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One of the Coolest Places In the Universe
phantomflanflinger writes "The Cern Laboratory, home of the Large Hadron Collider, is fast becoming one of the coolest places in the Universe. According to news.bbc.co.uk, the Large Hadron Collider is entering the final stages of being lowered to a temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) — colder than deep space. The LHC aims to re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang and continue the search for the Higgs boson."
We built the LHC to look for tits?
A countdown clock to when they fire that thing up? One that works in both Linux and Windows?
Or explain how another program can be used for that.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
You'd expect the Large Hardon Collider to be near body temperature, yes?
I find it ironic or at least counter-intuitive that it's necessary to create one of the coldest spaces to look for particles that flourished when things were at their hottest. It makes sense once explained, but I doubt Joe Sixpack would stick around long enough to hear it, let alone grasp it. They just think this thing is going to make a black hole that eats the planet.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Trying to discover a hypothetical elementary particle, or trying to create Batman's next villain?!
Have they checked behind the couch?
Tongue contact with cold collider parts can result in serious injury.
-- thinkyhead software and media
If the magnets are superconducting, why would they need a good thermal conductor? It's not as if superconductors generate any heat in operation.
And are they really going to push the magnetic fields up to the point where they truly need to cool high-temp superconductors down to the edge of absolute zero? TFA says they're using enormous currents, but doesn't this leave an awful small margin?
Sorry. The last I checked, the record went to the Bose-Einstein condensate at a few nano-Kelvin. 1.9 K is boiling by comparison.
Just callin' it like I see it.
When they create a black hole and destroy the earth, they can say "but it was such a cool experiment..."
The LHC has nothing on my mom's basement. RIGHT HERE is where it's at, baby. Cool Central.
Gordon Freeman is our saver :D
An originally unintended consequence of the cooling required of the LHC is that it will, as now being predicted by experts, reverse global warming and by 2010 will start a global cooling trend. That is if the earth isn't sucked into a black hole by then.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
In the scifi show Lexx, Earth is a type 13 planet which will shrink to the size of a pea due to physicists attempting to determine the precise mass of the Higgs boson particle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson_in_fiction
The collider is so cool you could keep a side of meat in it for a month. It is so incredibly hip it has trouble seeing over its own pelvis. Hey, you sass that hoopy large hadron collider, there's a frood that really knows where its towel's at.
Because its not being built by Americans. It's being built by European Organization for Nuclear Research, A.K.A. 'CERN' (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire). Thats why its not in the USA, and why its in France.
1.9 Kelvin isn't that cold, and if the BBC are so excited about the temperature then they should check out pretty much any magnetism lab on the planet and they'll probably find colder spots than this! They were excited last week about energy from nothing (8 & 9th paragraphs).
This message was scanned by European governments and contains no terrorism.
So whatever the cooling mechanism is removes heat from the volume faster than the microwave background heats it up?
I would have assumed that something this cool would be used to search for the elusive Fonz Particle.
The LHC is being built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
A friend of mine in high energy theory showed me this article earlier today. As anyone who has any knowledge of MRI knows, almost all strong magnets in use today use superconducting liquid helium to get large field strengths. There is absolutely nothing special about 1.9 Kelvin temperatures. These are easily achievable anywhere.
Hell, compare this with the temperatures needed to make BECs. That's seven orders of magnitude lower than what we're talking about here. Or look at the record lowest temperatures. I believe they are down to 100 picokelvins now.
Honestly, it's embarrassing to see such ridiculous articles put on the front page of the BBC science section. And this is the BBC, one of the most respected names in world news. Next time, save these 'journalists' the trip to Switzerland and send them to the nearest London hospital. They can go see the magnet used for MRIs and marvel at how it's been "cooled to a temperature as cold as deep space"
I came here for a good argument
This does not necessarily mean it's in Switzerland
When I was growing up, we had to get by on a few millikelvins, and we were grateful for every last one of them!
Because, you arrogant little fart, *you* (referring both to your country as a whole and to you personally) are not building it.
I hate printers.
[Guo_Si] Hey, you know what sucks?
[TheXPhial] vaccuums
[Guo_Si] Hey, you know what sucks in a metaphorical sense?
[TheXPhial] black holes
[Guo_Si] Hey, you know what just isn't cool?
[TheXPhial] lava?
http://www.object404.com
http://www-hep.phys.cmu.edu/cms/PICT_ARCH/lhc_map.gif
Its about 90% under France.
Have you seen the cost of this large hagrid colliding thing? What is the point of wasting all that tax money looking for that higgs boson that, when found, will probably have been stepped on or at least be all dirty. Wouldn't it make more sense just to write the boson off at the next inventory count and just requisition a NEW higgs boson from stores?
Okay, we need to be more environmentally aware now, and less wasteful of materials but this just confirms what people have told me about these CERN guys; they just take stuff to extremes.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
it doesn't exist.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Finds nipples pretty damn quick and only needs a glass, a spoon and some ice.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Why does light stop accelerating at 186,000 miles per second?
Does that everything in the universe has some mass?
With all this talk about the LHC starting up soon lets not forget about the "spin out" technologies that they have developed along the way. eg.
1) www - One of the most important developments in computing.
2) Medipix - The only full spectroscopic x-ray detector designed for medical imaging.
What has NASA done? Teflon for non-stick frying pans?
First thing I read was "Hardon Collider"
Your own quote clearly says it's in both.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
... and expected an article about a beach club in Barcelona.
This whole buildup of never before reached circumstances, environments and ultimately the experiment with unknown effects keeps reminding me of the buildup in the storyline of the original halflife. Better put on my hev suit, anyone seen my crowbar? Remember kids, headcrab == bad, vortigaunt == good
Anyone know the coldest place in the universe?
Please don't say Cheney's heart...
The apparent movement of galaxies moving away from each other is what gives rise to the notion of the big bang. What if this is just an optical illusion? If matter in the universe is gradually shrinking in size (there is plenty of room for a lot of shrinkage in each atom) by a means we are not yet familiar with (forty standard kilogram weights around the world are mysteriously different weights now), then the universe started off in a superheated cloud and gradually cooled off in our local area. As galaxies shrink, the space between them increases, giving rise to the illusion that they are flying apart (faster and faster), when they could just be staying in relatively the same areas they originally formed in. This explanation, which I call the big collapse, doesn't need the iffy explanation of 'everything coming from a singularity'. It doesn't require the awkward expansion period. It doesn't even require different physics at the time of the creation of our universe, which happened over time, not in a relative instant. The big bang is likely a ludicrous explanation that's helping to lead us down a gigantic blind alley in the advancement of science.
Bullshit. 1.9K to cool the magnets (even "high" temperature superconductors have a critical temperature of up to 138K (current record)) which keep your particles on track so that they can produce really high temperatures when colliding inside one of the particle detectors.
Okay, I don't really understand the science behind this but recreating the conditions of the "Big Bang" sounds potentially risky to me.
I have a tendency to empathise with Dr. Adrian Kent in a related BBC article ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7468966.stm ) when he says:
"How improbable does a cataclysm have to be to warrant proceeding with an experiment?"
Supersonic commercial flight - Yet another thing the US could never have due to its overbearing paranoid government.
I mean, it's evil, it's right there!
a) As a technical project, Concorde was actually a complete success. A single failure on matter how catastrophic, does not mean that Concorde's 30 year history of flying without incident and its revolutionary nature is any less impressive.
b) I'm not European. I'm just anti pompous Americans who think that nothing worthwhile gets done by anyone who is not American.
I hate printers.
Could you please point me to the American supersonic jetliner?
Thought not - and seeing as how it was bits falling of a US plane that caused the disaster that killed off Concorde, you've got nothing to shout about.
Concorde was an elementally flawed idea - too small and too expensive to develop and run, but I saw the A380 at Farnborough the other day, and that's going to kill Boeing in the next few years, especially if they lose the USAF tanker contract too.
And 'super-massive supercollider'?
That's just a drag strip with 2 SUVs loaded with lard-arsed Yanks playing chicken :o)
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
and Switzerland.
Not to be confused with the hippest place in the universe, a title still held by Zaphod Beeblebrox's left cranium.
Do you know what you get when you mix high energy colliders with Professor Otto Rossler's charged micro black hole theory? Answer: A golf ball
So bow down to your creators :)
And makers of great beer.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The photon doesn't go at any other speed than c, but it can take a break being absorbed by a charged particle. Of which matter has a huge abundance of.
While the LHC is a big deal, cooling things to 1.9 K isn't. People have been doing it for decades. In fact, there are more than a handful of physicists who routinely work with things held at tens of mK.
well, actually it is in switzerland...
...that scientists still believe in the Big Bang?
TFA has one of the few times when the adjective "cataclysmic" can be used with out accusations of hyperbole. If the Big bang isn't cataclysmic, it is difficult to see what is.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
It is a Pretty Big Thing to cool to 1.4C. Also it is a nice pun in the idea that the LHC is Kewl. Any excuse is a good excuse to publish a reasonably accurate and informative article about Big Science doing what it is meant to do. In a news stream full of doom and disaster, the LHC coming on line is a rare example of something that is both Good and News.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Has no-one else noticed how this far too similar to a wacky super-villain plot? A giant magnet, capable of destroying all life... Or, with a little creative engineering, tearing out all the fillings of the Swiss...
..is it cooler than Chuck Norris?
you can't educate someone on the "proper" considerations in a news story as this is a subjective, not an objective determination, depending upon how involved you are already with a subject matter. a news story can only gloss over ANY story, and a news story about a science issue, as read by a scientist, as read by a scientist knowledgable and involved with the subject matter, can only, as a rule, invite a feeling that something is missing from the story
if a detective of a major criminal case were to read the average piece of journalism concerning his case, he would be shocked at what was misconstrued, miscommunicated, the huge gaps, what is plain wrong, etc. its completely unavoidable: he is deeply involved in the subject matter, and the journalist, never mind the intended audience, is only remotely tuned in and interested, and most importantly, doesn't necessarily WANT to know much more
so many scientists poopoo science journalism as if it is supposed to get the facts right and be as involved as if it were a rigorous journal, and as if it is supposed to instill a sense of wonder or reverence for the subject matter. no. its a bit of fluff, a blurb. you aren't reading "cosmos" by carl sagan. get over yourself and your ridiculous standards, it's just journalism, it isn't a university masters education. you expect a piece of science journalism to adhere to extensive and rigorous investigation and education for the reader? why do you have such ridiculous expectations on the journalist? why do you have such ridiculous expectations of what the average reader wants out of the story?
your complaint is utterly without merit. the real problem here is your ridiculous standards and expectations for what science jourmalism can and should do
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Since temperature is a property of matter, space has no temperature, so the article header is a bit misleading.
You're thinking of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). It was being built in Texas in the 90's (and was in fact going to be larger than the LHC), but was cancelled in 93 after costs far exceeded expectation. Actually the SSC would have been more than twice as powerful than the LHC (30 TeV vs 14 TeV). It's not cheaper over here. In fact the cost of living for the workers is much more. But it's an international project, one which to date has involved over 30 countries. How do you decide where such a project, with so many participants, is built? Obviously you pick the most logical spot, i.e. CERN.
Uh, cranking on about American's driving SUV's is a little disingenuous after touting the supersonic jetliner. The reason the yanks never built one is because they're such gas guzzlers that it doesn't make financial sense (cost too much per person to fly). Sorry, your and idiot.
So that's why the world has been cooling!
A man who can correctly spell and use the word 'disingenuous', yet who says 'your and idiot', is a rare thing indeed.
I wasn't really worried about the LHC until now :X There's definitely no chance of it destroying the world right?
RIGHT!?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...in the realm of science
science journalism is not in the realm of science, it is attached to it
as such, your expectations of rigor are misplaced
got it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Russell Donnelly
http://www.absolutezerocampaign.org/about/index.htm
http://www.uoregon.edu/~rjd/index.htm
You're thinking of the SSC, which was supposed to be built in Texas but was canceled. The LHC is being built in France because most of it is being funded by the EU.
You wanna talk about the coolest place in the universe, try my bedroom! There hasn't been a Big Bang in there in years!
Thank you! I'm here all week! Try the fish!
It is not that impressive at all. If you read the article, they are cooling the superconducting magnets with liquid helium. (Nearly?) every university chemistry department will have an NMR spectrometer with a superconducting magnet doing at the same temperature, and many will have a SQUID going colder. So although it is *one* of the coldest places on earth, it is a fairly routine temperature.
Well here you go guys, proof positive that Joe Sixpack has heard of the thing.
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
Okay, so I have a couple of questions then. One of the one-page papers compares the relationship between the Higgs Field and the Higgs Boson to the relationship between the Electromagnetic Field and the Photon.
Particles that interact with Electromagnetic fields gain energy, but they can also lose energy in the case of natural energy decay. For example, an electron in a high energy state decays to a lower energy state, giving off a photon / emitting electromagnetic radiation. Similarly, moving charged particles emit an electromagnetic field.
Since interactions between zero-mass particles and the Higgs field gives rise to mass, isn't there also a necessary mechanism for those particles giving up that mass through decay? Also, do moving masses produce changes in the surrounding Higgs field in the form of a traveling wave?
We can detect the presence of an electromagnetic field by observing its effects on particles that we know can interact with it. The supposition here seems to be that all of the basic particles start with zero mass and subsequently gain it from interacting with the Higgs field. Since we "know" that these particles can interact with the Higgs field, how come we cannot detect the Higgs effect on them, which I suppose might be a variation in the mass?
Just some curiosities...
And even if it was in the US, plenty of non-US people (scientists, techs, students) would be working on it, and plenty of non-US funding would be required. Or you could build a smaller, whimpier machines, and hear the "wooosh" as the rest of the world make yours obsolete before it has started...
Oh, and I doubt that it is cheaper in Europe (France/Switzerland), as (at least as far as I have understood) living standards are generally higher here.
If that's true the EU are such bad asses, we better watch out for them!!!
what a load of crap, the EU could'nt fight their way out of a paper bag..
At least Americans have balls unlike you fruity creatons!!
Pretty sure you're just being intentionally dumb here, but you're thinking of the Superconducting Supercollider. The SSC was indeed being built in Texas, but Congress killed it in the mid 90s.
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
You're also being trolled. The AC was (probably deliberately) conflating the LHC with the SSC (the Superconducting Super Collider) which *was* being built in Texas, and had it not been killed by Congress in the mid 90s, would still be the highest energy collider in the world (even the LHC would not have outdone it).
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
We invented the Airplane you EU FUCKTARD!!!! Someone mod this asshole out of existance!!
Why are EU morons so damn foolish?? Are they that poorly educated over there??
These idiots piss me off!!.. Quit hating on the only country in the world that has ever done anything to improve on the lives of everyone on the planet.
Jackasses!!
Oh, P.S. Has the EU matched America dollar for dollar on grants, food, etc.. to other countries.. NOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..... so shut the fuck up!!
Big deal.
We regularly go down below 50 millikelvin in an ADR (adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator). We can only measure down to 50, but we know that it is getting cooler than that.
That is 0.050 degrees above absolute 0...
Perhaps you just confused it with the Superconducting Super Collider which was planned to be built in Texas, but was canceled.
You're the disingenuous
Actually, it was a couple of design flaws in the tires and fuel tanks of the Concorde which meant it couldn't safely handle running over any debris without exploding into flames.
And the A380 isn't going to kill Boeing, and certainly not because you saw it at Farnborough. Boeing (like Airbus) has a huge backlog of commercial jet orders - their new 787 is sold out until 2019 - and Boeing can handle losing the USAF tanker contract because their military business is still massive even without it.
Now go learn something, you complete ignoramus.
Call me when they plan to recreate the conditions right BEFORE the Big Bang.
... where are the drinks?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Caveat emptor is not english either. Caveat is latin for warning.
One could make the argument that it has become an English word meaning, roughly, "exception, condition".
For example, "'Caveat emptor' is Latin, with the caveat that it is frequently used as English."
We could get into the whole prescriptive vs descriptive language debate now, if you like. :)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I dunno about the universe, but the coldest place in the solar system is the dark side of Mercury, right?
(10 points to anyone who gets the reference.)
((Points can be redeemed at participating Milliway's locations.))
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
if all of the black holes observed in the universe were the remains of races that had advanced sufficiently to create an LHC and turn it on? "HA! Did you see that? Got another one! Yeehaw!"
There is one possible experiment, which we have found quite by accident. About 40 globes exist in the world to represent the mass of one kilogram. When made, each globe was precise. Now each one has a slightly different weight. This may indicate that atoms do change size/weight over time. I think it's worth looking into.
As the galaxies shrink relative to one another, the space between them increases, and thus it takes light longer to travel the distance between galaxies. Red shift. The farther away they are, the more space accumulates between them. Space in effect expands as matter shrinks.
I've posted a possible experiment elsewhere in this post.
"You're also being trolled."
Yup. I admit it. But, hey, 26 replies means I got a lot of people...
"...which *was* being built in Texas, and had it not been killed by Congress in the mid 90s, would still be the highest energy collider in the world.."
Yeah? Well, MY plans for an Ultraconducting Ultra Collider, to be built under the English Channel, would have been ten times more powerful than your SSC, if only I had got funding....
The kilogram is the only remaining standard of measurement tied to a single physical object: a 120-year-old lump of platinum and iridium that sits in a vault outside of Paris, France. But the mass of this chunk of metal is slowly changing relative to the 40-odd copies kept by other countries, and no one knows why or by how much.
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn14229-roundest-objects-in-the-world-created.html
So you see, there is something going on that we don't understand in physics. Not some new physics, but something we don't yet understand. In as short a time period of only 120 years, this change has occurred.
Thank you for your intriguing reply. It certainly gives me new subject matter to think about in this putative hypothesis.