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More On The International Linear Collider
paragon_au writes "The UK Independent is reporting that details for a purposed 40km long international Linear Collider have been released by 'An international panel of particle physicists [that] decided the high-energy linear collider - a £3bn machine for smashing matter against antimatter - will use revolutionary superconducting technology to shed light on the origin and nature of the universe. Plans for the International Linear Collider have still to be finalised but scientists hope that construction of the underground machine will begin in six years.'"
As much as we all love CERN, Curves don't allow electrons thus no clean experiments. electron collisions are clean and pretty!
That's fine and dandy, but we already know the answer to life, the universe, and everything. What I want to know is, what's the question. Can this thing help?? ;)
It's called the Trans-Canada Highway.
(It's an immature joke so I'm posting it AC.)
a toy that i can finally put to good use, smashing things never gets old!
THe old Superconducting SuperCollider (SSC) is still there, half built in Texas. All the buildings are still intact and the tunnels are still there (just closed off). Would THAT be cheaper. As I recall it was also about 40km in length. I live near that site and I'm sure that we could make someone a HECK of a deal on the site. Of course there are people living nearby now but it's not going to be a hazard. IIRC, The collider at Stanford (SLAC) goes under houses, campus bldgs and a freeway. Oh right, I forgot, common sense and high-energy high $$$ physics projects don't go together.
You forget that no one trusts the US anymore.
Imagine a beowolf cluster of those!
Your half built SSC is curved.
We could revisit reactivating the SSC project, but that's a different debate.
Letter To Iran
In Fact, I'm not sure _I_ trust us anymore!
Damn intolerant fool, your anti-americanism is getting the better of you.
Scotty's getting on in age, what if they can't reverse polarity in time?
There might be a warp core breach!
I can hear the scientists planning this now...
"Okay, we'll make this like, really huge collider and we'll smash matter and anti-matter together really fast, like SSSSKRKKRAASSSH. Oh man, this will be so awesome."
"Super collider? I just met her!"
[The audience laughs.]
And then they built the super collider.
Thank you, you've been a great audience....
This is the future. There is no way we're on this little blue planet at the edge of a galaxy, one of millions in the universe, without a practical means of travelling around. There simply must be a way to do it. If we can't increase the speed, then shorten the distance. I don't know what scientific magic we'll end up with, but I suspect it's buried deep in partical physics.
German lab wins linear collider contest
Particle physicists have chosen to base the proposed International Linear Collider on superconducting technology developed by an international collaboration centred on the DESY lab in Germany. The superconducting approach was chosen by an international panel ahead of a rival technology developed at Stanford in the US and the KEK lab in Japan. The eagerly-awaited decision was announced at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Beijing today.
The 30-km-long International Linear Collider (ILC) will collide electrons and positrons together at energies of at least 500 billion electron volts. Particle physicists will use the ILC to make detailed studies of the Higgs boson and any other new particles, such as supersymmetric particles, that might be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is envisaged that the ILC will turn on by around the middle of the next decade, about eight years after the start up of the LHC, which is currently being built at CERN in Geneva.
Is this the answer to God, the universe and all that?
Physicists plan £3bn experiment in a 20-mile long tunnel
They call it the God particle: a mysterious sub-atomic fragment that permeates the entire universe and explains how everything is the way it is. Nobody has ever seen the God particle; some say it doesn't exist but, in the ultimate leap of faith, physicists across the world are preparing to build one of the most ambitious and expensive science experiments the world has ever seen to try to find it.
ITER Impasse Illustrates Challenge of Site Selection
its tough being anti-american and an american at the same time...I actually like myself... but I completely understand the rest of the world not wanting to give our government their money. Which is exactly why good foriegn policy is so important to a nation. Our science is directly and negatively affected by the anti-science position of the current Administration. I was trying not to rant...I think I explained my points.
the Atlantic ocean does not border Texas.
Too bad the average European IQ is higher than the average American IQ
it puts the antimatter in the particle accelerator or it gets the non-unified description of our Universe.
:o) but einstein's special theory of relativity was instigated by the simple idea that acceleration and gravity are equivalent.
btw, here's an idea. so string theorists say that electromagnetism and other stuff is caused by extra dimensions that are too small to see. what i was thinking a couple days ago during a heat lightning storm, is that it relates to another part of string theory. namely the idea that our universe is like a soap bubble among a conglomerate. then the extra dimensions could be the axes to adjacent universes. perfect.
keep in mind that cosmology/quantum mechanics are non-intuitive.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
Wasnt this supposed to be combined with the new free electron laser build there? That the electron part of the collider would also feed the FEL?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I see scientists getting skate boards, or roller blades on and hurting them selfs as they have jousting tournaments in the thing. On the up side, I bet they will come up with some really bad ass new kinds of armor as a result of this project... maybe even some cool really fast skate boards.
Note: this has been posted by r.future (a person who spends way to much time on the internet!)
Why do they have to spend all this money just to smash atoms together at near-light speed?
:P :)
All one has to do is to connect two California freeway lanes together, going in opposite directions.
And no, LA freeways don't count. LA is not a part of California.
Despite the incredible importance of this research - not to mention basic research in general - it was dismissed as a boondoggle and sandbox for particle physicists.
More reading: Science and Patriotism run amok in Texas
As for being anti-american at the same time as being American, it's not tough at all. We've always had the most vehement American haters home grown. Their are blacks that are racist against blacks, men sexist against men, and there are certainly Americans who are anti-US. Want to change international perception, than help encourage the US to build big science projects like this. The US needs to once more be the worlds top destination for scientists, and this is one of the ways of doing so.
Never before has a nation worked so hard to give away and abandon it's lead in technology.
I'm sure there is some way to make a conspiracy theory out of this.
I am sure you are alluding to the well known fact that this is all part of the plan to give Dick Cheney Spidey-Powers and send him back to before the time of the dinosaurs so that he can influence the size of the US oil reserves.
"Proposed"
That is all.
Any possilility that a collider of this size could result in an exotic, yet disastrous incident that could that spell our sudden and premature demise?
namely the idea that our universe is like a soap bubble among a conglomerate. then the extra dimensions could be the axes to adjacent universes. perfect.
Do a Google for 'brane theory' -- it is similar to what you appear to be thinking of.
but einstein's special theory of relativity was instigated by the simple idea that acceleration and gravity are equivalent.
That would be 'general theory' -- special relativity deals solely with unaccelerated frames of reference.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The Swiss?
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
This sounds strangely like the plot-line from Half-Life... Do I smell a prequel?
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Make Love not [Browser] War!
...if someone would build an exponential collider?
Might as well bring up the mention of strange matter before some other paranoid ninny does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet . Unlikely it could be made, but I'm sure the same people who worry about neutron emissions and world destroying asteroids will like this also.
...again.
Isn't that ALWAYS what they say about these things? Nobody ever says "This is to help us built anti-matter bombs."
That said, sounds exciting, let me go ahead and echo what the other poster said WTF happened to the SSC?
I am a doomsayer but still these things have a capacity fore loveliness. Such as the creation have Black Holes and such.
A ruler wears a crown while the rest of us wear hats. But which would you rather have when it's raining?
I think they should build it....
;)
oh, I don't know, maybe 40 or so km from SCO's headquarters?
liqbase
Special relativity can handle accelerated frames just fine, just like ordinary Newtonian mechanics can; it just can't handle curved spacetime.
Never before has a nation worked so hard to give away and abandon it's lead in technology.
No, I'm afraid you don't win that, the Nazis and Soviets are some way ahead, but you are catching up fast. I can offer the fact that in the modern age Totalitarian regimes don't usually last long, sorry I can't be of any more help.
Don't forget to mention that Fermilab (with a piddly 4 mile ring collider) is already heavily involved in the international scene. Sometimes it seems like more people speak russian there than english.
Quick, start up the conspiracy theories!
While I understand that electron/positron collisions require the linear accelerator, doesn't a lot of this hinge upon the discovery of the Higgs boson? I mean, basically, this whole project is being built with the assumption that the Higgs boson both exists and will be possible to study in a 40 km LinAc. I'm all for new particle accelerators, but I'm also all for not using money needlessly. It seems to me that it would be prudent to delay starting a project of this magnitude and international importance until we're sure that all the hypotheses regarding the Higgs boson are correct. Additionally, the whole "superconducting accelerator" thing is hardly new. The Tevatron at Fermilab (which is the fifth stage of a five-stage particle accelerator) already uses superconducting magnets. Anyone happen to know if this LinAc is any different from that (other than the obvious straight/curved difference) or if journalists just like to say "revolutionary superconducting technology" as if they know what they're talking about?
The article and talks a great deal about discovering the origins of matter. I am not a physicists so I really don't know the answer to why this takes precedence over other scientific problems, for example discovering a cure to cancer or AIDS?
3 billion is a lot of money, and I am sure there are AIDS or cancer researchers who badly need it, and I can actually see a benefit to humanity in those cases.
I am not against spending 3 billion on science just for the sake of improving humanity, in many cases we have discovered some wonderful things, but I was just wondering, are we going to say "Ah, that's how it works!" and then shut the machine down because there isn't a practical use for knowing the origins of matter or are there projects to actually make use of the results in the pipeline?
From what I understand, we need at least 1 Trillion eV collisions in order to judge whether or not the higgs particle or supersymmetry are physical realities. But for the press releases,I get the impression that this project, at least in the eralier stages, is only meant to act as support for the LHC (i.e. refined versions of sub-TeV experiments done there). Why not ,go for the big prize right away?
The Swiss?
But some Swiss Cantons (broadly equivalent to US states) didn't allow women to vote until 1992!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Special relativity can handle accelerated frames just fine, just like ordinary Newtonian mechanics can; it just can't handle curved spacetime.
Yep, you're right; I'm so used to considering gravity-induced accelerations that I often interchange the two in my mind.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
In Fact, you're not sure that you aren't quite sure of ANYTHING anymore!
Good point. Surprised no one else noticed that.
All of Switzerland is smaller than many US states. A canton is roughly equivalent to a small city but, because Switzerland is a democracy, it has more self-government.
You're absolutely right: humanity is facing some immediate, pressing problems: the environment, overpopulation, soil & water depletion, and disease as you mentioned.
For the most part however, these are human problems, with human solutions. We know what causes overpopulation, and that in turn results in environmental damage, starvation etc. We also know what causes AIDs; and its spread is more a result of governmental unwillingness to educate their populations and promote safe sexual practices, than lack of medical technology. Likewise, cancer is largely a Western disease, and diet & lifestyle plays a large part in the likelihood one gets it: it's for the most part preventable.
But here we are, in a Universe. While we've made significant progress, we still don't really know what the hell it is. What are the rules? What makes everything happen? How did it come to be? Pursuing the answers to these fundamental questions is natural human curiosity, and the same drive that has led to many of our other scientific and technological advancements.
Knowing the answers may not be of use to the average person, other than possibly having another neat formula to put on T-shirts. But having a complete model of how the universe works, may result in many spin-off technologies. I'm speculating, but they may include things like quantum propulsion, true nanoscale engineering, new materials development... who knows.
Politicians are going to be idiots and let people die of preventable diseases, breed until they wipe out the natural world, etc. But should particle physicists simple twiddle their thumbs while humanity consumes itself; or busy themselves seeking a better understanding of the cosmos we inhabit, and perhaps giving us better tools to improve our world and ourselves?
Live simply, that others may simply live. -Gandhi
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Research into cancer and AIDS is a branch of biochemistry.
- Biochemistry depends on science like DNA sequencing and protein folding
- DNA sequencing and protein folding need fast computers
- Fast computers need leading-edge engineering and physics.
- The structure of DNA was clarified partly as a result of X-ray analysis
- The discovery of X-rays was a byproduct of pure research into conduction of electricity in gases
We have no way to be certain that deeper insights into the fundamental structure of matter will contribute to solving other biological problems - but we have no ay to find out other than to do it.You might also like to consider that $3billion is less than drug companies spend on advertising and promotion every year.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
oh my god, thats gross... I hate you.
...An article in the times that was basically the top 10 things that can kill us all, I can't remember what number it got to but it was on there. anybody know if these things are safer now, or what makes them so dangerous?
They'll probably start colliding particles in order to find a graviton. Though the particle has been postulated, and its properties have been mapped out (they have different theories for different models of the universe--one for point-particle, one for string-particle), they've yet to observe it. Frankly, what would be really cool is if they were able to observe a disappearing graviton, with the proper distortion waves in space to at least postulate that the graviton has left our brane (see M Theory for an explaination of what a brane is).
Now that would be quite interesting, no?
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
FROM A PHYSICIST:
First Why. Natural Science is a lot like mining. Physicists discover things about nature. They attempt to put together an idea of how the fundamental works, both large and small, and create methods to predict phenomena based on these ideas. Applied Physicists and Engineers then take this knowledge and ask themselves the question "How might I use this for mankinds advantage". A simple example is the transister. The transistor could be the most powerful invention of the last century. But, without the knowledge of quantum mechanics discovered by natural physicists the transistor would never be. Natural physicists mine for the knowledge that will be later used for application. Their are countless examples of this from maxwell and wireless applicatons, certainly quantum mechanics and solid state technology, and even general relativity and GPS satellites.
Second Linear Collider vs SSC, etc: The linear collider is not a discovery machine per se. It is a precision measurement machine meant to refine knowledge about discoveries that will be made by the Large Hadron Collider which is being built in Europe. Natural physics isn't about finding a particle alone. This does nothing for us. It's about building and understanding a model of nature that can later be used to predict phenomena as accurately as possible. Neither of these machines is focused on a single particle (HIGGS, SUSY, etc.) Saying so is the equivalent of saying we're building a workbench to put together only rocking chairs. Our 'workbench' is an experiment meant to study interactions spanning the entire current model of nature. It is an expensive tool, but keep in mind once it is built it will last 20-30 years (fermilab as an example). I don't believe it's very expensice considering this keeps the flow of technology rolling.
Superconducting: The magnets proposed are revolutionary because they will be at 2 kelvin. Fermilab operates at 70+.
Look at how 'helpful' and 'trusting' the Swiss have been about returning the Gold the Nazi's stole.
and we pronounce linacs as 'linacs'.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Want to change international perception, than help encourage the US to build big science projects like this. The US needs to once more be the worlds top destination for scientists, and this is one of the ways of doing so.
Suppose the USA builds a great scientific project and invite scientist from all over the world, what will happen? Half of them won't be let into the USA for 'security reasons'.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
lol
einstein's special theory of relativity was instigated by the simple idea that acceleration and gravity are equivalent.
Errr, no. It was General Relativity.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Yeah go ahead and mod me troll. Seems like an awful lot of money to spend on an intellectual pursuit when a few African kids starved to death while your were reading this.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
People of Vietnam: "It's true."
The matter explosion (=hot nuclear) is the hottest explosion.
open4free © : the pacifist
I can hear the words... "welcome to the Black Mesa research facility"
http://www.automatiq.se
This is so fantastic, they should be calling it a Super Linear Colliding machine. That seems some what more accurate, I believe.
I suggest you read Slashdot
the cost estimate of exponential collider is divergent...
We'll wind up accidentally discovering an interesting new way to create a really big explosion.
From the article:
"Last year, physicists accurately measured for the first time how the universe is composed. They found that only 4 per cent of it was made up of visible atoms, with the rest being mysterious dark matter and dark energy - neither of which entities can be seen."
SF author Ted Sturgeon once noted that "90% of everything is crap" (he actually said "crud", but "crap" sounds better). So, according to the article, they refined the estimate to 96%. How many more digits of precision will $5B get us?
The trouble with this train of thought is that the science that you are talking about is very very far removed from basic physics. Even at the chemistry level, none of the equations are useful beyond very basic cases. For example in molecular dynamics simulations of proteins - the answers are nearly always wrong because of problems in the force fields. These problems are not due to any lack of understanding of the underlying physical equations but the lack of computable approximations in a complex environment.
When you start going up the ladder of complexity, more or these details become less and less important. Whether DNA is a B form double helix is not ever really used by most biochemists - only the fact that there are two complementary strands and that replication is semi-conservative is of use. Not to say that there won't be some unforseen spin-off of finding another weak force but to think that AIDS research hangs on this is misleading.
The part about the drug companies wasting their money is true and I would have no objection to them spending it on the collider. Actually I don't even have objections to spending limited public resources on it because I believe that it is important to know about these things - but that is for the public to decide.
Yeah.
:D
:) I'm not sure they understand the theories of unaccelerated frames of reference :D
.9c :D
:D
Bad Universe, Bad! *Spank*
How *dare* you do what we don't want you to do!
---
Sorry, that was a brain fart inspired by my cats, who casually (and occasionally causally) violate our most cherished theories of how things should be
Like another poster put it in his sig once, beware blue cats moving at
Heinlein may have been on to something
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Shadowbearer's attempt to inject humor into this thread/time stream is likely to fail utterly due to the ability of some observers to alter what they see by merely observing.
:)
I believe the human outlook on that is to "Take it with a grain of salt" - which is a very broad aphorism, akin to "burning the midnight oil". An ancient scientist put it very well once, in saying that the observer affects the observed. However, he was more or less universally ignored outside of the fields of physics, to the detriment of the social advancement of the species.
However, and even being that this is totally irrelevant to the subject at hand (nm that all things are connected) this particular entity will bow out of the conversation, with the observation that he likely shares, along with most of the inhabitants of the 3rd planet from the star called "Sol", a certain bais.
Meh, I really need to go to bed
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Don't make me start schooling you again, DAldredge.
Actually this is one of the few times in science when we really can be certain that we will see something interesting with a new accelerator. Certain cross sections exceed unitarity, i.e. the probability of two particles interacting exceeds 100% at LHC energies if we simply extrapolate existing theory to ~1TeV. Since this is a nonsense result we either have to see somethng new even if its just a completely unexplained bahvaiour of these cross-sections or we have to reinterpret was 100+% chance of interacting means. Either way it will be exciting....we can't just have the current theoretical model continuing to work as normal.
...they build a 40075 km collider.
A lot...cast your mind back 100 years to the period when a strange new science called Quantum Physics was making its debut. This new theory grew out of the need to explain a few strange results from the experiments of the time. Of course at the time this theory was extremely esoteric and not much use to the common person on the street. However application of this theory to semiconductors lead directly to the development of modern computers. Of course, nobody at the time, least of all the scientists realized how incredibly useful this new theory would be. The problem is with "blue skies" research is that it can take considerable time before the results are directly useful.
I would argue that the current state of particle physics is very similar to that at the turn of the last century. We have several experimental results that we cannot explain with our existing best theory (the Standard Model) namely: the apparent non-baryonic dark matter in the universe, neutrino masses and mixing and the cause of the particle masses. Perhaps resolving these problems will cause as big and as useful a revolution in physics as there was 100 years ago and perhaps not....but the only way to find out is to find the resolution to these problems and that means spending money on big accelerators like the LHC and NLC.
Kerry is not a liar
what I, and many of my, uh, comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, uh, took torture to avoid saying
What he was saying was TRUE, and these veterans ADMIT IT. *THEY* are the fucking liars for wanting to keep it covered up.
Well, according to John Titor CERN will allow humans to create the first localised black hole in 2007. This leads to new scientific breakthroughs, eventually leading to limited time travel (around 30 to 60 year jumps max).
Of course, if that happens, along with how the US is currently regressing as a society, you can be reasonably certain that in 2015 the US will be devastated by a short but horrific nuclear war.
So, if CERN does indeed create a black hole around 2007, you'd be well advised to move away from the US permanently before 2015.
Visceral Psyche Films
I think they just want to achieve a new world record for the 40km Marathon.
- Already in vacuum - only need the last stage of vacuum pumping to catch the few ballistic molecules;
- No need to dig tunnels, just build it on the surface;
- Might not even need an enclosure - just pylons with the accelerating magnets. Collisions with ambient particles will occur, but system can compensate by accelerating more particles. Collision products will nearly always leave the accelerator;
- Make it as long as you want - 200, 300 km or more - more, smaller magnets and much higher potential energies - a huge leap.
- Little or no vibration & ground movement;
- Cleaner data;
- Longer lifespan & less maintenance;
- Building on Luna is easier than building in orbital space.
Issues (answers?)- Cost is much higher (but may get more support from the space development community? How much higher depends on how much can be built with local materials.);
- Need big, exotic magnets shipped from Earth (can they be constructed of lunar materials in whole or in part?);
- Building in Lunar environment is untried (gotta do it some time);
- Most scientists won't get to visit (Bigelow's space tourism => lunar-orbit hotel?) also, no real need to visit.
Just a little futuristic speculation.It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
One should wonder how much energy is needed to create a small black hole. It's logically assumed black holes can become very small as they shrink via Hawking radiation. It's true of course, that small black holes eventually dissipate. However, this process is very slow; unless it happened very quickly, it would drift into the matter rich wall of the collider eventually. After which, it would drag in earth's matter. (How long would it take you to fall the earth's radius at earth's gravities' acceleration? ~5 minutes)
Aside: I did send some email about this theory to some people related to the Texas supercollider before the project got cancelled. I tried off and on for several years to discover the relative facts and theories; but was not capable of groking enough of the information to determine anything other than I remain curious. Surely people making these things would have thought of this or would understand why this is rediculous.
Think: we accept the pressure from a collapsing super nova can cause a black hole. It would seem then enough energy and pressure on a small mass can cause a smaller black hole. The question is, how much? That's not an easy question to answer but perhaps we have a vested interest in figuring that out.
Jeff Carr
How about 120Km? how about 240Km? what about around the earth? :D