LHC Reaches Record Energy 347
toruonu writes "Yesterday evening the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for the first time accelerated protons in both directions of the ring to 1.18 TeV. Even though the 1 TeV barrier per beam was first broken a week ago, this marks the first time that the beam was in the machine in both directions at the same time, allowing possibly for collisions at a center of mass energy of 2.36 TeV. Although the test lasted mere minutes, it was enough to have detectors record the very first events at 2.36 TeV. LHC passes Tevatron (the particle collider at Fermilab that operates at 1.96 TeV) and becomes the highest energy particle collider in the world (so far it was effectively just the highest energy storage ring...)"
Doom (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Doom (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks! You're a life saver! (Score:2, Funny)
Thanks! I've got 40K in student loads and 1K on my credit card and 300K in mortgage on my home (which is now worth half that).
So if you want me to send you -341K dollars, I'll be happy to obligue. :-)
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No doom involved. This machine can microwave a turkey in an instant. Yum!
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Very good. I love the sound of dying Cacodemons.
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http://dengine.net/ [dengine.net]
jDoom is old-n-busted.
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Very good. I love the sound of dying Cacodemons.
Stop, you're making me nostalgic for my days of abusing DeHackEd horribly.
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Re:Doom (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Doom (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doom (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doom (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doom (Score:5, Funny)
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Fess up, you wrote that a year ago and have just been waiting for the chance to copy and paste it into a post, right?
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Re:Doom (Score:5, Funny)
Start running your credit card up... You can't take it with you!
.. and if you've been good, those debt collectors can't follow you!
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I don't think fraud is the hallmark of being good.
Is this related to this wormhole .. (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html [dailymail.co.uk]
http://angryhosting.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/92/92a406b3d33f96b6953bab7efdf4541c1f130c27.jpg [waffleimages.com]
http://img.waffleimages.com/d0718b906d187ca53b2e5a919c0e50dc2bb920d2/Fenomen_over_Borras_340148c.jpg [waffleimages.com]
http://img.waffleimages.com/c3c879e75fc8f28b8867e8e678300ab6550dddfb/Fenomen_over_Borras_340149c.jpg [waffleimages.com]
http://img.waffleimages.com/37f2e96dcb20b8b968af81799df40f72a36e73e1/1260346061961_198.jpg [waffleimages.com]
http://www.vgtv.no/?id=27553 [www.vgtv.no]
http://img.waffleimages.com/294526ec517df78cb7535993b41d3cc0dafa0f05/DSC00020_340153b.jpg [waffleimages.com]
http://img.waffleimages.com/1ff7bad9b6542532a8cdc63bf02b386f891861d0/8fb0b14e0b4c7123618a8783dc35c964.jpg [waffleimages.com]
http://img.waffleimages.com/9094e12c8e6320a3238bbf7e833c3cf6e36ed3c3/Fenomen_over_Borras_340147c.jpg [waffleimages.com]
http://img.waffleimages.com/e07e495a8589dd769b7640ac21be295f738c1c04/f8ec04b52d3ffb2558f3256fd8f11d0a.jpg [waffleimages.com]
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What the hell? Is this for real?
I don't know what's freakier - the idea that this is some kind of covert human activity, or that humans aren't involved in any way.
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I did some digging but couldn't find an article on any "real" news sites. From Google it's showing on conspiracy sites, blogs, and social sites. Didn't find anything searching major news outlets.
I'm guessing hoax at this point. I would think that the major news outlets would all be jumping to get on this first...unless they're just being cautious too, and want to fact-check first. ...though lack of fact-checking rarely stops US news...
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It was a russian rocket (Score:3, Interesting)
The first image from vg is taken with a long shutter time (or long exposure, or what the english expression is) on a tripod.
americans might consider these newspapers NSFW. Most norwegian ads contain a fair amount of tits and ass. just sayin'.
Re:It was a russian rocket (Score:4, Funny)
Man, I am loving these Norwegian news sites. It looks like English and Norwegian have some similar words due to their common Germanic origin. But what's interesting is the fact that there seem to be many more false friends [wikipedia.org], which makes for amazing headlines like this one: "Innbrudd hos Nicky Hilton - Jeg hater folk som stjeler, twitrer søstera Paris". Which of course I interpret as "Inbred hos Nicky Hilton and her sister Paris hate folks who twitter".
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Looking at some clip, it appears to me to be an rocket spiraling out of control and leaking propellant. The propellant is reflecting sun light.
but based on the time-lapse photo, it created a geometrically perfect spiral - the odds of a malfunctioning rocket doing this would approach zero.
Another forum had a link to an ionospheric heater nearby:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionospheric_heater [wikipedia.org]
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Since the rocket doesn't really have to move in a spiral, just tumble/spin in a relatively stable way in the center of it, perhaps it's not so unlikely...
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I was sceptical after looking at the first link, but those images really convinced me.
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they've put in an anti-Slashdot referer rule on those images - was there an original article so we don't have to copy & paste?
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http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3238877 [somethingawful.com]
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they've put in an anti-Slashdot referer rule on those images - was there an original article so we don't have to copy & paste?
Just click the link then hit F5 when it won't load. No referrers on a refresh...
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Why not try this Firefox extension: RefControl [mozilla.org]. You can set it to block the referer (equivalent to copying & pasting the URL) or, even better, set it to the URL you're visiting, which gets around attempts to block direct links. This is, as one of the commenters put it, "One of the essential addons for Firefox. "
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How about you click the link, get the error image, then press enter in the address bar?
Works for me (firefox 3.5)
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Definitely a rocket launch (Score:3, Interesting)
as evidenced by the trail from over the horizon. Note the wind shear... Sorry, Russia. Denial denied!
Humorbot 5.0 (Score:5, Funny)
So I says, "Super collider? I just met her!" And then they built the super collider. Thank you, you've been a great audience. - Humorbot 5.0
Higgs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Higgs (Score:5, Funny)
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Of course, that's assuming that commissioning goes well in the next year. I believe the LHC is currently on s
Cool Displays (Score:2)
Next week on slashdot.... (Score:2)
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Actually the speed is pretty much the same, because of relativistic effects...
So instead of "double" it's another 9 as in "the speed is 99,9999% instead of 99,999% of the speed of light"
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The LHC becomes the first particle accelerator to collide protons at energies twice the speed of the tevatron!
Please explain the Google service or iPhone tie-in.
Breaking news. (Score:5, Funny)
A herd of Lamas have escaped a local zoo and nibbled on the Christmas lights at CERN. The short caused the cooling system to go off line and the LHC will be off line for five months.
Re:Breaking news. (Score:5, Funny)
The Lamas were heard shouting "stop whipping our ass" and seen trashing any PC running WinAmp.
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what's a lama? (Score:5, Funny)
did you mean llama?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llama [wikipedia.org]
or perhaps lamia, a child-eating female demon? that would be sexy but would certainly mess up cern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamia_(mythology) [wikipedia.org]
they were attacked by hawaiian trees?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyros_sandwicensis [wikipedia.org]
they were attacked by a ukranian pop band?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama_(band) [wikipedia.org]
ohhh, you meant tibetan religious leaders! why won't those damn buddhist fundamentalists leave science alone!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama [wikipedia.org]
unfortunately, they may know lama, so they'll certainly kick your ass after knocking out cern with a tibetan white crane style kick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama_(martial_art) [wikipedia.org]
Re:what's a lama? (Score:5, Funny)
So you're suggesting it was a Lama-trained Lamia Lama playing for Lama under a Lama?
Man, when Lima hears about this...
Re:Breaking news. (Score:5, Funny)
Those responsible for the llama escape have been sacked.
The LHC will come back online in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.
Yes... (Score:2)
Yes, but are we any closer to using it to shoot pigeons?
At 2.36TV... (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah... if only a volt (unit of electrical potential, symbol V) and an electron-volt [wikipedia.org] (unit of energy, symbol eV) were the same thing...
Killjoy... (Score:5, Funny)
Someone goes to all the effort to make a perfectly reasonable Back to the Future joke and you have to kill it with your infernal logic. Great Scott, how dare you! This is so heavy.
Jiggawatts (Score:2, Funny)
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Still? (Score:5, Funny)
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That, my friend, is what gods do.
I think a little
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Re:Still? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a few years back we could have an article every time WoW gained a subscriber, or every time someone at Google farted, or some pirate got busted, I think we can have an article when a particle physics record is broken.
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Do you guys even read the post? The news is the COLLISION. Not just accelerated beam in both directions, but also the fact that the beams collided head on in points 1 and 5 i.e. Atlas and CMS. Atlas even has a fancy picture of the di-jet event at 2.36 TeV center of mass energy. THAT is the new result. There have not been collisions at center of mass energies beyond 1.96 TeV, now there are, hence the new record.
And with regard to following CERN twitter or not understanding physics, I'm actually a member of o
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The easiest answer is that it is for understanding the underlying world better than we do today. The whole scientific world can be worked up in a hierarchical structure.
The fundamental layer is where the deeper understanding of the universe and interactions are explained, the four interactions that we know now, the elementary particle content etc.
Then comes the layer that has atomic physics that explains how the fundamental particles behave in combined systems, how they can interact in complex structures an
"Luke, I felt a disturbance in the force" (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Bah. (Score:4, Funny)
Yesterday evening the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for the first time accelerated protons in both directions of the ring to 1.18 TeV
640GeV ought to be enough for anybody.
2.36 TeV - How much is that... (Score:3, Informative)
- Two female mosquitos colliding at 1.652 km/h? http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/lhc_glossary.htm [web.cern.ch]
- An unladen African swallow falling off a grain of sand?
- The calorific value of 1 cornflake unleashed over the space of a fortnight?
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Your third bullet conflates energy with power. You could put it in terms of the calorific value of 1 cornflake (that would be energy, which is also what eV measure), but time has nothing to do with it.
Anyway, 2.36 TeV = 3.78 * 10^-7 J
So if my math is right, that's about enough to heat a shot glass of water by 1/10,000,000 of a degree C.
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or to move 1 Library of Congress through a electric field potential of 2.36 volts.
(I never realized LCs were charged particles before...)
Picking nits... (Score:2)
the 1 TeV barrier per beam was first broken a week ago
That is not a barrier, that is a record.
A barrier is something that provides actual resistance. The speed of sound is a barrier. The speed of light is a barrier. AFAIK, there is no barrier at 1 TeV.
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Here's a nit: Words are often used figuratively.
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Nah. I don’t buy that explanation, in this case.
They used “barrier” to describe a limit that was based on “we didn’t spend the money to build a powerful enough accelerator to achieve 1 TeV per beam until just now.” That’s not a barrier, it’s a record.
A barrier is located where your marginal rate of increase exhibits a local minimum.
please stop telling uabout every increase in .1TeV (Score:2)
Just tell us when you find the Higgs Boson. We don't care about every .1 increase in TeV
barrier not the same as threshold (Score:3, Insightful)
The summary makes it sound like there's some immense wall that must be climed or broken in order to pass 1 TeV. There is no barrier at 1 TeV, but rather an arbitrary threshold put there by humans because the numeric representation of that energy level has a lot of zeros in the scale we happen to use. LHC did not pass a barrier, but a threshold.
This is science, and important science, so it's critical to get it right. Especially so for the non-scientific public.
Webcam (Score:4, Funny)
Webcam from the LHC is here [cyriak.co.uk]
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called "minimizing downside risk".
Which is a fancy way of saying "well, and what if the Singularity does NOT occur on schedule?"
Personally, I don't think anyone is taking the whole "global warming" thing seriously yet - they're just posturing with another unenforceable (and largely meaningless) Treaty meant to placate the global warming lobby while otherwise doing not very much at all.
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Since I happen to think nuclear fission is our best bet, that wouldn't bother me.
On that subject, I noticed in the news today that Taiwan now has a birthrate of 1.0 babies per woman. Which is about 1.2 babies per woman below replacement rate
Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy. (Score:5, Interesting)
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...Global warming carries with it a huge risk of reducing food supplies....
That is completely and utterly false. Most plants, including most crops grow better when it's warmer and moister. If every last bit of ice on earth melted, it might raise the ocean level a few feet, but there would be vast areas of earth that would then be agriculturally productive, whereas now they are frozen wasteland or desert. Greenland would be once again a green land, covered with forests similar to what is on the east coast of
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Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's right, Citizen, don't worry about your problems. Just go be a good consumer and enjoy life; everything will be taken care of for you by the Great Tin God. As if by magic Technology will sweep in and save the day, with no need for you to change or contribute in any way.
Oh, and don't worry; mere mortals cannot dig a hole so deep that Technology can't solve it. You can't do so much damage in the next 20 or 30 years, give or take, to face catastrophy before the coming of the Great Tin God. Your folly certainly can't interfere with His coming - and have faith, He is coming!
Give. Me. A. Break.
If not for humans striving to solve significant problems, there would be no technological advancement, and any Singularity that we might imagine coming would never be. That's if the whole Singularity idea isn't crap to start with (of which I am not convinced).
Perhaps an aphorism will help: Have faith, but row toward shore.
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Isn't the entirety of the whole singularity concept the eventuality of creating a machine intelligence capable of refining the design of technology for greater capability/efficiency at a much greater speed than any human is able, including itself, and accordingly creating a sort of spiraling out of control where machine intelligence creates ever greater forms of itself which in turn solve ever greater problems growing farther and farther beyond the range of man to comprehend within a lifetime?
Effectively an
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Ecept Kurswell is a loon that doesn't deserve the attention he is getting.
And singularity makes wild and unfounded assumptions.
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No it wouldn't. You are *seriously* underestimating the cost of large scale solar. The Desertec [wikipedia.org] project estimates 400 billion euros to provide 15% of Europe's electricity.
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Energy consumption numbers (Score:5, Informative)
The amount of power they used in mere minutes during this experiment could have powered millions of homes and businesses for a significantly longer period of time.
About a minute worth of googling shows that the site draws a peak load of about 180 MW when it's running, of which about 120 MW is for the LHC itself. And it doesn't run all the time.
Typical homes are about 2 kW or so, give or take, so that's hardly enough to power "millions of homes and businesses".
Population of Europe is abour 830 million, by the way, so LHC represents approximately zero percent of the energy consumption of Europe (to two significant figures).
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What is that, a 10^7 difference in magnitude? And a whole lot cheaper to observe the collisions.
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And a whole lot cheaper to observe the collisions.
Not if by "observe" you mean "observe with multiple layers of detectors that the collision happens inside of", which is the only sense of the term anyone would use in this context.
Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy. (Score:5, Informative)
This is factually incorrect. At peak (experiment running, all detectors running, all computers processing), the LHC will consume 180 MW of energy. This includes all the energy used to heat offices, etc... The actual experiment uses ~22MW of power. It's not "sneeze-at" power consumption, but considering an average household uses ~1kW of power, and the fact the LHC is planned on being shutdown a significant fraction of the year, the assertion that you could power "millions of homes and businesses for a significantly longer period of time" is bogus.
Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy. (Score:5, Insightful)
The LHC uses 120MW [web.cern.ch], but if you really want to slant the numbers in your favor we can go with the 180MW consumed by the entire CERN complex.
If you wanted to power millions (we'll say 2M, since that's the lowest number that can be called "millions") of homes and businesses, you could only give each one 90W. My modest-sized, well-insulated, gas-heated, largely-flourescent-lighted house consumes roughly 1kW (1000W).
So now that we have the hyperbole out of the way, certainly LHC consumes a lot of power. If you hadn't been greedy, you could've said "could power thousands of homes and businesses" (and left off the assertion that there was some time multiplier involved), and that's true.
However, willingness to spend energy on physics is only in conflict with wanting to conserve energy if either (1) the value of the physics fails to outweigh the value of the power consumed, or (2) there is a more energy-efficient way to do the physics.
Perhaps you think the physics isn't worth doing; those funding it disagree. That does not make them hypocrits.
If you have a more efficient design for the LHC, I'm sure many people would love to see it.
Oh, and there's only one LHC whereas there are millions of homes, millions of vehicles, millions of offices in the world. In other words, millions of opportunities to make incremental energy improvemnts that would cumulatively offset far more power than all of the particle accelerators in the world consume, without the need to sacrifice scientific progress (or much of anything, really).
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"You guys aren't comparing apples to apples "
Wrong. Comparing average power consumption is just as valid is comparing energy over a fixed time frame.
"141304 average US residences able to be powered off the energy consumed by the LHC"
Very similar to the result I posted, which should have tipped you off that your numbers are no better than mine. You used different estimates given in different units, but otherwise you're merely repeating the calcualtion that a number of us already did.
The reason the numbers
Re:Effect of using the same ring? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Effect of using the same ring? (Score:5, Informative)
To accelerate particles in opposite directions using the same magnetic field, you'd need to accelerate both positive and negative charged particles (positives go one way, negatives go the other), The Tevatron does this (protons one way, antiprotons the other). You only have to build one ring to contain the particles, but it's a tradeoff because you have to generate the anti-particles, which is an expensive process (basically, take regular particles, slam them into a fixed target and you get some % out the other side as antiparticles.).
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Yes, your adam's-apple will swell up like a pregnant camel. Stock up on soup.