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Science Hardware

LHC To Start Back Up In November At Half Power 110

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the no-blackholes-here dept.
mcgrew writes to mention that the Large Hadron Collider, smasher of particles, will get another chance to prove itself this November. The restart will begin with tests at half power, a mere 7 trillion electron volts (TeV), and ramp up slowly to the designed goal of 14 TeV. "Measurements indicate that some of the electrical connections could not safely handle the amount of current needed to run at the full 14 TeV, so will need to be replaced before dialing up the energy that far. But even 7 TeV is much higher than physicists have ever probed in the laboratory before. The Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, is the current record holder, with collisions at 2 TeV."
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LHC To Start Back Up In November At Half Power More

LHC To Start Back Up In November At Half Power

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  • Only half (Score:5, Funny)

    by swaq ( 989895 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @01:55PM (#28989137) Homepage
    Good, only half the universe will be destroyed. =)

    • Re:Only half (Score:5, Funny)

      by tnk1 ( 899206 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:07PM (#28989285)

      Looks like they are right on schedule for their planned full power-up on December 21, 2012.

    • Re:Only half (Score:5, Funny)

      by epiphani ( 254981 ) <(epiphani) (at) (dal.net)> on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:15PM (#28989363)

      There is actually a website available here [hasthelarg...rldyet.com] that monitors the situation and gives real-time updates on the status of the LHC.

      • There is actually a website available here [hasthelarg...rldyet.com] that monitors the situation and gives real-time updates on the status of the LHC.

        Drats. You beat me to it.

        • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Two opposing beams travelling at near the speed of light collide. Yet they don't collide at near twice the speed of light. The LHC is destroying my brain.

          • That's the time dilation... they actually collide at slightly nearer to the speed of light.

          • Re:Only half (Score:4, Interesting)

            by TheGeniusIsOut ( 1282110 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @03:56PM (#28990783)
            It is actually fairly simple relativity, the faster an object moves relative to another, the slower its time reference to the other is. Even though relative to each other from an outside viewpoint they seem to be travelling passed each other at greater than the speed of light, Each experiences a time dialation relative to mass and velocity, so in the frame of reference where the particles collide, they are moving much slower than the speed of light due to time taking longer. When the collision occurs, velocity is mostly cancelled out relative to the surrounding environment, and all of the energy that was contained in the high-speed sub-atomic particles is released in a cloud of elementary particles, which recombine into new and interesting matter. It is out of this cloud that the quark-gluon plasma is formed, which in turn is theoretically capable of forming quantum singularities at high enough energy densities. The faster you can get a particle moving, the higher its energy level is, the higher the density of energy will be at moment of collision.

            • in the frame of reference where the particles collide, they are moving much slower than the speed of light

              This is really, really wrong. It doesn't even make sense. What is the frame of reference where the particles collide? Is it the frame where both have the same velocity / momentum / energy? Then this is the frame we're in, the frame where both protons are practically at the speed of light (the "center of mass frame" to put it into technical terms, which in the case of the LHC equals the so-called "lab frame"). If you're talking about the center of mass frames of the individual colliding quarks, then the

      • Re:Only half (Score:5, Funny)

        by Woogiemonger ( 628172 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:49PM (#28989817)

        There is actually a website available here [hasthelarg...rldyet.com] that monitors the situation and gives real-time updates on the status of the LHC.

        What's amusing is if you view the page source of that link. There's even a nifty comment there: "if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn't yet updated please email mike@frantic.org to receive a full refund" Going to email Mikey and ask for a refund. Maybe he won't check.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by davester666 ( 731373 )

          Alternately, if the web site is down, assume the black hole has expanded enough to suck in the web server...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by weicco ( 645927 )

            I'm wondering which half of the world LHC will destroy when it's turned on at half power...

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by zig007 ( 1097227 )
          I kind of like this part of the code, pretty safe, really : if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) { document.write("YUP."); } else { document.write("NOPE."); } Should work. :-)

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by zig007 ( 1097227 )

          *reposting, better laid out*
          I kind of like this part of the code, pretty safe, really :
          if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
          document.write("YUP.");
          } else {
          document.write("NOPE.");
          }

          Should work. :-)

      • Re:Only half (Score:5, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @03:34PM (#28990437) Journal
        Meh. You have to wait for someone to manually update that page. You'd be better off checking the status yourself with the internal and external webcams [cyriak.co.uk].

      • Actually you can look in http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/ [web.cern.ch] for status.

      • NoScript will save the world! Thanks god, I'm save!

        <script type="text/javascript">
        if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
        document.write("YUP.");
        } else {
        document.write("NOPE.");
        }
        </script>
        <noscript>NOPE.</noscript>

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Because of quantum mechanics, we can only know about half of the quantum state of a system.

      I'm hoping the LHC destroys only the half we don't know about. Out of sight, out of mind, I say.

    • No good. Those stupid Europeans are gonna get the wrong half and kill us all.

    • I'm a doubting Thomas. Show me the Power!

  • they've been soldering those wires. They should you thicker ones if they want higher current. Doh!

  • Temporary! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:03PM (#28989245) Journal
    One thing missing from the summary is that 3.5 TeV/beam is only (hoïpefully) a very temporary setup. The ramp up to 5TeV/beam, or 10 TeV centre of mass energy should be quick rapid if everything works. Going to the full 7 TeV will take longer though.

  • Feats of engineering miscommunication. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm still skeptical... I'd like to see the all the work that was done on the LHC that was outsourced. There had to be quite a bit of miscommunication for the scale of the problems this machine has had. Still, I hope they get this working! I want to hear about Higgs boson!

  • Fun with units... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:08PM (#28989287) Homepage

    It always kinda amuses* me to remember that 7 TeV is equal to ~1 microJoule. So this incredibly massive and complicated machine is required just to reach energies that are a million times less than what I can get by flicking my pinky finger. Though they do put all that energy into a single subatomic particle and carefully guide them into hitting each other right in front of their detectors, while every time I try to flick a proton with my finger I end up hitting a ton of them and they go flying off every which way, so I guess we still need the LHC.

    * Yes I am easily amused, why do you ask?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Ardaen ( 1099611 )

      So what your saying is you need a pin with a really REALLY sharp point so you can search for new exotic particles?

    • It seems like we live a universe where the knowledge and secrets of reality are kept well hidden and very difficult to access, like it is trying to keep us as ignorant fools who dont know what anything is or why its here. We have a better grasp in recent years, but we are still a long way to knowing what this is all about on a scientific level (thought religions propose their own speculative/intuitive ideas about this).

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by blackraven14250 ( 902843 )
        Maybe it's here to see if we can get smart enough to not destroy ourselves before we destroy ourselves...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Terwin ( 412356 )

        It seems like we live a universe where the knowledge and secrets of reality are kept well hidden and very difficult to access, like it is trying to keep us as ignorant fools who dont know what anything is or why its here. We have a better grasp in recent years, but we are still a long way to knowing what this is all about on a scientific level (thought religions propose their own speculative/intuitive ideas about this).

        Perhaps because much of the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked.
        Such unimportant things as: F=(m1 * m2)/d^2 for example.

        Then again, just because it could be discovered without hugely expensive equipment does not mean it was easy, just less expensive.

      • It seems like we live a universe where the knowledge and secrets of reality are kept well hidden and very difficult to access, like it is trying to keep us as ignorant fools who dont know what anything is or why its here. We have a better grasp in recent years, but we are still a long way to knowing what this is all about on a scientific level (thought religions propose their own speculative/intuitive ideas about this).

        The religion of Science demands we question everything, rather than accept all on blind faith.

    • while every time I try to flick a proton with my finger I end up hitting a ton of them and they go flying off every which way

      I, for one, welcome our newly cloned elephant [wikipedia.org] overlord!

      • I, for one, welcome our newly cloned elephant overlord!

        What can I say? I have a very large pinky (and of course I flick it very slowly).

    • Well it does not accelerate just *one* particle. According to the CERN people, a typical single beam will have enough energy to melt half a ton of copper. Your hand waving must be pretty strong, I guess.

      • a typical single beam will have enough energy to melt half a ton of copper.

        Humm... beginning from what temperature, I wonder?

        • Even if it begins at its fusion temp, it would take 13.050 kJ/mol * 5E5g / 63.5g/mol = approximately 100MJ

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by BitterOak ( 537666 )

      Your post is modded funny, but it is absolutely correct.

      The key point, however, is that when you flick your finger, and end up hitting a huge number of protons, the energy is therefore distributed among all these protons, neutrons, electrons, etc., and so nothing very interesting happens. When all the energy is is concentrated in one collision between two subatomic particles, then very interesting things happen, the most important of which is the creation of a shower of short-lived particles which we don't

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 )
      http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/beam.htm [web.cern.ch]

      What you say is very misleading. While that is true on a proton basis, you are neglecting the 115 billion protons per packet, with 2808 packets per beam. This puts your calculation off by 15 orders of magnitude. Unless your finger can flick a typical scobie up to mach 2.

      • 7 TeV is the energy of one proton, and that's the value I was talking about. My "calculation" was just a conversion between two units of energy. Yeah I didn't accurately represent the power of the entire LHC beam. I guess that's misleading, if you thought that was the point, rather than some yucks and an observation about how much energy a TeV really is.

    • Indeed an interesting mix of scales. However, just so nobody gets confused, they aren't just accelerating one proton at a time. The LHC website claims there will be 2835 bunches each of 10^11 protons in each ring. Suddenly that 1 microjoule (each proton brings to one collision) becomes 565 megajoules (carried by entire beams)

      That's the same energy as a 14 ton truck moving at mach 1. Stay out of the way.

    • You flick a TON of subatomic particles around every time you flick your PINKY FINGER? Are you ... GOD?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      So this incredibly massive and complicated machine is required just to reach energies that are a million times less than what I can get by flicking my pinky finger...

      Try to dress it as "science" all you want, but it's still picking your nose, dude.
         

  • But even 7 TeV is much higher than physicists have ever probed in the laboratory before.

    This is true, but is that probable to lead to anything special? Can for example the Higgs particle be found at such low energies?

    • Every mention of LHC coincides with how they're trying to find the Higgs. Say they find it within a year, what happens then? I understand the LHC is designed for hadrons and for lead nuclei, so that would indicate more experiments down the pipe, but could someone explain what they plan to do, or will they just party for 10 years after the Higgs is found and then shut the thing down?

      I realize I could go try to search for the answer, but if the average /.'er won't even read TFA, how many do you expect to do
      • It will be 10 years before they have realized that they made the observation. The amount of data that will be generated will be huge and then someone has to analyze it to understand what the detectors detected.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by The_Wilschon ( 782534 )
          On the contrary. The Higgs is discoverable at a 5 sigma significance level (PhysRev standard for "discovery") with about 1 year's worth of data at design energy and luminosity.[1] Furthermore, since people have already worked on analyses, it will only take probably about 6 months to run the analyses on the data and get the results approved by the collaboration. So, with the current startup schedule, barring any more problems, we should expect to see a Higgs discovery paper from CMS and ATLAS in time for

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by FrangoAssado ( 561740 )

        There's an excellent video on YouTube of Ed Farhi explaining it in some detail: Why Physicists Need the Large Hadron Collider [youtube.com]

        Basically, if all they find is the Higgs boson, that will be a huge disappointment. (Unfortunately, that's the expected outcome.)

      • Remember the old saying: the most exciting phrase in science is not 'eureka' it's 'that's odd...'

        Finding the Higgs boson is not particularly exciting. The interesting things that happen at an experiment like this are things that don't fit with established models. Obviously, you can't tell what these are until after you've run the experiment.

        Science works by making an observation, constructing a theory, and then testing it. If the tests don't contradict the theory then it's nice, but it's not particul

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Gromius ( 677157 )
        Well when you find the Higgs, you want to measure its properties and see if you really have a Higgs and not some random new particle. And then if it is the Higgs, you want to see which Higgs it is. All this takes time and lots and lots of data.

        And unless we are very unlucky, there should hopefully be lots of other werid and wonderful things to find. I'm personally not interested in the Higgs at all but much more exotic things. But for the media, its easier to say "we are looking for X" rather than we ar

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by The_Wilschon ( 782534 )
        Supersymmetry is a bigger deal than the Higgs, I would judge. The LHC is expected to find SUSY quite rapidly. Additionally, we will want to measure Higgs properties, perform precision measurements of various things such as the single top cross section, B_s mixing (and CP violation, and maaaaybe CPT violation), the top mass, the W and Z masses, etc. More exotic things include searching for (yes, really) black hole production, large extra dimensions, technicolor (an alternative model to the standard model

  • Dammit, will you stop posting LHC articles?! (Score:3, Funny)

    by EWAdams ( 953502 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:11PM (#28989315) Homepage

    Now I can't get that song out of my head again. "LHCB sees where the anti-matter's gone. ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions. CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind. They're looking for whatever new particles they can find..."

    Argh!

  • Only 7TeV? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:14PM (#28989353)

    I'll be more impressed when they turn it up to 11.

  • It's like a casino... (Score:4, Funny)

    by recharged95 ( 782975 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:22PM (#28989441) Journal

    "LHC To Start Back Up In November At Half Power"

    Any bets that it will not?

    Vegas should start a pool, I'm sure it would be a hit with the betters.

  • Meh. (Score:1, Funny)

    by swanzilla ( 1458281 )
    I'll start paying attention when they start running at ludicrous speed or plaid.

  • "Measurements indicate that some of the electrical connections could not safely handle the amount of current needed to run at the full 14 TeV..."

    So, if they dial it up now, we'll get all those 1960s visual effects explosions: as seen on TV in "The Time Tunnel"? I'm sure that doing effects for those old shows might have been exciting on occasion, but since we're paying for this hadron collider research, I suppose it's counterproductive. The collider now seems like a much better investment than those ot

  • Off topic, but this is the only story on the front page from today. Quit slackin!

  • The restart will begin with tests at half power, a mere 7 trillion electron volts (TeV), and ramp up slowly to the designed goal of 14 TeV.

    So I guess you could say that the Large Hadron Collider is being treated for electron dysfunction.

    Rob

  • In case you were wondering...

    One electron volt is equal to 1.60217653(14) x 10^19 joules.

    And they are talking about 7 and 14 Trillion eV which is a bunch of joules! Pretty nice ;)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      One electron volt is equal to 1.60217653(14) x 10^19 joules.

      And they are talking about 7 and 14 Trillion eV which is a bunch of joules! Pretty nice ;)

      You missed by a factor of 10^38

      1 eV = 1.6 x 10^MINUS19 Joules

    • Uh, no. It's 1.60217646 Ã-- 10^-19 Joules. A trillion eV is therefore 1.60217646 Ã-- 10^-7 J. This is a small number.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by FrangoAssado ( 561740 )

      Actually, 1 electron volt is closer to 10^(-19) Joules, so

      14 TeV = 2.2 x 10^(-6) J

      (When in doubt, ask google [google.com]! :-))

  • Did anyone else get the "free zero point magnet elecrticity" scam adds?

    Lately i'm getting a lot of crap adds like this from google adds... It's a shame.
  • Look at it this way, If the tin foil hat brigade are right, the end will be fairly quick. If, however, things go as planned, some of the potential gains for mankind would go a long way to paying some of their power bill. I wonder if their electricity company gives them a discount for paying by direct debit?

  • The actual plan (Score:5, Informative)

    by andre.david ( 1373517 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @04:27PM (#28991137)

    Hi,

    We were just briefed at CERN of the plan. It is a plan. Plans can change. With that proviso:

    0 - get the beams circulating at injection energy (from last year's experience, this happened in one week)

    1 - take some collision data at injection energy (450 GeV/c per beam => 900 GeV at center-of-mass or half the Tevatron) (from last year's experience, this could be only another week)

    2 - CERN will observe the annual closure from Dec 19 to Jan 3.

    3 - ramp the energy up to 3.5 TeV/c per beam (7 TeV center-of-mass energy, 3.6x more than the Tevatron)

    4 - take enough data to be competitive with 20 years of Tevatron in some topics

    5 - ramps the energy to 5 TeV/c per beam (10 TeV center-of-mass energy, 5 times more than the Tevatron)

    6 - inject lead-ions and have some Pb+Pb collisions at around 2.75 TeV center-of-mass energy? (that would be 13 times more energy than Brookhaven's RHIC Au+Au)

    7 - shutdown and work on getting the machine ready for 7 TeV/c per beam

    Thank you for your attention.

  • Why is this tagged "blackmesa"? Wouldn't Aperture Science be more appropriate, because these are black holes we're dealing with?

  • Half power does not usually mean half voltage, unless the value of the load also changes, just thought I'd toss this in.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by selven ( 1556643 )
      We're not talking about voltage, we're talking about energy. Energy = voltage * charge. A volt is a unit of voltage and an electron is a unit of charge.

  • Think of the possibilties (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I, for one, can not wait to be goatse'd in 3D.

  • You do realize that the SSC was built and completed right? Back in the 90's it ran at full power and tore us off our original world-line. After bouncing through a number of 'energy levels' we eventually fell down to this lowest ground state world-line where the Higgs had a sufficient energy level to not cause interactions that made things seem very weird to anyone used to either the original or this current world-line. In this world-line the SSC had been canceled during construction, leaving an impressiv

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