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LHC Success!
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Sep 10, 2008 09:12 AM
from the good-news-everybody dept.
from the good-news-everybody dept.
Tomahawk writes "It worked! The LHC was turned on this morning and has been shown to have worked. Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
(And we're all still alive, too!)" Here is a picture from the control room which I'm sure makes sense to someone that isn't me.
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Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm correct, no collisions have taken place yet.
Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Informative)
If I'm correct, no collisions have taken place yet.
Correct. That will happen later this month.
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Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Informative)
I would also like to point out they have to align the particle streams yet, AND this will take some time before they turn the energy levels up on the device to maximum, which as many have pointed out, is the "new territory" area.
Not until the device is at full power and doing collisions is there really any concern.
I suspect full power, "universe shattering" tests won't take place until sometime in December at the earliest.
-Hackus
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Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know why, but you made me think of this:
Dr. Egon Spengler: There is something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Do not cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I am 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 is bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
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Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, you'd think we'd be able to avoid the headline hysteria here at least.
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Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Insightful)
you'd think we'd be able to avoid the headline hysteria here at least.
You must be new here ;)
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Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Funny)
Can I help? ;)
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Epic fail (Score:5, Funny)
It started with the scientists, so noone has noticed anything different yet.
Re:Epic fail (Score:5, Funny)
This place has been full of strange matter for a decade now ...
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BFD (Score:5, Informative)
I thought that the critics of this project were worried about the effects of COLLIDING the particles. Since that hasn't happened yet, this story is a whole lotta nuthin'.
Re:BFD (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean I'll have to build up another sigh of relief and let it out again at a later date?
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Re:BFD (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought that the critics of this project were worried about the effects of COLLIDING the particles. Since that hasn't happened yet, this story is a whole lotta nuthin'.
Huh? You do realize that the purpose of building and turning on the LHC isn't to silence black-hole-apocalypse believers, right? The purpose of the LHC is to do new science. Successful containment and acceleration of the beams is an important milestone for this project. That's why this is news.
Presumably you will still think this story is "a whole lotta nuthin'" once collisions do happen, because those collisions will be at energies already probed by other accelerators. And even once LHC ramps up to full power, it will still be "a whole lotta nuthin'" because those energies already occur in nature (e.g. cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere).
I think it would be more accurate to say that the worries about black-hole-apocalypse are "a whole lotta nuthin'" whereas a successful activation of the LHC is amazing news for anyone interested in science.
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Damnit! (Score:5, Funny)
You're all still here.
Realtime LHC Data (Score:5, Funny)
research to application life cycle (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was an undergraduate studying mathematics one of the most intriguing comments made by a professor was
Cutting edge mathematics takes about 50 years to find its way into physics, from there it takes about 25 years to find its way into engineering.
With the advent of the LHC and other amazing advances, like easy access to substantial computing power, do you think that this still holds true? By this, I mean do you think that life cycle times will shorten, or will they remain the same because even though these advances are being made, they are at higher, or very specific level, and as such, they will not be able to be developed into applications as quickly?
Thoughts?
Can we please talk about physics now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who's sick of every news story and every discussion about the LHC deteriorating into giving the "end of the world" bullshit even more time of day that it doesn't deserve?
This is one of the most important and ambitious scientific experiments that has been attempted in a long long time, but it seems that instead of taking the opportunity to get the general public inspired about science and discovery, the mainstream media has used it to spread unfounded doomsday rumours and anti-science propaganda. The fact that it's dominating even Slashdot discussions (albeit mostly in a joking way) is pretty tragic IMHO.
Prof Brian Cox said it best [telegraph.co.uk] - "anyone who believes the LHC will destroy the world is a twat".
I've taken a huge interest in all this lately and have been spending hours on Wikipedia reading about bosons and leptons and so on.. it would be great to get some quality posts in this thread from some real hardcore particle physicists (come on, I know you're out there...)
Pretty picture, but not the one you want... (Score:5, Informative)
That picture is from smashing the beam into the collimator, not from passing the beam through ATLAS.
This is one of the final tests that you perform before passing the beam through - the result though is that millions of muons from the beam smash and deflect off the collimator, touching off all the different parts of the detectors. That's why you see so many energy deposits (green) throughout ATLAS.
When you're just circulating beams, the only thing you see are Cosmics and BeamHalo - any muons which collide with remaining gas particles upstream of the detector and basically circle right outside of the beam. Here's some pictures of CMS beam halo:
http://cmsdoc.cern.ch/cms/performance/FirstBeam/cms-e-commentary.htm [cmsdoc.cern.ch]
Coincidence? (Score:5, Funny)
Has anyone seen my cat?
Still alive? (Score:5, Funny)
> And we're all still alive too!
I'm not, you insensitive clod!
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
It was a triumph, I'm making a note here, huge success!
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Pass the c-
What do you mean all the cake is gone?
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Oblig. Eddie Izzard (Score:5, Funny)
Cake or death?
Cake please.
Sorry, we're all out of cake. We didn't expect to have such a run on it.
Ok, I'll have the chicken then.
Well... Ok. Good thing we're the Church of England.
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
For the good of all of us!
(Except the ones who are dead.)
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
And the ones who lost their bets with Stephen Hawking about whether they'd find the Higgs Boson.
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
That does it. I'm tagging this story 'stillalive'.
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time?
Well, they still haven't made the black hole yet. Just wait. When you get sucked in don't come crying to me. I'll be many, many light years away.
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be many, many light years away.
Infinitely many, in fact, if you haven't gotten sucked into the black hole yet.
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, my take is this. If the LHC guys really do manage to destroy the universe in some science shattering stranglet experiment, well...
That would be rather impressive. It's just too bad no one would be around to bear witness to the fact. ;-)
Or to put it in the context of Stargate...
Carter: He destroyed a solar system.
Jeannie: MEREDITH!
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
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Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Funny)
But don't forget your towel... just in case.
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Or: "Every time you masturbate, God destroys a planet" ...
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
... will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time? Probably not. I'm sure next time they'll say "this time, its different, the world is really going to end this time".
Don't knock the doomsayers man! When they think the world is going to end, they start selling (never understood this? The world is gonna end! My couch for $20! Just in case I need to pay a toll on the way to the afterlife..) or giving away all their stuff! I need a new couch so I hope they get all spooked. If I'm lucky, one will have been a gadget nerd and I can get some computer parts too!
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
>> ... will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time? Probably not. I'm sure next time they'll say "this time, its different, the world is really going to end this time".
The doomsayers only need to be right once... :)
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you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 hit Jupiter? There were people saying (and being interviewed on the BBC no less) that pieces of Jupiter would break off and collide with Earth...
The claims of some regarding LHC are no less crazy. What distresses me is the level of coverage these nutbars have had on the news channels. I don't know about you, but I've had several people with non scientific backgrounds who've been scared by this 'news' turn to me for some real world information/reassurance.
When you are dealing with the level of brain dead reasoning that produces such spurious and inaccurate statements about things like the LHC, you can't hope to succeed. Honestly, even if you come up with good reasons, it automatically becomes a cover up to those people, thus excusing even wilder claims.
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Re:you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Interesting)
True true. I know there have been several instances like this before. And it seems like each time something like this comes up, there are people with "strong evidence". I'm just saying that it seems like we don't really learn from history like they say we do.
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Re:you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Funny)
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Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remember - when they tested the first atomic bomb, they didn't know if it would ignite the atmosphere or not.
Fortunately, it didn't.
We (as a species) haven't done anything on the scale of the LHC before - and since the whole point of the device is to learn more about stuff we don't (relatively) know much about, there's bound to be WILD speculation about the potential results.
The loons get airplay because the loony airplay gets the ratings - and TV/radio is about ad revenue first and actual content second. ;p
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Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Interesting)
We haven't, but the universe causes such high-energy interactions to happen constantly without destroying itself.
The nuke-might-ignite-the-atmosphere thing is something of a special case because they ONLY had raw theory to base it on. They were virtually certain it wouldn't happen, but since humanity had never caused an energetic fission event before they had no definitive experimental evidence to back that up. The LHC by contrast is building on decades of advanced nuclear / particle physics work, to test the specifics of detailed theories. We have a very clear idea about what could happen, and the evidence that it will be completely safe is overwhelming. Due to the very low mass of the particles, the energy released in a 5 TeV collision will "only" be about that of 2 freight trains running into each other, which is certainly energetic but perfectly controllable. As one LHC scientist put it, the risk of you spontaneously evaporating due to random quantum events is much higher than the LHC somehow killing you.
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Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remember - when they tested the first atomic bomb, they didn't know if it would ignite the atmosphere or not.
Fortunately it didn't.
No, no they didn't. Stop trying to frame scientists as these irresponsible idiots who could murder us all in one experiment. One person proposed that possibility, and it was thoroughly refuted before the test. From Wikipedia's Manhattan Project page [wikipedia.org]:
Teller also raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might "ignite" the atmosphere, because of a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei. Bethe calculated, according to Serber, that it could not happen. In his book The Road from Los Alamos, Bethe says a refutation was written by Konopinski, C. Marvin, and Teller as report LA-602, showing that ignition of the atmosphere was impossible, not just unlikely.[7] In Serber's account, Oppenheimer mentioned it to Arthur Compton, who "didn't have enough sense to shut up about it. It somehow got into a document that went to Washington" which led to the question being "never laid to rest".[8]
Similarly, there's no chance the LHC can kill us. As you said, "we (as a species) haven't done anything on the scale of the LHC before" but that doesn't change the fact that nature does it all the time. Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays of energy levels higher than the LHC can produce. If it could have destroyed us, it would have already.
The loons get airplay because the loony airplay gets the ratings - and TV/radio is about ad revenue first and actual content second. ;p
No argument with that.
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Will you ever learn? (Score:5, Funny)
If disaster movies have taught us anything, it is that only when the party is over and everyone is a little tipsy, the problems will arise.
At that point, one lowly scientist (possible of Asian origin) will still be working in his office - despite regular calls of 'Hu! It's all fine, come out here and have some champagne'. He shouts out 'In a minute, I'm just checking something' Then to himself 'This is wrong. This is all wrong. Planck's constant shouldn't be varying like that.'
And then it all goes wrong.
Jeez, were you born yesterday!
Mark my words... come Friday, we'll all be eating black holes for breakfast with lashings of superheated strange milk.
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Re:Will you ever learn? (Score:5, Funny)
It's probably not a problem, probably, but I'm showing some variations in...
No, it's well within acceptable limits. Sustaining sequence.
Shutting down... Attempting shutdown... it's not, it's not shutting AGGGGHHHHH! ...yeah.
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Re:Will you ever learn? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
I thought they had already turned it on yesterday... Wait, today is September 10th... Again ?
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a picture from the control room which I'm sure makes sense to someone that isn't me.
The image is produced by an event display program, which provides a nice visual representation of the output of the whole detector (ATLAS in this case) for one event. One event here means one beam crossing, generally, which could include up to several proton-proton collisions, but generally only one interesting one.
Now, I'm not completely familiar with ATLAS (I'm a CDF guy), but I'm pretty sure the top left section is the muon chambers. These record, well, muons, which are the only thing which interacts poorly enough to consistently punch all the way through the detector and the layers of steel in front of the muon chambers, but strongly enough to be recorded all the way along its passage.
The top center shows a zoomed in view of the middle of the top left: the calorimeters. Calorimeters record the amount of energy that enters them, and are arranged radially, so that you can see just how much energy (in the form of both mass and kinetic energy) was carried away from the collision in a particular direction. This is accomplished by means of scintillator crystals, which tend to get ionized by the passage of high energy particles, thus absorbing some energy from the particles, and then they reemit that energy as photons, which are collected and measured in photomultiplier tubes. The calorimeters are used to look for most particles, particularly electrons and "jets" (which are a spray of particles resulting from the ejection of a quark from the collision), both of which leave clusters of energy over a significant area of the calorimeter.
The top right is again a zoomed in view of the middle of the top center: the tracking chambers. These act sort of like thousands and thousands of geiger counters; every time a charged particle passes through the vicinity of a wire in the tracking chamber, it records a hit. You can then piece all these hits together in a line to measure the track of a particle. The offcenter pink and blue line is almost certainly a cosmic ray, which will naturally leave a track in the chamber, but not appear to originate from the interaction point. In the lower left, you can see what is probably two different short track segments.
The first three images have been more or less slices out of the center of the detector, perpendicular to the beam line. The lower left is a side-on view, showing the somewhat less important parts of the detector that lie at small angles to the beam line, the so-called forward detectors.
The lower right is probably intended to be a flat plot of the calorimeter, as if you sliced it parallel to the beam line and unrolled it. The height of the bars would then indicate how much energy was deposited in each section. However, at the moment, that plot looks like it is having some sort of overflow problems.
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Insightful)
*By definition* the doomsayers are always wrong. If they had ever been correct in the past, we wouldn't be here to talk about it now.
By the same token, your claim that everything is going to be fine is a one-way bet. You can only be proved right.
(+5, Inevitable)
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Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Fanboism apart, they haven't crossed the proton streams yet. The event that can generate the strangelets and the black hole.
Yeah but they'll have to cross the streams if StayPuft attacks.
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Re:16 bit colour? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because screens with colour used informatively, rather than making eye candy screens with flashy gradients and transparency, make the actual information easier to discern. This isn't some commercial app that has to sell to Mac enthusiasts, nor is it Photoshop.
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Re:Based on the control room shot... (Score:5, Funny)
It appears that turning on the LHC is transforming the world as we know it into the nightmare world of Linux on the Desktop...
If that were true they would of called it Hardy Hadron.
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Re:Shuts down for the winter? (Score:5, Informative)
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