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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."
I doubt Joe Sixpack knows of the existence of the LHC, or the measurement of kelvin, let alone the actual *temperature* of the LHC measured in kelvin.
and was that Bose-Einstein condenstate 27km long? This is news because its a huge massive object cooled down to 1.9K.
Cern lab goes 'colder than space'
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News
A vast physics experiment built in a tunnel below the French-Swiss border is fast becoming one of the coolest places in the Universe.
Now tell me, what do you think a reader without any scientific knowledge will take away from this article, that the scale of the cooling is what makes it challenging, or the temperature itself? That 1.9 K is an exotically low temperature for physics experiments, or that it's mundane? This is what bothers me about most science journalism. The misleading statements and lack of information.
Come to think of it, that's the problem with most non-science journalism too.
I came here for a good argument
It's an impressive engineering feat. However, the BBC article presents it as some kind of pure science breakthrough. OMG!!!! COOLER THAN SPACE!!!1!!.
When I first read the article (about two days ago) I was also bemused as to why it warranted a news story. It was only when I thought about the sheer scale of the installation that I realised what CERN PR were pushing...
I think that the original poster is more disappointed about the quality of the journalism than the scale of achievement. I'm a bit fed up of seeing CERN PR stories reprinted in 'serious' news sources because the journalists don't a clue about science. I'm even more fed up when those PR releases get confused by a journalist and sound moronic.
It seems that there's a news story about CERN once a month, and a news story about Gravitational Waves about one every three months. The irritating thing is that neither of these have actually had any major breakthrough for quite some time...and yes, I am a physicist, and I work somewhere similar in flavour, if not scale, to CERN.
He does around here.
Teaching Kelvins is a part of 7th grade (1st grade being started at 6-7 years old, so this is at 13-14 years old) education in 9 year long mandatory school in finnish system.
Don't you have schools in USA or do you just choose not to teach, I dunno, the international standards used in scientific documents?
Also, explaining what LHC is (though not much details but the concept) was in the mandatory school. 8th grade I think? There was some nice little video about it...
Sorry but I'm just so sick of seeing "Yeah, but the average Joe won't understand that!" arguments with no basis, as if the whole world consisted of retards. Sure, it might consist of idiots but still, I get annoyed when seeing people start from assumption "The average people don't have any grasp of common knowledge!" without immediatelly following that by saying "And that is because I think our schools require more funding."
and was that Bose-Einstein condenstate 27km long? This is news because its a huge massive object cooled down to 1.9K.
Liquid helium temperatures are nothing new.
Off of the top of my head, CEBAF (1.4km), Tevatron (6.3km), RHIC (3.8km), and most NMR equipment use liquid helium to cool their low-temperatre superconducting components.
The canceled Superconducting Supercollider would have been 87km long, and have been cooled by liquid helium, had congress not pulled the plug.
Extending the technology to 27km simply requires a bigger investment. That doesn't make it any less impressive, though many of the other engineering aspects of the LHC are far more impressive.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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.