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Short Film About CERN's Large Hadron Collider

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the crash-test-donut dept.

Lobster911 writes "Seedmagazine.com has posted a new film, Lords of the Ring, about CERN's Large Hadron Collider. NESTA fellow Alom Shaha takes us through the world's largest machine, as he lets the scientists who work at CERN explain the LHC and what they hope to accomplish with it. The highly-anticipated collider is set to start up in 2007, running at full speed by 2008."

10 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Low content by Umbral+Blot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The video was a little low on content (I guess it was aimed at a more general audience). I think they should have spent a little more time explaining why re-creating conditions at the big bang will NOT create a second big bang that will obliterate the universe. (yes, some people actually worry about that)

    --

    Philosophy.
  2. OK, jokes are fine, but . . . by treeves · · Score: 3, Interesting

    does anyone have anything interesting to say about it?
    I read on a theoretical physics blog (yes, there are such things) that there is a fear that this LHC might actually generate black holes.
    link
    Now that could make things very interesting, for a short time. . .not that I think it's likely to really happen.

    --
    ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    1. Re:OK, jokes are fine, but . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      Or so we hope.

      Hawking radiation has never been observed (the process which you are betting litteraly Earth on). It stands to reason that the black holes have infinitesimal reaction cross-sections at high velocities (this is your cosmic ray argument), but all cosmic ray events would result in a blackhole with escape velocity and no ability to have an elastic collision to slow it down. But some of the particles from the ring will not have escape velocity and if there is no Hawking radiation, will simply hang around earth until there is no earth or they interact and make the whole place one big black hole.

      I'd give better than million to one odds that we will be fine. But judgeing odds that far out gets hard, and the question I have is, why bet the whole place? Why not wait a few centuries and bet mars?

    2. Re:OK, jokes are fine, but . . . by rrohbeck · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I read on a theoretical physics blog (yes, there are such things) that there is a fear that this LHC might actually generate black holes.

      That would actually be ultra cool. A black hole would evaporate in a minute fraction of a second, giving off a very different signature than the expected quark-gluon plasma. If that were the case, physicists would get insight towards new physics, like string theory - the first experimental data about it. It seems, however, that chances are slim.

      Also, a black hole is the most efficient way of converting mass into energy. Think about that.

      --
      thegodmovie.com - watch it
  3. Wouldn't it be interesting... by potuncle · · Score: 1, Interesting

    if at the moment they crank this thing up to full speed that the universe is suddently obliterated? Who should then be blamed? The scientists that built this thing that makes Big Bang II or by a god with a really twisted sense of humor?

  4. a little hasty by grahamrow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As an undergrad writing software to help align the muon spectrometer, I have been surprised to learn how behind the software is with the hardware. After attending a workshop at Harvard I was informed that segfaulting is normal behavior at the end of a reconstruction run? I will be surprised if everything is working as grandly as this video's creators would have us believe. Also take note that I am an undergrad writing software to align the muon spectrometer, they must be behind...

    1. Re:a little hasty by grahamrow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I was handed some very Fortran-esque C code (run in several steps) and have been converting that into C++. There is an official framework called Athena, which is written in C++ as well... when I spoke about the drawbacks of the software I was speaking about just that. I have been developing outside of the framework because my work is more geared towards calibration and alignment, and I do not need to take advantage of some of the more finicky functionality supplied by the framework. For those interested... all the muon spectrometer data gets spit out as 32 bit words with various headers. There is lots of interesting computing to be done, since every track fit I am currently doing is "blind" and results in 2^6 * (a few hundred) regressions to find the best candidate (and then 10 billion tracks in a file). Of more interest is the network backbone extending from CERN (tier 0) to Brookhaven Labs (Tier 1) to a few Tier 2 facilities such as BU (where I am.) The sheer volume of data spit out of these detectors requires some very interesting techniques. Sorry that was rambling...

  5. Interesting professional history... by PurifyYourMind · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "...he has also been a physics teacher, television producer, science writer and goat herder."

  6. Lest we forget ... by dlasley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The barren tunnels outside Wakahachie, Texas house a testament to the U.S. attempt:

    America's Discarded Superconducting Supercollider:

    Anyone know what the total cost will be? The U.S. version was supposed to top $US 8 billion, and I saw something about a U.S. government grant of $US 500 million in the late 90s. Curious to know if there were lessons learned and if the approach wound up making more fiscal sense.

    &laz;

    --
    when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
  7. Re:Not to bash physicists, but... by JAPrufrock · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The film is not the finest representation of the project. It's nice, but I winced when I heard that line - what amounts to a jobs program for physicists.

    The reality is that there are a number of good reasons to be doing this. There are an enormous number of tech spinoffs that result (you're using one of them). Medical, industrial, informatics, etc - we're solving problems (out of necessity) that the rest of the world hasn't even run into yet. The data rate from one detector is greater than every human being on Earth having 20 phone conversations at once.

    We're one of the reasons that the internet was developed to its present form.

    But mostly that's good for telling politicians why to fund us, so they can do cost-benefit analyses with Beltway bandits and justify the expenditure to the OMB without being scalped. The real reason for all this is

    We Are Not Human Beings If We Don't Explore.

    We become sheep. We surf the web and watch network TV and do stuff that is fun but stagnant. Or stuff that is not fun and even more stagnant.

    Poking at the fundamental levels of our knowledge is quite different from Googling the result - and takes time, money and expertise. These questions we're asking right now - we're asking them because we hunger for the real story. Fortunately, it's relatively cheap to do so. 5 billion in national terms is the price of a nice dinner in personal terms. In international terms, it's chump change. We'd do it cheaper if we could - but it's hard to examine things a octillion time smaller than you.

    We pay it - though there are worthy causes that could benefit from that cash - because succumbing to stagnation is to deny who we are, to turn our backs on the contributions of the giants on whose shoulders we stand, and to declare as a civilization that we're done looking forward - we're happy with what we are now. We roll over and go to sleep.

    I stand for something better.