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.'"

Comments

wha?

[Lord Ender]

Her last name is "09" and she is a "concentrator?" Who wrote this?

Re:wha?

[scheme]

Her last name is "09" and she is a "concentrator?" Who wrote this?

It's from a student newspaper. Hence the 09 which refers to her graduation year. Also the concentrator part means that she's concentrating on physics. Some universities call it concentrating on a subject rather than majoring.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's her model number. She's actually a Japanese Robot.

Re:wha?

[Quothz]

Her last name is "09" and she is a "concentrator?"

That threw me, too. The '09 appears to be standard form for the Princetonian, representing her (expected) graduation year.

Who wrote this?

Tasnim Shamma

Personal Info

* Degree: A.B. in English, IPS in Journalism

* Hometown: Jamaica, NY

* Contact Email: tasnim.shamma@gmail.com

Personal Bio

Princeton '11, Brooklyn Technical High School '07, Daily Princetonian news/blog/multimedia staff, Orange Key tour guide, Daily Princetonian Class of 2001 Summer Journalism Program Alum'06/ Program Staff Associate '08 (www.princeton.edu/sjp), Aspiring Reporter (if there are jobs left when I graduate) ;)

Off topic: Miss Quan is cute.

Re:wha?

[Tubal-Cain]

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.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic: Miss Quan is cute.

Funny how the site got slashdotted right after your comment appeared.

Re:wha?

[JWSmythe]

    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. :)

Re:wha?

[Red Flayer]

Also the concentrator part means that she's concentrating on physics. Some universities call it concentrating on a subject rather than majoring.

What a load of horsecrap. Do you even go to Princeton?

At Princeton, students are labeled by their preferred method of problem-solving.

Some students are "blackboardists" (though this label is being phased out for a more color-neutral label, since some students use whiteboards. Also something about racism. "Vertical writing surfacist" is just unwieldy, I think they'll settle on "writist".) Some students are modelers -- but these tend to be chemists.

This student is a concentrator, a la Feinman.

When asked how Feinman would solve a specific theoretical physics problem, a famous physicist (I can't recall who it was), said, "He'd close his eyes for a minute or two, then write the solution on the blackboard."

At any rate, I'm very surprised a concentrator was able to find a hardware problem. Ususally concentrators don't bother with hardware, since the solution comes directly from their wetware.

Just to note, that there are other types of problem-solvers at Princeton as well, but they are not as common in the Physics department. In the Fine Arts, one finds "Lysergicists", in Liberal Arts one finds "Inhalors". Most dropouts are "Procrastinists", and if one is very luck, you can spot an "Osmosisist" on the green -- you can tell them from others by the fact that they always carry their books on their head.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like a load of crap bro

Re:wha?

[dgatwood]

...in Liberal Arts one finds "Inhalors".

Where I come from, they're called potheads.

Re:wha?

[Red Flayer]

I think the label is meant to be inclusive. We wouldn't want to leave out the painthuffers and methsmokers, would we?

Re:wha?

[Keith_Beef]

whoosh!

did you spend any time at all in higher education? Or was it so long ago that the PC brigade hadn't started making terms like "blackboard" into unwords?

K.

Re:wha?

[edittard]

Pity the "anonymous reader" didn't go the extra nine yards and become an invisible writer. Then we'd never have known what a waste of oxygen he was.

Re:wha?

[edittard]

Shoooooow!

Re:wha?

[Kerstyun]

> Tasnim Shamma
> Personal Info
> * Degree: A.B. in English, IPS in Journalism
> * Hometown: Jamaica

Nigger is as nigger writes.

Any if any god's chillun'z write like a nigger, fo shizzl is her.

Re:wha?

[niklask]

This student is a concentrator, a la Feinman.

Feinman? Surely you're joking, Mr Feynamn! Sorry just couldn't resist picking a nit.

Re:wha?

[Red Flayer]

YHBT. HAND.

I always like to throw in a subtle spelling or grammar troll... always good for at least one taker.

Re:wha?

[jra]

You should have left off the Tolkein quote; even I wouldn't have been sure, then...

Re:wha?

[jra]

It's not just Princeton. Every college publication I've ever seen mentions the grad year after a student's name, at least on first reference.

And she's not bad. But if I understand Chinese naming properly, Quan is her given name, not her surname.

Re:wha?

[glitch23]

Feinman? Surely you're joking, Mr Feynamn! Sorry just couldn't resist picking a nit.

Feynamn? Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman! Sorry just couldn't resist picking a nit.

Re:wha?

[treeves]

Clearly she concentrated very hard in order to find this error...

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very likely the name is already flipped to the first name - surname format, so Quan is her surname.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of horsecrap. Do you even know who "Feinman" is? Feynman.

Re:wha?

[Ian Alexander]

AIUI many Chinese flip the name order around when they come to the States, because that's how it's done here. Or at least they put it into the expected order when talking to white people. And if her family has been here for a few generations, which is hardly unheard of, she's probably just been raised to put the surname last. I don't really care enough to go find out which name is which for Ms. Quan.

Re:wha?

[Quothz]

But if I understand Chinese naming properly, Quan is her given name, not her surname.

That's a good point, except that "Quan" is a surname and "Xiaohang" is a given name. It's a pretty safe assumption that this is the case here, much like assuming the name "Stephanie" is given or the name "Miller" is a family name.

Re:wha?

[fractoid]

Some students are modelers -- but these tend to be chemists.

I thought Psych and CogSci students were more likely to be modelers... at least she claimed it was "modelling". I thought modelling required more clothes and less dancing but what would I know?

Just to note, that there are other types of problem-solvers at Princeton as well, but they are not as common in the Physics department. In the Fine Arts, one finds "Lysergicists", in Liberal Arts one finds "Inhalors". Most dropouts are "Procrastinists", and if one is very luck, you can spot an "Osmosisist" on the green -- you can tell them from others by the fact that they always carry their books on their head.

Pure gold, 10/10.

Re:wha?

[fractoid]

Shoulda been Feignman (one who pretends to be great at physics but really only appears so to people who don't understand the subject matter :P No relation to Feynman, despite what they'll tell you!)

Re:wha?

[Walkingshark]

That's her model number. She's actually a Japanese Robot.

Or a Cylon.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard the Feynman bit somewhat differently. It was said that on the Manhattan Project, if a math problem came up, Feynman would create an algorithm for the "adding machine ladies" to execute, Fermi would solve it on a piece of paper, and Von Neumann would do it in his head.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's her model number. She's actually a Japanese Robot.

Ethnicity Identification Fail.

Re:wha?

[quacking duck]

That's a good point, except that "Quan" is a surname and "Xiaohang" is a given name. It's a pretty safe assumption that this is the case here, much like assuming the name "Stephanie" is given or the name "Miller" is a family name.

(Getting really off-topic, but I can speak to Chinese names with more authority than I can the LHC ;-) )

It's easier than that; to a Chinese person just learning western names, they'd have no idea whether "Stephanie" or "Miller" is the surname. Never mind when they run into people with last names that can also be first names, like Peter David ;-)

However, most Chinese people have three characters to their names, and each Chinese character has one syllable. Xiaohang has two syllables, and therefore is not the character that represents the surname.

Knowing this, westerners can easily tell whether western writers have written Chinese name with surname first, or surname last (assuming given-name characters are merged into a single word, or connected with a hyphen). In TFA, they went with the latter.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just surprised to see that this bug wasn't discovered by a BLACK MAN. (Sarcasm).

What do blacks offer white societies again? I must have missed my 'diversity' training.

Re:wha?

[sgt_doom]

You are correct, of course. I know this as I attended Dartmouth.....

Re:wha?

[FatdogHaiku]

Also the concentrator part means that she's concentrating on physics. Some universities call it concentrating on a subject rather than majoring.

Thanks for clearing that up. I've had enough issues with gravity, inertia, etc. that the idea of concentrated physics was somewhat disturbing...

Re:wha?

[PimpDawg]

She's the 9th Cylon

Re:wha?

[niteice]

and Von Neumann would do it in his head

Ah yes, the classical separation of code and data.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

then there are the "Assmosisist."

actually, i most often relate that to a learning style.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some students are "blackboardists" (though this label is being phased out for a more color-neutral label, since some students use whiteboards. Also something about racism. "Vertical writing surfacist" is just unwieldy, I think they'll settle on "writist".)

But what about left handed students? We don't want to be known as writist, thankyouverymuch.

Re:wha?

[Ridgecity]

Probably sent by Brainiac, since Jim Olsen seems to have been there, and when Jimmy is in trouble, Superman is just around the corner to save the day.

Re:wha?

[TehDuffman]

Dude BSG was so last week

There is a lull in SciFi... sorry SyFy till the new Star Trek comes out. Continue in the mean time to use car analogies instead of robot ones.

Re:wha?

[niklask]

Doh, there I got it for not proof reading my own post LOL. I just love having my nit picked :P

Re:wha?

[mcgrew]

Her last name is "09" and she is a "concentrator?" Who wrote this?

Seven of nine.

Oops.

[girlintraining]

Guess LHC better get in for a checkup. Like so many major observatories of late, this one is also near-sighted. ^_^

Re:Oops.

[peragrin]

at this rate someone had better double check the James Web before it takes off for orbit.

If you know what it is

[wjh31]

then it goes from a bug to a systematic error, which can likly be accounted for when it comes to results

Re:If you know what it is

[Gromius]

yeah its just an algorithm bug (having just checked this out), its no biggy at all. Its good that its fixed but CMS (and other particle detectors) are very impressive peices of kit which are very difficult to understand. It takes hundreds of scientists years to fully understand such a detector, continously making small improvements such as this. Its good and it clearly shows she has the smarts to do a PhD but its not exactly the earthshattering stuff the article makes out.

Re:If you know what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Its good that its fixed but CMS (and other particle detectors) are very impressive peices of kit which are very difficult to understand.

I'd imagine that this is very true for someone such as yourself, who appears to have difficulty with basic spelling and grammar, and hasn't quite grasped the concept of the apostrophe yet.

Great story.

[palegray.net]

She just made her career, and rightfully so.

Re:Great story.

[Gromius]

Its not actually amazingly impressive, its made to sound a lot more impressive than it actually is. One the meeting in question was "CMS week", one of several weeks a year we get all our collaborators together at CERN not CERNs annual meeting. She's basically improved our jet algorithm (as far as I can tell, the article is woefully lacking in details), a decent job for an undergraduate and will certainly help her walk into a PhD place as a shes clearly good enough but she's certainly not the only undergradute to have made a contribution such as this.

Re:Great story.

[couchslug]

"She just made her career, and rightfully so."

Yeah, but is she hawt?

Re:Great story.

[palegray.net]

I have always had a high preference for nerdy girls. The fact that she's attending Princeton for physics is enough to raise my pulse.

Incidentally, my girlfriend falls squarely in the category of "hot nerd." They're really hard to find, owing to their tendency to be fairly reclusive. I got lucky with her :). Hope she doesn't read this comment (at least the first part)...

Re:Great story.

[Brian Gordon]

How do these undergraduates access the LHC hardware schematics? I'd like to poke through them, if only to gape.

Re:Great story.

[palegray.net]

To more directly address your question, the article features her picture. Personal preferences may very, but my answer is "yes."

Re:Great story.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. Outside of the research community people might not know how much of the grunt work like this is done by students. She certainly has made a real contribution, but it isn't necessarily extraordinary. I'd bet that even had nobody seen it yet, as soon as collisions start it would be obvious that there were more muons than there should be and the problem would quickly be rectified.

Re:Great story.

[Walkingshark]

but she's certainly not the only undergradute to have made a contribution such as this.

Woah woah woah there. Didn't anyone tell you undergraduates aren't good for anything and undergraduate degrees are only useful to show you can "complete something?" Get with the latest talking points there please.

Re:Great story.

[Gromius]

These undergradutes are members of the collaboration working under supervision of experienced physicists so they have full access to everything. Anyway consulting the technical design reports will give you some hardware info on CMS but its not really presented in a way accessable to a non physicist.

Re:Great story.

[Gromius]

Exactly, you're spot on, a lot of this style work is done by students of some description under supervision from a more experienced physicist. The student is told by her supervisor, go find out which jet algoritm is the best using these and these criteria. She looks at it, finds a minor issue and solves it.

Re:Great story.

[c6gunner]

"Personal preferences may v-e-ry, but my answer is 'yes.'"

At first I thought that was a typo ... then I looked at the picture, and realized you were just adding emphasis :)

If it smells, it's chemistry,

[MadMidnightBomber]

if it moves, it's biology. If it doesn't work, it's physics.

Re:If it smells, it's chemistry,

[Tubal-Cain]

if it moves, it's biology.

Or gravity.

Re:If it smells, it's chemistry,

[Chris Burke]

Which was the inspiration for my discipline-crossing Zombie Slacker!

Re:If it smells, it's chemistry,

[Anonymous Coward]

if it moves, it's biology.

Or gravity.

Only if it's a force over a distance working against gravity is it work :P

Re:If it smells, it's chemistry,

[Slumdog]

if it moves, it's biology.

Or gravity.

Only if it's a force over a distance working against gravity is it work :P

So no gravity, no work....therefore no physics!

Re:If it smells, it's chemistry,

[X0563511]

... and if half the post seems to be missing, it's a jackass putting content in the subject field.

Re:If it smells, it's chemistry,

[dodo_dodo]

if it moves, it's biology. If it doesn't work, it's physics.

And if it does neither, its time for some viagra

Re:If it smells, it's chemistry,

[Anonymous Coward]

+10, Touché

Re:If it smells, it's chemistry,

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the countless odorless chemicals and working physics, sure

Behind her back..

[kop]

They are calling her "Gordon" and are scheming to get her to be the guinea pig in the resonance cascade scenario test.

Re:Behind her back..

[ijakings]

He is already there

http://www.gotogrado.com/sistema/data/upimages/Gordon_Freeman_Spotted_At_CERN.jpg

Re:Behind her back..

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, you can't change the gender yet. That will come in a new "re-imagined" HalfLife produced by Ronald D. Moore some 20 years from now.

Re:Behind her back..

[Walkingshark]

If I had large amounts of disposable cash, I'd find out who that guy was and send him a gift wrapped red crowbar.

Re:Behind her back..

[Man On Pink Corner]

Someone actually did send him a crowbar.

Re:Behind her back..

[Walkingshark]

And the award for coolest link in a response to one of my comments ever goes to... !

Sweet thanks.

let me fix this

[Anonymous Coward]

if it smells, its chemistry, if it moves, its biology. If everything in the universe is based off of it, its physics.

Re:let me fix this

[JWSmythe]

    You haven't been to a farm lately, have you? There's some definate biology there. Usually enough to make you wonder how people eat meat.

    (footnote: I am an avid carnivore, but farm animals are still dirty nasty things that I wouldn't invite into my house, unless served on a plate)

Re:let me fix this

[Anonymous Coward]

if it smells, its chemistry, if it moves, its biology. If everything in the universe is based off of it, its MATH.

There, fixed it for you.

Re:let me fix this

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the meat is on the inside.

Har har...

[Anonymous Coward]

Black Holes rock!!! End of the world here we come!

Re:Har har...

[xouumalperxe]

No, no. you got it all wrong. Black holes suck. Now geology, that rocks.

A bug = Revolutionize

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder physics is phucked in the phucking head, their goddamned bug fixes are "revolutions"

Re:A bug = Revolutionize

[Quothz]

No wonder physics is phucked in the phucking head, their goddamned bug fixes are "revolutions"

Only to a reporter that uses emoticons in her professional bio.

[Quan's thesis advisor] added that Quan's contribution was "not atypical." "Improvements to the algorithms are part of a normal process of scientific investigation that serve to improve the performance of the detectors," Tully explained. "It is this kind of work that constantly perfects the capabilities of the LHC experiments to do the best physics they can, and is business as usual for the physicists."

Mind you, it's a damned impressive contribution for a college senior. Miss Quan has opened a lot of doors for herself with this, I suspect.

Re:A bug = Revolutionize

[amRadioHed]

The article says that the Compact Muon Solenoid as part of the LHC has the potential to revolutionize physics, it did not say that the bug fix was a revolution.

It's the Universe!

[Ambiguous Coward]

It's quite clear that these issues will never cease. This is simply the result of the Universe preventing a causality paradox. If the LHC were turned on (Let there be light!) then existence as we know it shall cease to exist.

Oh yeah, I went there.

Re:It's the Universe!

[Slumdog]

I think you want to say that if the answer was found, the universe would cease to exist and be replaced with something even more inexplicable.

Job prospects

[bigredradio]

I would have to say that this student will not have a problem finding a job after graduation.

CERN: Now Xiaohang, Sherry is going to show you around the place. She can answer any questions you might have about fringe benefits or dress codes or anything and I'll see you back upstairs when you're done, okay? Sherry, take good care of this young lady. She's one of the ten finest minds kin the country.

XIAOHANG: Someday I hope to be two of them.

Re:Job prospects

[Tumbleweed]

I'm pretty sure that was a design problem.

Re:Job prospects

[Lurker]

I would have to say that this student will not have a problem finding a job after graduation.

CERN: Now Xiaohang, Sherry is going to show you around the place. She can answer any questions you might have about fringe benefits or dress codes or anything and I'll see you back upstairs when you're done, okay? Sherry, take good care of this young lady. She's one of the ten finest minds kin the country.

XIAOHANG: Someday I hope to be two of them.

She'll probably have some trouble with the test from later in the movie...the 6 inch spike-hammering one.

Re:Job prospects

[Anonymous Coward]

Tremendous movie! :-D

barely matters

[repepo]

It barely matters, as the tiny black holes engulf the detector, her, and us all!

Public Spin

[chill]

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?

Re:Public Spin

[JoeBuck]

Once again: if there were any chance that LHC could produce earth-swallowing black holes, we'd be dead long ago, because Earth is regularly hit by much more powerful events than anything the LHC will be able to produce.

Re:Public Spin

[Tumbleweed]

Put this in terms the average American can understand. How much does this increase the odds of Earth-swallowing black holes being created?

You severely overestimate what the 'average' American can understand. Let me try, "Will this make my bigscreen tv bigger for watching Gravedigger(tm) vs Truckosaurus(tm) pay per view event?, and if so, how much will it cost?" Also, "Does this help us defeat the terrorists GOD BLESS AMERICA. (Except the Liberals/Democrats/Commies/Atheists/Gays.)" (Please to note: spelling is representative of the 'average' American.)

Re:Public Spin

[Locke2005]

...spelling is representative of the 'average' American. No it isn't! You're spelling is correct, which is certainly not representative! The median American is an idiot... and half of Americans are below that level! Trust me, contestants for "Battle of the Jay-Walking AllStars" are a lot easier to find than physicists that can actually find errors in the engineering math for the Large Hadron Collider.

Re:Public Spin

[sidb]

As an American liberal democrat atheist gay, I should say that even most of the people who aren't as awesome as me aren't as dumb as you make them out to be.

Now excuse me, I have to get back to my Truckosaurus. Yeehaw. That guy with the mullet is hot.

Re:Public Spin

[Tumbleweed]

Sorry, I meant to say 'NOT representative', the mistake in doing that is, of course, representative, therefore, I was correct either way. Ha! Next, I shall go on to prove black is white.

Re:Public Spin

[Tumbleweed]

As an American liberal democrat atheist gay, I should say that even most of the people who aren't as awesome as me aren't as dumb as you make them out to be.

Nowhere did I indicate that even most 'liberal democrat atheist gays' are all, or even mostly, smart. I'm just saying the people on the other side of that equation ARE generally dumb. And I'm not saying it's their fault, even. Inbreeding will generally do that. :)

Re:Public Spin

[Keramos]

Once again: my buddy got shot by one of those high velocity armour piercing rounds; it went straight through him, hardly any damage at all. So there's no chance at all anyone'd be hurt by one of those namby-pamby pistol rounds. They'd probably bounce right off or something.

Re:Public Spin

[Meumeu]

Once again: my buddy got shot by one of those high velocity armour piercing rounds; it went straight through him, hardly any damage at all. So there's no chance at all anyone'd be hurt by one of those namby-pamby pistol rounds. They'd probably bounce right off or something.

Did he also get shot at billions of times per second for 4.5 billion years?

Re:Public Spin

[Meumeu]

You're spelling is correct

How ironic...

Re:Public Spin

[Magada]

Way to miss the point.

Re:Public Spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations on revealing yourself to be at least as stupid as you claim the people you revile are.

Not a hardware bug

[rminsk]

A Princeton senior has found a bug in the hardware design for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The bug was in the algorithm analyzing at the data from the CMS and not the hardware.

Re:Not a hardware bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, not a bug at all. It's a design choice.

The CMS Global Calorimeter Trigger hardware uses a 3*3 sliding window algorithm to find local maxima (jets) in the calorimeter regions. These 3*3 windows can partially overlap, meaning some energy is double-counted. Having a small amount of double-counted energy has no real consequence on the validity of the triggering, but does greatly simplify the firmware.

Re:Not a hardware bug

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS. TFA is mistaken when it talks about hardware - she found a bug in the SOFTWARE that's used to interpret the decoder data. (Disclosure: I work on ATLAS, the competitor experiment to CMS). How important this bug is, I can't know offhand, but I'm pretty sure if it were significant it would have been spotted by now. These reconstruction algorithms (our software lets you choose from 4+ major different algorithms with a lot of customizable options) are being and have been grilled to optimize performance using simulated events. It is *somewhat* impressive that an undergrad found this, but this work is not as hard as people might think it is. In other words, business as usual. Profit: clap on the back and probably another 2-5k/year from the grad school of her choice.

Re:Not a hardware bug

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I was saying!

Re:Not a hardware bug

[theyulman]

Yeah, I make up words too hehe

they should not turn it on

[crazybit]

until enough people / scientists are SURE nothing bad will happen.

Some people keep saying they are minor flaws, that nothing will happen, and that it is all safe... but people are still finding flaws in it's design. How many miscalculations could there be that we aren't aware of?

Maybe we should wait 'till we completely understand the basics of physics (we are still making discoveries even with carbon molecules) before we turn on something that in the worst case (black hole) will wipe out our solar system. This is not gunpowder we are playing with.

Re:they should not turn it on

[TheRealMindChild]

Dude. You better hold your breath. You don't want your breathing to possibly open an inter-dimensional rift. We still need to know the basics of physics before we can be sure. Don't worry. It won't be long.

Re:they should not turn it on

[Tubal-Cain]

until enough people / scientists are SURE nothing bad will happen.

The only way to know that is if they know exactly what will happen. And if you know exactly what will happen, what's the point?

Re:they should not turn it on

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you fail to realize the level of arrogance humans have, especially "scientists".

Re:they should not turn it on

[JoeBuck]

You are ignorant; the universe is already conducting high-energy physics experiments. They are called cosmic rays, and some of them are billions of times more powerful than the LHC. Yet the earth is still here. And your notion that we delay until we completely understand the laws of physics is comical. What do you think the LHC is for? It's to help us understand the laws of physics! You don't discover laws of physics by just thinking deeply. You discover them by experimentation.

Re:they should not turn it on

[amRadioHed]

Yeah, no more research until we understand everything. Good idea.

Re:they should not turn it on

[JWSmythe]

    It all depends on where you work.

    I've seen businesses make decisions on thousands of lines of code in meetings after meetings, where they don't actually bring a computer, nor a line of code in. They theorize. They ponder. They wonder. They question. Then they come out of the meeting, and tell the developer how he screwed up. The theory and the reality very rarely coincide.

    I like to throw them, by giving them a dozen different yet plausible theories as quickly as I can. Different people will pick up on various ideas that I threw out to them. Then some will try to converge on a single idea, and fail miserably. It would be funnier if you could just slide a few swords across the table, and watch them have at it.

    Of course, none of the theories I threw out in the meeting had any basis in reality, they were just fun to watch people fight over.

    Solar flares.

    Years ago, I actually proved to management, that solar radiation made one server crash, and didn't touch the hundreds around it. That was regardless of the fact that there was a 10 story building above it, and it was 30 feet underground, in a hardened bunker, surrounded by well grounded metal. It was the end result of a micro solar flare. I think we were lucky no one was standing there when it happened.

    I'm a firm believer that theory is like being a lawyer. If you can convince enough people (or the right people) of it, it must be true.

Re:they should not turn it on

[Gromius]

its not really a design flaw. Basically its a minor bug in the algorithms (if I'm reading it right, the article is very confused to say the least) which allow physicists to reconstruct the energies of hadronised partons. Now we can do it a bit better and make slightly better measurements. This software we know isnt optimal, it requires a great deal of knowledge to write and to be honest a major part of the effort in the earily days of an experiment is improving the reconstruction software with fixes such as this. And there will be many more such improvements. Bugs here do not pose any danger because the software is run *after* the event has occured so it cant effect the event, just our understand of what actually happened.

Also just to make clear that the LHC and CMS are very different things. The LHC is the accelerator and its what makes the particles go very fast. CMS is a detector, it just sits there and records what happens in the collision. CMS is built and designed by a completely different set of people to the LHC. CMS doesnt need the LHC to function and the LHC doesnt need CMS to function but they are a bit pointless without the other.

Re:they should not turn it on

[Anonymous Coward]

until enough people / scientists are SURE nothing bad will happen.

The only way to know that is if they know exactly what will happen. And if you know exactly what will happen, what's the point?

If I flip a coin, I don't know if it will land on heads or tails. I know it's not going to turn into a unicorn though.

Re:they should not turn it on

[crazybit]

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.

Re:they should not turn it on

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there were some system, based in language, that allows you construct sound theories from explicitly accepted assumptions, and some rules.

Re:they should not turn it on

[crazybit]

Humans have been breathing for thousands of years without rifts opening, so I think breathing is safe. How many microscopic black holes have been man-made before?

Re:they should not turn it on

[baKanale]

until enough people / scientists are SURE nothing bad will happen.

Maybe I shouldn't get out of bed tomorrow until I'm SURE nothing bad will happen.

Re:they should not turn it on

[crazybit]

I never said that. You totally misread my post and probably the people that mod you up didn't even read it.

What I said is that more research should be done BEFORE we turn on the LHC. Fermilab is not creating micro-black-holes, but advances in "trapping" the Higgs Boson where made on it 10 days ago.

There is still a lot of knowledge we can get without playing with this big buggy monster, at least until we are sure it's not buggy and that the calculations where right.

Re:they should not turn it on

[hobbit]

Yep, the universe is conducting huge physics experiments, but very VERY far away from where we are, not in the middle of Europe.

The earth is constantly being bombarded with high-energy radiation. Some of that bombardment happens above Europe. The ionosphere is about 50km-1000km away from the earth's surface. What exactly do you mean by very VERY far away?

Re:they should not turn it on

[hobbit]

Maybe it doesn't turn into a big black hole, but it can explode and/or cause any other tragedy.

More likely is that any power plant you name could explode and cause a tragedy.

I know, let's shut down every single power station in existence!

At least that would have the side effect of downing the internet and we wouldn't have to listen to any more of your nonsensical tripe.

Re:they should not turn it on

[hobbit]

There is still a lot of knowledge we can get without playing with this big buggy monster, at least until we are sure it's not buggy and that the calculations where right.

We are sure. It's only you (and a couple of other crazies) who think otherwise.

Re:they should not turn it on

[hobbit]

Humans have been breathing for thousands of years, but nobody has ever yet simultaneously breathed and thought about twelve thousand four hundred and ninety-six books about fruit all connected together by friendship bracelets.

I had to hold my breath while writing about that just now in order to be able to think about it without risking the entire universe imploding into a singularity.

Let me know if you manage to think about it and breathe at the same time. If we can get away with that, I think we can safely turn on the LHC (as you can surely agree that the whole universe imploding is a substantially worse risk than a single black hole or explosion).

Re:they should not turn it on

[Tubal-Cain]

If I flip a coin, I don't know if it will land on heads or tails.

They can land on their edges, too. Also, how did you come to that conclusion, without somebody trying it first?

Re:they should not turn it on

[Molochi]

That guy at Tunguska already showed the effects weren't that that serious.

Re:they should not turn it on

[Dreadneck]

There's no call for labeling scientists 'arrogant' simply because you lack belief in their silly superstitions about 'logic' and 'reason'.

Re:they should not turn it on

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of that going around.

Re:they should not turn it on

[Draek]

Years ago, I actually proved to management, that solar radiation made one server crash, and didn't touch the hundreds around it. That was regardless of the fact that there was a 10 story building above it, and it was 30 feet underground, in a hardened bunker, surrounded by well grounded metal. It was the end result of a micro solar flare. I think we were lucky no one was standing there when it happened.

People, the BOFH exists, and he's a Slashdotter!

Nice to meet you, sir, I'm a huge fan :) can I get your autograph?

Re:they should not turn it on

[Anonymous Coward]

Good post except you could have left off the "You are ignorant"

Re:they should not turn it on

[Roger W Moore]

Maybe we should wait 'till we completely understand the basics of physics...before we turn on something that in the worst case (black hole) will wipe out our solar system.

Ok, first some physics that we do know: converting the Earth into a black hole will not destroy the solar system, in fact even the Moon would likely be unaffected. The Earth's mass would still be there just considerably more compressed.

Next our understanding physics is not improved by sitting around with our heads in the clouds waiting for a bright idea, nor is it improved by debating it. No matter how smart an idea it must be tested by experiment. So you cannot 'wait' for our understanding to improve you have to do experiments exactly like the LHC to figure out which of the miriad of possibilities is correct.

Finally we know it is safe because we are not sitting inside an Earth-sized BH already. Cosmic rays strike the Earth, sun, planets and every start in the galaxy with energies many times greater than the LHC and yet we have yet to see any of these collapse into a Black Hole.

Re:they should not turn it on

[Kirth Gersen]

JoeBuck:

You are ignorant; the universe is already conducting high-energy physics experiments. They are called cosmic rays, and some of them are billions of times more powerful than the LH

On the other hand, cosmic rays arrive now and then, not in fiercely concentrated streams. Have you never heard of resonance cascade phenomena?

Re:they should not turn it on

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, 99% of the time you don't *know* what will happen if you do something, but can be quite confident that a lot of things will *not* happen at all!

Say, you are at a swimming pool in a health center in New Your.
You dive in: you may not be 100% sure you'll not be hitting somebody else. You can be quite confindent you're not going to find yourself in the middle of the Mojave desert, though.

Re:they should not turn it on

[JWSmythe]

    [pondering the possibilities]

    Sure. Would you mind meeting me in the datacenter? Yes, right through that door. No, disregard the sign that says "Caution: bare live wires" and "Beware of the Leopard". They're just ... a formality.

    Draek looks a little confused, yet star struck, and walks straight into the datacenter. 30 feet in he hears the slams of the firedoors, followed by click of the contactors as all the lights go out.

    "Oh, do mind your step, we may have a few loose floor tiles" Smythe says over the intercom, watching carefully with the infrared cameras.

    "Wha..."

    {{BOOM}}

    {{CRACK}}

    "MY LEG! I'VE BROKEN MY LEG!"

    Really, we can't have any witnesses now, can we. PFY, would you mind letting the leopard out for a run, I think he's hungry.

    Leopards are amazingly useful for both planning offices and datacenters. If you don't already have one, you should really consider it. Especially if you have such BOFH tendencies as I do.

Re:they should not turn it on

[batquux]

It is. Research is known to cause cancer in lab animals.

God made women to debug

[GodfatherofSoul]

Yes, it's probably sexist to say it but women have some innate ability to debug code. I've seen this happen too much professionally to think of it as a trend. The evolutionary origins? I can't explain.

Re:God made women to debug

[Anonymous Coward]

God made woman to help man. The ability to find man's shortcomings is an inherent design feature that allows women to help men where they need it most. However, most women do not use this gift productively...it is known as nagging.

Re:God made women to debug

[BiggerIsBetter]

Yes, it's probably sexist to say it but women have some innate ability to debug code. I've seen this happen too much professionally to think of it as a trend. The evolutionary origins? I can't explain.

She's also damn hot. There's just something about a nice ra^H^H smile and a high IQ...

Re:God made women to debug

[Anonymous Coward]

because they spend a lot of time trying to "patch" their men

Re:God made women to debug

[stevied]

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..

Re:God made women to debug

[amRadioHed]

I believe finding and removing bugs from their offspring's fur has been a longstanding job for mothers.

Re:God made women to debug

[hobbit]

I've seen this happen too much professionally to think of it as a trend.

I've seen this sort of anecdotal nonsense too much on Slashdot to think of it as statistically significant.

Re:God made women to debug

[Locke2005]

Yeah, but they are terrible at estimating distances... probably because they keep getting told that this much (holds 2 fingers apart) is six inches!

Oh, and judging from my wife, they're not really good at debugging, they just take great pleasure in pointing out mistakes made by men...

Re:God made women to debug

[drewvr6]

Well, they have to do something while their nailpolish dries.

Re:God made women to debug

[Molochi]

So, she's more of a play tester.

Jim Olsen? A physicist? Never!

[Gizzmonic]

The writeup is incorrect (obviously not up to Daily Planet-quality work here). Jimmy Olsen is a reporter, not a physicist. The physicist referred in the article is actually Lex Luthor, and the Large Hadron Collider is really a secret project to turn normal metals into Kryptonite.

Look at it this way ...

[golodh]

It might be the perfect time to absolutely max out any credit card you can lay your hands on, start a Ponzi scheme and also to go short on a heap of stocks.

Unfortunately there is always the nagging possibility that tiny black holes will fail to devour us all ... but that's a risk that can probably be insured. So you can't lose, right?

A concentrator!

[hellfire]

Some universities call it concentrating on a subject rather than majoring.

That's because years ago, teachers found out most students don't concentrate on anything.

But this girl is definitely the exception, she's obviously concentrating very hard.

Re:A concentrator!

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I've found thousands of bugs... Why aren't anyone writing stories about me? ;(

Re:A concentrator!

[icebraining]

Have you found thousands of bugs on billion dollar projects announced by the media as world-sucking black-hole producing machine?

Re:A concentrator!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying finding them some place other than your mom's basement.

Re:A concentrator!

[bucky0]

I have found a handful on the CMS experiment. While the physics and actual hardware is solid, the computer side of it is written a lot by grad students and others without any formal CS training. Bugs pop up.

Re:A concentrator!

[sortius_nod]

...the computer side of it is written a lot by grad students and others without any formal CS training. Bugs pop up.

I really don't think that's a valid statement. Bugs pop up in anything, CS trained or not. In fact, some of the best coders I've come across have been untrained.

Arrogance like that is a reason why there are bugs in programs...

Re:A concentrator!

[Walkingshark]

Have you found thousands of bugs on billion dollar projects announced by the media as world-sucking black-hole producing machine?

I found some bugs in Tim Geitner's bailout plan, which seems to match the second part of your criteria...

Re:A concentrator!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not arrogance. There's a group of ~100s of people without any formal CS or even programming training who are writing software that I wouldn't be surprised if it hit a couple million LoC. There are some people who aren't physicists who are doing the 'core' work, and that stuff is good, but as someone who has to actually work with it, the rest of it is a giant PAIN to use.

I could go on all day about it, but CMSSW _is_ really rough around the edges, and it _is_ at least partially due to the fact that the people who are writing the code don't know a single thing of C++ outside of the one class they took in college. A lot of the dudes are amazing physicists who are suddenly tasked with building a part of a retardedly complicated program. Sure, bugs happen anywhere, but I'd argue (and say that it's not arrogant to say) that there's a lot more in that situation than if they actually understood what they were writing.

Re:A concentrator!

[Man On Pink Corner]

Is there a way for experienced coders to volunteer to help?

Re:A concentrator!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found thousands of bugs... Why aren't anyone writing stories about me? ;(

International goverments didn't pay millions for your bed.

Re:A concentrator!

[L4t3r4lu5]

I have found a handful on the CMS experiment. While the physics and actual hardware is solid, the computer side of it is written a lot by grad students and others without any formal CS training. Bugs pop up.

Now, I know that when we talk about states of matter, the hardware more than likely is solid, isn't this whole article about how the hardware is in fact not solid? Did I mis-RTFM, or hasn't this student found an issue with the hardware?

Re:A concentrator!

[Xest]

CS training teaches you how to produce software that has much lower defect rates, potentially even zero defect rates.

You can prove correctness of a block of code using mathematical induction and this is something anyone with a CS degree should be taught.

This is not feasible for every piece of code ever, but it's fair to ask, if the LHC scientists wish to prove anything from their experiments how they intend to do so if the underlying software (and hardware!) hasn't been proven to be correct. My guess is there are two reasons it isn't:

1) Budget/Time constraints

2) The defects that may exist including those that have been discovered don't matter to their results

I assume by your comment you mean you know people who haven't had formal CS training who are better developers. But even if these people have trained themselves the techniques they'e still been trained. If my assumption is wrong and you simply mean CS is worthless for this scenario then it simply demonstrates that you have no idea about the contents of a CS education that are relevant here.

Whilst CS graduates often took the wrong degree (many wanted software engineering without realising the difference) and whilst CS might not be better than a software engineering education for writing run of the mill business apps in C#/Java and nothing more it is not better for what the parent you were responding to states - writing low/zero defect code for scientific application. This is one of the areas where CS really does shine.

"Arrogance like that is a reason why there are bugs in programs..."

No, ignorance of the tools, methodologies and concepts available is why there are bugs in programs. No one would expect Office to be written such that every function and block of code it's comprised of has a formal proof done for it (Who cares if the code for clippy isn't 100% defect free for example) but it would be a good idea if say, the mathematical functions in Excel were proven correct, perhaps then we wouldn't have the countless bugs through the years in Excel's math functions that many companies (perhaps foolishly) depend on.

Re:A concentrator!

[bucky0]

software glitch.

Re:A concentrator!

[pjt33]

You can prove correctness of a block of code using mathematical induction and this is something anyone with a CS degree should be taught.

For some values of "correctness". Unfortunately they're pretty useless in real life because you have to make a formal spec without any bugs first.

Re:A concentrator!

[Entropy2016]

You don't need classes to be a good programmer. Many self-trained programmers are quite effective, and are quite famliar with basic good-design concepts. Ultimately all that matters is you can write effective code. Physicists were some of the first people that needed a good programming language to use, and now you're saying that it's not their field or area to deal with? Physicists were doing it before "Computer Science" was a major. And what's this idea about needing to know C++ in-depth? I was under the impression that physicists typically used Fortran (for good reasons).

Physics is arguably the hardest type of science. Anyone who can make a career out of studying quantum mechanics and general relativity can figure out Fortran or C++.

Re:A concentrator!

[Xest]

Well it depends what you're trying to develop a formal spec for. Again, it's not something you'd use to make sure your clip art gallery works correctly, but certainly for important sections (again, the Mathematical functions of a spreadsheet) it's fairly trivial to produce a bug free formal spec for and prove correct.

You've also got to keep in mind that for something like the LHC a lot of the algorithms required are formally specified anyway as a side effect of that being part of the scientific and mathematical process used in discovering/designing the algorithms required to start with.

Re:A concentrator!

[Xest]

I agree that Physics is probably the hardest of the Sciences (unless you class Math as a science rather than as it's own area of study). I also agree physicists are almost certainly intelligent enough to learn to be great programmers.

The problem is that a lot of physicists I've met don't want to be programmers or don't have time to learn to be good programmers on top of everything else. They want to use computers to help them solve problems but they don't want the hassle of dealing with memory allocation and all that.

Just as many great physicists have required the assistance of great mathematicians through the years, I think the dawn of computing does bring a place for computer scientists to work alongside physicists.

It's also worth pointing out it's not just about writing effective code, it's about writing zero/low defect code, efficient code, possibly even maintainable and reusable code. A physicist may be able to learn what's needed to solve his problem, but if his problem is one that with his solution may take weeks on the university computing cluster then it makes much more sense for him to work with a computer scientist who may be able to tweak/re-write his program to solve it in days or even hours instead.

Computer scientists are important to science not because they can necessarily contribute directly to science itself, but because they have invested the time, likely years and years into learning how to use computers in the best way possible, sure a physicist can learn to use and manipulate them, but there's no way on top of their own discipline they can learn the ins and outs a computer scientist does.

Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, Physicists, all have their place and all augment each other well, none are as effective alone as they could be with others. Even Steven Hawking, arguably our finest living physicist has always had (even before he became so severely disabled) to work with the great mathematicians are Cambridge and computer scientists.

Re:A concentrator!

[alexj33]

Maybe she is the ancestor to Han Qing-jao in Orson Scott Card's Xenocide, who also could concentrate very hard to solve problems.

Re:A concentrator!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because nobody at all wants to hear about your public hair. :-)

Re:A concentrator!

[pjt33]

Try to write a formal spec for addition of two IEEE754 floating point numbers which is detailed enough to be usable for a proof of correctness. Even addition of integers is long and ugly. If that's too low-level then take something higher-level but really basic, like sorting: it's non-trivial to specify that the output contains the same elements as the input.

Re:A concentrator!

[sourICE]

Yes, it's called Microsoft Windows.

Re:A concentrator!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you found thousands of bugs on billion dollar projects announced by the media as world-sucking black-hole producing machine?

I have. Bank IT, my friend.

Re:A concentrator!

[ockegheim]

The problem is that a lot of physicists I've met don't want to be programmers or don't have time to learn to be good programmers on top of everything else. They want to use computers to help them solve problems but they don't want the hassle of dealing with memory allocation and all that.

Programming is a secondary activity for me (I'm a musician) and I'm very happy to leave memory allocation and low-level crap to other people and program in a higher-level language. Getting MIDI signals into my Lua program on my Mac required understanding C++ (Objective C was beyond me) and multiple levels of abstraction with MIDI ports, and compiling and linking.

When I say "understand", I mean be able to randomly tweak things until they work.

Re:A concentrator!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a brilliant point. I'm doing a phd in physics and currently have code that takes a couple of hours to run - maybe I could send it to you for some tweaks ;)

Eliminate bugs BEFORE the experiment: +1, Helpful

[Anonymous Coward]

via hardware verification with ACL2.

I hope this helps the LHC Experiment so it doesn't cause
a black hole to destroy THE UNIVERSE.

Yours In Physics,
Kilgore Trout

This is awesome

[adpe]

This story makes me fall in love with science even more. Smart people think of ways to understand the world better, other smart people review it, find errors and discuss their finding with other scientists.
They have a discussion like adults, they look at the math, one side is correct and they correct their experiment and thank them for the contribution.
This is what the world is supposed to be like. Not like these fucking religois nutjobs, screaming at each other, arguning who has the cooler imaginary friend, without having even a halfway decent argument. They're just like "You're stupid!". "No, you are!". "No you!"
Science for the fucking win!

Re:This is awesome

[rhizome]

Smart people think of ways to understand the world better, other smart people review it, find errors and discuss their finding with other scientists.

Absolutely. I'd be curious to know whether anything like this has ever happened in the world of Intelligent Design or any other theological science disciplines. "Regent University Senior find new method by which God created the universe!"

Re:This is awesome

[Mr. McGibby]

Yup. Scientists never argue or deride the work of their colleagues without merit. Never.

In case you missed it, I'm being facetious. Irrational disagreements and other immature behavior are a human problem. The scientific community is no less guilty of this than anyone else.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Some might say that already happened:

"Scientist discovers new method by which God created the universe. They're calling it The Big Bang"

Re:This is awesome

[Terwin]

I don't know about ID, but if you want a cleric and a scientist, try St. Albert the Great
Before my last move I attended a Catholic church named after him. The quote up on the wall was 'Use all the wisdom of man to delve the mysteries of God'

I expect he would be really excited about the LHC if he was alive today.

Re:This is awesome

[Ohio Calvinist]

I think the statement needs a little intellectual honesty. I do agree that the scientific method when used properly is wonderful thing and this case is an example as such. However to limit "close mindedness" to "relgious" people sounds good on /. and gets you some cred with the groupthink crowd, but is pretty weak.

It takes a high degree of personal humility to be open-minded. Particularly when you have a vested interest in a particular outcome, (beit relgious, scientific, political, etc...) many people to greater or lessor extents need to actively pursue impartiality. There are many spheres of life such as politics, sports, business, science, etc. where you find members of those communities not engaging in meaninful dialogue, because they have a vested interest in a particular ideology or theory or methodology.

I have been in lectures where Ph.D.'s would not intellegently debate and discuss a particular set of data or therom contradictory of their own research/worldview. In some scientific fields there are positions you can take that will effectively kill your chances at a tenure-track faculty position; even if you are taken to those positions by the data against your will.

On the other hand I've been in discussions of a religious or political nature where those in discussion where members were looking for insight from other members; including those who were diametrically opposed, because they recognized that they didn't have it all figured out and they'd either be convinced of an alternate or affirmed in their existing position. This isn't to say that religious, poltical, business communities are better or more open minded, or anything to that effect, just that your generalization simply isn't accurate.

Science is great when it is really science. Science is truly lamentable when the theory trumps the data because the theorizer has far too much to lose if the theory is disproven or radically challenged; and broken theories are taught as immutable truth.

Re:This is awesome

[Godji]

Yes, but in said community counterarguments like "Here's the math and it works out, while your doesn't due to this counterexample!" work. Try that with the religious nutjobs.

Re:This is awesome

[JJJK]

Reminds me of that one story from "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman" where Richard Feynman attends a meeting of some of the greatest scientists of his time. They have to decide on something (I forgot what it was), and several people are presenting their ideas. Feynman quickly identifies the best one but expects some kind of argument, with the owners of the inferior ideas trying to sell whatever they came up with. Instead, once the last person's talk is over someone says something like "I guess we can all agree that X's idea was the best" and everybody does. I think one of the points he was trying to make is that the greatest minds of the world have even more in common than just being smart and having special insights in their respective fields.

Re:This is awesome

[Mr. McGibby]

If said "religious nutjob" was a scientist or mathematician, then it would work with them too. Religious people can be scientists and vice-versa. There are nutjobs in science too, they're just not called scientists, they're called crackpots. And they can be just as irrational as the nutjobs in religion. But religious people are not nutjobs by default.

Re:This is awesome

[jonaskoelker]

Scientists never [...] deride the work of their colleagues without merit.

I thought science was exactly about deriding the work of your merit-less colleagues :)

Re:This is awesome

[Gotenosente]

Absolutely. I'd be curious to know whether anything like this has ever happened in the world of Intelligent Design or any other theological science disciplines. "Regent University Senior find new method by which God created the universe!"

Actually ancient Indian spiritual literature is filled with accounts of various spiritual leaders debating each other. Often times, if one lost the debate they'd have to study under their victor. It was during this era that one of the world's great international universities, Nalanda, was created. Later it was burned to the ground by invading Muslims.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrational disagreements and other immature behavior are a human problem. The scientific community is no less guilty of this than anyone else.

Certainly, the scientific community is guilty of this from time to time - but you're saying that there is not a single area which is any worse in this respect. What about politics? Can you imagine a correction and acknowledgement this civil happening in politics, sincerely, ever?

My limited experience of industry and academia also suggests that the latter is more open to criticism. (The industry and academic area are mineral exploration and astrophysics respectively, if that makes any difference.)

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The scientific community is no less guilty of irrational disagreements than the religious community? That's a pretty outlandish claim.

Re:This is awesome

[scheme]

Yes, but in said community counterarguments like "Here's the math and it works out, while your doesn't due to this counterexample!" work. Try that with the religious nutjobs.

That doesn't happen as often as you'd think it does though. Depending on the field, a lot of the arguments revolve around details of the data analysis which can be somewhat subjective.

Re:This is awesome

[Internalist]

[Scientists] have a discussion like adults, they look at the math, one side is correct and they correct their experiment and thank them for the contribution.

...you're kidding, right? Don't get me wrong, I'm a scientist (well, in some people's eyes) and I love when it works the way it's supposed to, but it's so rare that I sure as hell don't hang my happiness hat on it.

To think that scientists don't jealously guard their pet theories, or that politics and sociology don't play a major role in the development/advancement (or lack thereof) in science is just to be woefully blind to the truths of human nature. Everyone consistently (although perhaps mostly unknowingly) takes full advantage of Duhem-Quine by tweaking auxiliary hypotheses/assumptions.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I know (secondhand) of a case where a Nobelist basically told a postdoc of his: 'If you don't choose to take a second postdoc with my group, I will make sure that you never work in this field again.'

Please, have no illusions about the purity of science. If you become very closely involved in any human field of endeavor, you will find soon enough that many of its participants suffer from bitterness, jealousy, paranoia, perceived personal slights, ethical lapses, and so on. This is human nature, and scientists are not immune.

And then there is the well known adage that academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics precisely because the stakes are so small.

Re:This is awesome

[im_thatoneguy]

It's called philosophy. If the logic doesn't fit then your belief is in indefensible. The problem is most religious people have no foundation in philosophy beyond the philosohpy that's barely required to spread their religion.

The real problem is religion is all known religions are rapidly falling out of sync with our understanding of the universe. Far Far quicker than we're learning new things. Where the religious authorities used to have centuries or millenia to compensate for new discoveries the modern idealogue is being forced to reasses and re evaluate their belief system on a monthly basis.

This is the phase of the argument where someone isn't willing to look at the math anymore and is simply rejecting the other's conclusions out of spite. It's immature and rediciulous now, but it's the last dieing breath of a failed belief system awaiting replacement.

I'm sure there were a few centuries where people were desperately trying to defend zeus while the more modern and nimble christianity absorbed all of the adherants.

In the long run empiricism almost always wins. You either have to adapt your beliefs to conform to observation or else develop completely new beliefs. If the major religions survive the onslaught of observation and discovery of the 20th and 21st centuries then it'll probably be far better positioned for future survival. If it doesn't adapt it'll die. Right now a vocal minority is choosing not to adapt. Ironic really.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but in said community counterarguments like "Here's the math and it works out, while your doesn't due to this counterexample!" work. Try that with the religious nutjobs.

What a rubbish statement to make. You seem to possess a heavy bias against religion. Disagreement is part of the basic human traits, you will find this in all aspect of society. It is not exclusive to any group of people.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Math is the only realm where hard proofs are possible. Everything else uses models based on observations.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I am incapable for logging in for whatever reason, I usually use Starguy32 as my nickname for stuff, just fyi...

I agree with you 1,000,000%, on all aspects of your post.

and indeed....
Science for the fucking win!

also.... I would really like to know what the original stuff looked like, and what the flaw was, and what it now looks like...
I plan on Majoring in Cosmology or Astronomy or something, and minoring in philosophy, but that is just a reference to what kind of mind i have...

so... what exactly do other people think of the actual flaw she found, or error or defect or what have you....

Re:This is awesome

[evilviper]

Try that with the religious nutjobs.

Try that with the pseudo-scientific nutjobs, and you'll get about the same results.

There are enough nutjobs to cover every field known to man.

Re:This is awesome

[TheoMurpse]

In some scientific fields there are positions you can take that will effectively kill your chances at a tenure-track faculty position

Let's level our sights at the main culprit, shall we? String theory.

Lee Smolin's (a theoretical physicist with his Ph.D. from Harvard) book The Trouble with Physics describes how taking a contrarian view of string theory effectively kills your career.

For anyone interested in the book, it's important to point out that it's really got two main thrusts. One is an attack on academic homogeneity (which I agree with and think Smolin argues effectively that theoretical currently suffers from such homogeneity in this area without sufficient experimental results to justify the uniformity). The other is an attack on string theory and quantum physics themselves. This I'm not as concerned about (due to incapacity to comprehend and store for later retrieval), being merely an abstract mathematics student in a former life and currently a law student.

Re:This is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

This story makes me fall in love with science even more. Smart people think of ways to understand the world better, other smart people review it, find errors and discuss their finding with other scientists.

... and this is what makes me envy Science and hate Management even more. Once you move into the Corporate Management side of things, managers try to cover their asses or find someone else they can squarely blame on. Things take a political dimension and even writing a simple e-mail about the issue becomes a strenous write/review/edit/repeat exercise.

Missing your patriotism!

[RiotingPacifist]

There are at least 36 Slashdot comments so far, and not one of them is bitching about Xiaohang going over to America and taking all yer physicist's jobs/university places. Come on guys if i don't see something bitching about the chinks soon, I'll just have to assume you've seen the follies of nationalism and go troll elsewhere.

Re:Missing your patriotism!

[Quothz]

There are at least 36 Slashdot comments so far, and not one of them is bitching about Xiaohang going over to America and taking all yer physicist's jobs/university places.

Yeah, unpaid research in Switzerland belongs to Americans, damn it! The INS should look into this "CERN" outfit.

Re:Missing your patriotism!

[LingNoi]

There are at least 36 Slashdot comments so far, and not one of them is bitching about Xiaohang going over to America and taking all yer physicist's jobs/university places.

1) She's paying to go to university, so she's not "stealing" anyone's job

2) You assume she's not a US citizen based purely on her name

You are a thundering dunderfuck

[Anonymous Coward]

They *DONT* know what will happen JACKASSS...that's why they are running the experiment... ASSHOLE. THEREFORE something bad, COULD indeed HAPPEN!

I hate motherfucking idiots like you.

ASSHOLE
SHITFORBRAINS
SLASHDOTTER

She is hot!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah! She'd find a hardron in my pants if she looked!!

Re:She is hot!!

[Hork_Monkey]

She'd also find all those bugs crawling around.

Re:She is hot!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Genius! All the reused memes get +5 Funny, but the truly witty don't get bumped up.

Re:She is hot!!

[icannotthinkofaname]

Mod parent funny. I can't.

Nice post, Hork_Monkey. :)

Re:She is hot!!

[Jeoh]

You must be new here.

Cool.

[Colourspace]

Just delays us nearer to 2012?

You should not post to Slashdot

[hobbit]

until you are SURE you have a better handle on the issues.

Maybe you should wait until you completely understand the basics of physics before you talk about man-made black holes wiping out our solar system?

Re:You should not post to Slashdot

[crazybit]

well, LHC will indeed create black holes, and we all know the LHC has had flaws before (it even got broken). The only part I am not sure is that if "the worst case scenario" will happen.

Maybe it does work fine, maybe it explodes and kills people. The fact is we don't know for sure what would happen, and saying "it will work fine" will be as ignorant as saying "it will kill us omg". That is why I think doing more research and tests will be a good idea BEFORE we turn the toy on.

Re:You should not post to Slashdot

[hobbit]

Nobody's saying "it will work fine". We're just saying "it won't explode". If you're saying "it will explode", provide some evidence. Otherwise, yours are just the ravings of a lunatic.

Re:You should not post to Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok hows this the collisions in the atmosphere retain their high speed and then continue on out of the solar system safely because they keep their velocity no planets gravity will trap them.

Head on collisions on Earth however will sometimes cause a loss of speed and when you are talking about millions of collisions a second that could potentially be a lot of mbh or other heavy/unknown dangerous particles.

So basically it comes down to will we make black holes and if so will they evaporate because if they don't (and Hawking has never been proven right about anything) the Earths gravity runs the risk of trapping them here.

There is a huge difference and as a safety argument from CERN they really are just playing the propaganda game they must know the difference.

The only safe way to do this is colliding a high speed particle with a stationary particle when you accelerate both you run the risk of canceling escape speed.

This really is a gamble in my book I just hope the LHC is to weak to make micro black holes in the first place because once it does it's completely out of our control.

This isn't an attempt at fear mongering just my own concerns and I've thought about it a lot.

Re:You should not post to Slashdot

[hobbit]

I see you're prepared to believe the physicists when they say that black holes will be created, but not when they say that those black holes will evaporate harmlessly.

Care to explain why?

That blows.

[insomniac8400]

A different undergrad is going to CERN for the summer with her thesis adviser. You'd think they invite her after she stumbled upon this.

so...

[Anonymous Coward]

bugs cause the end of the world....AUGGH run away run away

Implications for discovery of new particle.

[gillbates]

Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second, to take from four days to four years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years. It does not decay, but undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes, not to mention multiple oxymorons. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. That hypothetical quantity might normally be called 'critical mass' but, in this unique case it is known as 'critical mess'. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (Am), another just-discovered element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Re:Implications for discovery of new particle.

[fddr]

Another interesting property of governmentium is that when governmentium and its anti-particle (revolutionarium?) collide, both particles are destroyed resulting in considerable heat and newly created governmentium.

Re:Implications for discovery of new particle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, this frequently recycled joke used to be about "administratium" back when the internet was mainly populated by university students and researchers, and their main contact with bureaucracy was through university administration. Now that the general public dominates most internet discussions, this new version adjusted for easier understanding by Joe sixpack appears more frequently than the original.

Re:Implications for discovery of new particle.

[TractorBarry]

Here's another of a similar age

"An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications".

SILC

[Anonymous Coward]

Coincidentally, Quan was also nominated for Princeton SILC, or "Senior I'd most Like to Collide with" in '09...

Bush also found an error in Fermilab calculations

[noidentity]

It's little-known that Bush also found some critical errors in Fermilab calculations.

The LHC

[Lurker]

Every time I see a story about the LHC, I'm always glad I'm far away from it, because I don't want to have anything to do with colliding large hardons.

Re:The LHC

[mcgrew]

As someone whose large hardon has collided with a black ho, I can tell you that it's nothing to be afraid of! Now the white dwarfs, on the other hand...

Re:The LHC

[An ominous Cow art]

Once blue supergiant, never back.

defectivebydesign?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which imbecile tagged this defectivebydesign? Are you a *AA shill trying to dilute the meaning, or just plain stupid?

Re:Eliminate bugs BEFORE the experiment: +1, Helpf

[ekhben]

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that there's already black holes slowly destroying THE UNIVERSE. They're going to the whole thing eventually; there's a giant one busily destroying THE GALAXY right now. Maybe you're more concerned with the microscopically small part of THE UNIVERSE that is necessary to sustain your own life?

Yours in Pedantry,
Ekhben

Re:wha? Concentrator or Cencentraitor?

[davidsyes]

This is going to go down as a quirk discovery by a Quan who is not a Quark....

Either way, looks like she concentrated pain on them with her high-QUALity, QUANtitative analysis... Now, if QUANtum Mechanics is in her repertoir... and she makes a substantial amount of money, she can qua-qua-qua duck-waddle all the way to the bank...

OK, I'll QUit, now...

Carter at Three Mile Island

[VValdo]

It's little-known that Bush also found some critical errors in Fermilab calculations.

Oh but seriously, Jimmy Carter's background as a nuclear physicist and engineer became somewhat useful during the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor partial-meltdown.

On April 1, President Jimmy Carter arrived at Three Mile Island to inspect the plant. Carter, a trained nuclear engineer, had helped dismantle a damaged Canadian nuclear reactor while serving in the U.S. Navy.

That Onion story also reminded me of this SNL sketch from 1986 or so. Some jokes are eternal...

W

Re:wha? Concentrator or Cencentraitor?

[fractoid]

Trying to be funny just makes you sounds quanceited.

...whoops O.o

I'm afraid...

[atrocious cowpat]

... that's Ali G.
At Arvard, no less!

What's the news here?

[bromoseltzer]

Why is this newsworthy? There was a bug (a bug!) in the LHC software? The bug was found by an _undergraduate_? An undergraduate _girl_?

No - an undergraduate girl from _Princeton_!

-as seen from Yale, anyway.

Are the Chinese really taking over??

[wvmarle]

OK risking off-topic now... but it may be me or are the Chinese really taking over? The last few years when I read about US based research, particular fundamental research, almost always I see Chinese names on the list. Often only Chinese names, or the main researcher being Chinese.

Now I know there are indeed more and more Chinese, particularly mainlanders, going to the US to study and do their PhD. Here again it's a Chinese student that is in the news for some outstanding achievement.

Where are all the "native" Americans gone? (with native I mean born and raised in the country, not only the "native Americans" kind of natives). Why don't we see more American (as in English or otherwise European) names on this kind of research?

Re:Are the Chinese really taking over??

[EmagGeek]

>> Where are all the "native" Americans gone?

They're all down at the Student Union playing on one of the free public XBoxen they demanded the school provide them. Not to fret, though. None of them will be late to their 9pm meeting of the "Entitled Youth of America" task force.

Re:Are the Chinese really taking over??

[An ominous Cow art]

When I was in college in the mid-late 80s I used to work as a sysadmin in a robotics lab, and more recently while taking classes a couple of years ago I used to wander the halls in the late afternoons and evenings and look in at at the various labs. They were always occupied by Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, etc. students - very rarely were there any 'native' American students there.

I suspect that when you've traveled around the world to get an education, you actually focus on doing so rather than partying or whatever. Also, perhaps someone who would travel around the world for education might be more focused naturally.

Good...but hardly distinguishing

[Roger W Moore]

Actually that is pretty typical for most good grad students - just because it is the LHC does not make it special. In fact I really fail to see how this is news is of any interest outside CMS. A lot of what grad students do to get them started is to check what has already been done - I have a grad student doing this right now and it looks like he's found a problem too with some online code so should I submit that as newsworthy to Slashdot too? If so there are going to be a huge number of "look I found a bug" stories...

Even when not just checking they are usually concentrated on particular parts of the detector and it is quite common for them to spot subtle problems that others have missed. I did it several times when I was a grad student and now, as a prof, I'm finally where I can make the errors for future grad students to find!

Physics is different

[Roger W Moore]

I'm a firm believer that theory is like being a lawyer. If you can convince enough people (or the right people) of it, it must be true.

This is why theoretical physics is considered so difficult. People are irrelevant: you have to convince the Universe that it is true.

Black Holes.....

[IHC Navistar]

I think the LHC has already created Black Holes..... Money Holes, that is.

young physicists

[Goldsmith]

"If you haven't done anything in physics by the time you're 21, you never will."

I've been told this quote comes from Heisenberg, and at the time I heard it, I thought it was a load of crap. However, the idea is correct. If you want to be a physicist, you have to be able and willing to jump into research right at the beginning (as an undergraduate), or you'll probably never do real research. Of course, most undergraduates don't end up finding bugs in code which has been checked by dozens of postdocs and grad students.

OMG

[hesaigo999ca]

For something that cost almost 1 billion dollars to make, you would think they would check and recheck and recheck and recheck and recheck and recheck and recheck the calculations. How many engeneers can you pay to review your code for you with 1 billion dollars.

Of course if you live in Montreal Canada, the answer is 1 , he'll charge you 800 million for it, give you back 400 million cash under the table, and keep 400 million for himself....that's how crooked they are here.

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

You can hire 2.5 engineers per billion at the canadian rate

Like a bad DC plotline...

[Anonymous Coward]

"physics professors Christopher Tully GS '98, Jim Olsen and Daniel Marlow"

I feel so much safer knowing Jimmy Olsen is on the case. What could possibly go wrong when you have Superman as back-up when investigating a world-ending device?

this demonstrates successful "science"

[peter303]

Scientists are constantly double-checking each other and making improvements. Especially in the case of one of the largest engineering projects ever built there will be improvements found.

Re:this demonstrates successful "science"

[jc42]

Scientists are constantly double-checking each other and making improvements.

At least that's the way it's supposed to work. In reality, scientists tend to be as human as everyone else, and it's common enough for the people running a project to, uh, discourage their underlings from doing such things.

Let's just say that the LHC project seems to be run by people who are "true scientists", since they seem to welcome challenges to their design. This is assuming, of course, they they really are encouraging Ms Quan to keep up the good work. The fact that her name has gotten out to the media is a good sign; all too often a project's leaders will react to a junior's important discovery by putting their own name on it when it can't be ignored.

CMS isn't going to work anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

ATLAS is clearly the better detector in the first place :smug:

Assignment: Find an Error

[natoochtoniket]

One of my favorite assignments to give is: "Find an error in the textbook." It gets the students to actually read the book closely. (Of course, I need to be sure that there is at least one error in the book before giving that assignment. That usually isn't too difficult. Most undergraduate texts have numerous small errors.)

GRBs

[GPS Pilot]

I am the only person who knows the true cause of gamma-ray bursts.

They are alien civilizations who just switched on their LHCs.