CERN LHC Reaches Its Goals For 2010 90
Anonymous Dupaeur writes "The goals for the first run of the most powerful particle collider (and the most energetic storage ring since ISR) were recently surpassing the 10^32 level of luminosity, with a destructive 15 MJ energy per-beam. This is a significant milestone, opening the way to collect more and more data. The current plan is to stop the proton collisions soon, and provide an ion (Pb) beam and conclude this year with a X-mass break. The next year is expected to bring at least one inverse femtobarn of data, which is achievable with such beam power. After that, the entire accelerator complex will be shut down for a year, due to budget costs for science in Europe."
X-mass? (Score:5, Funny)
conclude this year with a X-mass break.
Is that supposed to be some kind of punny joke?
Re:X-mass? (Score:5, Funny)
conclude this year with a X-mass break.
Is that supposed to be some kind of punny joke?
It's just a subtle reminder to never cross the beams.
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conclude this year with a X-mass break.
Is that supposed to be some kind of punny joke?
It's just a subtle reminder to never cross the beams.
Its streams, not beams. Nice try though.
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what about cross beams?
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It's just a subtle reminder to never cross the beams
Yet another cross to bear
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I thought crossing the streams was the whole point of the LHC.
Well crossing the streams and bringing about the apocalypse.
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conclude this year with a X-mass break.
Is that supposed to be some kind of punny joke?
Yes? :)
Later on they say The next year is expected to bring at least one inverse femtobarn of data. Barn is a unit of area. inverse femtobarn is collisions per that unit of area (10^-28 m. sq.) which is related to luminosity. The brighter the beam (ie, more crap in it that is focused properly) the brighter the luminosity, the more data you get.
From, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_%28unit%29
"It took Fermilab over a decade to achieve 1 /fb" (fb is femtobarn)
And yes, physics like to make these little puns
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If it was, I didn't even get it until you mentioned it.
I don't know if that's the best kind of pun, or the very very worst...
Shutting down (Score:2)
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Don't You Mean "Extort"? (Score:2)
Summary failure? (Score:2)
The article says 2012. Is it 2011 already? Did my nap take THAT long???
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Well, maybe the true reason is that they don't want to be blamed for the world ending in 2012 :-)
Re:Shutting down (Score:5, Informative)
The cost is too high to run next year. That is disappointing.
Bad reporting. The LHC has scheduled maintenance in 2012.
However, CERN has more accelerators than just the LHC, and those will
be shut down due to financial constraints. They don't do much cutting edge
research anyway, so the science output is largely unaffected.
Shutting down the LHC for other than technical reasons isn't planned at all.
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Well as I understand it, it is not just because of budget constraints that the LHC is being shut down, I seem to recall there being a story here on /. about a number of upgrades being planned for the LHC over the next few years.
Even so, the accelerator has produced a lot of data already, which needs to be processed by some theoreticians.
Soo.... (Score:1)
So you editors are going to go ahead and just post any old gibberish?
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Inverse!!!! (Score:2)
The next year is expected to bring at least one inverse femtobarn of data, which is achievable with such beam power.
Provided the inverse femtobarn doesn't react at a quantum level with the inverse tacheons (they're BOTH inverse!) then we should be fine.
I hope someone has thought of the possible interactions here.
wtf is a inverse femtobarn? Great term though
Re:Inverse!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Well, if a femtobarn is a really really small barn, then its inverse would be a really really small anti-barn.
When two such particles collide, you'd better get the flock out. At least that's the little I've herd.
Re:Inverse!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
This is my favorite bit:
10^-40 meters square = picobarn
10^-43 meters square = femtobarn
10^-46 meters square = attobarn
10^-52 meters square = shed
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My favorite bit is 1<<12
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My favorite bit is 0. Where 1 is looking so inflexible, 0 shows the roundness I like.
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My favorite number is potato.
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10^-52 meters square = shed
Hey, don't knock it until you've experienced a shedload of uhhh... collisions with Caltech girls.
Re:Inverse!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
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Actually, the inverse of something very small is very large. For example a millionth is very small. The inverse of it is a million which is very large.
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Ok, wow, its an actual term explaining the number collisions. From wikipedia:
The "inverse femtobarn" (fb1) is a measurement of particle collision events per femtobarn. Over a period of time, two streams of particles with a cross-sectional area, measured in femtobarns, are directed to collide.
However, an "inverse femtobarn of data" still makes no sense.
Re:Inverse!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Could you tell us the formula for converting femtobarns into Libraries of Congress so the rest of us can understand this?
Correction (Score:2)
....to get the total number events that you should see.
Actually that gives you the number of event that should be produced. The number that you should see also depends on your detector's acceptance and efficiency.
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Re:Inverse!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not really a measurement of collision events, though it is proportional to it. Think about it classically, for a beam of billiard balls, say. The number of collisions you get will be proportional to to the area of beam, the number of particles per unit area for beam 1, the same for beam 2 and the cross-sectional area of the balls. All the factors apart from the last are shoved together in the luminosity figure - which has dimensions of inverse area and the barn is a unit of area.
So the integrated luminosity (in inv. barns) * the cross-section of the process you're interested in (in barns) gives you a number.
In reality, the cross-sections don't correspond directly to physical areas (it's all quantum after all) but the principle is the same.
Re:Inverse!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Wow. Your analogy didn't make anything clearer. I'm just as confused now as I was prior to reading your comment. Perhaps more so!
*sniff*
I'm so proud
In the future... (Score:2)
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wtf is a inverse femtobarn? Great term though
Enough collisions that you expect to see a collision with a cross section of one femtobarn once.
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Thank you. Clearest explanation of an inverse femtobarn yet.
Since I have an idea how small a femtobarn is*, enough collisions to see one with that cross section is one hell of a lot of data.
(*Take a half teaspoon (about 3ml) of stuff, stretch stuff out into a strand a megaparsec long. It'll have a cross section of about 1 barn. Now take a quadrillionth of that.)
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Epic explanation -- thank you!
What is the particle energy? (Score:2)
The summary didn't mention how many MeV's the particles had. Is it that they weren't colliding the beams?
NOT shutting down due to budget cuts (Score:5, Informative)
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You're correct (as I glance at my LHC run schedule PDF that I probably shouldn't provide a link to). It appears the LHC is doing ion beam setup in a week or so (for two weeks), and then begins ion physics runs starting Nov 1st for 4 weeks. Still, lots of science to do before the upgrade.
Re:NOT shutting down due to budget cuts (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I haven't been following this. (Score:5, Funny)
There you go again, always complaining about black holes. You can bet that if they produced a whole gang of planet-destroying white holes it wouldn't even make the back page of the crime section.
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Look, call me prejudiced if you want, but to me Supermassive Black Hole just sounds more threatening than White Dwarf. Or any kind of dwarf for that matter.
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Re:I haven't been following this. (Score:5, Funny)
Have they used the Large Hardon Collider to make a black hole yet?
There has never been more of a need for the -1 obvious flag.
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There has never been more of a need for the -1 obvious flag.
Why is that?
If they did happen to make a black hole at the LHC, it would surely not be large enough to sustain itself.
It would loose its own mass via Hawking radiation much faster than it could absorb the mass around it (which, with it being in a vacuum, is quite a large distance, relative to the size of the bh itself).
Any blackholes created within the LHC shouldn't exist for more than a few femtoseconds.
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Obligatory: http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ [hasthelarg...rldyet.com]
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And, just notice that this site uses Javascript to calculate its result. The answer is by no means hard coded in it...
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I'm somewhat disappointed by this, it seems some at CERN might be, too [mediaarchive.cern.ch] (text in lower left part of the image)
I wonder if.. (Score:4, Funny)
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I think they're more worried about what to do when the femto-chickens come home to roost.
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They won't have to. They'll just feed it to the atto-cows.
Thank You Recession! (Score:2, Funny)
The Great Recession that Saved the World! Don't worry, our politicians are dutifully working on more.
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It's due to it's power requirements.
But shutting down the LHC will cost too many jobs. They need to keep drilling with the 15 MJ beams, even if it causes another black hole in the gulf of mexico.
15 MJ energy (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, it's only 14.9999999.... MJ, so we're safe. [slashdot.org] Thank goodness!
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Or one Domino's pizza.
Its goals? (Score:2)
Technological Terror? (Score:2)
Wait, are they trying to study particle behavior or build a Death Star?
femtobarn? (Score:2)
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It's a unit.
1 barn = 10^-28 square meters
1 femtobarn is 10^-15 barn, i.e. 10^-43 square meters.
1 inverse femtobarn therefore is 10^43 per square meter.
The universe is at it again.... (Score:1, Funny)
You do realize that "Budget cuts force CERN to shut accelerators for year" is yet another example of the God particle coming back in time and preventing its discovery. Indeed I'd wager that this entire "Great recession" is do to the God Particle's insistence on anonymity. That or the theory that in this universe the CERN collider cannot operate else a black hole would open and swallow us all.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68G3NL20100917
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I am sure they thought of it. They will probably just open a micro-wormhole into the future and send Gordon Freeman, PhD, to smash the God particle with a crowbar as it starts moving back in time.
And the goal for 2010 were... (Score:2)
* LHC did not explode into bits.
* finally find the other side of that wormhole (spills out into a closet in it).
* 30 consecutive days of no spontaneous human combustion.
* Do not destroy the galaxy with spurious black hole generation.
How can their goals be considered reached? (Score:2)
What happened to all the black holes? (Score:1)
Isn't LHC supposed to destroy the universe by creating some black holes? It'll be very disappointing if the 2 billion investment for LHC will not even destroy the universe. If I were putting my money on it, I would immediately want them back.
Just turn it up to max already... (Score:2)
They should just turn it up to whatever the full power is and answer the question about the "higgs boson" once and for all...
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It goes to 11^32, man!