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LHC Fully Documented Online

Posted by kdawson on Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:51 PM
from the twenty-seven-kilometers-of-documentation dept.
The Internet Science
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."
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Submission: LHC Fully Documented Online by Physicser (1104279)
[+] LHC Flips On Tomorrow 526 comments
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."
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  • Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2008, @10:55PM (#24747081)

    Not particularly.

  • PR0N! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Brain_Recall (868040) <brain_recall@NosPam.yahoo.com> on Monday August 25 2008, @10:58PM (#24747091)
    Nerd porn at its finest.

    This is something to download, store away, and reminisce some 30 years later.

  • I would but.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by east coast (590680) on Monday August 25 2008, @10:59PM (#24747101)
    It would be a great read if I was one of the ten people on the face of the planet who could actually understand every detail. Oh, sorry, that's the people who wrote it.

    I know it's going to get downloaded a ton of times and probably deleted before most readers ever get to the 3rd page, if it's even read at all.

    Save them poor guys some bandwidth, torrent it. Too many people are going to be wasting their resources with no serious intentions of reading the contents.

    • Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kesuki (321456) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:11PM (#24747223) Journal

      well, they have the abstracts... you don't have to download the whole thing... but having read one abstract, i'm lost in the technical jargon, that large particle collider scientists write about without hesitation.

      "Abstract. The TOTEM Experiment will measure the total pp cross-section with the luminosity-independent method and study elastic and diffractive scattering at the LHC. To achieve optimum forward coverage for charged particles emitted by the pp collisions in the interaction point IP5, two tracking telescopes, T1 and T2, will be installed on each side in the pseudorapidity region 3.1 || 6.5, and Roman Pot stations will be placed at distances of ±147 m and ±220 m from IP5. Being an independent experiment but technically integrated into CMS, TOTEM will first operate in standalone mode to pursue its own physics programme and at a later stage together with CMS for a common physics programme. This article gives a description of the TOTEM apparatus and its performance."

      • Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Matt Edd (884107) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:31PM (#24747379)
        People should keep this kinda stuff in mind when bashing scientists (like intelligent design supporters, anti-vaccination people, and other alternative medicine supporters.) The experts in a field really are experts. The argument from authority fallacy only applies to people talking outside of their field.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by polar red (215081)

          or climate scientists ?

          • Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Tuesday August 26 2008, @10:00AM (#24751459) Homepage Journal

            If Richard Feynman himself showed up and told me something crazy about theoretical physics, I'd be like, "you fool, that's crazy."

            From what I've studied, everything in theoretical physics is crazy.

            Perhaps I misunderstood you.

            I think you're conflating issues. When you're in a field, it's your job to question everything the other experts in the field claim, especially when the claims are dramatic or unexpected. When you're not in a field and want to know something about it, then it's perfectly OK to use experts analysis as a baseline for further study.

            It's not OK to dismiss all the experts in that field as crackpots just because you don't understand what they're saying. For instance, if Feynman showed up and told me that there are charm quarks, then I'd be unjustified in dismissing him. That's what ID and anti-vaccine folks do all the time: reject all authority they disagree with. Call it "appeal to anti-authority".

      • Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Maelwryth (982896) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @12:48AM (#24747879)
        I found the abstract perfectly understandable. All you have to do is translate from english to greek and then greek to english. This gives you a very clear discription in laymans terms.

        Summary. The experience of Totem will measure the intersection of pp completed by the method of brightness and independent study and the rubber band diffractive dispersing the LHC. To fulfill the best possible coverage for advanced charged particles issued by conflicts pp mutual action show télescopes IP5, two of pistage, T1 and T2, will be installed on each side of the region of pseudofastness 3,1 | | 6,5 and Roman stations Pot will be at a distance of 147 meters ±

      • Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by moosesocks (264553) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @01:01AM (#24747941) Homepage

        This is interesting, because this is exactly the sort of thing that Tim Berners Lee sought to avoid when he envisioned the semantic web.

        These papers and abstracts should be properly hyperlinked to other papers (or even a google search) to properly define what many of these terms mean. A lot of the jargon seems specific to either accelerator science, or even just the LHC.

        I am a physicist who has worked on accelerator applications, and could only barely understand that abstract. It's very poorly written, and makes a far too extensive use of very specific jargon/acronyms to be comprehensible to even a physicist that happens to not be affiliated with the LHC.

        Even an undergraduate should know better than to write an abstract like that. The general incomprehensibility, the use of extremely specific and unnecessary information ("±147 m and ±220 m from IP5") would be perfectly sufficient justification for a failing grade.

        I'm truly ashamed of my colleagues for writing this.

        • Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Gromius (677157) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @02:01AM (#24748223)
          I understand every word. Any experimental particle physicist does. I will conceed its not clearn to non-experts.

          However an important feature of a luminosity and diffractive phyics detector such as TOTEM is its coverage, ie at what angle it can go to. Therefor its pseudorapidy range (basically the angle it covers from the beam line) and the distances of the roman pots from CMS (and effecting the angular coverage of this part of the detector) are key peices of information. This is perhaps the most important thing to know about TOTEM.

        • I am not in TOTEM (other side of the ring) but I understand the abstract just fine and consider it an immensely valuable contribution to the physics programme of the LHC.

          These weren't written to be read end to end by the layman. They were meant as reference publications for professionals. I don't know how I would have gotten through my ph.d. without publications like these. Where else do I get the exact layout of the ATLAS semi-conductor tracker? Where else do I look for the muon momentum resolution of CMS vs. ATLAS? I am sorry if you think that renders them incomprehensible but this is what we need.

      • Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by jabernathy (1152921) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @01:47AM (#24748147)

        "Abstract. The TOTEM Experiment will measure the total pp cross-section with the luminosity-independent method and study elastic and diffractive scattering at the LHC. To achieve optimum forward coverage for charged particles emitted by the pp collisions in the interaction point IP5, two tracking telescopes, T1 and T2, will be installed on each side in the pseudorapidity region 3.1 || 6.5, and Roman Pot stations will be placed at distances of ±147 m and ±220 m from IP5. Being an independent experiment but technically integrated into CMS, TOTEM will first operate in standalone mode to pursue its own physics programme and at a later stage together with CMS for a common physics programme. This article gives a description of the TOTEM apparatus and its performance."

        The TOTEM experiment will measure the total pp (proton-proton) cross-section (probability of collision) with the luminosity-independent method (does not depend on the amount of incoming particles) and study elastic and diffractive scattering (particle and wave scattering) at the LHC. To achieve optimum forward (close to the beam-pipe) coverage for charged particles emitted by the pp collision in the interaction point (where the beams cross) IP5, two tracking telescopes (planes of silicon or something that can detect charge particles), (named) T1 and T2, will be installed on each side in the pseudorapidity (the angle above the beampipe) region 3.1 (~5 degrees) || 6.5 (1 degree), and Roman Pot stations (to measure the luminosity) will be placed at distances of +- 147m and +-220m from IP5 (those distances from where the particles collide). Being an independent experiment but technically integrated into CMS (the Compact Muon Spectrometer), TOTEM will first operate in standalone mode to pursue it's own physics programme...

      • Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by mcelrath (8027) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @02:41AM (#24748425) Homepage
        Okay, why not...
        • pp: proton - proton
        • cross-section: particle interaction rates are measured using "cross section". Imagine a billiard ball colliding with another a billiard ball. The cross section is just it's area seen from one side: pi r^2. But quantum particles are not hard solid spheres and can pass through each other, resulting in cross sections much smaller. The unit here is the "barn" = 10^-28 m^2. The total p p cross section is about a milli-barn. Higgs is about a pico-barn. Z bosons are about a nano-barn.
        • luminosity: inverse of a cross section. This is how we measure the amount of data. It is the "intensity" of the beam. (luminosity)*(cross section) = number of (expected) collisions. The LHC is expected to collect about 1 inverse femtobarn in the first year of operation, and 300 total.
        • elastic scattering: p p -> p p. Used to measure luminosity. (TOTEM's primary function)
        • diffractive scattering: p p -> p p + X. This has been proposed as a high precision but low rate way to detect the X=Higgs. In this scenario, TOTEM sees the final p p and X ends up inside the CMS detector. (TOTEM's other primary function)
        • pseudorapidity: a measure of angle: \eta = -ln \tan \theta/2. At \eta=\infinity, \theta=0 and at \eta=0, \theta=90 degrees. Pseudorapidity has nicer properties under Lorentz Transformations [wikipedia.org] than angle.
        • Roman Pot: a particle detector device which is lowered into the beam line to detect particles traveling very close to the beam. It detects protons scattered by very small angles.

        There's a reason a Ph.D. takes 4-6 years. Gotta learn all this.

        P.S. TOTEM is one of the minor experiments. Now go read about CMS and ATLAS. :)

        Disclaimer: I am an American theoretical physicist at CERN.

  • If you need me, I'll be in my basement.

    • This is Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)

      by aztektum (170569) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:07PM (#24747185)

      Don't you mean your parent's basement?

        • Some of us have better taste (Score:5, Funny)

          by Moraelin (679338) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @08:18AM (#24750261) Journal

          Please try not to picture a fat sweaty nerd in a loincloth defending the entrance to his parent's basement from all comers.

          Well, first of all, some of us have better taste than to wear a loincloth. A robe and wizard hat, for example, is much more stylish and comfortable for the aspiring sorcerer or warlock. A toga picta works too, for the aspiring Emperor. Well, at least until mom catches wind that you dyed one of her bedsheets purple ;)

          But a loincloth? Ugh. We're civilized people, not some barbarians.

          Second, some of us have our own basement to defend, thank you very much. I mean, have you tried taking over the world from your mom's basement? Ooer, talk about frustrating. It would go sorta like this.

          Me: "Now we open the prayer books to the dark invocation psalm and..."
          Mom (poking her head in): "Anyone want milk and cookies?"
          Cultist 1: "I'll have some, please."
          Cultist 2: "Me too."
          Me: "Mooom!!"
          Mom: "Oh, hush. Nice dress, by the way."
          Me: "Mom, it's a robe."
          Mom: "Sure it is. I just want you to know me and dad support your lifestyle choices."
          Cultist 3: "Told you it looks gay."
          Cultist 1: "Yeah."
          Me: "Mom, you're interrupting our invocation!"
          Mom: "Oh, hush, I'm your mom, I'm allowed to. What are you guys playing anyway? Dungeons and Dragons?"
          Me: "No, it's serious. And you can start calling me High Overlord Moraelin the First."
          Mom: "High, huh? Well, you know me and dad don't approve of _that_, but I guess it would explain a few things."
          Cultist 4: "Heh!"
          Me: "*sigh* Where are the sacrificial dagger and the sacred chalice anyway?"
          Mom: "You mean our kitchen knife? I put it in the dishwasher, together with that plastic cup you had there. They were getting ridiculously dirty, and it's just not healthy."
          Cultist 3: "Told ya."

          A trip to the kitchen later:

          Group chanting: "Nigrae legiones, ferus imperator, sinus occultus, fatum terminatum"
          Mom (poking nose in again): "By the way, I'm going to sleep. Try to keep the noise down, please."
          Me: "Ok, mom."
          Mom: "By the way is that the chorus from Das Omen?"
          Me: "No, it's an ancient and sacred invocation.."
          Cultist 2: "Nah, I googled it, it's E Nomine."
          Cultist 1: "Owned."
          Cultist 4: "I thought you said you only listened to metal?"
          Me: "Gah! Fine by me, chant Dies Irae if it makes you feel any better."
          Cultist 3: "Why do we have to chant in Latin anyway?"
          Me: "Because we're summoning an arsehole of a demon, and he wants it that way."
          Mom: "Anyway, keep it down and turn off the lights when you're done, ok?"
          Me: "Ok, mom. Now where were we?"
          Cultist 3: "You know, screw this. Let's skip the henchman and work for the real overlord. Do you happen to need some accolytes, Mrs?"
          Cultist 1: "Seconded."
          Cultist 2: "No kidding."
          Cultist 4: "Actually, I'm out of here. I promised mom I'll be home by eleven anyway."

          (Disclaimer: it's fiction.)

    • Wait! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jd (1658)
      The LEGO Mindstorm version will be released any day now!

  • doomed! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rdickinson (160810) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:01PM (#24747113)

    Now I can build my own the planet is DOOMED!

  • Look at this way... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2008, @11:02PM (#24747137)

    ...1600 pages for every detail of the making of a LHC, 6546 pages in the specs for OOXML and it's still not enough detail to let you open and create OOXML documents. Obviously the LHC is not adequately complex.

  • TL;DR (Score:3, Funny)

    by Spring182 (1338645) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:03PM (#24747145) Homepage
    TL;DR

  • Funny... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:09PM (#24747203)
    I recall hitting numerous sections of the site that were protected. One was a log of superconducting magnet quenches. I guess that openness doesn't extend to embarrassing operational problems...

  • On the serious side... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Onyma (1018104) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:18PM (#24747263)
    I am very much looking forward to what comes out of the LHC. It's been wonderful to watch its construction and that's only a fraction of the satisfaction its discoveries will provide.

  • At sixteen hundred pages, it can only create about a fourth of the suckiness of the OOXML standard. Since that hasn't generated a black hole - except for maybe a few terabytes of lost data here and there - we should be safe.

  • Simple introduction... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Deliveranc3 (629997) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:35PM (#24747397) Journal
    It's a hobby, I'm way outside of the brainpower to do the math.

    So I found some videos and articles to help me out: YouTube [youtube.com] to the rescue [youtube.com] Warning there's some crap with bird in there.

    Finding the Higg's Boson is the big prize, if they find it it will help with this which disrupts the notion of black holes as "singularities" and raises some philosophical, and religious questions... largely if the theorized particle is not found. [wikipedia.org]

    Also interesting is the evaporating black hole theory, which is all but proven so don't worry (Cough CNN).

    Personally I've always been facinated by Virtual particles [wikipedia.org] and am curious about the implication of examining non-singularity black holes.

    Enjoy it, it's gonna be cool as hell!

  • I found a vulnerability... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Shag (3737) <.dan. .at. .birchalls.net.> on Monday August 25 2008, @11:37PM (#24747417) Homepage

    On page 867, there's mention of a two-meter-wide thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The exhaust shaft leads directly to the reactor system, and a precise hit would start a chain reaction which should destroy the LHC.

    • I'm afraid the LHC will be quite operational when your friends arrive.

    • Sounds pretty serious, can we cover it with some plywood or something?

        • Re:I found a vulnerability... (Score:4, Informative)

          by moosesocks (264553) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @01:07AM (#24747963) Homepage

          Now that we're venturing out into the realm of "extremely offtopic," I should point out that Americans have no idea what gaffer tape is, unless they've worked as a roadie or stage tech at some point in their lives.

          For those of you who still don't know what gaffer tape is, you may substitute "duct tape" to sufficiently understand the parent poster's humor.

          However, gaffer tape is far superior to duct tape in many aspects. It's made from cloth, rather than plastic, and doesn't tend to destroy whatever surface it happens to be applied to. It can generally be removed without causing damage, despite being nearly as strong (if not stronger) than duct tape.

  • Neat! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quiet_Desperation (858215) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:54PM (#24747543)

    I especially like appendix B, or "Build Your Own Large Hadron Collider"

    I totally have a project for this weekend!

    Home Depot has extra large superconducting electromagnets, right?

  • Great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Perseid (660451) on Monday August 25 2008, @11:58PM (#24747565)
    ...now we have to worry about random third-world countries building weapons of mass-collision.

  • The documentation was released weeks ago. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rei (128717) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @12:18AM (#24747703) Homepage

    Come on, don't you remember the slashdot article [slashdot.org] about it?

    Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
    Designed with mind to send protons around
    A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
    Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
    Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
    Til in the hearts of the detectors, theyre made to collide
    And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
    Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
    And then

    LHCb sees where the antimatters gone
    ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
    CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
    Theyre looking for whatever new particles they can find.
    The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
    And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

    Come on, let's drop some particle physics in the club!

  • You disappoint me... (Score:3, Funny)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus (1223518) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @12:28AM (#24747775) Journal
    I was expected at least a mirror and placeholder wiki at openlhc.org by now.

  • Slightly offtopic, but (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Maelwryth (982896) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @12:56AM (#24747901)
    If anyone ever needs a reason to wallop copyright, let this quote from the article [symmetrymagazine.org] be that reason;

    Most copies of The Blue Book had vanished from the SLAC Library, and the librarians wanted to make it available electronically. But they ran into a snag: No one could figure out who owned the copyright, so there was no one to give permission to put it on the Web.
    "It's an orphan work," SLAC archivist Jean Deken told me Friday. The original publisher was bought by another, which was bought by another, and so on. Finally, with the help of an expert from Stanford Law School, librarian Abraham Wheeler tracked down the current owner of the copyright-which said that since it could not find any documentation on the book, it could not grant permission to reproduce it.

  • This is outrageous! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bit01 (644603) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @01:13AM (#24748001)

    Are they mad? The work of thousands of scientists published on line for all to see. A reasonable generic copyright license. All downloadable.

    What about the poor deserving lawyers? Where is the DRM? The commercial propaganda about "IP"? The hundred page license? The attempts by assorted hangers on to profit at other people's expense?

    I think the lawyers should form a class action lawsuit for loss of income. It's just not right that somebody should be able to do something without numerous lawyers attached.

  • Announcing the Hadron XPrize (Score:4, Funny)

    by CopaceticOpus (965603) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @02:36AM (#24748399)

    Help to save the world from being destroyed by a black hole! The specs to the LHC (Large Hole Creator) are available. Create a detailed proof showing that the LHC will create a planet-destroying black hole when it is switched on. Send the proof, with your $75 entry fee, directly to me. The person submitting the first valid proof will be awarded a prize of $50 Million, to be awarded on Sept 12th.

  • Funny? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vainov (107102) on Tuesday August 26 2008, @02:45AM (#24748441)

    Isn't it funny that the entire LHC spec is 1.600 pages, while the OOXML documentation, as submitted by Microsoft, is a full 6.000 pages.
    Does this reflect a difference in complexity, or is it a sign of something else?

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