom in which most experiments in this field have been performed so far. The finding of such a large effect in Ytterbium poses an exciting opportunity to use tabletop atomic physics techniques as part of sensitive searches for new physics that complement ongoing efforts at the world’s high-energy colliders.

Exploring the standard model of physics without the high-energy collider

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, have performed sophisticated laser measurements to detect the subtle effects of one of nature’s most elusive forces - the “weak interaction”

Along with gravity, electromagnetism and the strong interaction that holds protons and neutrons together in the nucleus, the weak interaction is one of the four known fundamental forces. It is the force that allows the radioactive decay of a neutron into a proton - the basis of carbon dating - to occur. However, because it acts over such a short range - about a tenth of a percent the diameter of the proton - it is almost impossible to study its effect without large, high-energy particle accelerators. Theorists had predicted that the weak interaction between an atom’s electrons and its nucleus could be quite large in Ytterbium (element 70 in the periodic table). To actually see this interaction, though, Dmitry Budker and his group at UC Berkeley had to carefully perform delicate measurements based on fundamental quantum mechanical effects and systematically eliminate other spurious signals.

The effect Budker and his colleagues see in Ytterbium is about 100 times bigger than what has been seen in Cesium, the atom in which most experiments in this field have been performed so far. The finding of such a large effect in Ytterbium poses an exciting opportunity to use tabletop atomic physics techniques as part of sensitive searches for new physics that complement ongoing efforts at the world’s high-energy colliders.

Simple Explanation for Mysterious Observations

Recently, several astronomical experiments have revealed mysterious components of elementary particles. But up until now, the origin of electrons and positrons is unknown. Is dark matter the actual origin of this radiation, as some physicists speculate?

Now an international team of astrophysicists, including the Bochum junior professor Dr. Julia Becker and the Dortmund physicist Prof. Dr. Dr. Wolfgang Rohde, have found a simple explanation: giant stars, at least fifteen times the mass of our sun, emit elementary particles in a final explosion when they die. The flux of the electrons and positrons calculated on the basis of this theory fits in with the enigmatic signals observed during these astronomical experiments.

40-year-old data tackles very modern physics problem

Looking back at old data allows physicists to place new constraints on physics beyond the standard model and propose a new approach to uncovering evidence of new physics.

The Large Hadron Collider is still going through a painful commissioning process—coming online in time for the winter shutdown is probably not what researchers had in mind when they broke it the first time. So, what is a physicist to do when the shiny toys are still being polished? Sit around at the pub and gossip about old experiments, of course.

One such session has ended with Jorg Jaeckel, from Durham University, taking a new look at 40-year-old data from a classical electrostatics experiment. He found that this data provided the strongest constraints on a particular set of particles so far, thus proving that some experiments age very gracefully indeed.

higgsboson:

Independent Lens: The Atom Smashers

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

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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.

Which Subatomic Particle Are You?

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