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Canada Science

Quark-Gluon Plasma Observed At LHC 155

Posted by timothy from the particular-particles dept.
Canadian_Daemon writes "A phase of matter created moments after the Big Bang is thought to have been detected at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. 'Striking' evidence of a quark-gluon plasma has been observed by a team of researchers, including Canadians, at the facility near Geneva, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced Friday."
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Quark-Gluon Plasma Observed At LHC More

Quark-Gluon Plasma Observed At LHC

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  • Go Canada!

    • Thanks (Score:5, Informative)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Friday November 26, 2010 @09:37PM (#34355380) Journal
      Thanks, but it is actually an international effort with those of us in Canada working on ATLAS making up ~5% of the collaboration. For those with a more technical mind there is the actual paper [cdsweb.cern.ch] which was accepted by PRL this morning (after being submitted yesterday!). To give you an idea of what the events actually look like you can go here [twiki.cern.ch]. As you can see there are around 1,000 tracks in a typical event!

      • Everybody else WISHES! We were in charge! And we did all the critical thinking!

      • Yawn.. and I say thanks as an American taxpayer that RHIC was first.. hopefully the eurocrats won't kill themselves if national lab gets the Higgs too.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Roger W Moore ( 538166 )

          Yawn.. and I say thanks as an American taxpayer that RHIC was first

          It's true that RHIC came before the LHC but the SPS and ISR came well before RHIC and none of these have really produced compelling evidence of a QGP. However don't worry - as an American taxpayer you also helped pay for the LHC, so thanks!

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by ieatcookies ( 1490517 )
        Nice work, hosers!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Luyseyal ( 3154 )

        Now if they would issue 64-bit jobs for Linux hosts on LHC@Home, I would totally help!

        -l /Still registered, haven't seen a work unit in YEARS

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vadim_t ( 324782 )

          Wikipedia says:

          BOINC users who are considering joining this project should know that it only occasionally has work; the project is used for design and repair considerations related to the LHC. There are currently no plans to use the project to do computation on the data that will be collected by the LHC.

          That might explain it.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by sznupi ( 719324 )

            Not exactly, I get (however small) new work units semi-regularly. Possibly in every month of this year there was something.

        • Seti@home is also off for quite some time...

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Roger W Moore ( 538166 )

          Now if they would issue 64-bit jobs for Linux hosts on LHC@Home, I would totally help!

          Actually you would probably not want to help for long! Analyzing data from an experiment is I/O intensive as well as CPU intensive plus the executables are very large and require ~2GB/core to run so they are not really a suitable scale for an @home project unfortunately.

      • The list of authors is longer than the paper itself. And it's in alphabetical order. At least, there surely is no fight as to know who will be first author. ^^

  • As a Canadian, I like to watch... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thomasdz ( 178114 ) on Friday November 26, 2010 @07:53PM (#34354658)

    What a strange thing to say: "observed by a team of researchers, including Canadians"
    Does this mean the Canadians aren't team players or they weren't researchers (were they just tourists?)
    This Canadian wants to know!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gruturo ( 141223 )

      What a strange thing to say: "observed by a team of researchers, including Canadians"
      Does this mean the Canadians aren't team players or they weren't researchers (were they just tourists?)
      This Canadian wants to know!

      I think it has something to do with the initial line which says "Canadian_Daemon writes " :-)

    • The report is from cbc.ca, a few of those c's probably stand for Canada. The "including Canadians" bit basically means "our country was involved" or "we helped" or similar.

    • Canadians tend to be skeptics.

      They are always the first to wait up so they can catch santa claus coming down the chimney.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MachDelta ( 704883 )

        Of course we're skeptics! Every year we hear about this crazy bastard flying around in a sleigh all night. Any sane Canuck knows that, during winter, you get your shit done during the two and a half hours of daylight in the afternoon. After that you stay the hell inside because its fucking cold! We just wanna meet the guy so we can tell him he's got everything ass backwards. He must be an American. ;)

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by tomhudson ( 43916 )
          Don't be such a wimp. Even at -30, the dogs have to be walked for half an hour first thing in the morning before work and again in the evening after work.

          As long as it's not windy, I don't care. That's what boots, coats, hats, sweaters, gloves, etc., are made for.

          Not warm enough? Put on another layer and MOVE AROUND! You'll warm up to it.

          Winter's not going to go away for a few months, so might as well enjoy it.

          -- Barbie

          • > Winter's not going to go away for a few months, so might as well enjoy it.

            I hope I'm going to be around for more than a few months.

        • He's clearly an Australian in that case. tak tak tak tak tak thnnka tak tak thunk tal thin kl

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Dabido ( 802599 )
          Actually, Saint Nic was originally from Ephesus, where it's very hot usually. He obviously hasn't adapted to the climate ... then again, maybe he's the person behind all this climate change.

      • Re:As a Canadian, I like to watch... (Score:5, Funny)

        by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday November 26, 2010 @09:13PM (#34355244)

        Canadians tend to be skeptics.

        Oh, I don't know about that.

    • Having a Canadian on the team embraces a certain regional pride to calm insecurities of those Yanks.

    • Because researchers from TRIUMF (Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) were involved... of course... so were researchers from Fermilab, and other institutions... but the article was submitted by a Canadian.

      • Were they named after this cheesy but proficient Canadian band [wikipedia.org]? Now someone in Canada needs to build a collider called the Relativistic Electron Smashing Hammer, and we'd really be rocking!
    • It's just nationalism.
      • But it's Canadian nationalism. Isn't that a bit like being proud to be a generic white guy as opposed to one of them ethnic white guys that nobody can tell isn't a generic white guy?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by JamesP ( 688957 )

      I'm thinking that except if they actually injected Canadians into the LHC pipes and then collided them at high speed, this whole Canadian bias of the news is unjustified.

      IT'S A CANADIAN CONSPIRACY

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )
      Canada was busy watching its back side from 2000 to 2008, what with all the weird goings-on down there. Now they are free to turn their attention to something more constructive.

    • Nah, it's like Canada has been America's hat for so long, they don't really get the recognition they deserve. This tribit was just trying to correct that a little.

    • The Canadians supplied the bacon.

    • The article was posted on a Canadian website. The fact that Canadians were involved would be of immediate interest to their readers.

    • Most likely is that the Canadian scientists involved are not allowed to talk about anything they are doing, ( gag order [nature.com]), especially this new stuff. But if one can get the information from other sources, the CBC can let the Canadians know that Canadians are involved in science still, although we're not allowed to talk about that either.

  • Quark-Gluon Plasma Observed At LHC (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26, 2010 @07:54PM (#34354670)

    I'm glad the OP mentioned that Canadians had a hand in this. Otherwise I would have assumed they didn't.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dr. Spork ( 142693 )
      Yeah, that was really important. I would not have been able to even make sense of what was discovered in that Swiss/French collider without the information about the Canadian input. It wasn't just a quark-gluon plasma; it was a quark-gluon plasma that Canadians had something to do with! That's totally more revolutionary!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mrops ( 927562 )

        It seems funny the way they have said "including Canadians", however the link is to a Canadian publication, primarily intended for Canadian readers.

        Just FYI

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 )

          It's worse in TFA, actually. I don't know about other countries, but in the American and British stuff I read, you just don't see this kind of bullshit. Seriously, four separate mentions of Canada in that tiny article, plus a sidebar about what Canada has been working on.

          I mean, really? Does Canada really have that small an ego? When was the last time an American publication had to remind us that they were talking to Americans who work on the LHC, that Americans helped build it, etc?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by IrquiM ( 471313 )
      You can't make a Gluon without a Canadian This is why all have failed previously!

  • Quark Glue-ons (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    A Ferengi with a Glue-on observed moments after the big bang?

    Its like horrible geek porn. I must retreat to the relative artistic successes of the Star Wars Christmas Special.

  • Eh! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26, 2010 @08:25PM (#34354930)

    Canadian observes quark-gluon plasma, then immediately apologizes.

  • Including Canadians, and... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chebucto ( 992517 ) on Friday November 26, 2010 @08:27PM (#34354952) Homepage

    I'm a canuck and would be happy to celebrate a discovery by my compatriots, but it doesn't make much sense to say the team that made this ion-shattering discovery 'included canadians' when it included a lot of other nationalities too.

    From TFA:

    Canadians make up more than 150 of the researchers involved in ATLAS.

    From Wiki [wikimedia.org]:

    The project is led by Fabiola Gianotti and involves roughly 2,000 scientists and engineers at 165 institutions in 35 countries.

    So.. how about we say 'Horray for people!' or something like that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jamesh ( 87723 )

      No I think it's reasonable to point it out explicitly. If they had just said "Observed by a team of researchers", you would fairly quickly assume that there wouldn't be any Canadians in that team, for obvious reasons.

      Just like if a blind guy had ascended Mount Everest, the news article would read "A team of mountaineers, including a blind guy, ...".

    • I'm a canuck and would be happy to celebrate a discovery by my compatriots, but it doesn't make much sense to say the team that made this ion-shattering discovery 'included canadians' when it included a lot of other nationalities too.

      Well, as I understand it, the Canadians were mainly in the facility to get warm.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by circletimessquare ( 444983 )

      1. Quark gluon plasmas are rare in Switzerland
      2. Canadians are rare in Switzerland

      3. Therefore, anything related to quark gluon plasmas is intrinsically Canadian in nature

      this is all perfectly logical

    • It is so sad. It is a place of contrasts, the sally-fields-like desperation for acknowledgement against the smugness of not being Americans (even though nobody else can tell).

    • It was a misquote:

        'Striking' evidence of a quark-gluon plasma has been observed by a team of researchers, at the facility near Geneva, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced Friday, however some of them were Canadians."

    • I'm a canuck and would be happy to celebrate a discovery by my compatriots, but it doesn't make much sense to say the team that made this ion-shattering discovery 'included canadians' when it included a lot of other nationalities too.

      Yes, but Canadians are the "special sauce" in any recipe. In my next project, I am going to insist that it "includes Canadians." Hell, Cajuns are displaced Canadians, and the whole world knows how good their cooking is: The secret ingredient? Canadians!

      One of my cousins from Calgary sent me some seasoning, named "Bifteak de Montreal." It tastes fantastic, but I'm afraid to read what's in it . . .

      Uh, oh, whatever happened to the Montreal Expos . . . ?

    • The project is led by Fabiola Gianotti and involves roughly 2,000 scientists and engineers at 165 institutions in 35 countries.

      As a young spud in one of my first big projects, the project manager kept dumping work one me. He told me two things: "In any big project, 5% of the people do 95% of the work." and "Work gravitates toward people who can do it."

      I thought that he was trying to be funny, but now that I have 25+ years under my belt . . . I know better.

      So how many of those "roughly 2,000 scientists and engineers at 165 institutions in 35 countries" are actually doing any work? Their conference calls must be a hoot and a half

      • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

        by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 )

        And if the article wanted to make the point that the Canadians are the ones who are "committed" and "actually doing any work", it could've said so, though I doubt they can back it up.

        Without that, I still don't see the point of saying "including Canadians" unless Canada has a serious ego problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drolli ( 522659 )

      That was just for safety. If something goes wrong.... "Blame Canada, blame Canada..."

  • Well then, this makes the event all that more noteworthy, obviously.

    • Well, of course it was noteworthy. The quark-gluon plasma never would have been noticed if one of the Canadians hadn't dropped maple syrup in to the Collider.

  • Why there's a red maple leaf there is beyond me.

    I'm a Canadian and like to toot our own horn but this was done by an international consortium in Geneva.

    C'mon guys. Get the story straight.

  • They were expecting this observation... http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/ardlouis/dissipative/Schrcat.html [cornell.edu] and although many applications are quite feasible, am only hoping that it is not able to be used for ill purposes.

  • RHIC (Score:4, Informative)

    by Lawrence_Bird ( 67278 ) on Friday November 26, 2010 @11:44PM (#34356014) Homepage
    all the Candian jokes are nice and all.. but this really was about trying to make people think CERN is the only thing going on in HEP or nuclear physics. Not so, and this is not a first as RHIC was there first. [bnl.gov] Glad to see CERN is catching up though.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hardwarefreak ( 899370 )

      all the Candian jokes are nice and all.. but this really was about trying to make people think CERN is the only thing going on in HEP or nuclear physics. Not so, and this is not a first as RHIC was there first. [bnl.gov] Glad to see CERN is catching up though.

      I thought the big deal with the LHC is that it was supposed to give us the Higgs Boson, as no other collider on earth was powerful enough to create the Higgs. Enough about this QGP junk. Where's our Higgs Boson?

  • Who knew Quark had a last name, or that Ferengi had blood plasma? Even more impressive, the LHC created Quark-Gluon Plasma (presumably water with suspended hydrocarbons and traces of his DNA) with a mere collision of some high energy particles.

  • Practical usage? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jolyonr ( 560227 ) on Saturday November 27, 2010 @06:17AM (#34357116) Homepage

    So, when will I be able to buy a Quark-Gluon Plasma TV?

    • I don't think they'll ever make it to market, they require gigawatts of power and they break down every few months.

  • Eh? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    'Striking' evidence of a quark-gluon plasma has been observed by a team of researchers, including Canadians, at the facility near Geneva...

    There's three ways to interpret that.

    1) Canadians were present during the observation.
    2) The quark-gluon plasma said, "Hey! What'cha looking at buddy?".

    or

    3) Canadians have spread so far, they've now overrun the LHC, and our only chance to find particles that repel them is lost!

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