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LHC Fully Documented Online
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:51 PM
from the twenty-seven-kilometers-of-documentation dept.
from the twenty-seven-kilometers-of-documentation dept.
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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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)
Not particularly.
Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Informative)
Hint: click on the word "abstract". It's turtles all the way down.
Parent
Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Funny)
It's like a giant hula-hoop(TM), lying on the ground, with tiny bits of things forced to circle inside it until they collide with one another, which results in the Earth disappearing into a black hole.
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Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Okay, other options (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Okay, other options (Score:5, Funny)
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PR0N! (Score:5, Funny)
This is something to download, store away, and reminisce some 30 years later.
What 30 years later? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought that there will be no 30 years later after they turn on the machine...
Parent
Re:What 30 years later? (Score:5, Funny)
If you end up in some evil mirror universe where W became President instread of Gore you could use the plans to build another LHC to get back home.
Parent
I would but.... (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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."
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Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Funny)
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 ±
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Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Cool! I'm going to get started on mine right away! (Score:5, Funny)
If you need me, I'll be in my basement.
This is Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean your parent's basement?
Parent
Look at this way... (Score:5, Funny)
...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.
Safe from black holes (Score:5, Funny)
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)
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)
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.
Re:I found a vulnerability... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Neat! (Score:5, Funny)
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)
This is outrageous! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.