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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!"
When every government balance sheet is dripping red, why are we doing this again ?
Your not. . . the LHC is localed in Geneva, and was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The monetary numbers were just converted to USD because the article is written/targeted to a US audience.
*Knock Knock* Hi, its the rest of the world here at your door, we'd love for you to come out and visit sometime!
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);}
Yeah, we're having a windows 7 party too.
40 million is pretty cheap considering the US government doled out 600 billion in bailouts not long ago. Billion is the new million.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
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
You mean they're spending like there's no tomorrow? Hmmmm.
Table-ized A.I.
2. Couldn't this say $40,000,000 USD (FORTY MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS) to be more dramatic?
It's European, not Nigerian.
Government balance sheets aren't "in the red" due to a lack of money, it's due to a lack of restraint. "Oh hey let's attack a country.. Oh hey let's attack another.. Let's give money to the banks with the stupidest management.. Let's give people money to not grow food.. Let's give people money to buy new cars.." and then when the budget problems come up "If this spending bill doesn't pass, we have no choice but to shut down libraries and fire departments!"
Yeah, we're having a windows 7 party too.
Curse you for killing my "colder than Vista's reception" joke!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Because the food those people eat is produced using fertilizers, steel structures, engines based on petroleum combustion, transit networks, irrigation systems, computers and, ultimately, a market for the food - all of which come about because of technological advances (computers wouldn't work today if we didn't know about quantum mechanics - modern PC's are affected by quantum-scale artefacts), most of which were funded by military investment (Internet, etc.) or academic institutions, designed and implemented by people that went to university to study something other than fertilizer, using mathematics from previously theoretical subjects that they found could apply to modern physics, using even vaster ranges of technology to achieve their goals.
Did you know that the Moon missions visibly pushed scientific advancement for *decades* before and after they occurred? Did you know that previous "waste of time", purely-theoretical, large-scale, cutting-edge technology now powers most of the world, the world's satellites, thus world communications, thus enable people to even *find* those people, let alone help them?
How about that computer you just posted this troll on? Have you any idea how many man-hours it takes to build that? Considering your attitude, I should take it back, leave those raw materials in the ground and give someone a job instead... that makes sense, no? Or how about you *think* for a second about where those people are going to get their houses, pharmaceuticals, food, warmth, clothing, how they'll be found and helped and their progress tracked by your government to ensure they show up as a statistic at least?
Eighty years ago, the highest-level scientific research of splitting the "unsplittable" atom helped discover and then (50 years ago) harness the most destructive force held by man, culled from the annals of scientific research and weaponry, and now makes it power most of your country, provide pharmaceuticals, medical scanners and countless other innovations. Now think what'll happen in another 80 years when the tech discovered, manufactured and researched based on the findings of the LHC hits your country.
"Restraint" implies something desired, but totally unnecessary.
When you go deeply in debt paying for college, it's not a "lack of restraint" that put you in that bad situation, but an investment, which may or may not pay off.
So why is the government so roundly critized for similarly trying to get the education dollars remotely back up to where they were (per-capita) 30+ years ago?
I guess NASA represents a lack of restraint as well.
Roads, too. As well as all forms of public transit.
The government exists specifically to pay for all those things which we all find beneficial to society, and would be impractical to do individually, or otherwise piecemeal.
And even those areas of flagrant fraud and waste, while requiring a fix, won't come close to making up the national deficit. The bailout money, while significant this year, will barely be noticeable average over the decades between major bailouts, AND would presumably end up costing everyone far more money, if that money wasn't spent where and when it was needed.
It's only on /. that the rabid libertarian sentiment doesn't get you laughed out of the room. It's idiotic on it's face.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant