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LHC Successfully Cools To 1.9K In Lead-Up To Restart
Smelly Jeffrey writes "The BBC is reporting that the LHC has had all eight of its sectors cooled to 1.9 Kelvin. Their tagline is that it is now 'colder than deep space,' referring to the CMB. LHC engineers have spent nearly $40,000,000 USD on a new system to prevent the 'quench' condition that caused the LHC to be down for warming, repairs, and re-cooling over the last year. The LHC is now cold enough to begin colliding particles in search of the Higgs Boson. High power collisions won't be started until late December, or perhaps early January. However, a low-power beam through parts of the collider could be tested as early as next week!"
Time for my friends and I to throw yet another end-of-the-world party!
Then why are they spending all the energy to cool the things two months before it's needed?
I don't mean this as a sarcastic comment. I'm genuinely curious.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
yay blackhole'd death
For reals.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
They're doing low-power test runs. I managed in my brilliance not to notice either that paragraph in the article or the tagline at the end of the summary. /hangs head in shame.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
When every government balance sheet is dripping red, why are we doing this again ?
Yes, I know, -1 Flamebait here I come.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"Related Stories
Science: The LHC, the Higgs Boson, and Fate 666 comments"
It's a sign, they're going to kill us all!
We need to get rid of all these extra hadrons that have been piling up since the accident.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Has the LHC destroyed the Earth yet?
NO
Good. Carry on.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?_r=2
I'll keep an eye out for Doc Brown and his Delorean
"LHC engineers have spent nearly $40,000,000 USD on a new system to prevent quenching condition that ..."
No,
1. it is not to prevent quenching, it is to allow helium to escape properly. Superconductors will at some point in their life quench or lose superconductivity. This happens for various reasons though most are due to insufficient cooling, like the last case.
2. Couldn't this say $40,000,000 USD (FORTY MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS) to be more dramatic?
Destroy the Earth by creating a massive black hole? Nope, not yet...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
They must know that this will cause a resonance cascade, even when the warnings indicate that the anti-mass spectrometer readings are dangerously high - yet at the last minute are deemed to be within acceptable limits.
The Large Hardon Collider is designed to pump various types of hardon up to huge energies before banging them together. However, many concerned citizens without the personal experience or understanding of what hardons do worry at the idea of the large hardons being sucked deep into a black hole.
The device will push large, energised hardons through a ring repeatedly, faster and faster, as smoothly and tightly as possible, until they clash and spray matter in all directions. “It’s nothing that cosmic rays don’t do all the time all over the place,” reassured a particularly buff scientist. “It’s perfectly right and natural.”
Low-energy hardon physics and the temperature dependence of hardon production are well understood, as is the process of a hardon smoothly entering the nucleus. But some question what may happen at greater, hotter energies.
Church leaders have come out at the device. “They’re the same polarity!” said Pope Palpatine XVI. The Church worries that strange matter may recruit normal matter and turn it strange.
The Large Hardon Collider was to launch last September, but this has been delayed due to inexplicable and ill-timed failure to get a beam up. “I’m so sorry,” stammered a scientist, “this has never happened to us before.”
http://rocknerd.co.uk
And also: Large Hadron Goatse Cookies!
Ah, but don’t go home with your hadron
It will only drive you insane
You can’t shake it (or break it) with your Motown
You can’t melt it down in the rain.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I just think that this time around they keep a little low profile until it works fine
it was nice knowing you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Prepare for unforeseen consequences
if the balls touch, we all die
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
When millions are living on the streets, millions more losing their homes, why oh why are we spending money on crap like this? Disassemble and sell off the LHC, and give the money back to the People, who need the money for human needs.
Let's hope the shields hold up against those pesky bosons from the future!
Hardon collider?
Higgs Bossom?
That article should go in idle.
I think there's a place in West Hollywood you can get that done for about $20.
(Bring a friend for 10% off.)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Unless you are at a library posting from a public computer you are hardly living your own words. It seems to me your own existance is substantially less valuable than the LHC, which at least has some potential for benefitting humanity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
colder than my wife... /bitter -- oh so bitter
(better make sure to check "post anonymously")
Doesn't seem very cool to me, in any commonly used temperature scale!
Actually "every government" is not having economic problems, unlike the US some European countries have come out of the recession.
Some Europeans countries are actually "in the black" with surpluses, and little or no unemployment. The US media is not very good at informing the public about the situation around the world.
Oh, and 40 million USD is not the real cost to European countries since it's obviously payed for in local currencies (Swiss Franc, Euros). The exchange rate inflates the numbers.
And it is a tiny amount for a continent with over 700 million people (twice that of the US) and a much bigger economy than the US! Even the EU has a larger GNP than the US, and the EU does not include all of Europe at all.
P.S. The project straddles the Swiss and French borders on the *outskirts* of Geneva (and quite a few kilometers).
I'm dyslexic, and I don't get this.
Could you detect the ring with thermal imaging from an orbiting satellite?
Time to activate the FNAL mole.
The beer cans will have labels showing coils going completely around them; when you've had them chilling on liquid helium long enough, the coils will turn blue, and that's when you'll know your beer is as cold as the interior of the Large Hadron Collider.
but, you don't get the ballmer signed edition...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
... pump...to huge energies before banging them together ... faster and faster, as smoothly and tightly as possible ... hardon smoothly entering ... greater, hotter energies ...
I feel strangely aroused...
Aahhhhhhhh!
Large Hardon Collider
All the previous reports that I've been reading, must have had the wrong spelling!
Actually, the whole system is getting close to 1.8K, but some magnets aren't quite down there yet. About 2/3 of the ring has cyro authorization (cold enough to power up the magnets) but the magnets haven't been energized yet. All the magnets have to be powered up. Then comes low power beam testing and alignment. Then maybe they can do some science.
There are supposed to be two big fixes in place now. First, the quench protection system now covers not just the magnets, but the connections to them. (The basic idea is that if a superconducting magnet ceases to be superconductive at some hot spot (in which case all the energy in the magnet comes out as heat), the system dumps the energy into resistive loads, and heats up the entire magnet quickly to make it resistive, so that the energy is dumped throughout the magnet, not just at the hot spot. Last time, a hot spot developed at a welded splice. Second, the venting system for dealing with the gaseous helium released after a quench has been improved, with bigger rupture discs. Last time, the vents weren't big enough, and there was substantial damage to the cryogenic plumbing.
None of this has anything to do with the physics. It's all plumbing and DC power control.
The original design documents say a quench is supposed to be recoverable within three hours. That was rather optimistic.
Let me guess, they'll do the experiment on December 21, 2012, right?
I predict they will discover the Higgs-Boson particle, aka "The God Particle", on December 21, 2012.
Shortly thereafter the flux of strange quarks created at the same time will cause the fabric of the Universe to reformat to its original state, just like last time. Thus bringing the end of our world and the beginning of the next cycle as predicted by the Mayan callendar.
Or maybe it will be more of a "Silent Earth" scenario. (Google it, I'm too tired to link it myself, its bedtime)
It'll send a message back through time and stop itself!
My web domain.
I refuse to believe, 3 years after seeing the original sig, that you are still making a movie :-)
For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!
Here's what Hawking said when giving his Michelson-Morley award lecture:
Well hey, the Silent Earth scenario seems pretty groovy!
An intoxicating mix of mellow dance and ambient soul...
The earth reformatted, not so much. Unless... I head for the boot sector!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What? How on Earth did you end up with 17.5 cents?
$40 000 000 / 700 000 000 = 0.06 (0.057) cents
Oh, wait you screwed up the numbers! You did it the other way around! You divided 700m people by 40m USD! That would give you 17.5 cents.
i've been waiting for this ... dont ask why.
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