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Awesome Pics of CERN's Large Hadron Collider

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the because-we-can dept.

mactard submitted a collection of insanely beautiful pictures of the Large Hadron Collider. I've always had a warm place for amazing photgraphs, and these really don't disappoint. Science really is beautiful sometimes.

12 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Sci-Fi Should Look so Cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Next time some sci-fi movie wants to display a massive quasi-government experiment regarding anything, they should look this stuff over. So much cooler looking than the BS that most movies have.

  2. Obsoletely Amazing... by ClaraBow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is astonishing what man can accomplish when not at war!

    1. Re:Obsoletely Amazing... by antic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      +1 on amazing.

      I don't know how it works exactly, but it's massive, incredibly complicated and absolutely stunning. Something of a beacon to children becoming interested in science, I'm sure.

      A toast to the brains behind it and those who got it funded.

      --
      'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
    2. Re:Obsoletely Amazing... by Arguendo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is inspiring to see so much human effort put into exploring the nature of our existence. Our species is truly just trying to make sense of it all.

  3. the most impressive thing by Gromius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I always find the most impressive things about the detectors is the cabling that you have to do. The CMS ECAL has at least 61,200 cables to read out all the the crystals, the tracker (first photo) also has thousands and thousands of cables. Trying to wire the damn thing up is an epic task (one I'm happy to have avoided) and trust me, you dont want to screw up.

    1. Re:the most impressive thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's tested with processes which were already observed on other experiments. There is awful lot of testing during preparation phase (but also in first year or so), test beams were used during construction of some detectors, cosmic muons that you can detect without beam that produces particles, and, finally, simulations which help to predict detector output. Also there are many different test procedures to check if hardware is properly assembled (or even working properly).

      Systematics is a term for that kind of issues. It's possible, or even likely, that detector has "bugs" and doesn't produce entirely true result. This is the primary reason why two conceptually different detectors for the same thing are built (CMS and ATLAS), to proove that whatever is observed is really there.

    2. Re:the most impressive thing by Gromius · · Score: 2, Insightful

      you're telling me. Trying to figure out if the damn thing is working is an epic task. It takes hundreds of scientists, all testing little parts to commission these things. And trust me everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Right now I'm writing monitoring software to ensure that we can trigger electrons and photons and to diagnose problems when they occur and its a huge pain in the ass. And when we think its working, even then we will have a round the clock team in place to continuously monitor it addition to the team that actually operates it.

  4. ET technology by SpaceGoret · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is so beautiful. It looks like extra-terrestrial technology.

  5. machine porn vs beautiful science by somethinsfishy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The tools are beautiful objects, to be sure. But what makes beautiful science is elegant, concise, and simple (within the context) descriptions of how the universe works.

  6. Re:LHC by ralewi1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From the lhcdefense.org site - "61% of over 250,000 participants in an AOL survey say that operating the LHC is not worth the risk"

    Yes, we must end all science until at least 51% of all AOL users agree that it is safe.

  7. The comments by nightfire-unique · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The comments on that page are as depressing as the pictures are beautiful and impressive. :(

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  8. Re:3rd photo by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Some of their 'hits' detailed in this book are pretty darn impressive.

    Care to relate any of them?

    The tricky thing about remote viewing is not that it doesn't work, but that it's hard to separate the 'signal' from the 'noise'.

    Which is, in essence, the definition of a cold reading.

    While I'm at it, check out Banachek.

    I'm not saying it's impossible, and I would agree with this:

    But when you get significant results that contradict theory, it's the theory that should change, if you're doing science.

    However, this being little more than a hobby, I don't really want to buy a book. If the results really are that compelling, there should be some web resource you can point me to.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!