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Life and Work On the LHC At CERN
An anonymous reader sends in a CNet Crave interview with a working physicist at CERN. The interview is full of detail about what it's like to work in this geek paradise (if a bit dumbed-down for an audience assumed not very technical). Dr. Paul Jackson, a particle physicist working on the LHC's Atlas experiment, says there's no chance of black holes wiping us out, and that the time travel speculation is bunkum. He is 100% convinced that they will find the Higgs boson. The scientists there favor Macs, while computers in the control room are Linux-based. "What would happen if you were standing in front of the beam? You would die. It would be a pretty spectacular death, and you wouldn't know a lot about it. ... It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body."
"It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body." jamie wants big boom
What would happen if you were standing in front of the beam? You would die. It would be a pretty spectacular death, and you wouldn't know a lot about it. ... It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body.
So you're saying it'd be pretty painless? You could revolutionize flawed processes we have in the United States by providing an alternative that may have a more expensive start up cost but would solve budget problems by providing needed services for both our prison system and science research at the same time. I mean if we ignore the ethical problems with televised executions, the costs of an LHC could be mitigated by commercial segments ...
My work here is dung.
I personally hope they don't find the Higgs boson as Dr. Hawking has predicted, as that will be far more interesting than if they do in my opinion.
"I'd put the chance we will find the Higgs boson or something similar to it at pretty close to 100 per cent. From a physicist's standpoint, if you don't find that it's almost more interesting, because it means we got it wrong and there is other stuff going on we don't understand." - Paul Jackson
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Look, kids! A real life working physicist. He's got a job that doesn't involve waiting for an internship to open up at a University.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Sould probably leave a bit of a mess... Albeit in little tiny pieces!
Scientists using MAC's and the place controlled by Linux...
This flies in the face of all the Microsoft Advertising! You mean reality and what I see in print and TV are not the same?!?!!?!
I'm just happy to use this as a new item to throw in front of the MSFT fanbois at work.. Hmm, Microsoft is not stable enough to run this important facility, Why do we trust it here?
It will make them squirm... I love making them squirm...
"It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body." jamie wants big boom
LOL!
I clicked through here specifically to post that. Whether or not it's "myth", it would make for a pretty cool Mythbusters episode. They could travel to CERN and tour the LHC, interview some scientists about the cool stuff going on there and then blow up a pig or two!
It would be exceptionally cool if the guys at the LHC would let them blow up a pig by putting it into the particle stream, but I'm sure that would do too much damage to the LHC, which is having enough trouble as-is.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
And then when THAT ultimately doesn't work, they put in 10 times the amount and do it again.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Could someone more versed in physics tell a layman how this scales up?
"What would happen if you were standing in front of the beam? You would die. It would be a pretty spectacular death, and you wouldn't know a lot about it. ... It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body."
Am I the only one that IMMEDIATELY pulled up the vision of the green beams combining inside the deathstar?
(deathsar firing at 30 sec)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm curious about this point because under a previous LHC article, someone commented that "11 trillion electron volts sounds impressive, but when I flick something with my finger, far more energy is transferred." (paraphrase, obviously)
Could someone more versed in physics tell a layman how this scales up?
I'm not a physicist, but I typed "11 TeV in Joules" into Google and it says "1.76239411 × 10-6 joules". That's not very much energy. It's enough to accelerate 1.7 micrograms from rest to a velocity of one meter per second -- a gnat's whisker to a slow walk. Yeah, flicking a finger is far more energetic.
However, that's the energy in the most energetic particles in the particle stream. There are a lot of particles in the stream, so their total energy is much higher.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yes, that is the energy in each *individual* particle (for the most energetic ones). And as you point out, there are going to be lots of particles. It will add up.
Ian Ameline
Yeah, even a few billion atoms (which isn't very much at all) and you're already talking about hundreds of Joules.
I forget the exact energy specifications of the LHC, but if you're interested in getting a feeling for the power it packs, do a search for "LHC beam dump". This is a huge block of solid material (some sort of a lead-composite, IIRC) that's only job is to be vaporized if they need to shut down the beam quickly.
IANAP*, but I do play one on TV.
You see Volts deal with Electrons, and Electrons are really tiny. Fingers aren't very big either, but they are bigger than electrons [citation needed]. Some scientist somewhere took 11 trillion electrons with 1 volt each and sent them towards a single finger, in flicking motion. The battle raged for just over a year, and in the end, the finger was the victor.
*or a lawyer
Now I'm thinking that depending on which opening you drop those 87 kg of TNT into someone's body, this may finally be a thread where the goatse link isn't off-topic ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Anyone that prefers a MAC has intelligence issues..
;-)
Now that really is not very kind. (Disclaimer: I mostly use Linux, but I have a MacBook) Some people do actually manage somehow to get serious work done on Windows when they're not downloading the latest patch or anti-virus update.
and you wouldn't know a lot about it.
...not after being cooled down to -271 C and exposed to vacuum (if you were very lucky, in that order)...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
source : http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/science.html
====== snip======
So it was in 1978 that when the proton beam entered Anatoli Bugorski's skull it measured about 200,000 rads, and when it exited, having collided with the inside of his head, it weighed in at about 300,000 rads. Bugorski, a 36-year-old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, was checking a piece of accelerator equipment that had malfunctioned - as had, apparently, the several safety mechanisms. Leaning over the piece of equipment, Bugorski stuck his head in the space through which the beam passes on its way from one part of the accelerator tube to the next and saw a flash brighter than a thousand suns. He felt no pain.
From what we know about radiation, about 500 to 600 rads is enough to kill a person (though we don't know of anyone else who has been exposed to radiation in the form of a proton beam moving at about the speed of sound). The left side of his face swollen beyond recognition, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow so that doctors could observe his death over the following two to three weeks.
Over the next few days, skin on the back of his head and on his face just next to his left nostril peeled away to reveal the path the beam had burned through the skin, the skull, and the brain tissue. The inside of his head continued to burn away: all the nerves on the left were gone in two years, paralyzing that side of his face. Still, not only did Bugorski not die, but he remained a normally functioning human being, capable even of continuing in science. For the first dozen years, the only real evidence that something had gone neurologically awry were occasional petit mal seizures; over the last few years Bugorski has also had six grand mals. The dividing line of his life goes down the middle of his face: the right side has aged, while the left froze 19 years ago. When he concentrates, he wrinkles only half his forehead.
====== snip======
"The scientists there favor Macs"
Even the physicists turn pansy in Europe. A disgrace.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
.7m x 7m long carbon cylinder sucking up 350 MJ, surrounded by 750 tons of concrete and iron to keep it from going "sproing".
PS, 350 MJ is around 84 kilos of TNT. Perhaps they are running a bit hot?
Well, the beams have the energy equivalent of 87 KG of TNT. Your statement implies that standing in front of the beam would cause you to explode, which I very much doubt.
I am curious as to what actually WOULD happen. The beams themselves are very narrow (on the order of a millimeter according to http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/beam.htm ). With such a tiny size I might guess the beam would quickly cut a hole straight through you.
AccountKiller
As if Mac or Linux were imune to virus...
With such a tiny size I might guess the beam would quickly cut a hole straight through you.
Aren't there cheaper ways to achieve that? ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Your statement implies that standing in front of the beam would cause you to explode, which I very much doubt.
I am curious as to what actually WOULD happen.
This is the closest thing I could find:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski
http://forgetomori.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/anatolibugorski3.jpg
"It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body." jamie wants big boom
... Whether or not it's "myth", it would make for a pretty cool Mythbusters episode. ...
Looking at a description of the LHC beam dump system, it sounds like this sort of experiment could be arranged: http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/components/beam-dump.htm.
The beam dump is a 7 m long, 0.7 m wide graphite cylinder (about 5 tonnes) surrounded by a cooling system and several hundred tons of concrete and iron. The beam gets their by shooting down a 600 m tunnel after extraction from the ring. Normally this tunnel is filled with nitrogen at 1.2 atmospheres (since the carbon dump gets heated to 1000 c and would catch fire if oxygen were present), but some arrangement where a test chamber gets inserted in the tunnel seems possible.
What is a dumped beam like? It is very narrow, at the tunnel entrance window it is 1.5 mm , but is swept in a spiral path (length 110 cm at the window) by deflector magnets as it enters the tunne. The spiral expands to a 1.2 m wide spiral pattern 4 m long when it reaches the dump. The initial mass absorption coefficient is 80 g/cm^2 (for carbon) indicating a mass of tissue 6 inches thick with a density of 1 would absorb something less than 20% of the energy (360 megajoules, indeed about 87 kg of TNT), which see. The mass of a 1.5 mm x 4000 mm irradiated zone is only 6 g.
So, perhaps 15 kg TNT of energy would be absorbed by several grams of tissue in a long stripe. It would make a very violent explosion. The MythBusters guys better bring a strong walled chamber.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
> Dr. Paul Jackson, a particle physicist working on the LHC's Atlas experiment, says there's no chance of black holes wiping us out, and that the time travel speculation is bunkum. He is 100% convinced that they will find the Higgs boson.
Maybe it is me, but when I hear someone say "no chance of..." or "100% convinced that they will find..." they sound more like a politician than a scientist. I thought the latter should have an open mind until proof was presented ?
The very idea of dumbing down science by blowing up pigs is just hogwash!
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Anyone that prefers a MAC has intelligence issues.
Yes. They prefer to apply it to something other than keeping their computing system up and running.
Have gnu, will travel.
It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body.
.... Mexican food.
Have gnu, will travel.
"What would happen if you were standing in front of the beam? You would die."
Or through a fluke of physics you'd become a super hero. The Higgs is called the "God particle" for a reason. Of course, nobody would stand in front of the beam for a while, because of all the safety precautions. But a few years from now maybe in 2012 when everybody's relaxed and used to working on it, it could happen. Probably around the holidays when people are distracted most. Probably around Christmas, since that's a big, stressful holiday and everybody's thinking about everything but work. It wouldn't happen on Christmas day itself but most likely a few days before that like around December 21 maybe. As a physicist the interviewee should expect strange things like that to happen. Where's the imagination? This is what happens when they interview Dr. Paul Jackson instead of Dr. Daniel Jackson.
So, perhaps 15 kg TNT of energy would be absorbed by several grams of tissue in a long stripe.
The amount will be far, far less than that because it takes time for the hadronic shower produced by the protons to develop. Energy deposition is not linear but peaks at a distance into the material (this is why lower energy proton beams are used for treating brain tumours). So while you may end up dead, depending on what the beam hits or from the radiation later, I doubt it will be in any way "spectacular". The vast majority of the energy will go right through you but tissue close to the beam will get effectively cooked.
Hmmm, ok. Name: Analatoly Bugorski. INTELLIGENCE: 15. STAMINA:18. LUCK: 2...
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
LMAO. Well worth the read.
So it would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body
I guess dump=ignite.
I wonder what is the energy efficiency of these electromagnetic accelerators: i.e. (beam power)/(operating power); I assume LHC will not qualify for any government green rebates by a long shot.
It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body.
The assumption being that the TNT is exploded once it's in your body? Or are we talking about a stream of TNT that's exploding as it's entering the body?
per for each gram of particles accelerated (assuming the particles in the accelerator are roughly the mass of protons / neutrons). I'm not sure how the energy of acceleration affects the mass, but I'm assuming that Avagadro's number should put you in roughly the right ballpark.
That's about 10 ** 18 ish Joules, so my guess is somewhere between 100 PetaJoules to a few Exajoules per gram.
Yipes! That's a *LOT* of energy. Wikipedia says that 60 TJ was release in the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima.
That's about what I remember from a TV show about the LHC a while ago; roughly about 1 m in diameter (what's that in foot, 10 square feet?), 7m (23 feet) long. If the beam is directed into it, it heats up to about 800 degrees C (~1700 degrees F according to Google) in an instant.
/. is munging for some reason/g)
I can picture the scientist going "Operation room, the pizza's a bit stale, and the coffee machine blew up. Would you mind rerouting the beam once more?"
(s/degrees/the simple circled degree character that
Argh, /. ... That was supposed to say 'about 1 m^2 in diameter'!
*Normally this tunnel is filled with nitrogen at 1.2 atmospheres (since the carbon dump gets heated to 1000 c and would catch fire if oxygen were present)*
Great. So instead of fire, we get cyanide radicals.
What?
They did a test and the beam vaporized like a 40 M long copper tube a mm wide or so.
Now they have a large graphite tube encased in like a foot of concrete to stop the beam and they scan the beam across it so it heats up evenly.
Knowledge/0=Infinite stupidity.
You can't divide by zero. Additionally, learn to type so that people can understand the point you are attempting to convey.
Considering how he converted everything, I'd imagine us Americans must have a different definition of diameter.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]