LHC Hits an Energy of 3.5TeV 149
Inovaovao writes "As announced on Twitter by the CMS experiment, the LHC has finally accelerated both beams to 3.5 TeV for the first time. It thus broke the previous energy record of 1.18 TeV it had set last fall, about a month since operations started again this year. It'll be a while yet before we see stable beams and collisions at 3.5 TeV. You won't get much of a clue to the timetable by reading the General Manager's pompous announcements. If you want to follow what's going on, look at the Status Ops."
The press release is one week old (Score:5, Informative)
The press release you called 'pompous' is one week old -- when the record energy hadn't yet been reached. Apparently going to CERN's front page is too much effort for slashdot's editors. Anyway, here's the current press release [web.cern.ch]
Re:The press release is one week old (Score:5, Informative)
Also, IIRC the general director's first language isn't english, so I think the "pompous" the submitter saw was just stemming from that. From what I've heard, he's a nice guy.
Re:The press release is one week old (Score:5, Funny)
That's not pompous, that's just German thoughts translated into English ;).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
That's not pompous, that's just German thoughts translated into English ;).
You seem to have confused country and language. Those are Swiss thoughts translated into English.
(Most) Americans speak English (granted, a bastardized form thereof). But that does not make them Her Majesty's subjects ;)
Re: (Score:1)
That's not pompous, that's just German thoughts translated into English ;).
You seem to have confused country and language. Those are Swiss thoughts translated into English.
(Most) Americans speak English (granted, a bastardized form thereof). But that does not make them Her Majesty's subjects ;)
It's funny how the English think that their language originated from their little island.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's not pompous, that's just German thoughts translated into English ;).
You seem to have confused country and language. Those are Swiss thoughts translated into English
Schwyzer Duetsch? Make it twice pompous!
Re: (Score:2)
No, that's just doubly wrong. Try: Schweizerdeutsch.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Rolf-Dieter Heuer (born 1948) is a German particle physicist and the Director General of CERN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf-Dieter_Heuer [wikipedia.org]
Why would he have Swiss thoughts? Other than the usual (Hmmm, molten cheese and chocolate...)
Granted, i don't know if he wrote the txt, or just signed it.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, if you want to call anyone pompous it's not Heuer. One of his predecessors on the other hand...
Re: (Score:2)
Well that's good, because in the article he says that they hope to have an "inverse femtobarn" of data. Femto is 10^-15, so an inverse femtobarn would be 10^15 barns full of data.
Which, okay, is a lot of data, but I still wouldn't be acting too pompous if I kept my data in a barn instead of a library like civilized people. I mean what if your sheep eat the data, huh?
Though it makes me wonder if the German Parliament has their own barn, and if its the largest data barn in
Re: (Score:2)
Particle physicists have their own terminology for things. The inverse femtobarn [wikipedia.org] is a particular unit of measurement related to data collection on collisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Wha? You mean physicists don't REALLY measure data in terms of books stacked up in a barn, and Germans don't use barns as libraries? I never would have guessed that I was actually just making a "How many Libraries of Congress is that?" joke!
Re:The press release is one week old (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:1)
Probably because Funny doesn't earn you Karma.
Or maybe the moderator just misclicked. Shit happens.
Re: (Score:1)
Misclick happens.
3.5 TeV? Pffft! (Score:2)
Re:The press release is one week old (Score:4, Insightful)
The release wasn't pompous anyway. It was clear, outlined what their goals are and put their (nearly) current status in perspective.
Doesn't Slashdot have editors to turn crappy submissions into reasonable summaries?
All right, I just exceeded my sarcasm quota for the day in a single statement.
Re: (Score:2)
I think Slashdot has noticed more people comment when they inject editorials into stories. If the past is any indication, it'll be a year or two before this settles down.
Re: (Score:1)
Doesn't Slashdot have editors to turn crappy submissions into reasonable summaries?
Maybe in Soviet Russia
Re: (Score:1)
1.21 gigawatts? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd explain it all to you, but we don't have time! Well, time is very relative. When it reaches 3.6 TeV, it will open a rift in time that will launch the entire planet back in time. Most likely none of us will ever remember it, so we'll let it happen over and over until ...
[LHC reaches 3.6 TeV, and the loop begins again....]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, where is Lt.Cmdr. Data when you need him...
Re: (Score:2)
I wish you'd stop saying that. I don't know how many times I've read that comment.
oh...
shit...
I very much doubt that will happen... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Like I told you before, there haven't been Pterodactyls in this or any parallel universe for over 65 million years. This has already been proven through examining the far side of Einstein-Rosen bridges and exchanging information with our peers on on the other sides that we've discussed the matter.
Don't you remember the loop where the operations at Area 51 were made public. It did shut up the alien conspiracy folks, at least until the LHC got up to speed again at ....
Re: (Score:2)
In this loop, your domain still doesn't work. You should fix your domain, or your tagline. And remember to keep changing it until we do finally go forward. ... why is your nose bleeding?
Re: (Score:2)
It took me a little bit to get your Lost reference. :) Once I got it though....
There is a wealth of fictional material that relates to infinite time loops. I think the story line has been going on for just about as long as we've had the concept of time travel being a valid plot element. Most of them involve the traveler as being the focus and the only one (or ones) aware of the loop. Here are a few that I can think off, off the top of my head, that are loops. I dug around
Re: (Score:2)
Ahh, that's a show I've been meaning to watch, but haven't successfully caught yet. Too much happens in real life, so I usually don't get to the TV until it's all infomercials. They're not quite as entertaining, unless you're looking for a flowbee, snuggle, shamwow, the exercise equipment of the week, a variety of diet aids to make you look like a model, and want to watch college girls getting drunk and naked. :)
Re: (Score:2)
I think I've seen this one. At one point, there's a time travel coffin in a storage unit, right?
The one I was referencing was out in the desert somewhere in the Southwest US. If I remember right, the time travel machine was somewhere in a cave, and there was at least a good guy (the protagonist), bad girl who was helping the good guy, a bad guy (antagonist) who was also either a serial killer or just had a rather angry streak and would kill anyone for any reason. The good gu
O Really? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Not pompous, (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty outrageous calling the Director General's web update pompous. Someone clearly has an axe to grind. His web page seemed like quite a reasonable summary for the time it was posted. Part of his job is to promote the value of the billions of Euros being spent on CERN.
Re:Not pompous, (Score:4, Funny)
It's pretty outrageous calling the Director General's web update pompous.
I'd say you were new around here (as kdawson is not known for his intellectual musings), but damn it Anonymous Coward, you've been posting here for longer than I have - so you should know better than to write crap like that.
Re: (Score:1)
>but damn it Anonymous Coward, you've been posting here for longer than I have - so you should know better than to write crap like that.
rofl... that was hilarious :)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably a Fermilab fanboy.
How many Libraries of Congress (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
1024.
Re:How many Libraries of Congress (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Turn in your nerd card; "libraries of congress" refers to computer storage space. TeV is trillions of electron volts. 3.5 is three and a half, which ain't five and ain't two, neither.
Re:How many Libraries of Congress (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the correct way to do it would be to multiply the information of the LoC with k*T ln 2 where k = Boltzmann constant, T = temperature of the Library, ln 2 to change from base 2 logarithm (information entropy) to natural logarithm (thermodynamic entropy).
Let's take the 20 million volumes * 200 pages from your calculation, and assume 250 words per page [google.com], 4.5 letters per word [trincoll.edu] and 1.4 bits per letter [garykessler.net] (see directly above table 1, the value for longer text; I've taken the middle, rounded up). With this data, we get a total information content of the LoC of 6.3*10^12 bits. Let's further assume the temperature of LoC is about 290K, then we get the energy equivalent of the LoC as about 0.11 TeV.
Therefore 3.5 TeV is about 32 LoC.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
ah, but Ballmer threw the chair across his office to hit a table. Using round numbers, assume a ballistic lob with starting height of 1 meter to peak of 2 meters high to table 5 meters away also of one meter height with 20kg Aeron chair in 10 m/s gravitational field. chair will fall that one meter vertically in sqrt((2d)/a) =~ 0.5 seconds, so up and down in 1 second. And that's the time the horizontal travel must take, so horizontal initial velocity is 5 m / second. Vertical initial velocity is a*t for
Kdawson is the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
What I want to know is - when will kdawson not be such a tool?
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
What I want to know is - when will kdawson not be such a tool?
Worst Slashdot editor, ever. There's no hope, other than to stop reading Slashdot when he's approving submissions.
Re: (Score:2)
You can go into your account settings and set it to not show you his submissions.
I would not be surprised if they keep a metric of who has been blocked the most.
Re: (Score:2)
You can go into your account settings and set it to not show you his submissions.
I would not be surprised if they keep a metric of who has been blocked the most.
Perfect, thanks! Ah, the quality of Slashdot just went up.
Re: (Score:2)
When Europe disappears into a black hole?
Re: (Score:2)
What I want to know is - when will kdawson not be such a tool?
When you learn to use Slashdot's preferences system.
Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV (Score:2)
Because the world will come to an end as a Higgs Boson Particle is created and all the mass fo the earth is sucked into space equal to the size of a small pea.....
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yo Way oh.....
No one, not even the many Nerds here got the reference......
Guess I will go back top my job as a security guard class 4....
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
This is why I contend that no one ever dies (at least in their eyes). Ever have those dreams where you are killed? Seem very real? Then bam!! you wake up and it was just a fleeting memory while the memories of your current life start flooding in. Then up and into the shower.
You died on another time line and your loved ones mourned.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Unfortunately, if you are riddled with cancer, society will not allow you to end your world line peacefully. They will instead force you to live through an extended world line of little value, filled with terrible suffering.
Re: (Score:2)
It's called quantum immortality [wikipedia.org].
(Except for that freaky dream thing.)
Press release vs Status Ops (Score:3, Insightful)
Energetically Equivalent to... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Energetically Equivalent to... (Score:5, Informative)
Per particle.
The designed nominal total beam energy of the LHC is in the range of the kinetic energy of an aircraft carrier travelling at a significant speed.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/beam.htm [web.cern.ch]
362 MJ. But they're talking about the kinetic energy of the aircraft carrier, not the energy output of it's engines that is required to keep it at speed, so if the carrier in question is American, it would have the equivalent energy when it was moving at about 5 knots.
Things you won't hear at LHC (Score:2)
They did have stable beams (Score:2, Informative)
It'll be a while yet before we see stable beams...
From the CMS e-commentary ."..the beams were extremely stable
during this period and had a very long lifetime."
Re: (Score:1)
From the CMS e-commentary ."..the beams were extremely stable
during this period and had a very long lifetime."
Yes, but only for about two minutes, then they were dumped because the protection system was acting up. That's a major PITA when running such machines. The protection system is overly sensitive and needs to be carefully tuned to safely detect "safe" conditions and only report minor deviations. Since it has never been run at that energy with beam it it, there are still a few things to sort out, which needs a bit of time (and a certain amount of trial and error). Well, better safe than sorry.
And, by the w
If both beams are 3.5 TeV (Score:5, Interesting)
Does that make the collision 7 TeV? Serious question - I'm not sure I completely understand the physics. OK. I almost completely don't understand them. I have read that the LHC produced collisions of 14TeV, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt [wikipedia.org] and that the most energetic cosmic rays are 10^8 TeV. If all that it true, doesn't it completely and totally kill the whole "LHC will destroy the world" bullshit?
Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV (Score:5, Informative)
LHC physicist checking in - yes, that will make the collisions 7 TeV. Note that there are no collisions yet, we're still doing work to make sure that the beams are stable and focused properly. Once we have collisions, we'll run at this energy for about a year and a half before shutting down for a year to perform maintenance.
The LHC never produced 14 TeV collisions, the highest collision it will perform this year is 7 TeV. It is designed to produce 14 TeV collisions, and it will hopefully do that after we finish taking data at 7 TeV. It is true, however, that cosmic ray collisions completely kill the "LHC will destroy the world" bullshit.
Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV (Score:5, Funny)
It is true, however, that cosmic ray collisions completely kill the "LHC will destroy the world" bullshit.
Ah, but you forget that cosmics ray hadrons are natural and organically grown, unlike those nasty synthetic LHC ones which cause obesity, cancer and black holes. Plus they don't taste as good.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you'll find that if you get hit by the beams from the LHC, you won't have to worry about obesity or cancer. And the only black hole you'll notice is the one that is the entry into your body where it hit you.
luminosity (Score:2)
What is lost on most people is that the luminosity will be relatively low and that while 7 TeV CM is impressive, its not all that matters. Fermilab is down, but not quite out yet!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
my point was that this has not yet happened, has it? and IIRC most colliders have taken some period of time to meet their initially designed luminosities.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, maybe you could answer this question for me.. how much shielding do you think manned spacecraft need from galactic cosmic rays? I've heard people say that the best thing you can do with galactic comic radiation is let it hit you.. of course that's a little hard if you're already shielding for solar radiation.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
From their press release:
"The first attempt to collide beams at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) will follow on a date to be announced in the near future."
Source: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2010/PR05.10E.html
Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV (Score:4, Informative)
If all that it true, doesn't it completely and totally kill the whole "LHC will destroy the world".
You are exactly right. And it’s the failure of every “expert” interviewed who didn’t mention this, and of course of the media hype machine, that that is not well known to everyone.
Oh, and of course mostly to the loonies who want to stay ignorant.
and that the most energetic cosmic rays are 10^8 TeV.
To imagine this: Those particles are so fast that they have the mass of an apple or orange. A subatomic particle! This gives you some feeling for the power.
And yes, that does mean that they create those tiny black holes all the time in our atmosphere.
If this would create black holes, earth would have never existed.
Re: (Score:2)
And yes, that does mean that they create those tiny black holes all the time in our atmosphere.
If this would create black holes, earth would have never existed.
Potentially, but we haven't yet proven that micro black holes can be created by particle collisions. If it turns out they can be created however, it would certainly imply that they are not a risk to the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe the core of the Earth *is* full of mini-blackholes and the Earth would be a few thousand miles larger in volume if not for them. We always assumed the weight was due to an iron core, but maybe it's mostly holes instead.
Re: (Score:2)
No. On earth the (a-)holes live on the surface. And nowadays they easily can outweigh an iron core. ;)
Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV (Score:4, Interesting)
I highly doubt you'd feel an impact with a single particle regardless of it's momentum. It would just blow right through you like an X-Ray or gamma ray without you knowing, but potentially damaging some DNA on its way.
A related story (Score:1)
http://www.everything2.com/title/Stop+killing+me+now [everything2.com]
Requires some knowledge of the many worlds interpretation or the anthropic principle though.
Re: (Score:1)
http://www.everything2.com/title/Stop+killing+me+now [everything2.com]
Requires some knowledge of the many worlds interpretation or the anthropic principle though.
Of course, according to MWI, you are killed all the time even without the LHC. After all, if it can happen, and be it with absurdly low probability, then it will happen in some world. There are worlds where the whole earth collapses into a black hole not because of some LHC experiment, but just due to an unusually large quantum fluctuation. There are worlds where is just happens that no oxygen molecule finds its way into your nose for several minutes, and you suffocate. There are worlds where the nucleons i
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole text is based on the arrogant, ignorant and retarded Fermi “paradox”.
It is arrogant and ignorant because it states that we don’t see any aliens, so there must be no aliens, so where is everybody?? Which is just as retarded as a blind man going “i don’t see humans, so there must be no humans, so where is everybody??”
Or your doc going “There is no cure to this disease.”. When in reality he should say “I don’t know a cure to this disease.
Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't mean to offend anyone, but why is this even such a big deal? Sure it's a new record, but why is it posted seemingly every week. Tomorrow we can expect another headline reading 3.6TeV.
Didn't they design this thing to run at much higher energy levels anyway?
Perhaps considering the frequency of problems they have been experiencing, the merit here is that it is, for the time being, running without something else exploding, leaking or burning up.
I'm more interested in the actual results of experiments wh
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, this goes in steps. They went from ~1.18TeV (which was already the highest energy for a proton beam ever achieved in lab) to 3.5TeV. The experiments will run at 3.5TeV for some time, then another shutdown to get them to the design energy of 7TeV per beam (14 TeV per collision). All is happening as planned.
The "problems" you mention happened with every single collider, ever. When you get to a new scale, you expect things to happen differently from your original idea; so you plan to allow time to solve problems. The accelerator itself is an experiment, and one that is going very well.
You want hard results? ALICE [aliceinfo.cern.ch] published a science paper [arxiv.org] on collisions almost four months ago. You can see more from ALICE [stanford.edu], ATLAS [stanford.edu], CMS [stanford.edu] and LHCb [stanford.edu]. Lots of simulations, descriptions and detection methods, but at least the two "smaller" groups (LHCb and ALICE) have measurements already, at one sixth of the energy they were designed to work on. In fact, LHCb will only have actual b hadrons to see when they start colliding protons at 3.5TeV; but they still could find a meaningful result to publish, sooner than anticipated by anyone with even passing understanding of collider physics. Is that enough? Or do people actually believe things go like this [xkcd.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
I was surprised that those articles weren't in Spires, I was sure I saw them before. Thank you for confirming I'm not crazy.
If you want updates ... (Score:2)
But... (Score:1)
Is 3.5 TeV enough to power my Delorian?
Whatever you do... (Score:1)
Postel's Law (Score:2)
LHC Webcam (Score:4, Funny)
This is good news. Check out their webcam. [cyriak.co.uk]
pompous? (Score:2, Insightful)
When it hit's 1.2 gigawatts you can go back in tim (Score:2)
When it hit's 1.2 gigawatts you can go back in time!
Re: (Score:1)
When it hit's 1.2 gigawatts you can go back in time!
Back where, and in time for what?
So what's this thing supposed to do again? (Score:1)
Dr. Breen? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
I'd think you meant Another World.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_World_%28video_game%29
It starts with an accelerator.