More On The International Linear Collider

paragon_au writes "The UK Independent is reporting that details for a purposed 40km long international Linear Collider have been released by 'An international panel of particle physicists [that] decided the high-energy linear collider - a £3bn machine for smashing matter against antimatter - will use revolutionary superconducting technology to shed light on the origin and nature of the universe. Plans for the International Linear Collider have still to be finalised but scientists hope that construction of the underground machine will begin in six years.'"

The final frontier

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the future. There is no way we're on this little blue planet at the edge of a galaxy, one of millions in the universe, without a practical means of travelling around. There simply must be a way to do it. If we can't increase the speed, then shorten the distance. I don't know what scientific magic we'll end up with, but I suspect it's buried deep in partical physics.

dual-nature of light is really "brownian motion"?

[SaberTaylor]

it puts the antimatter in the particle accelerator or it gets the non-unified description of our Universe.

btw, here's an idea. so string theorists say that electromagnetism and other stuff is caused by extra dimensions that are too small to see. what i was thinking a couple days ago during a heat lightning storm, is that it relates to another part of string theory. namely the idea that our universe is like a soap bubble among a conglomerate. then the extra dimensions could be the axes to adjacent universes. perfect.

keep in mind that cosmology/quantum mechanics are non-intuitive. :o) but einstein's special theory of relativity was instigated by the simple idea that acceleration and gravity are equivalent.

Re:Chances of Life

[onyxruby]

I cant stand this administration either, and think Bush is a fool. I also think his anti-science policies are rubbish. But please don't let that cloud your judgement of our country. At most he can only be in office four more years, leaving him out of the picture long before this thing could ever be built and functional.

As for being anti-american at the same time as being American, it's not tough at all. We've always had the most vehement American haters home grown. Their are blacks that are racist against blacks, men sexist against men, and there are certainly Americans who are anti-US. Want to change international perception, than help encourage the US to build big science projects like this. The US needs to once more be the worlds top destination for scientists, and this is one of the ways of doing so.

Never before has a nation worked so hard to give away and abandon it's lead in technology.

Circular Colliders

[musingmelpomene]

While I understand that electron/positron collisions require the linear accelerator, doesn't a lot of this hinge upon the discovery of the Higgs boson? I mean, basically, this whole project is being built with the assumption that the Higgs boson both exists and will be possible to study in a 40 km LinAc. I'm all for new particle accelerators, but I'm also all for not using money needlessly. It seems to me that it would be prudent to delay starting a project of this magnitude and international importance until we're sure that all the hypotheses regarding the Higgs boson are correct. Additionally, the whole "superconducting accelerator" thing is hardly new. The Tevatron at Fermilab (which is the fifth stage of a five-stage particle accelerator) already uses superconducting magnets. Anyone happen to know if this LinAc is any different from that (other than the obvious straight/curved difference) or if journalists just like to say "revolutionary superconducting technology" as if they know what they're talking about?

Another sub TeV Collider

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand, we need at least 1 Trillion eV collisions in order to judge whether or not the higgs particle or supersymmetry are physical realities. But for the press releases,I get the impression that this project, at least in the eralier stages, is only meant to act as support for the LHC (i.e. refined versions of sub-TeV experiments done there). Why not ,go for the big prize right away?

Re:The final frontier

[SKorvus]

I agree. One really exciting conceptual propulsion system is the idea of being able to push against the quantum vacuum that underlies all of reality.

A simplistic metaphor would be to imagine someone in zero-G trying to move around; then putting them in water and letting them swim. Chemical propulsion means you have to carry all the mass with you that you push against in order to propel yourself. With "Space Drive", you would still need to expend energy; but presumably much less than with current methods.

Nasa: Ideas Based On What We'd Like To Achieve [nasa.gov]
Nasa: Some Emerging Possibilities [nasa.gov]

Re:Circular Colliders

[vondo]

I believe it's the accleration cavities that are superconducting in this design, which is not the case with the Tevatron or the LHC (I think). Yes, this fundamentally different technology.

Your concerns on waiting to build this are shared by a number of physicists. But, in 6 years we should know about the Higgs if it is where most theories place it. It's important to do the R&D now so the LC when it's needed.

Re:Circular Colliders

[Gil-galad55]

It's useful to think of cyclotrons as the "big sticks" of particle physics, and linacs as the microscopes. Cyclotrons will almost always be able to reach a higher center-of-mass energy since they can "re-use" RF accelerating cavities. However, above certain energies, the synchrotron radiation of light particles becomes too lossy (iirc, the LEP at CERN used 10 MWs of power just to keep up with losses to synchrotron), so you have to move to heavier particles. That's why electrons are perfect for linacs.

While not as powerful, linacs can probe much more carefully than synchrotrons. Since electrons are believed to be point particles, they make MUCH less mess under collision than do hadrons or mesons, each composed of 2 or 3 quarks. Thus, assuming Higgs exists, LHC will *find* it, but it will take a linac to really zero in on its mass and characteristics in a way that it can solve some other physics questions.