Large Hadron Collider

[trekkor]

Originally Posted by Jim Richards

It's because we're not communicating. Communication requires talking (typing), listening (reading), and thinking/understanding.

So what you're saying is we could have saved these billions of dollars ourselves by having you and I stand 100 feet apart, run towards each other and butt heads under an overpass and look for the Higgs?



KT

[kstar]

Nature has a really good section with multiple stories for those of you genuinely curious folk:

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/lhc/index.html

[Jim Richards]

Reading and understanding...

Now, this seems like it would be easy to check, right? Maybe the Higgs bozon is postulated to have (make up numbers here) a weight of 40 pounds. Calculations show that you need a 20 mile circumference accelerator to get that energy. However, we only have a 17 mile unit. Basic atomic physics says that we will never see the Higgs.

However! Quantum Mechanics now steps in. It says that the energy/mass correlation can FLUCTUATE. You can give 35 pounds of accelerator energy, and it'll steal 5 pounds from the space-time fabric, and make that 40 pound Higg's bozon with your 17 mile accelerator...SOMETIMES. The more energy it needs to steal, the less likely it is, and the faster that particle disintegrates back into 35 pounds of energy and pays back the 5 pounds borrowed.

Mike was giving you a hypothetical example to explain the whole process. It's always going to be a tradeoff between cost, size, energy requirements, and performance.

[dd74]

Originally Posted by trekkor

If they went to all the trouble to build this thing, why did they make it too small.
What's a few more billion?

Or are they already planning a VLHC?


KT

Mike said Quantum Mechanics compensates for the length of the tunnel. Or at least, that's what I think he said.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by dd74

Is the Higgs bozon black matter?
How exactly will the scientists know it when it occurs?
How many times will the scientists run these tests before they achieve their desired results? Or, if not, will there come a time when they'll just give up and call it a day?

Part of the issue is that we don't know how "big" the Higg's is. The Standard Model doesn't give exact values for particles that are several rungs up the ladder from what we've seen. It gives a range of mass. WE also don't want to make TOO big of a collider, because then it will preferentially make the giant particles, and not the slightly smaller ones we're interested (strange and beauty quarks, etc). It's not just there to find the Higg's, they have (probably) dozens of other experiments going on simultaneously looking for other data.


Is it dark matter? Well, yes, in a way, but so are you Dark Matter is anything that doesn't give off radiation itself. That would be just about everything in the universe except for fusion driven stars.

Dark ENERGY? That, we don't know. The Higg's was postulated to be the force carrier of mass long before Dark Energy (Quinessence) was "rediscovered". They could be related, or they could be the opposites of each other (think electron/positron).

IROC can give a better idea, but they'll run that ring until they run out of money. The older rings are still cooking along, it's relatively easy to upgrade them. If they expect the Higg's at 40 pounds, and they don't find it (even if they know they should have), then they don't assume that it's a failure, they assume that it's at 41 pounds, or the theories need some tweaking (sometimes input data isn't accurate enough...think of that hurricane in the Gulf right now).

[trekkor]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Interestingly enough, if you were to rewrite that paragraph and replace "scientist" with "Jehovah's Witness" it would work just as well

Noted... And appreciated.


KT

[Mike Bonkalski]

Originally Posted by trekkor

If they went to all the trouble to build this thing, why did they make it too small.
What's a few more billion?

Or are they already planning a VLHC?


KT

Yep! Its called the International Linear Collider (ILC) and it will build upon what is found at the LHC.

Fermilab is one of the possible locations for the machine.

http://www.linearcollider.org/cms/

[dd74]

Mike - who or from where did the Standard Model originate? And is it continually being re-tweaked?

I mean, I think for experiments like this, one would have to have a baseline of what occurred split-moments after the Big Bang. Is this what the Standard Model theorizes?

[dd74]

Originally Posted by kstarnes

Nature has a really good section with multiple stories for those of you genuinely curious folk:

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/lhc/index.html

Great stuff! Thanks...

[IROC]

Originally Posted by dd74

Mike - is that an accelerator or collider (or is an accelerator and collider the same thing)?
Does it make a noise when operating?

Our facility has a linear accelerator (linac) that creates a proton beam and then sends the beam into a ring where it is "chopped" into pulses and then the pulses are slammed into a liquid mercury target (about 20 tons of mercury) to produce neutrons. We use the neutrons for material and physics research. So...technically an accelerator only does the accelerating where a collider uses accelerators to generate beams to smash into each other. Our accelerator is only capable of about 1 GeV, but there are ways to increase that. LHC is on the TeV scale. Much larger energies, but then again, their beam is much smaller than ours.

IIRC, the tunnel that the LHC is constructed in was built for something else and the LHC simply utilized it because it was already there. Building a bigger one would have been nice, but everything comes with a price.

[trekkor]

Originally Posted by sjf911

You clearly do not understand science and the scientific method.

Just because you chant that over and over to yourself doesn't make it true.




KT

[IROC]

Saw this and had to laugh:

Large Hadron Collider 'destroys God by accident' < plain > 09/10 08:55:55


GENEVA (AP) – Concerns that the Large Hadron Collider might destroy the Earth proved unfounded on Wednesday, but scientists warned that they may have instead accidentally destroyed God shortly after powering up the machine.

Detectors in the $10 billion machine recorded a massive outburst of Higgs bosons, nicknamed the "God particle" about 3 seconds into the first experiment. Scientists speculate that God may have accidentally strayed into the high-powered beam of photons the collider generates, and been disintegrated.

"We detected so many Higgs bosons in such a short space of time, there's little chance God could have survived," said Dr Tara Sheers, a particle physicist from the University of Manchester.
Despite the unexpected results from the collider's first day of operations, the public should not be concerned over the safety of the machine, said Professor Jim Vordee, a particle physicist at Imperial College London.

Moreover, today's accident should not greatly impact the world's major religions, he said.
"From the results of today's experiment, we can conclude that while God probably did exist, He probably doesn't now.

"Theologically speaking, this is much the same position we were in on Tuesday."

Officials at the organization that operates collider - the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known by its French acronym Cern – have yet to make a statement on God's probable destruction.
However, Steve Myars, head of the accelerator and beam department at Cern, said some sort of letter of apology and condolences to the leaders of the world's major religions might be in order.

"We really didn't mean to 'do a Nietzsche' as it were, and kill God, but then again, God's been dead for over three hours now, and things still seem to be going on pretty much as usual in the universe.

"God may have been destroyed, but it's not the end of the world."

[trekkor]

their beam is much smaller than ours.

Sounds familiar...


I couldn't resist.


KT

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by dd74

Mike - who or from where did the Standard Model originate? And is it continually being re-tweaked?

I mean, I think for experiments like this, one would have to have a baseline of what occurred split-moments after the Big Bang. Is this what the Standard Model theorizes?

Murray Gell-Mann (a bada$$ of epic proportions) was an American physicist who realized that the particle "zoo" had gone out of control in the 1960s. They were finding new things, and adding them into the list indiscriminately. The Zoo had become loaded with hundreds of particles, and any symmetry was disappearing. One thing that scientists like about the Universe is symmetry and simplicity.

He realized that by understanding the particles at a deeper level (quarks) that many of these apparently different things were actually the same particle (or close brothers), being "viewed" different ways. His Eightfold Way was a new way to structure the Zoo, and brought a huge amount of symmetry to it. It also (for the first time) allowed them to look higher up the ladder, and start predicting new particles based on this symmetry. This was done with the Omega Baryon, and was the first time that particle physics had predicted a particle (Quantum did it back in the '30s when Dirac predicted the positron).

The Standard Model is this new symmetric Zoo.

as for the Big Bang...we can use "standard" physics to turn the clock back quite a ways (gravity, electromagnetism, etc). however, when the energy levels of the Universe were quite high, those theories start to collapse. The error ranges explode, the force equations diverge, and things get weird. By forcing high energy conditions in colliders, we hope to get a glimpse of some of the environment at an energy level higher than we can currently calculate. By doing this, we hope to get a beacon where we can try to get the standard physics to point as we get closer to the Big Bang.

[trekkor]

Originally Posted by kstarnes

Nature has a really good section with multiple stories for those of you genuinely curious folk:

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/lhc/index.html

Looks like a lot of interesting material. Thanks for the link.


KT

[Aurel]

So, what happens when a hardon collides with a black hole?? The big bang? Makes physical sense...

Aurel

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Aurel

So, what happens when a hardon collides with a black hole?? The big bang? Makes physical sense...

Aurel

Your avatar hates you now...

[Jim Richards]

What color are Higgs bosons supposed to be? Do they spin, and if so, in which direction?

[Aurel]

Originally Posted by trekkor

Looks like a lot of interesting material. Thanks for the link.


KT

Well, I can see one of the physicists already gave himself the God look...I hope that`ll help him recreate the universe!


Aurel

[dd74]

Originally Posted by Aurel

So, what happens when a hardon collides with a black hole?? The big bang? Makes physical sense...

Aurel

Okay, I finally get it. LOL! (I'm a bit slow this morning from staying up, thinking about this thread...)