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

Where's Gordon Freeman?

[Hausenwulf]

Sorry, I can't help but think of Half-Life2 when I see articles like these. ;)

Re:Where's Gordon Freeman?

[iamlucky13]

Did you check out the photographs of the Compact Muon Solenoid? It would fit in perfectly at Black Mesa.

I swear, if I don't see a level in Episode 2 or 3 involving the LHC and the CMS, I'm going to go gravity-gun-equipped-particle-phsyical on somebody's ass! HL2 and Episode 1 didn't have quite enough gigantic, super-expensive and complex equipment malfunctioning catastrophically to satiate my inner geek.

It can't be too much of a plot stretch to have Dr. Kleiner modifying the Compact Muon Solenoid to trigger lepton-catalyzed resonance cascades as a controlled means of opening portals. He'll just have to be careful to maintain steady electrical and helium supplies or a quench of the superconducting magnets could occur. The resulting spallation from relativistic particle collisions on the beam pipe wall would almost certainly cause gluino-poisoning of the portal's singularity...

The techno-babble from Half Life 1 was fun and well-delivered, even if utterly meaningless.

Re:Cool

[malsdavis]

No it won't. They'll still just make it up as they go along and deny the previous episodes ever happened.
Audience: what happened to the dinosaur? writers: what dinosaur?
Audience: what happened to the polar bears? writers: what polar bears?
Writers: Lalalalalalaalal, we can't hear you.

Looking at that map...

[RealGrouchy]

It looks like a good way to smuggle particles between France and Switzerland!

Better keep an eye on these "scientists"...

- RG>

Go on -- shrink Earth to the size of a pea

[Baldrson]

I bought a new puppy. But what to name him? It was a toss-up between "John Galt" and "Lexx". My wife and I went round and round about the crucial decision. We finally settled on "Lexx"; just in the nick of time it seems.