And you thought your hadron was big...?

[Sperge]

The Large Hadron Collider is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to the LHC.*

http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/



On 10 September, the LHC will hurl protons around a giant ring-shaped underground tunnel, 27km in circumference, which is a bit bigger than the Circle Line (22.5km). The ubergeeks who are running this experiment think it'll help answer some of the questions about life, the universe and everything. The particles will then be smashed together 600 million times per second, and the results recorded and observed by four huge underground detectors that look like this:



It's taken 20 years of preparation, 10 billion dollars and has involved more than 10,000 scientists from 70 countries. So let's hope it doesn't all go tits-up, eh? It would be a bit of a shame after waiting an entire shakyjane lifetime and a bit more to push the button.

They're hoping to find the Higgs Boson (Mr Higgs did ask for it at the Lost Property Office but all they could find was some umbrellas, a half-chewed Travelcard and an inflatable woman, used). They also want to rip space open to find new dimensions and maybe create a few mini black holes.

I'll say that again: they want to rip space open to find new dimensions and maybe create a few mini black holes. It's all completely safe, even though it's never been done before. Move along, folks, there's nothing to see...


*apologies to the late Douglas Adams

[leah]

duck and cover!

duck.jpg (98.13 KiB) Viewed 527 times

[Slypsy]

There have been numerous saftey tests and 2 very full on reports due to worries about creating things like black holes by mistake. Someone pointed out in the latest report (it may have also been pointed out eariler, i am not sure) that there are many cosmic rays with greater energies than those which will be produced by CERN colliding with particles of various types at the edge of our atmoshpere and these don't create world destroying blackholes, although there are theories (well more hypotheses i guess) that they do create very little ones which then "rain" down on our planet unnoticed by us.

At least CERN is going to be finished and used. There were plans to make an even bigger one in America and they got to the stage of spending billions of dollars to create a really big fuck of hole/tunnel and then decided to withdraw funding, so now there is just a fucking massive unused hole just sitting there doing nothing, which is what i guess holes do best. What a fucking watse of money that was

[leah]

There were plans to make an even bigger one in America and they got to the stage of spending billions of dollars to create a really big fuck of hole/tunnel and then decided to withdraw funding, so now there is just a fucking massive unused hole just sitting there doing nothing, which is what i guess holes do best. What a fucking watse of money that was

underground dance music festival! surely that wouldn't get any noise complaints...

[shakyjane]

It's taken 20 years of preparation, 10 billion dollars and has involved more than 10,000 scientists from 70 countries. So let's hope it doesn't all go tits-up, eh? It would be a bit of a shame after waiting an entire shakyjane lifetime and a bit more to push the button.

They're all saying that too. They even asked that I come and press the button but I refused and just responded with "WERE ALL GONNAE DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!".

[Dave Skywalker]

"And you thought your hadron was big...?"

Christ, read that the wrong way and this whole thread could have taken an entirely different slant!

[Sperge]

"And you thought your hadron was big...?"

Christ, read that the wrong way and this whole thread could have taken an entirely different slant!

Well, that was the general idea. Hadrons have been causing schoolboy sniggers for decades.

[Sperge]

There were plans to make an even bigger one in America and they got to the stage of spending billions of dollars to create a really big fuck of hole/tunnel and then decided to withdraw funding, so now there is just a fucking massive unused hole just sitting there doing nothing, which is what i guess holes do best. What a fucking watse of money that was

underground dance music festival! surely that wouldn't get any noise complaints...

[Exulus]

Ahhh the "large hadron collider"...ive always thought it was such a bad idea to call it that...one small typo and you could be talking about something VERY different indeed

Now..if the scientists don't find the Higgs Boson they're gonna be screwed pretty much...back to the drawing board for the standard model??

[Dominick Destruction]

wow... that is going to be a whole spectacular heap of fail/waste of cash if that doesn't work or fucks up.
Will be interesting to see what happens when they do put it.

[shakyjane]

i not understanding what the typo would be

[Sperge]

i not understanding what the typo would be

If you transpose two of the letters, it becomes a slang word for an erection, sweetie.

[shakyjane]

oh lol

[Exulus]

i not understanding what the typo would be

If you transpose two of the letters, it becomes a slang word for an erection, sweetie.

It becomes even worse than that if you use it with the words to the left and right though

[megadaisy]

They thoughtfully explain it all in this video..

[bongobil1]

42

[baldmosher]

They thoughtfully explain it all in this video.

Brilliant! I'm singing that chorus in my head now

[tavdy79]

There have been numerous saftey tests and 2 very full on reports due to worries about creating things like black holes by mistake. Someone pointed out in the latest report (it may have also been pointed out eariler, i am not sure) that there are many cosmic rays with greater energies than those which will be produced by CERN colliding with particles of various types at the edge of our atmoshpere and these don't create world destroying blackholes, although there are theories (well more hypotheses i guess) that they do create very little ones which then "rain" down on our planet unnoticed by us.

From what I can remember of the currently understood physics of black holes, those that are under a certain size shrink rather than grow. This is because the rate at which they emit Hawking radiation (a form of thermal radiation believed to be the only thing able to leave black holes) is inversely proportionate to their mass. Since energy and mass are the same thing (E=MC^2) the more Hawking radiation a black hole releases the more mass it loses. Black holes over a certain size replace lost mass through gravitational attraction, however any black hole that can't do this will shrink, and the rate at which it shrinks will accelerate exponentially until it disappears completely. Any black hole that CERN might create would have an incredibly small mass (in astrophysical terms that is) so even if CERN did create a micro black hole there's little chance it would last long enough to be detected. At most you'd get a very brief, very bright flash of gamma radiation and some (extra) heat. Likewise any micro black holes created in our upper atmosphere wouldn't last long enough to actually hit the ground.

Personally, I'm just waiting until a bunch of scientists asks if they can build a collider round the equator.

[Slypsy]

The size of blackholes has nothing to do with whether they shrink or grow. That is all down to whether the amount of mass gained from infalling matter is greater than the amount of mass lost from Hawking radiation (if Hawking radiation exists. Personally, the idea behind it make sense to me, but it is still not "proven"; come to that, neither a blackholes). It is generally accepted that smaller black holes would dissipate faster than larger black holes. However, a black hole that was formed in out atmosphere would have much more infalling matter than one produced in the vacuum of space and so would probably last a lot longer.

Any why build an accelerator around the equator? The best would surely be to put a detector into orbit and some sort of electromagnetic "funnel" to focus the incoming particles and detect what happens when uber high energy particles collide with the atmosphere. They come in at energies we would never be able to produce on Earth and this way would probably be cheaper than building an accelerator which circles the equator.

So, who thinks the LHC is going to find the Higgs then? I hope it does as a deep understanding of the Higgs could be just what we need to allow production of such things as speed of light travel and ideally Speeder Bikes! I mean, it is the 21st century and we still dont have speeder bikes. what the fuck is going on there?

[baldmosher]