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Large Hadron Collider Struggling
Writing in the NY Times, Dennis Overbye covers the birthing pangs and the prospects for CERN's Large Hadron Collider (which we have discussed numerous times). "The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections. [And] many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies. Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine [Fermilab's Tevatron] across the ocean. ... Technicians have spent most of the last year cleaning up and inspecting thousands of splices in the collider. About 5,000 will have to be redone... Retraining magnets is costly and time consuming, experts say, and it might not be worth the wait to get all the way to the original target energy [of 7 TeV]. Many physicists say they would be perfectly happy if the collider never got above five trillion electron volts. Dr. Myers said he thought the splices as they are could handle 4 [TeV]. 'We could be doing physics at the end of November,' he said in July, before new vacuum leaks pushed the schedule back a few additional weeks. 'It's not the design energy of the machine, but it's 4 times higher than the Tevatron,' he said."
For now, it will only be able to collide small and medium Hadrons...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
FTFA:
"scientists say it could be years, if ever, before the collider runs at full strength"
Looking more and more likely that a Dec 2012 full-power test could be on the cards.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
After I invested my entire 401(k) in crowbars???
Just how they managed to suck billions of dollars from governments is beyond me
Well, you could say the LHC working better than intended. Instead of making a black hole, it became one.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Given the reduced energy: Re, the Higgs Boson (that's the one that everybody talks about): Is that still the one sure thing that this machine will sort out? If the Higgs exists, will they still see it right away, and if it doesn't, will the scientists still finally say, "There is no Higgs, we need new physics to account for why; things have mass, something in our standard model went awry"?
No, it won't. Actually God keeps breaking the LHC. You didn't think (s)he'd let a bunch of monkeys have h(er/is) particle do you?
You're right. I do hate scientists.
In recent upgrades to the LHC, the collider has been equipped to smash large amounts of money together and observe its annihilation:
"We start with a 50 Euro note and a 50 USD note," Dr. Grotzy explained. "We accelerate them to near the speed of light- interesting things can happen when the velocity of money gets this high. When the beams of Euros and USDs collide - thousands of notes per minute- we get some interesting reactions.
"This is a photograph of one such collision- an annihilation as you can see," Grotzy said, pointing at the annotated diagram. "The buck stops here."
"Out of it you can see these spiraling particles. Given the $50 is one of the ingredient particles, we call this 'Grant money going down the drain'.
"The experiment is actually quite easy to run. If the beams start to wane you just go up to the generator and throw more money at it.
"To keep busy we'll be adding more projects. With with a little more funding from the Brits, we can test out a heating system powered by burning cash. Convert a pound's mass into energy.
"Some people are concerned this collider will produce economic black holes that will destroy the worldwide economy. I can assure you this is nothing but uninformed rumor.
My webcomic
Here's what's going on: in every universe that the LHC works, the earth immediately disappears in a giant black hole, so, by the entropic principle, we must always be in one of the failures. The project will be plagued with failure until they give up! It's proof positive that we live in a multiverse!
"unforseen consequences"
Great. Now I _AM_ going to stock up on crowbars.