A Detailed Profile of the Hadron Super Collider

davco9200 writes "The New York Times has up a lengthy profile of the Large Hadron Collider. The article covers the basics (size = 17 miles, cost = 8 billion, energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts) and history but also provides interesting interviews of the scientists who work with the facility every day. The piece also goes into some detail on the expected experiments. 'The physicists, wearing hardhats, kneepads and safety harnesses, are scrambling like Spiderman over this assembly, appropriately named Atlas, ducking under waterfalls of cables and tubes and crawling into hidden room-size cavities stuffed with electronics. They are getting ready to see the universe born again.' There are photos, video and a nifty interactive graphic."

Comments

Sexist/Agist

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

"the physics is complex, but the controls are so simple, even my grandmother could use it."

As a 48 yo grandmother, I am offended that technical incompetance is equated with being a grandparent. I don't think anyone would have said "so simple even my grandfather could implement."

I am incidentally, a C programmer of 20+ years.

Cool

[grub]

They are getting ready to see the universe born again.

It's like having a Tivo with a 6,000 year replay capacity!

Re:Cool

[sentientbeing]

Theyre stating the obvious about the daily workwear though, I thought.
 
- When youre creating a captive mini black hole on Earth I would have thought hard hats and steel toecapped boots would be a MINIMUM safety requirement.

Re:Cool

[CelticWhisper]

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH...

Compact?!

[TheWoozle]

"Above is one of the collider's massive particle detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid"

I'd hate to see the Large Muon Solenoid!

Thank goodness there's no typo

[Nimey]

I don't even want to think about a hardon supercollider.

Re:Thank goodness there's no typo

[Anonymous Coward]

For a minute, I thought "Hardon Super Collider" was the name of the Japanese version of "America's Funniest Home Videos".

kneepads? oh yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

'The physicists, wearing hardhats, kneepads and safety harnesses

The kneepads are for when the Senators, Representatives, various goverment functionaries, and lobbyists visit.

I don't get it.

[teal_]

Let me be the first to admit that I don't understand how this works. Will the mass of Slashdot users who pretend to understand follow suit, or will they shun me? :)

Re:"Energy Consumption" - WTF?

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Mine bills in tachyons, they are charging me for energy I haven't used yet!

Flying Cars

[bill_mcgonigle]

how that will change my everyday life

You're going to get a flying car, OK?

Well, maybe. See, the LHC is going to be able to smash things at the Weak Scale energy, which is where we need to look (at what comes out of smashed things) to pick among many theories of how the universe works. Depending on the results, dozens of models will be ruled out, and, if we're lucky, one will be left standing.

This model will likely contain a theory of quantum gravity. We have lots of ideas about how quantum physics and gravity might align, but we don't know which, if any, are right.

Now, to make your flying car is going to require some engineering work. That'll have to figure out how to cancel out gravity. Nobody knows if this is possible or if we can do it, but if we can and it is we're going to have to know how gravity works first.

So the LHC is the first step to getting you a flying car. I'm just not sure that we want people who judge 'basic science is worthless' to be making flight judgments in flying cars.

Does not compute

[StikyPad]

(size = 17 miles, cost = 8 billion, energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts)

For the old school among us, that's 59,840 cubits, 370 metric tons of gold, and 1.18170471 x 10^-19 foot pounds, respectively.

Or about 3 Libraries of Congress accelerating at about 1.72 x 10^-183 m/s/s.