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LHC Flips On Tomorrow
Posted by
Soulskill
on Tue Sep 09, 2008 06:07 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."
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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."
[+]
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."
[+]
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."
Firehose: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.
Parent
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, Informative)
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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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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!
Parent
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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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!
Parent
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.
Let's make another bang (Score:5, Funny)
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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