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Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC
feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."
well... at least no killer blackholes were sent across the circumference, that's a good thing right?
Oh, wait, wrong show (or was that a LHC around the disc of the Enterprise??!?)
Assuming it exists. After all, this is an experiment designed to determine the accurace of a theory, not to confirm it.
Of course, I believe they'll find it. My wife goes to 'mass' every weekend; I'm assuming that's where Higgs particles come from? I wouldn't know, as I haven't gone. You could describe me as 'massless'. :)
Come on, you know someone did it...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I was planning on getting really drunk on December 20th 2012, but maybe I'll get drunk tonight because obviously the earth will disappear tomorrow at 0600GMT
what with everything else going whack, a planet/universe eating black hole will not help much? like the sci-fi channel in real time/space/circumstance?
not to mention, the lights are coming up all over now. ta da?
Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to byNO UNIVERSE
http://twitter.com/CERN
SMQ 90AE4B2BC4F6BEAF7340F0B40BA2DEF7340F6BC2D0392
If you disagree, feel free to mod me up!
I heard that LHC is being sabotaged from the future by parallel universes. Cool, neat. Let's all marvel at this idea and give 5, Interesting to this comment for no good fucking reason
Wow, maybe that's why I haven't won the Powerball lottery - the future abhors the prospect of me being rich! Oh, well...if my wife and kids are out to make sure I'm never rich, why should the future be any different?
Is there anybody else out there, or am I alone in my own micro black hole?
CERN reported that "We have captured it! First circulating beam of 2009!" at 21:02 today.
It's just an ordinary particle beam. But watch out, because that's no ordinary particle beam!
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
I *was* going to go see a movie on Monday, but since we're all going to be sucked into a black hole of oblivion, that plan is out the window.
On a positive note, I don't have to worry about those credit card bills now.
proton beam!
It's the end of the world people!
Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday.
By 0324 GMT Sat. the protonbeam will inadvertedly collide with a piece o' bread.
Won't you all have egg on your faces when the LHC opens the Abyss from Revelations and the Beast and false prophet are able to materialize on the Earth for the first time in ages? The Nephilim from the Old Testament have been psychically manipulating the power elites of Earth in order to secure funding for this demonic Stargate. Source: Satan's Star Gate
I love all these romantic theories about alien or demonic invasion. Sadly, I think that neither that will happen nor will any new particles be discovered. RE: The Tao of Physics - we find what we're looking for in the act of looking for it. Or to paraphrase Eris - the more attention I pay to the number five the more places I see it!!
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
I don't quite get it, though.
Here you go.
:)
Sorry -- couldn't resist
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
this time around. I have a physics prof who's part of the project. Part of our lecture on superconductivity was dedicated to the catastrophic malfunction. There's nothing that conveys the epic nature of the failure like technical language.
According to my professor, they were in too much of a rush to get the thing started they didn't fully test the whole thing. One of the superconducting junctions quenched (transitioned from superconductive to non-superconductive states due to the 7-8 Tesla magnetic field), necessitating the dispersal of IIRC 1500 A of current. This turned insulating copper into plasma which breached the chamber wall and caused the explosive vaporization of 2 tons of liquid helium into the accelerating chamber.
Long story short, it's a very large, complicated, and expensive machine. They'd better sure everything works this time.
Where can I buy a Delorean they are hard to find nowadays? I'm working on the flux gapacitor. I'm adding Nitro to the car so I can go 88 mph in no time and the source of the 1.21 gigawatts is easy for me to get. Its just that darn Delorean. I don't think my Honda Civic will work. Screw it, I'm going to steal a Ferrari.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ ???
I can't wait to see what causes it to malfunction this time!
Say, at about January, 2012?
Well, they were successful, here's a picture:
http://fox.nncdn.com/nn/0/142/729/324435.jpg
No problems whatsoever.
Just curious, but why do they only smash protons and not neutrons? Is it because the proton has a charge and thus can be flung around by the magnets? I mean if they are looking for elusive particles like the Higgs, I would think it would more likely be held inside a neutron rather than a proton.
Namaste
Charged particles can be accelarated in an electromagnetic field, but uncharged particles (like neutrons) cannot.
They still have many engineering challenges to complete before the LHC can start looking for the Higgs Boson.
Well, that's a big relief! Wait... Boson? Oh. Never mind.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Everybody hates Protons. Neutrons are the cool bits.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
For a guy with planck in his name you really need to read up on particle physics A neutron is udd, a proton is uud. Nothing special there, one is magnetic though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_physics
We're doing science and we're still alive.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
children are the future :)
Thanks ok so if the only difference is one is udd and the other is uud, then the "mass" in each is the same I suppose. And each would contain roughly the same exotic particles as the other. Maybe I'm just caught up in the god particle frenzy. I should stick to trying to understand string theory instead.
Namaste
Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Splash events from the ATLAS experiment, from beam hitting an upstream collimator, can be seen here (updated regularly). The plan is to have low energy collisions within a week to help test the detectors. Accelerating the beams, in preparation for high energy collisions, will happen next year (so no black holes until then!). More details are available from the LHC commissioning and status pages. There is even a CERN tweet available for all you twits.
Because we can control protons (and other charged particles) with electric/magnetic fields. We don't have a way to steer (and accelerate) neutrons (well, there are neat little tricks, but none of them are as powerful).
-Bucky
so if the only difference is one is udd and the other is uud, then the "mass" in each is the same I suppose.
Very nearly. The mass of the proton is 938 MeV; the neutron is 939 MeV. And the physics at a proton-neutron or neutron-neutron collider would be very similar to that at a proton-proton collider. But neutrons are neutral, as you and others have pointed out, and therefore much more difficult to accelerate.
Now you could imagine a collider with a stationary neutron target and a high-energy proton beam. But remember that what you get out depends on the energy as measured in the center-of-mass frame of the colliding particles. To reach the LHC design energy of 14 TeV, you can collide two protons, each with an energy of 7 TeV in the lab frame, or you can collide a neutron at rest and a proton with an energy of ... excuse me while I dig out my TI-85 ... 104 PeV. Holy cow. I don't think anyone here has any idea how to get a 100-PeV beam in a working collider experiment, and I'm sure we don't have the money. So protons it is.
And each would contain roughly the same exotic particles as the other.
I think there's a misconception here. Protons (and neutrons) don't "contain" Higgs bosons, or W and Z bosons, or top quarks, or high-pT jets, or any of the other interesting things that we see at the Tevatron and will see at the LHC. These things are created from the kinetic energy of the two colliding protons. But otherwise yes, if you could find a way to build a neutron collider, you'd see pretty much the same stuff as at a proton collider of the same energy.
Oh, and I must rant:
Please don't call it the "God particle". This unfortunate nickname was coined as a marketing ploy and is not apt. Physicists do not call it the God particle. Reporters call it the God particle. And the main result is that people become confused, frightened, or angry.
I'm tempted to point out that if you're interested in a theory describing the universe we happen to live in, the Higgs boson is far more likely to be relevant than string theory. But maybe I should leave that discussion for another thread.
Presumably you can still hit static neutrons with the proton beam?
I knew they started that damned thing up again, my hemroids are killing me again...
Oh, and I must rant:
Please don't call it the "God particle". This unfortunate nickname was coined as a marketing ploy and is not apt. Physicists do not call it the God particle. Reporters call it the God particle. And the main result is that people become confused, frightened, or angry.
(sighs) Only in America...
but beams traveling in opposite directions have twice the relative velocity & smash harder.
My understanding is that neutrons, like any other subatomic particle, do not rest unless at 0 Kelvin. Otherwise, they will wiggle about, making poor targets in the absence of an sort of capture/containment field. Also, cooling to 0K is asymptotically hard to achieve, effectively impossible.
At present, it looks like the LHC will operate at just above 0K, but not at it.
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/
Charged particles, on the other hand, may be held at a known location and/or known path with the application of a containment field.
"Charged particles, on the other hand, may be held at a known location and/or known path with the application of a containment field."
Heisenberg begs to differ.
Just curious, but why do they only smash protons and not neutrons? Is it because the proton has a charge and thus can be flung around by the magnets? I mean if they are looking for elusive particles like the Higgs, I would think it would more likely be held inside a neutron rather than a proton.
because magnetic fields cause rotational motion which can be used to redirect the protons in such a manner that accelrates them through electric fields, a process only works with charged particles... ie protons, an electron would work, but you'd have to run it backwards, and munipulate the intensity of the b-field. However, protons provide a more impressive show than electrons, so we stuck with that.
You mean one is charged, right? They both have a magnetic moment.
Actually most of it seems to happen on the Internet.
wow! cool! they proton-beam-scanned a calorimeter!
(wondering what all those yellow X's are in atlas flash movie?)
On the luck check needed to beat the universe. :P
Ten thousand years of religions breeding their adherents into zombie armies have resulted in a population that is entirely caught up in a death wish which prevents it from seeing that the LHC is creating the field that is responsible for giving them their wish. This is why half the movies today are about zombies; people unconsciously recognize themselves but are unable to resist their fate.
Man, where is the tl;dr moderation modifier when you need it?
So they fired up the LHC and what happens? Once in a thousand years rainfall and flash floods across the UK and Ireland.. and on the opposite side of the world in Australia, catastrophic record heat and lightening storms sparking hundreds of fires..
Coincidence? I think not - sounds like the end of the world! ;)
But seriously.. looking forward to them getting the LHC fully active and doing cool science.
Higgs is not held inside the proton, it's created during quark-quark, quark-gluon or gluon-gluon collisions (quarks and gluons constitute protons and neutrons).
>For a guy with planck in his name you really need to read up on particle physics
ironically, that's the exact opposite of the advice given to Planck:
There are plans to accelerate (and collide) lead and possibly uranium nuclei. These would include neutrons as well as protons.