Life and Work On the LHC At CERN

An anonymous reader sends in a CNet Crave interview with a working physicist at CERN. The interview is full of detail about what it's like to work in this geek paradise (if a bit dumbed-down for an audience assumed not very technical). Dr. Paul Jackson, a particle physicist working on the LHC's Atlas experiment, says there's no chance of black holes wiping us out, and that the time travel speculation is bunkum. He is 100% convinced that they will find the Higgs boson. The scientists there favor Macs, while computers in the control room are Linux-based. "What would happen if you were standing in front of the beam? You would die. It would be a pretty spectacular death, and you wouldn't know a lot about it. ... It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body."

Re:Higgs boson

[Idiomatick]

I hope they do find it. Simply because it has public interest. On /. everyone gets that if it isn't found that would be GOOD science. The general populace will be like BOOO science sucks, it never gives any answers, I love jeeebus. Scientists wrong again. And honestly? I'd much rather have something called the GOD-particle proven true just to have another 'Science, it works bitches' moment.

Real scientist ?

[Zoxed]

> Dr. Paul Jackson, a particle physicist working on the LHC's Atlas experiment, says there's no chance of black holes wiping us out, and that the time travel speculation is bunkum. He is 100% convinced that they will find the Higgs boson.

Maybe it is me, but when I hear someone say "no chance of..." or "100% convinced that they will find..." they sound more like a politician than a scientist. I thought the latter should have an open mind until proof was presented ?

Re:Anatoli Bugorski

[Smurf]

Fascinating. Thanks for the info.

But do take into account that Bugorski was using an accelerator from 1978, and for all we know it may not have been one of the top of the line even at that time. The LHC is the most powerful accelerator built till now, and 30 years have passed. Chances are that the beams Dr. Jackson refers to are orders of magnitude more energetic than the one that hit Bugorski.