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LHC Flips On Tomorrow
Posted by
Soulskill
on Tue Sep 09, 2008 05:07 PM
from the nice-knowing-you-all dept.
from the nice-knowing-you-all dept.
BTJunkie writes "The Large Hadron Collider, the worlds most expensive science experiment, is set to be turned on tomorrow. We've discussed this multiple times already. A small group of people believe our world will be sucked into extinction (some have even sent death threats). The majority of us, however, won't be losing any sleep tonight."
Reader WillRobinson notes that CERN researchers declared the final synchronization test a success and says, "The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made this Wednesday, Sept. 10 at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV). The start up time will be between (9:00 to 18:00 Zurich Time) (2:00 to 10:00 CDT) with live webcasts provided at webcast.cern.ch."
Related Stories
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News: Why the LHC Won't Destroy the World 508 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Most people are aware of the recent articles contending that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN might destroy the world. While most scientists have no such concerns, a recent preprint released to arxiv systematically dismantles the notion. The gist of the argument is this: Everything that will be created at the LHC is already being created by cosmic rays. If a black hole created by the LHC is interactive enough to destroy the world within the lifetime of the sun, similar black holes are already being created by cosmic rays. Such black holes would be stopped by dense cosmic objects (neutron stars and white dwarfs). A black hole stopped in one of these objects would eventually absorb it. We see sufficiently old neutron stars in the sky, thus any black hole that could be created at the LHC, even if it is stable, would have no effect on the earth on any meaningful timescale."
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Large Hadron Collider Goes Live September 10th 409 comments
Naznarreb writes "CERN announced today that the first attempt to circulate a beam through the Large Hadron Collider will be on September 10th, 2008. You can read the press release here. They also announced the event will be webcast live. According to the release, they're just planning to run a few tests laps, not smash any particles, so the world won't be ending quite yet." And despite that September 10th date, according to the BBC, "On 9 August, protons will be piped through LHC magnets for the first time."
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Idle: Physics Nerds Rap About the LHC 91 comments
Engadget has pointed out a small band of people even we can consider nerdy that decided to cut loose and demo CERN's fancy new toy, the Large Hadron Collider. The resulting music video is certainly enough to "rock you in the head," and maybe even enough to cause a rip in space-time. Between Alpinekat and Dr Spatzo, I think my iPod just got a new entry.
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LHC Fully Documented Online 239 comments
Physicser writes "Want to read every single technical detail of the design and construction of the Large Hadron Collider and its six detectors? The whole shebang — seven reports totaling 1600 pages, 115 MB, with contributions from 8000 scientists and engineers — has been published electronically by the Journal of Instrumentation, free to read without a subscription."
Submission: LHC Flips on Tomorrow by Anonymous Coward
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Large Hadron Collider Struggling 371 comments
Writing in the NY Times, Dennis Overbye covers the birthing pangs and the prospects for CERN's Large Hadron Collider (which we have discussed numerous times). "The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections. [And] many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies. Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine [Fermilab's Tevatron] across the ocean. ... Technicians have spent most of the last year cleaning up and inspecting thousands of splices in the collider. About 5,000 will have to be redone... Retraining magnets is costly and time consuming, experts say, and it might not be worth the wait to get all the way to the original target energy [of 7 TeV]. Many physicists say they would be perfectly happy if the collider never got above five trillion electron volts. Dr. Myers said he thought the splices as they are could handle 4 [TeV]. 'We could be doing physics at the end of November,' he said in July, before new vacuum leaks pushed the schedule back a few additional weeks. 'It's not the design energy of the machine, but it's 4 times higher than the Tevatron,' he said."
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Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
Correct. No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow.
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Informative)
No boom tomorrow either:
"First beam circulated" != "First collisions"
Also, beam will be circulated at injection energy (450GeV) and not accelerated to the design collision energy. Even if they did circulate beam in both directions *and collide them* (a separate activity) the total energy of collision would still be less that half of what the tevatron at Fermilab, USA, has been doing for many years. If *that* were a problem we'd already be
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
If *that* were a problem we'd already be
Oh crap, it was a problem!
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Interesting)
No boom tomorrow either:
"First beam circulated" != "First collisions"
I duno, when the beam needs a Dump Block [ieee.org] consisting of an 8M long, 10ton graphite rod encased in 1000 tons of concrete, and even then has to be directed around in a pattern to keep from burning through it because it is "capable of melting a 500-kilogram block of copper," Id say boom possible, but not likely. I just wouldnt want to be in the tunnels with something like that racing around held in place by magnets, if one nearby turns off, BOOM you either turn into the incredible hulk, get zapped off to another world [wikipedia.org] or simply vaporized like that 500kg block of copper.
tm
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod the above as +10 Informative since most news outlets completely missed this point in their coverage.
The *actual* doomsday will occur when the first collisions occur in one to two months. [uslhc.us]
Much cooler than a black hole would be Death By Strangelet [wikipedia.org]
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Re:I think we should ask reader WillRobinson (Score:5, Funny)
Did you see my robot flailing its arms around? Was it screaming danger! danger!?
No not yet as noted above on the amount of energy used. Ill be sure to let ya know when its necessary.
As reported by CERN [web.cern.ch] announced the success of the second and final test of the Large Hadron Collider's beam synchronization systems which will allow the LHC operations team to inject the first beam into the LHC.
Some very cool pictures there too. Now what they mean, is a bit beyond my skills.
Now if I could just get that LHC song [slashdot.org] out of my head ...
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
The guy in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt1Yo610lG0 [youtube.com] explains it all.
Yes, it is a STARGATE TO HELL ! Doom fans, rejoice ! Happy ! Happy !
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Informative)
wikipedia is wrong or was edited for hilarity. in the books, it's actually "big mistake of '38"
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
I like Terry Pratchett's take on this sort of 'low risk' experiment (from 'The Science of Discworld'):
"Well ... in the unlikely event of it going seriously wrong, it ... wouldn't just blow up the university, sir."
"What would it blow up, pray?"
"Er ... everything, sir."
"Everything there is, you mean?"
"Within a radius of about fifty thousand miles out into space, sir, yes. According to Hex it'd happen instantaneously. We wouldn't even know about it."
"And the odds of this are...?"
"About fifty to one, sir."
The wizards relaxed.
"That's pretty safe. I wouldn't bet on a horse at those odds," said the Senior Wrangler.
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
I kind of like this LHC doom.
It's not the kind of doom where people tell you the best thing you can do about it is to buy MREs, take a gun out into the mountains, bug out and prepare to defend your MREs from hungry zombies for the next six months.
Personally, I think the best response is probably PANIC SEX!!!
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
Big ba-da-boom
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Informative)
One of the main fearmongers concerning the LHC is Otto Rossler. He's a 68-year-old biochemist whose initial career was respected and conventional, but in recent years has veered into promoting his own "Theory of Everything" that contradicts the Theory of Relativity. According to Rossler, (a) Hawking radiation doesn't exist, and (b) microscopic black holes created by cosmic rays are moving so fast that they pass right through the earth, whereas LHC black holes will be trapped by earth's gravity and destroy the planet.
What's really happening is that Rossler and others like him are using the LHC as a soapbox to promote their particular brands of pseudoscience. From what I've read, any debate with Rossler quickly leads to him promoting his own pet theories, rather than any rational examination of the risks.
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microscopic black holes would evaporate in a very small amount of time due to Hawking radiation..
Are you willing to gamble the existence of the universe on that untested hypothesis? Yes?
By the way, every biology article gets tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong?" An article showing that artificial DNA self-associates was tagged that. No chance of killer viruses from that, yet it got the tag. Here we have a scientific study with some people actually claiming it will end the earth. They may be idiots, but people who worry about DNA strands creating vampires like in I am legend are just as idiotic. What gives?
I personally say it's only because no movies have yet taken the idea of LHC and mangled it into nonsense to use as a plot device the way they've used killer artificial viruses. And that's probably only because "complete oblitheration of the world" is a pretty boring plot.
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Interesting)
First, we actually have to be in the right range to create the black holes. This is very, very unlikely - it requires large extra dimensions, something allowed for but not expected in theory.
Then there's Hawking radiation. While there's no reason to believe it doesn't exist (and several to believe it does), it hasn't been experimentally verified. If it doesn't exist, or if a black hole radiates much slower than expected, any created holes could survive long enough to actually absorb more matter.
This [arxiv.org] PDF has the interesting math behind all of this.
Note: No, I'm not even saying they're right. I'm simply stating what their argument is for it. There's a lot of problems with those arguments, and I'm on the "destroy the world? Yeah, right?" side. I'm actually having an LHC get-together tomorrow night, and plan to have an Mad Scientist "End of the World" party on October 21, when they're having the first high-energy collisions.
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
Only if the LHC is propelling cats.
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
With any luck these tests will finally let Schrodinger's cat rest in peace. Never again having to exist in the zombirific dead and alive state.
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Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet. (Score:5, Funny)
With the speeds involved I think it's safe to say it will exist as a thin film of... cat. 27km long.
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Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone out of the universe... QUICK!
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
Reader WillRobinson notes.. 450 GeV (0.45 TeV) .. Zurich .. live webcasts ..
Someone should inform him of the DANGER!
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Death threats (Score:5, Funny)
Why would you send death threats to someone you think is going to destroy the world? If he was afraid of dying, he wouldn't be destroying the world, right?
Re:Death threats (Score:5, Funny)
No kidding. We should be saving our death threats for where they matter: idle.slashdot.org.
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Re:Death threats (Score:5, Insightful)
Insightful?
Logical fallacy is fallacious.
A threatens B because A believes B's experiments will destroy the world. B believes this is not the case.
There is no indication that B does not fear death.
B most likely falls in line with the general stance on death - B probably doesn't want to die.
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End Of The World Party (Score:5, Funny)
Re:End Of The World Party (Score:5, Funny)
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Only in a single direction (Score:5, Informative)
They will be only sending a beam around the LHC in a single direction at about 7% power. It will be about a month before they send a beam in the other direction and have a collision. I think it is about a year before they will be up to full power.
It's going to be OK they said (Score:5, Funny)
No possibility of a resonance cascade they said. Put the crystal thing into the spectrometer they said. The whole thing blew up my place of employment and I started Unforeseen Consequences with nothing but a crowbar for a while.
Moral: Keep your crowbars close and your guns closer and don't trust the scientists.
Re:It's going to be OK they said (Score:5, Funny)
You say that as a joke, but it may be more likely than you think [kuvaton.com].
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Come on scientists, seriously... (Score:5, Funny)
You guys can't blow up the Earth! It's where I keep all my stuff!
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warping reality already (Score:5, Funny)
The weirdness has already begun if 9:00 to 18:00 Zurich Time is 2:00 to 10:00 CDT.
IMPENDING DOOM!! (Score:5, Funny)
Time to get to work... (Score:5, Funny)
I need to hurry up and finish work on my black-hole shelter...
the world is not going to end (Score:5, Funny)
I owe far too much money for that to ever happen.
0.45 TeV (Score:5, Funny)
Shouldn't that be 0.439 TeV? (450 GeV / 1024)
Explains the silence, they all did it before... (Score:5, Funny)
Remember what we were taught? (Score:5, Funny)
Back in the old days of the cold war, in the schools,for preparation of a nuclear bomb falling, we would get under our desks because they are obviously made of some kind of material that can withstand radiation and a giant percussion wave. I'll bet those desks can withstand the LHC black hole too. Only school children and teachers will be left.
Re:Remember what we were taught? (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't miss the joke -- I LOL'ed, I promise -- but speaking as a CERT instructor [citizencorps.gov]: you were told to get under your desks not to protect against a blast near enough to cause vaporization, but to protect against a possible collapse of a building damaged by an otherwise-non-lethal pressure wave. Yes of course if the bomb detonates right above you, you're toast, and if the bomb detonates far enough away that the pressure wave can't cause building damage then you're cowering under your desk for nothing. For the huge chunk of distance-from-ground-zero in between those two extremes, though, your chance of surviving a building collapse is much greater if you have a personal void to hide inside -- like the area under a desk. That's why your 'nuclear bomb drill' and your 'tornado drill' are so similar: you are increasing your odds of survival, being successfully located and extracted by search and rescue teams, in the event that part of your building collapses.
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Re:Remember what we were taught? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, it could. It could also be argued that the aim was to prepare future interns for service under the desk of Bill Clinton.
Just because an argument COULD be made, doesn't mean it should. If you truly think that your suggestion is a rational one, I'm willing to bet you'd feel right at home with those weirdos from ANSWER.
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Let's make another bang (Score:5, Funny)
More likely it will punch a hole in the (Score:5, Funny)
You'll know it too. You'll wake up one day with a Black President or with an old geezer and a MILF for a VP.
Then, and only then, will I worry!
For Sydney Slashdotters (Score:5, Informative)
Doctors Karl Kruszelnicki and Kevin Varvell are giving an LHC lecture [usyd.edu.au] at the University of Sydney tonight. 7pm at the Footbridge Theatre. Varvell is a contributor to the ATLAS detector. Kruszelnicki is always fun. It includes a live cross to CERN. The lecture was to be in the school of Physics but has had to be transferred to a larger venue due to popular demand.
Radio 4 coverage in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
For some reason, the BBC are making a big thing of this, and providing a lot of coverage and related programmes on the Radio 4 station.
The BBC provide a listen again service for those of you who are distant but interested. Check out the programmes here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/ [bbc.co.uk]
Assuming that the world isn't swallowed up by a black hole from the experiment, that is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15risk.html [nytimes.com]
Regular status updates can be found here: (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry... (Score:5, Funny)
LHC has all the latest safety systems... in the event of an actual black hole or strangelet event...
they simply full the lever and hit the button!! [isv.uu.se]
It says.. "Black Hole/Stranglet CRASH button - In case of imminent world destruction, break glass and press CMS ABORT button"
(Yes, that's really in the LHC control room LOL)
Re:Wasn't this already covered by Ghostbusters? (Score:5, Informative)
Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
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