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Princeton Student Finds Bug In LHC Experiment
An anonymous reader writes "A Princeton senior has found a bug in the hardware design for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the hardware used to record and capture events in the LHC, she discovered errors that were leading to the appearances of double images because of particle streams known as jets. 'Xiaohang Quan '09 was working on her senior thesis when she found a miscalculation in the hardware of the world's largest particle accelerator. Quan, a physics concentrator, traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last week with physics professors Christopher Tully GS '98, Jim Olsen and Daniel Marlow for the annual meeting of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). This year, however, they also came to discuss Quan's discovery with the designers of the hardware for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which, as part of the Large Hadron Collider, has the potential to revolutionize particle physics.'"
Put this in terms the average American can understand. How much does this increase the odds of Earth-swallowing black holes being created? Isn't the LHC beam scheduled to hit full luminance sometime in December of 2012?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Tasnim Shamma
Personal Info
* Degree: A.B. in English, IPS in Journalism...
You could have just posted a link.
* Contact Email: tasnim.shamma@gmail.com
Cue a quarter-million inquiries about Miss Quan's email address.
Hey now, I'm a subscriber, so I saw it before most folks. I just didn't get back to get first post saying....
She's cute... And brilliant. And smarter than the experts in particle physics. I'm in love. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I've always figured women are just more sensible and are quietly mulling over the details while the men are concocting grand plans to conquer the world / explain the origins of the universe / wipe the floor with the competition / eradicate terrorism. I presume the biological or cultural origins of the latter are in the need to have men around to supply essential protein (by killing it - requiring a certain amount hubris!) and protect the tribe from other men, with the former is something to do with child-rearing: caring for a young child basically means paying close attention to it.
Whatever it is, it's obviously overridable, but there is a definite trend..
1. Yep, the universe is conducting huge physics experiments, but very VERY far away from where we are, not in the middle of Europe
2. Thinking deeply is always done FIRST than experimentation (at least in the scientific method), when you first make an hypothesis and then predictions (Wikipedia even describes it as "logical thinking" and "calculations") before experimentation, which is the last step.
3. I wrote that post because it is obvious for any observer that there are flaws in the LHC. They have already broken a magnet of it, and now a student finds a flaw in one of its calculations. Maybe it doesn't turn into a big black hole, but it can explode and/or cause any other tragedy.
Never ever underestimate Murphy's Law, we need to learn to be less arrogant.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world