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LHC Has First Collisions After Years of Waiting
An anonymous reader writes "Only four days after the first attempt to send a particle beam around the LHC, we have arrived at the point when all four experiments got their first real collisions from the machine. This was met by celebrations and champagne, as people have been waiting years and years for this moment. It is a testament to the engineering of the machine that collisions were reached already, so few days after restarting. The LHC had already demonstrated ca 10h stable beams, and now also stable beams in both directions at the same time. In the coming weeks, we need only wait for increased intensity and the first attempts at acceleration."
...when should we throw our end-of-the-world parties?
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
Is the LHC insured for collisions?
The beams aren't squeezed right now, just centered. You have a higher probability of collisions when they're squeezed (which will be coming up shortly). It was very cool to be in the control room when the first collision took place =)
LAST POST!!!!1
The formula: N(>E) = k(E + 1)^-a
N is impacts per second
E is the impact energy in in GeV
k is ~5,000 particles per steradian per square meter per second
a is about 1.6.
So the ground your feet occupy get a dozen or so such collisions per day, and so on.
I am a science fantasy fan
Despite all the hoopla, all they've really done is cross the streams.
Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions. With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring. From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the look out for collisions. Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.
An important step, sure. But low-speed collisions and beam tuning are not what the LHC is designed to do. It's akin to a pitcher throwing a few warmup pitches - he won't be bringing the heat til he's out on the mound, he's just trying to make sure he shoulder is fucking healed after he blew it out in his first opening game.
By the end of the year we should have some real info about the first useful collisions.
Apparently the future has given up its battle against the LHC. Take that, Nature!
I don't understand all this hoopla about why it took so long. When a new machine is brought into our clean room, it usually takes three months before it runs more or less smoothly. The LHC is a bit bigger than our cleanroom and has many more parts. So much more has to be tested, finetuned, etc. before it can even be brought up after a big repair like it had. I think almost two years is a good time in which to do the repair and all that tweaking.
-- Cheers!
"The LHC was shut down again today due to an accident involving a champagne cork."
I think what I love most about the LHC and whatnot is that, despite all the incredible and amazing science and technology and innovation and potential for learning behind it, what it really comes down to is just us banging rocks together and watching what happens, just like humans have been doing throughout history. It just happens that this time, the rocks are incredibly tiny and incredibly fast.
Kinda puts it all in perspective, in kind of a cool way, IMO.
ìì!
Some screenshots at the CERN site show GNOME's 'Clearlooks' window manager theme. At least BSOD will not be a source for further delays.
My other signature is a car
Probably more like this. It's a better film, too.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Despite the so-called "rivalry" too many science "news" outlets have played up, Fermilab puts it on the front page. Always nice to recall that in the end everyone benefits from this big boy coming online.
Sounds like they should have used a switch instead of a hub. Then there wouldn't be collisions.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The black holes or universe-ending paradoxes are still a few months off, at least. They are colliding at a paltry 450 GeV, a level we have been able to produce at other colliders for many years. Wake me when they are passing 1 TeV, on their way to 8...
What about the Poop concentration?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I just want to say, you can also contribute your CPU power for LHC calculations, by joining LHC@Home.
I'm in awe of this machine, no other monkey species on this planet has been able to make what those scientists made....
Hurp durp two year old video game reference. i get it. you're so funny.
According to xkcd, he's still three years early.
If life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, let's all get wasted and have the time of our lives.
Why even bother posting LHC news on /. anymore. It's just top to bottom black hole and collision jokes. The bottom of the barrel has been scraped, and you guys have worked your way through the wood and there is light peeking through on the other side. No funny can escape from this. These are the same jokes that occur every day in the upper atmosphere at much higher humor levels than we can manage. The universe is actively avoiding the discovery of a funny black hole joke, and will mysteriously break any attempts to discover it.
I want to buy a snowglobe with a miniature blackhole in it.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Uh, yeah, about that. We're kind of swamped up here with all the new souls looking to get in, so we've decided to fast track certain predominantly Godless groups to eternal damnation. You're now stuck at work.
Forever.
Respectfully yours,
The Archon V2.0
Trainee mortal/immortal liason, New Media Department, Heaven.
I welcome our future past overlords. Anyone wanna bet it will be sabotaged by the future, and not run right?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
But low-speed collisions and beam tuning are not what the LHC is designed to do.
You do realize that even at the injection energy the speed of the protons is 99.99978% of the speed of light in vacuum and at full energy the speed of the protons has only increased to 99.9999991%? The collisions are both equally high speed thanks to relativity: what is interesting is the collision energy.
Given that the LHC is under the French/Swiss border, I was wondering what import/export paperwork the CERN operators need to fill in (and tariffs to pay) every time the beam travels from one country to another .... :-)
Will it blend?
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
we're still two years away from Dec 21st 2012
I applaud your math skills, good sir!
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
Do you think, if somehow the sun were turned into a black hole, it would suck in the earth?
How about if we turned a pound of bricks, or a pound of feathers into a black hole with the LHC?
What's that? It would still only have the mass of a pound and not have the gravitational pull to suck 'everything' into it, outside of a radius of ~6.71316708 × 10^-28.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
If the sun turned into a black hole, I believe the Earth would become somewhat colder and less comfortable fairly rapidly. That's besides the point, though - the most reassuring argument I've heard for the LHC not turning the Earth into a black hole is that collisions far more energetic occur all the time, when high-velocity cosmic particles collide with our upper atmosphere. If such collisions had any appreciable chance of creating a microscopic black hole, and that black hole had any appreciable chance of then going all super-happy-meal on the Earth, then it would have already happened.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
What have logical arguments got to do with scared idiots?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
whats this in womprats?
True for large values of "two"