LHC Reaches Record Energy

toruonu writes "Yesterday evening the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for the first time accelerated protons in both directions of the ring to 1.18 TeV. Even though the 1 TeV barrier per beam was first broken a week ago, this marks the first time that the beam was in the machine in both directions at the same time, allowing possibly for collisions at a center of mass energy of 2.36 TeV. Although the test lasted mere minutes, it was enough to have detectors record the very first events at 2.36 TeV. LHC passes Tevatron (the particle collider at Fermilab that operates at 1.96 TeV) and becomes the highest energy particle collider in the world (so far it was effectively just the highest energy storage ring...)"

Comments

Doom

[2names]

Doom, I tell you. It's coming for all of us.

Re:Doom

[purpledinoz]

Since we're all doomed, how about you send me all you money?

Re:Doom

[dunkelfalke]

Very good. I love the sound of dying Cacodemons.

Re:Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom, I tell you. It's coming for all of us.

yeah.. science has always been horrified like this over centuries.. no wonder we still live in the same timesss

Re:Doom

[DigitalPasture]

Start running your credit card up... You can't take it with you!

Re:Doom

[MiniMike]

Start running your credit card up... You can't take it with you!

.. and if you've been good, those debt collectors can't follow you!

Re:Doom

[dumuzi]

I lepton the chance to be the FIRST POST!!!!!. and got so charged up about it I got a large hadron. I am still a little fermion. fortunately no black holes were involved, Unfortunately I miss gauged and some braneless boson beat me to the first post. so I had to gluon my post here, The insensitive clod who beat me was probably from the future and came back in time just to ruin my post, I do not for one welcome this new overlord from the future, The positive side of all this negativity is that having his post on top and mine on the bottom does have a quarky strange charm to it (like a flex fuel car’s superposition of states), At the risk of creating a messon this post (like a bird bombings and baguettes) and having it spin out of control I shall anti up. collapse my own wave function and walk myself off the Planck [through a displacement of 1,2 m (0,24 rods. or about 15 wamprats)] before the beams cross and swine flu mutates into ebola on Dec 21st 2012,

Re:Doom

[Majestix]

HA!

They have general stores in hell. im going to need my money.

K

Re:Doom

[baKanale]

Dr. Doom is a "he", not an "it". Way to be rude.

Re:Doom

[Verdatum]

I'm Cookoo for Cacodemons!

Re:Doom

[pisto_grih]

you missed out step 3: natalie portman's hot grits.

Re:Doom

[Verdatum]

This is your boss. Get back to work!!

Re:Doom

[MadKeithV]

Compiling!

Re:Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahhaha...I haven't played that in a decade but I just got this hilarious A/V of a cacodemon dying, going "ahuhuhuhuh" and guts spilling.

Re:Doom

[dumuzi]

With a Beowulf cluster of memes already used I was afraid natalie portman's hot grits would make my post too memeingfull.

Re:Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

Send $3,000 to my account in Nigeria. This will pay export taxes. $2,000,000 will be in your account tomorrow.

Re:Doom

[grub]

A decade?

Man, download jdoom, install the high-res textures, 3D models and new map packs!

It's a whole new game.

Re:Doom

[electricbern]

+5, Punny

Re:Doom

[Idiomatick]

;; /. should have special occasions like this where you can rate a post to +6

Re:Doom

[Verdatum]

Carry on.

Re:Doom

[L3370]

What, no mention of chair throwing?

Re:Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't you rather be out fission?

Re:Doom

[geekoid]

I don't think fraud is the hallmark of being good.

Re:Doom

[geekoid]

Fess up, you wrote that a year ago and have just been waiting for the chance to copy and paste it into a post, right?

Re:Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

over 9000 internets to you, sir!

Re:Doom

[The Archon V2.0]

Very good. I love the sound of dying Cacodemons.

Stop, you're making me nostalgic for my days of abusing DeHackEd horribly.

Re:Doom

[vegiVamp]

Mmmm. Anyone got mozarella and olive oil handy ?

Re:Doom

[th1nk]

Running up your credit cards isn't fraud.

Re:Doom

[simoncpu was here]

Doom is so 90s. It's Half-Life, I tell you. The Combine is coming for all of us!

Re:Doom

[X0563511]

http://dengine.net/

jDoom is old-n-busted.

Re:Doom

[grub]

bah yeah, and doomsday is what I meant. ty!

Re:Doom

[Lord Pillage]

What's a cacodeomon? Is that when Satan lives in your hot chocolate?

Re:Doom

[b4upoo]

No doom involved. This machine can microwave a turkey in an instant. Yum!

Re:Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

I lepton the chance to be the FIRST POST!!!!!.

ok that was one of the funnies posts i've seen in a while.

Re:Doom

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Being doomed does not make me any less lazy. Even if I wasn't, sending money to strangers would not be high on my priority list of things to do when facing certain doom.

Re:Doom

[fritsd]

Naah... kakos daimoon = evil "daemon".
The original word daemoon has many connotations, not all of them evil, as I recall.
To Slashdot admins: C'mon admins! do full UTF-8 support!

Re:Doom

[Tablizer]

Psssst, Boss. Make him use an interpreted language and skip the compile time wait.

Re:Doom

[AmberBlackCat]

While I'm not certain, my guess is they will have banks, McDonald's, and Wal-Mart there. Maybe you would need money. And the McDonald's will have the burgers but not the fries.

Re:Doom

[Tablizer]

Dude, you overwhelmed my pun gland. Gotta see a doc.

Re:Doom

[rainmayun]

McDonald's in hell will only have the McDLT, the McRib, and Chicken McNugget Happy Meals... but no sauce.

Re:Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet union, your post make you too memeingfull.

Re:Doom

[ElMiguel]

This is the first time I've seen a "can i haz your stuff" reply in Slashdot.

Re:Doom

[chaos579]

of course if you've been bad the YOU ARE SCREWED!!!!!1

Re:Doom

[clone53421]

Were you looking for æ?

Copy-and-paste works just fine now, for a variety of unicode characters. They’re still stored as HTML character entities internally, but it converts them so you don’t get weird characters in their place.

Before, you could still have inserted it with æ.

Re:Doom

[zildgulf]

Pew Pew Pew

Re:Doom

[Foobar of Borg]

Since we're all doomed, how about you send me all you money?

I don't know about OP, but I couldn't send you mine since it's all invested in handbaskets. That's a market that will be very lucrative soon, I hear. And you can actually take it with you.

Re:Doom

[MrPhilby]

sends imaginary mod points

black hole

[Anonymous Coward]

What? And still our earth hasn't been sucked down a black hole? Do I have to do everything myself?

Re:black hole

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I have to do everything myself?

that's what SHE said!

Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it extremely hypocritical of so many European nations to be very gung-ho about the Copenhagen climate change conference and the associated chicanery with carbon offsets and all that crap, yet they're willing to fund and encourage excessive energy use like this.

The amount of power they used in mere minutes during this experiment could have powered millions of homes and businesses for a significantly longer period of time.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[oldspewey]

How many homes exactly and how much of a "significantly longer period of time?"

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[CRCulver]

A greater understanding of physics may well be worth the excessive use of energy, as it may lead to better sources of energy tomorrow.

Lately I've been wondering how worthwhile attempts to e.g. stop climate change are when, if Kurzweil is right, we'll hit the Singularity in only a couple of decades and then all of humanity's environmental and technological problems may well be solved.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[sentientbeing]

The application potential for new science is open-ended. Anyway. Out of my way luddite. Im first in line for a portable black hole garbage compactor on ThinkGeek.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[oldspewey]

... for certain values of "solved"

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think peak oil is a serious hindrance to the Singularity. No oil, no Singularity.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Lately I've been wondering how worthwhile attempts to e.g. stop climate change are when, if Kurzweil is right, we'll hit the Singularity in only a couple of decades and then all of humanity's environmental and technological problems may well be solved.

It's called "minimizing downside risk".

Which is a fancy way of saying "well, and what if the Singularity does NOT occur on schedule?"

Personally, I don't think anyone is taking the whole "global warming" thing seriously yet - they're just posturing with another unenforceable (and largely meaningless) Treaty meant to placate the global warming lobby while otherwise doing not very much at all.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[bucky0]

This is factually incorrect. At peak (experiment running, all detectors running, all computers processing), the LHC will consume 180 MW of energy. This includes all the energy used to heat offices, etc... The actual experiment uses ~22MW of power. It's not "sneeze-at" power consumption, but considering an average household uses ~1kW of power, and the fact the LHC is planned on being shutdown a significant fraction of the year, the assertion that you could power "millions of homes and businesses for a significantly longer period of time" is bogus.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we can throw what amounts to two grains of sand from a mile apart, make them collide, and actually record the event. The monkeys on this little water-covered rock never cease to amaze me.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[mea37]

The LHC uses 120MW, but if you really want to slant the numbers in your favor we can go with the 180MW consumed by the entire CERN complex.

If you wanted to power millions (we'll say 2M, since that's the lowest number that can be called "millions") of homes and businesses, you could only give each one 90W. My modest-sized, well-insulated, gas-heated, largely-flourescent-lighted house consumes roughly 1kW (1000W).

So now that we have the hyperbole out of the way, certainly LHC consumes a lot of power. If you hadn't been greedy, you could've said "could power thousands of homes and businesses" (and left off the assertion that there was some time multiplier involved), and that's true.

However, willingness to spend energy on physics is only in conflict with wanting to conserve energy if either (1) the value of the physics fails to outweigh the value of the power consumed, or (2) there is a more energy-efficient way to do the physics.

Perhaps you think the physics isn't worth doing; those funding it disagree. That does not make them hypocrits.

If you have a more efficient design for the LHC, I'm sure many people would love to see it.

Oh, and there's only one LHC whereas there are millions of homes, millions of vehicles, millions of offices in the world. In other words, millions of opportunities to make incremental energy improvemnts that would cumulatively offset far more power than all of the particle accelerators in the world consume, without the need to sacrifice scientific progress (or much of anything, really).

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[geckipede]

Nobody agrees on when the singularity is coming. We're nowhere near producing an innovative AI, let alone anything genuinely intelligent in software, so technological progress is stuck going through human systems for a while yet. I am more inclined to believe the predictions that technological advances will start coming too fast for humans to follow in centuries to come, not decades. Our job is to make sure that civilisation doesn't fall apart in a mess of overpopulation and resource shortage before then. Global warming carries with it a huge risk of reducing food supplies below that that we'll need in order to ever reach the point of singularity.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[mea37]

That's right, Citizen, don't worry about your problems. Just go be a good consumer and enjoy life; everything will be taken care of for you by the Great Tin God. As if by magic Technology will sweep in and save the day, with no need for you to change or contribute in any way.

Oh, and don't worry; mere mortals cannot dig a hole so deep that Technology can't solve it. You can't do so much damage in the next 20 or 30 years, give or take, to face catastrophy before the coming of the Great Tin God. Your folly certainly can't interfere with His coming - and have faith, He is coming!

Give. Me. A. Break.

If not for humans striving to solve significant problems, there would be no technological advancement, and any Singularity that we might imagine coming would never be. That's if the whole Singularity idea isn't crap to start with (of which I am not convinced).

Perhaps an aphorism will help: Have faith, but row toward shore.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Using renewable solar power, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power and hydroelectric power, we could easily meet all of our electricity needs for years.

Had the billions of euros poured into this LHC experiment been used to build huge solar arrays in the Sahara Desert, all of Africa and Europe would have a reliable and extremely sufficient power source.

Even after that, there'd still be money left over to build large wind and tidal turbine arrays in the North Sea, which would provide extra energy that could be exported to Asia.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhh, no.

Solution to no oil == Singularity

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[city]

Yes but they also "may well be solved" when 2012 hits, but I say we go ahead and research climate change just in case neither of those likely events take place.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Issarlk]

Can the Singularity enlarge certain parts of the masculine anatomy too?

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Rising Ape]

No it wouldn't. You are *seriously* underestimating the cost of large scale solar. The Desertec project estimates 400 billion euros to provide 15% of Europe's electricity.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[DomNF15]

You guys aren't comparing apples to apples - the website [http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/faq/lhc-energy-consumption.htm] indicates that in terms of energy, the LHC consumes about 130 Giga-watt hours (GWh) per month when it is fully online. Your residential electric bill is on the order of kilo-watt hours. On average, the typical US household used 920 KWh per month in 2006 [http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html], that is equivalent to 0.00092 GWh. 130 GWh / 0.00092 GWh = 141304 average US residences able to be powered off the energy consumed by the LHC during a regular usage month. Hardly millions, but definitely a few decent size towns worth of residences. I'm not making an argument for or against the energy use of LHC, just want to clarify the facts...

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Schadrach]

Isn't the entirety of the whole singularity concept the eventuality of creating a machine intelligence capable of refining the design of technology for greater capability/efficiency at a much greater speed than any human is able, including itself, and accordingly creating a sort of spiraling out of control where machine intelligence creates ever greater forms of itself which in turn solve ever greater problems growing farther and farther beyond the range of man to comprehend within a lifetime?

Effectively an inventor inventing a better inventor who can do the same ad nauseum?

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. Those numbers more closely match what I was getting.

Also many state that the LHC is 'wasting' energy. It seems a bit hypocritical to say that when posting to a internet web site. While in the back ground watching their plasma screen TV...

I only 'save' energy to save me money. These dudes are willing to foot the bill for all the energy I say go for it... Then once the experiments are done the extra generators that were built to support this thing can then be reused. We need more ways of making more energy not just figuring out ways to 'save it up'. Building more power plants is a good start.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[CRCulver]

Your repetitions of "Great Tin God" are ridiculous. I said that a Singularity would solve technological and environmental problems, and that's pretty believable. I said nothing about the many other problems (moral, philosophical, existential) that humanity faces.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

... the assertion that you could power "millions of homes and businesses for a significantly longer period of time" is bogus.

That's *Higgs* Bogus.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[arminw]

...Global warming carries with it a huge risk of reducing food supplies....

That is completely and utterly false. Most plants, including most crops grow better when it's warmer and moister. If every last bit of ice on earth melted, it might raise the ocean level a few feet, but there would be vast areas of earth that would then be agriculturally productive, whereas now they are frozen wasteland or desert. Greenland would be once again a green land, covered with forests similar to what is on the east coast of North America today.

If such warming did happen, which the data in the last 10 years refutes, it would be generally good for humanity as a whole. This is especially true if the warming happened over a century or more, so that coastal areas and others could adapt.

It is nonsensical how almost everybody automatically assumes that global warming, even if it were happening, is universally bad. There are very few things on this earth that are either all good or all bad, but it is always a mixture of the two.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[timeOday]

Even if the Singularity did happen, who's to say a pain-free energy source actually exists? What if the new super computer brain comes back with, "nuclear fission is your best bet"? Or, "a lot of problems would be solved within 100 years if you just quit making babies"?

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[geekoid]

Ecept Kurswell is a loon that doesn't deserve the attention he is getting.
And singularity makes wild and unfounded assumptions.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[mea37]

"You guys aren't comparing apples to apples "

Wrong. Comparing average power consumption is just as valid is comparing energy over a fixed time frame.

"141304 average US residences able to be powered off the energy consumed by the LHC"

Very similar to the result I posted, which should have tipped you off that your numbers are no better than mine. You used different estimates given in different units, but otherwise you're merely repeating the calcualtion that a number of us already did.

The reason the numbers are slightly different (you actually estimated slightly less homes than I did, btw) is that I used different starting estimaets and rounded a bit more. Why did I do this? Because it was sufficient to disprove the original claim of 'millions of homes and businesses' and was a lot less work.

In other words, you spent more effort to reach the same conclusion. In a discussion on efficiency. And then had the balls to claim the rest of us were doing it wrong.

"during a regular usage month"

And here you are factually wrong. Those estimates were for a peak utilization month.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[mea37]

That's nice. I stand by the idea that taking any specific, significant problem and delegating it to unspecified "Technology of the Future" to take care of, amounts to technology worship. If you don't like that assertion, you're free to disagree.

Since your only objection is to my wording, I gather you agree to the various points that discredit the validitty of waiting for the Singularity to solve this problem? If not, perhaps you should address them.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[jbezorg]

AC

...this experiment could have powered millions of homes and businesses...

oldspewey

How many homes exactly and how much of a "significantly longer period of time?"

It's a Catch 22. AC's calculations involve keeping the LHC operational so future power consumed by the LHC can be brought back in time to power the millions of homes and businesses now. Of course, the only way to get the power from a future LHC ( that needs to be running ), is to use that future LHC to get power from a future future LHC...

It's an infinite recursion that will cause the universe to implode. So thanks AC for destroying the universe. Way to go.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Entropius]

That's the start-up cost. After that's paid, what is the ongoing cost per kWh of solar compared to fossil energy?

Also keep in mind that 400 billion euros is about 20% of the cost of the war in Iraq.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[NonSequor]

I'm very skeptical that there's going to be an AI singularity at all.

There are physical constraints on computation density. There's going to be an upper limit on how much computation you can do within a given volume within a given amount of time without it's own waste heat destroying it.

And just increasing the volume doesn't fix everything. Just as the ratio of surface area to volume makes very large single celled organisms less efficient, I/O is limited by the same relationship.

Furthermore, there's no evidence that an artificial genius will be any less temperamental than a human genius. The price of leaps of insight is the possibility of false inferences and even very intelligent people can find ways to continue to believe in mistaken ideas.

And I don't think you can sidestep the problems with human intelligence by just making machines that think in a different way. The problems with human intelligence result from the inherent difficulty in predicting future events based on historical data. Essentially, there are a lot of problem types which you can only ever estimate answers for and the inherent trade offs between, for example, computation time and the level of accuracy of the solution are inescapable.

I don't think that we should sell short the value of human ingenuity in general purpose problem solving. I think that the human brain may be closer to the limits of having to make those difficult inherent trade offs between accuracy and computation time than we might hope.

I will say that there is some hope for enhanced progress through machine-human integration. Our strength in general purpose computation can definitely be supplemented by the computer's more narrow skills in number crunching and communications. I know that at my job that I spend most of my day dicking around with spreadsheets and a calculator and a neural interface to those things could greatly enhance my performance.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[petermgreen]

except that isn't what we do, we throw pretty large bunches of particles and some of them collide.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

mhh. Ok I'll bite.

Adding energy to the atmosphere *MIGHT* result in a new stable situation where the heat is dispersed on a wider area (opening siberia to farming).

*IF* you have serious data for this I'll believe it.
If not adding energy to a complex system usually makes it more instable and violent.
More hurricanes is the problem, not a couple of feet higher oceans.

Also, adding a couple of degrees won't result in a couple of percentage points highier frequency of hurricanes... I'll leave the reason as an excercise for the pupil.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[geckipede]

What makes you think that increasing temperatures will help to reverse desertification? Increased evaporation of water isn't going to change the lack of regular pressure changes over the equator that could cause more regular rainfall. What it is far more likely to do is cause heavier intermittent storm rain, of the type that overwhelms the land's ability to retain water and mostly just flows away. Colder regions nearer the poles may gain in agricultural productivity, but at the cost of farmland nearer the equator, and the equator covers far more land area.

You might also want to look up ocean acidification by increased uptake of CO2, which is causing loss of coral reefs and threatening stability of fish as a food source.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[stumblingblock]

Well, yes, of course a few degrees might not be unwelcome in most place on earth, but I believe the concern is that we would spiral towards becoming like the planet Venus, since there is no way to stop the changes once started.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Secshunayt]

If we were to adopt this attitude, the "Singularity" would never occur; it comes as a result of our own innovation and progress.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Locke2005]

Lately I've been wondering how worthwhile attempts to e.g. stop climate change are when, if the Bible is right, we'll hit Armageddon in only a couple of decades and then all of humanity's environmental and technological problems may well be moot.

Hey, it makes about as much sense as depending on "the Singularity"!

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[geckipede]

The world can survive having co2 levels as high as this, and higher. It has happened in the past, just not recently enough for us to be able to get any detailed information on how that related to climate.

The danger is not to life in general, only to species that aren't going to be able to make it through a period of relatively rapid change.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[mrrudge]

"It's intelligent design for the IQ 140 people." - Mitch Kapor on Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for all you know, Armageddon == Singularity. There's a new untapped cult/religion opportunity in there that will make a someone a lot of money, with a more credible basis than Shlockentology. However in a technological Singularity, it probably would be the regular religious schmoes who would be left behind and the technological savvy who might have a chance to be uplifted^H^H^H^H^Hoaded without suffering from critical future shock. Unfortunately, the regular religious schmoes are the natural marks so you'd have to get creative to explain why they would be the ones going to Silicon Paradise.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[rainmayun]

Rising sea levels, which you already acknowledge, would displace a whole lot people. 40% of the world's population lives in coastal zones. We can't turn all those places into Venice.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[mrrudge]

As a /. reader, I'm super happy that several ( presumably very capable ) people did the math, using slightly different techniques, and came to similar answers, it assures me that these are pretty good numbers given the sources, and I love that this would be the answer to someone casually proclaiming a 'millions' figure.

It's a shame that this is diluted by oversensitive bitchiness, but thank you anyway.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please refrain from using the term "black hole" as it is offensive to african-americans. The correct term is now "white hole." For reference please see http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0723/p09s01-coop.html

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[DomNF15]

"Comparing average power consumption is just as valid is comparing energy over a fixed time frame."

Not really. I'm sure your energy usage at 1am differs from that at 8am and 2pm. The only way you can arrive at a reasonable per hour estimate of your energy usage is by at least averaging out a day's usage. If you want to get an even better estimate, you would average out usage over the course of a week, because your usage on a Thursday when you are at work all day is probably a lot different than Saturday when you're home. Your "energy over a fixed time frame" is in fact an hourly AVERAGE consumption rate. An estimate (average) which takes into account a larger data sample (takes more days into account) is going to result in a number that is closer to the actual usage were it to be measured daily and added up. So, using monthly estimates actually yields a result that is more accurate than comparing raw hourly usage, it is not as you state, extra work with nothing to show for it. I would think that, in a discussion of efficiency, you would want to talk about results that are as accurate as possible.

Oh yeah, regular usage month == month when the LHC is on and in use. I am not factually wrong, unless you want to consider months when it is running not regular. Weren't the usage numbers from when it is running the whole point of this discussion?

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[rock_climbing_guy]

Thank you. I get so sick and tired of hearing the flat-earth, no growthers telling everyone to do without while they fly around in their private jets for their circus^Wconvention in Copenhagen. I just saw in the news yesterday that some schmuck in the British government wants to tax Brits who take too many flights because it allegedly is destroying the planet. Give me a break!

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Chris Burke]

What makes you think that increasing temperatures will help to reverse desertification?

Same thing that makes him think the solar wind is a current caused by the sun's electric field... abject ignorance, combined with a willingness to believe anything so long as it purports to contradict what the Scientific Clergy believe.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[fritsd]

Yes, possibly ending in some kind of apotheosis of the AI.
<weird_rant_mode>
What I'm amazed about is, should we be able to create such an intelligence, why would anyone believe that it will then desire to sort out all our current problems. It all seems very childish to me: a bit like "after we've destroyed this our only, beautiful blue world through our lazyness and wastefullness, don't worry, we'll create a God who will then give us a new one to play with because we took such good care of the old one".
Who's to say that such a God wouldn't do the equivalent of locking us up in our room until we've sorted out our mess -- and no cake for dessert!
Even if such a God would be benevolent doesn't mean it would give in to its puny-brained creators' every whim; after all if you see someone who is not very smart eating themselves sick on cake, the wisest thing might be to take it out of their hands and tell 'em off: "don't eat so much, you'll get sick, and you won't have any cake left tomorrow".
Replace "room" by "planet" and "cake" by "petroleum" if you like.
</weird_rant_mode>

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The idiocy of niggers knows no bounds. I propose we rename black holes to nigger holes.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[mea37]

From your quote of my previous post:

"Comparing average power consumption is just as valid is comparing energy over a fixed time frame."

From your response:

"The only way you can arrive at a reasonable per hour estimate of your energy usage is by at least averaging out a day's usage"

Perhaps you should learn to read a post before replying to it.

I used monthly averages. This was evident from the material I posted, and while I could guess at how you missed that fact it wouldn't be a very charitable assessment.

"Weren't the usage numbers from when it is running the whole point of this discussion?"

No, the relative environmental impact of LHC vs. consumer power use was the point of this discussion. Those homes don't stop existing for half the year just because the LHC powers down. If you want to average home power consumption for peak and non-peak time, then you need to do the same for LHC to arrive at a meaningful, apples-to-apples number.

In other words, take your "monthly averages are better than weekly averages which are better than daily averages" argument to its logical conclusion, and you'll realize we should be using annual averages (since that is the longest-period peak cycle in consideration).

The LHC has regular cycles of some months on, others off. Neither of those alone represnts a "regular" usage figure. Times when it's at full power are peak.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[pwfffff]

If you can outrun the tide you can outrun globally rising waters. It will devalue some property. Oh nooooooo.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[zildgulf]

The singularity is coming in 20 years. Of course next year the singularity will still be 20 years off, just like it was in 1980, 1981, 1982, etc.

Quite frankly, after studying AI a long time ago, I am not surprised. The Technology singularity seems to be a moving goal. Today data mining techniques, search engines and data analysis/feedback systems would be considered AI back around 20 years ago.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[pwfffff]

"I think that the human brain may be closer to the limits of having to make those difficult inherent trade offs between accuracy and computation time than we might hope."

I'm glad you THINK, now try looking up some facts before assuming that the people who've spent their lives looking into these things weren't able to address your points:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann's_limit

"2.56 × 10^47 bits per second per gram."

http://www.merkle.com/brainLimits.html

"It seems reasonable to conclude that the human brain has a raw computational power between 10^13 and 10^16 operations per second."

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Thing 1]

(I understand the parent was a joke, and this is not directed at parent.) It always surprises me when people drag out some book written thousands of years ago, and state with absolute belief that the things written in it not only were the case and are the case, but also explain the events that will happen in the future!

No other book that I know of purports to distort the space-time continuum in this fashion. Well, perhaps Nostradamus, and other religious texts.

Depending on "the Singularity" is completely different; this is an understood event that is likely a few decades away, if that. ("Understood" in the sense that we know how to get there; not in the sense that we know what the world will look like after the event happens. It's difficult to imagine that future; one thing I know is that we'll be able to make backups, and I fully intend to play the same existential games Bill Murray's character played in Groundhog Day. But, perhaps those games will be passe, and we'll instead play the "extract energy from other universes" games...)

And to the OP, it does make sense to conserve at this juncture because another Bush might emerge and delay the singularity another decade or more.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[NonSequor]

That limit ignores all practical computational concerns.

For example, a machine with a high level of computation density will be highly susceptible to outside interference. The slightest molestation of a single molecule will alter the results.

As such, to get close to that limit you would have to spend a vast amount of energy protecting and repairing the structure of your computer.

I'll admit that your point has made me think a bit more about what I've said and so I'll rephrase it. I think that the human brain is cost-effective in terms of providing a robust computation infrastructure with a system for self-maintenance for a reasonable energy cost. In general, the more sophisticated you become, the more you have to spend on maintenance and organizational problems.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Dr. Spork]

Wow, that's such a perfect post!

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[arminw]

...increasing temperatures will help to reverse desertification?....

Because a warmer atmosphere will hold a LOT more water which then can precipitate out in places that get little or no rain today. Warmer, moist air also distributes temperature variations more efficiency because it holds more heat. This means that rather than more violent weather, the weather will calm down because there is less difference between the hot places and the cool places on earth. This applies vertically in the atmosphere as well, reducing the temperature differences that drive violent storms such as hurricanes and tornadoes.

When the fossil fuels were formed, the earth was uniformly tropical and life was much more prolific because of that.

(...farmland nearer the equator, and the equator covers far more land area...)
Maybe that is true of farmland, but not land as a whole. The vast areas of northern Russia and China as well as northern Canada would once again be usable by humans. This tremendous increase in usable land area would far outstrip a possible small loss of land in coastal areas. There is also evidence that the areas now known as continental shelves were once free of water. A warmer atmosphere, say 10 C. warmer on the entire earth would hold a tremendous amount of water in suspension. Water vapor is lighter than either oxygen or nitrogen. This means that pure water vapor could accumulate above the oxygen nitrogen atmosphere. Water vapor is orders of magnitude more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

All that presupposes that global warming is actually taking place. In the last 10 years at least, there has been no evidence of this. That is why, in one of the hacked e-mails, one of the so-called global warming scientists called it a "travesty" that the data doesn't support their foregone conclusions.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Even if the Singularity did happen, who's to say a pain-free energy source actually exists? What if the new super computer brain comes back with, "nuclear fission is your best bet"?

Since I happen to think nuclear fission is our best bet, that wouldn't bother me.

Or, "a lot of problems would be solved within 100 years if you just quit making babies"?

On that subject, I noticed in the news today that Taiwan now has a birthrate of 1.0 babies per woman. Which is about 1.2 babies per woman below replacement rate....

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[arminw]

...*IF* you have serious data for this I'll believe it.....

Is oil in Alaska and coal in Antarctica good enough? These are fossil fuels produced by dead plants and animals. All fossil fuels represent carbon that was once were? Oh yeah, in the atmosphere were plants and sunshine could turn them into hydrocarbons which we now burn in our SUVs.

(...More hurricanes is the problem,...)

All weather on earth, including hurricanes, tornadoes and nasty blizzards, such as the Midwest is experiencing as I write this, are the result of temperature DIFFERENCES both vertically and horizontally in the atmosphere. If it were true that the earth is getting warmer overall, these differences would be reduced, because the atmosphere would hold more water and carry more heat that would be distributed more evenly. It is just too bad, that the wishful thinking of climate scientists is not happening. It would be rather nice to have a more uniformly warm earth. It would mean we would burn fewer fossil fuels to heat our houses. The vast iced over land areas of Siberia, northern Canada and Greenland would be habitable.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[arminw]

.... but I believe the concern is that we would spiral towards becoming like the planet Venus....

If that were true, it would have already happened. All the carbon we have already burned and all the carbon that is still in the ground in the form of fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere of the earth. The earth was uniformly warm from pole to pole and orders of magnitude more productive of living things, especially plants.

The Emperor of global warming is naked and the high priests of global warming know that. The hacked e-mails give strong evidence that they know that it is a "travesty" that their socialistic agenda is not supported by the data.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[arminw]

....Rising sea levels, which you already acknowledge, would displace a whole lot people.....

It would certainly be rather traumatic if this happened suddenly, say over a decade or two. However, even if global warming were real, it is projected to happen over a century or more. Humans as well as other lifeforms are pretty adaptable. There are many areas for example, around New Orleans, that should never be built on. It is too bad that global warming is fake, because it would be nice to live on a uniformly warmer planet. There is plenty of land in northern Canada, Siberia and Greenland and other places that are now literally ice cold.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

*groan* but I did enjoy it.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[sootman]

"... and the fact the LHC is planned on being shutdown a significant fraction of the year..."

Planned on? Or just "kinda working out that way"? :-)

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[sznupi]

Fine. Persuade US to stop engaging in needless wars before proposing the diversion of costs from such wasteful and harm0inucing projects as LHC.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[sznupi]

Today data mining techniques, search engines and data analysis/feedback systems would be considered AI back around 20 years ago.

Actually...who says that they aren't? We have a very limited image of what we consider an AI, mirrored very good in "the question whether a machine can think is no more interesting then whether a submarine can swim".

Singularity will probably take us by surprise. Heck, we might hardly notice it long time after it happens; not realizing that, for example, as a humanity we operate in hive-mind manner. Which is already true to some degree...

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

If such warming did happen, which the data in the last 10 years refutes,

I refer you to the following article, in particular the graph, and the text immediately below it pointing out that this is based on *three* sets of independantly obtained data.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8400905.stm

showing quite clearly that the decade just ending is by a significant margin the hottest on record.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

yep!

GW is the least of our troubles, thus it will be made to appear the biggest, until the shit hits the fan. Quite soon. If you missed the movie from the link below, you can still catch on Friday or look for other means to see it (I-player, youtube).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pdjmk

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Kurzweil speculates that if computer development keeps following Moores law, we'll have sufficiently fast computers to simulated an entire human brain in a few decades. This is pretty much a brute force methode to get an AI. No need for AI-researchers, just a fast computer, extremely accurated brain scanner and a good programmer with experience in simulation software.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

GW is the least of our troubles

You sang a different tune when he was president.

Re:Energy consumption hypocrisy.

[Anonymous Coward]

...except the land area in which it's not too hot, and more importantly, not too dry, will decrease.

And the chance of weather phenomena destroying crops will increase.

I don't think it'll offset the gain in growth - certainly not the growth in human population.

Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Idimmu Xul]

Is this related to the wormhole that opened up above Norway yesterday?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html
http://angryhosting.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/92/92a406b3d33f96b6953bab7efdf4541c1f130c27.jpg
http://img.waffleimages.com/d0718b906d187ca53b2e5a919c0e50dc2bb920d2/Fenomen_over_Borras_340148c.jpg
http://img.waffleimages.com/c3c879e75fc8f28b8867e8e678300ab6550dddfb/Fenomen_over_Borras_340149c.jpg
http://img.waffleimages.com/37f2e96dcb20b8b968af81799df40f72a36e73e1/1260346061961_198.jpg
http://www.vgtv.no/?id=27553
http://img.waffleimages.com/294526ec517df78cb7535993b41d3cc0dafa0f05/DSC00020_340153b.jpg
http://img.waffleimages.com/1ff7bad9b6542532a8cdc63bf02b386f891861d0/8fb0b14e0b4c7123618a8783dc35c964.jpg
http://img.waffleimages.com/9094e12c8e6320a3238bbf7e833c3cf6e36ed3c3/Fenomen_over_Borras_340147c.jpg
http://img.waffleimages.com/e07e495a8589dd769b7640ac21be295f738c1c04/f8ec04b52d3ffb2558f3256fd8f11d0a.jpg

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that was the Higgs Boson from future, trying to sabotage the LHC again. It missed.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[oldspewey]

What the hell? Is this for real?

I don't know what's freakier - the idea that this is some kind of covert human activity, or that humans aren't involved in any way.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Sockatume]

I was sceptical after looking at the first link, but those images really convinced me.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[zygotic mitosis]

I want to believe...

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It could explain why yesterday night my G-1 started receiving duplicate and triplicate text messages minutes apart, all of them being time-stamped at 8:36PM...

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[bill_mcgonigle]

they've put in an anti-Slashdot referer rule on those images - was there an original article so we don't have to copy & paste?

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[mace9984]

Okay.... FREAKED OUT! This for real? I'm trying to process the implications if this was an actual event, I swear to got if this is some photoshoped junk, I will flip out!

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[mace9984]

"got" being the god like figure that will emerge from the next wormhole.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Verteiron]

This HAS to be a rocket misfire of some kind. The apparent geometric perfection of it makes it look like a 'shop, but the wide variety of images and the video seem to indicate otherwise... Spaceweather.com is reporting on it too, with links to more articles (if you can read Norsk).

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Vohar]

I did some digging but couldn't find an article on any "real" news sites. From Google it's showing on conspiracy sites, blogs, and social sites. Didn't find anything searching major news outlets.

I'm guessing hoax at this point. I would think that the major news outlets would all be jumping to get on this first...unless they're just being cautious too, and want to fact-check first. ...though lack of fact-checking rarely stops US news...

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

The apparent geometric perfection of it makes it look like a 'shop

Or that it is in fact an artificial wormhole.
Oh noes, the Wraith stole Atlantis with the wormhole drive configuration installed.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Idimmu Xul]

they've put in an anti-Slashdot referer rule on those images - was there an original article so we don't have to copy & paste?

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3238877

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[ParanoiaBOTS]

they've put in an anti-Slashdot referer rule on those images - was there an original article so we don't have to copy & paste?

If you just open it, and then refresh the page it will show the image.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[solevita]

they've put in an anti-Slashdot referer rule on those images - was there an original article so we don't have to copy & paste?

Just click the link then hit F5 when it won't load. No referrers on a refresh...

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[JesseMcDonald]

Why not try this Firefox extension: RefControl. You can set it to block the referer (equivalent to copying & pasting the URL) or, even better, set it to the URL you're visiting, which gets around attempts to block direct links. This is, as one of the commenters put it, "One of the essential addons for Firefox. "

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[mtemmerm]

Images still not showing up here, not even after a refresh... Did anyone figure out in the mean time if this was a real event or not btw? It looks too perfect, which makes it stand out of the footage as something that shouldn't be there. I'm going to call hoax on this one. If its's not - all the better :).

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[crazycheetah]

Idk. They're saying it was probably a russian missile, but what I'm reading, the Russians are denying that...

Whatever it is... holy shit!

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Rigrig]

How about you click the link, get the error image, then press enter in the address bar?
Works for me (firefox 3.5)

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[hvm2hvm]

took me about 20seconds to copy paste and look at all of them. some times just do the thing, it's not worth it trying to find a simpler or better way of doing it.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, you didn't do the obvious, and check actual Norwegian websites.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Ch_Omega]

http://spaceweather.com/ mentions it..

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I'll get my crowbar.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

or just hit Enter on the address bar after you click through; that sends no referrer.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

...And the daily mail isn't a major news thing? (biased maybe, but unless the lights have some
political affiliation that probably doesn't matter)

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time I used a proxy called Proxomitron, which allowed me to do exactly that - send the URL I'm visiting as the referrer.

It did all kinds of cool stuff, but perhaps the most useful was extracting embedded links from pr0n thumbnails that would occasionally pop up ads instead of the thumbnail gallery I clicked on. This way I could open the link directly.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[geekoid]

Yes it's real, most photo are long exposures of the event.

Looking at some clip, it appears to me to be an rocket spiraling out of control and leaking propellant. The propellant is reflecting sun light.

I've seen similar events before.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It is definitely for real. It was seen all over the country by thousands of people this morning. The first theory was that it was a failed Russian rocket, but this has already been denied by the Russians.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Akral]

Simply click on a link.
Then, when you see a "Denied referer", just Ctrl-L, Enter.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[mtemmerm]

Apparently it's not the first time: http://topufo.com/ufosightingvideos/143-spiral-ufo-russia-2006.html

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[bill_mcgonigle]

Nice. Thank you.

BTW, is the quote in the .sig yours? I need to know who to quote. :)

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[bill_mcgonigle]

Looking at some clip, it appears to me to be an rocket spiraling out of control and leaking propellant. The propellant is reflecting sun light.

but based on the time-lapse photo, it created a geometrically perfect spiral - the odds of a malfunctioning rocket doing this would approach zero.

Another forum had a link to an ionospheric heater nearby:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionospheric_heater

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[bill_mcgonigle]

This HAS to be a rocket misfire of some kind. The apparent geometric perfection of it makes it look like a 'shop, but the wide variety of images and the video seem to indicate otherwise...

What are the odds of a malfunctioning rocket creating a perfect concentric spiral with no imperfections? Darkseid invading seems about as likely.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

US news...

Yes... dailymail.co.uk, that well known US newspaper's website.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[ColdWetDog]

Idk. They're saying it was probably a russian missile, but what I'm reading, the Russians are denying that...

They are a bit embarrassed. It's really a Russian attempt to contact Batman. They've been trying for years over Moscow without any success. So now the plan is to launch the bat-light (or whatever it's called) towards Gotham City to see if they can attract his attention. Apparently it's harder than it seems, but they're making progress.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Just open it in a new tab, click on the address box, and press Enter.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was written by the man who singlehandedly fought off invading armies and built all the roads in the country - ie a fucktard like the OP.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[mikael]

It could be a laser light show - that would explain the green light and the "beam" going towards the mountain side.

The Cineplex in Mountain View, California used to have these automatic rotated spotlights. These would be visible from at least 10 miles as either vertical beams or as moving points of light in the clouds.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Gordonjcp]

And the daily mail isn't a major news thing?

I guess, in much the same way that The National Enquirer is.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Some extended googling will show this is a Russian rocket that messed up, it's happened before and been documented.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Remus Shepherd]

That's freaky. I'm more interested in hearing about this phenomenon than the LHC.

And you know, they *might* be related. I don't buy any rumors about a russian rocket -- no rocket would make anything that geometrically precise and long-lived. This looks to me like a bizarre magnetic disturbance caused a bizarre aurora. The helical blue beam looks like a trace of a LEO plasma stream. The large spiral would then be a magnetic mirror -- common in the polar magnetosphere, but never this bright or perfect.

Could the LHC have spat out a magnetic monopole?

I'd like to see the timing of when the LHC spun up to power and when this display occurred.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Derek Pomery]

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abcnyheter.no%2Fnode%2F101011&sl=no&tl=en

This newspaper has an EISCAT theory.

Maybe it was a combination of a rocket test w/ ionospheric heating.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[JesseMcDonald]

BTW, is the quote in the .sig yours? I need to know who to quote. :)

No, I just copied it from another comment's .sig. A quick search on Google suggests that the original version was:

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I’ll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems — Jamie Zawinski

I usually try to include a citation, but in many cases (like here) there isn't enough room in the .sig area.

P.S. To the anonymous coward who posted "No, it was written by the man who singlehandedly fought off invading armies and built all the roads in the country": lack of government does not imply a lack of cooperation, but merely the absence of legitimized aggression. It's not like the government—being nothing more than a group of individuals itself—is more capable of these things than any other group of individuals cooperating voluntarily. Government's only advantage is that it gets an irrational free pass on actions which would otherwise be considered crimes.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be a laser light show - that would explain the green light and the "beam" going towards the mountain side.

The Cineplex in Mountain View, California used to have these automatic rotated spotlights. These would be visible from at least 10 miles as either vertical beams or as moving points of light in the clouds.

Yes, that was my first thought too. But this must have been a bit more powerful, as it was visible in an area of more then 1000 kilometers...

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

What are the odds of a malfunctioning rocket creating a perfect concentric spiral with no imperfections?

Very likely. It's a spinning rocket. If it's spewing fuel there's every reason why the fuel would distribute itself out along a spiral pattern. There's no reason why it should be lopsided or otherwise messed up. Have you ever played with model rockets? If something is off center, your rocket will launch and spin all around and the smoke trail will be a 'perfect' corkscrew.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Phil Plait at badastronomy has a write up:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/12/09/awesomely-bizarre-light-show-freaks-out-norway/

He believes the rocket hypothesis and it includes a video of a different rocket creating a similar pattern.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Derek Pomery]

Well, the video is of a simulation, but further comments by readers do strengthen that hypothesis (pics and navteq post).
I suppose the spiral would be the spinning rocket spewing fuel and the blue would be exhaust from the initial launch glowing like a man-made aurora borealis?

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Prompt Norwegian expert explanation on this:

The Russian rocket was probably out of control and exploded. The special helical "lysmønsteret" is because the sun was shining on the fuel that leaked out, said Hansen.

Again easy explanation for this "UFO" phenomena, maybe next time they catch something really interesting. In other words, nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[etnoy]

I did some digging but couldn't find an article on any "real" news sites. From Google it's showing on conspiracy sites, blogs, and social sites. Didn't find anything searching major news outlets.

All major Swedish newspapers report on the mystic spiral. Google translation here

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[sznupi]

Since the rocket doesn't really have to move in a spiral, just tumble/spin in a relatively stable way in the center of it, perhaps it's not so unlikely...

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[bill_mcgonigle]

Since the rocket doesn't really have to move in a spiral, just tumble/spin in a relatively stable way in the center of it, perhaps it's not so unlikely...

How likely is it for an out of control rocket to tumble in only two dimensions without losing any altitude for a period of several minutes?

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Reasonably so, since the components that monitor and attempt corrections of the dimensions in question (pitch, roll & altitude) are independent systems. However, that said, it doesn't look like a rocket to me.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[Cal27]

Wouldn't it be slightly elliptical due to gravity, or does the rocket's power simply outweigh gravity enough to make it insignificant?

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[sznupi]

Who says it was stationary? Certainly it already had considerable speed; and since this likely happened above most of the atmosphere, fuel dumped from it after malfunction would travel in roughly the same direction...

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[bill_mcgonigle]

Who says it was stationary?

Spinning and creating an exhaust plume that grew outward as it dissipated seems highly unlikely but possible.

Were you thinking it actually followed that precise geometric path under its own power (while out of control)? That seems less likely given the video.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[sznupi]

But it didn't have to be under its own power.

Consider: rocket launches fine and leaves behind a long plume of gasses (that stay more or less in place because they were exhaust of the engines; you can see them in the photos). But later (say, during 1st stage separation) something goes wrong (perhaps one explosive bolt went awry?), the rocket loses all power and guidance, but before that happens the forces acting on it were slightly asymmetrical, so it starts spinning a bit. Now, above the atmosphere, it's purely ballistic, no forces acting on it. But for some reason it's dumping fuel (perhaps the uneven dumping of it causes spinning?). Because it's happening in near vacuum, everything just coasts for the ride and creates that effect. The plume moved in the general direction of the rocket, but every "sweep" of it grew outward at fairly low and constant rate.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[bill_mcgonigle]

Ah, *very interesting* theory. I hadn't considered that this was high enough to factor out gravity, that reduces many of the problems.

Sounds plausible, well done.

There's still the matter of the "beam" that came out of the center of the spiral at the end of the event, though.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[sznupi]

The "beam" might have been the ultimate explosive destruction of the remains.

Also, one thing must be said clearly - the gravity isn't factored out. It still influences the trajectory. But because it's happening above the atmosphere, it influences all pieces in exactly the same way, so the only apparent movement the dumped fuel might have, comes from the venting. After that each portion of it mostly coasts along the rest.

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[toddestan]

http://img.waffleimages.com/e07e495a8589dd769b7640ac21be295f738c1c04/f8ec04b52d3ffb2558f3256fd8f11d0a.jpg

Mystery solved?
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Everyone%20Else/images-3/death-star-firing.jpg

Re:Is this related to this wormhole ..

[holmstar]

Hey, back when HAARP was big news, wasn't there some theory that ionospheric heating could be used as a shield if powerful enough?

Step one: Set up ionospheric heating based shield. ...Notice that a big spiral-y thing in the sky is an artifact of the shield.
Step two: Fire missile at the shield, leaving an odd blue trail.
Step three: Claim that it was just a failed missile test.

Humorbot 5.0

[Yvan256]

So I says, "Super collider? I just met her!" And then they built the super collider. Thank you, you've been a great audience. - Humorbot 5.0

So...

[nvivo]

... do they see the higgs bosons now?

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/401/

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

after reading the post before yours, I read that as "higgs bossoms".

Higgs

[toruonu]

The most optimistic scenario for Higgs discovery would take a few years of running. But there are plenty of other theories to test that can show their first signs already after a few months of running in physics configuration (7 TeV or 10 TeV energy that'll probably be around in January/February). Things like supersymmetry, lepton flavor violation etc.

Re:Higgs

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Are you absolutely sure that "Lepton flavor violation" isn't some sort of horribly translated import-only hentai?

Re:Higgs

[Verdatum]

That comment made me shoot Fruity Oaty Bar out of my nose.

Re:Higgs

[Anonymous Coward]

lepton flavor violation

Like when the box says Orange & Spice but it ends up tasting like Chai?

Re:Higgs

[The_Wilschon]

One year of design energy running. At 14 TeV and design luminosity, the LHC will deliver 10/fb of data to each experiment per year. Either CMS or ATLAS can discover the Higgs at 5 sigma across nearly the entire available mass range with 10/fb, and with much less data for many masses. In combination (like CDF and D0 do now), it would take even less data for ATLAS and CMS to discover it together.

Of course, that's assuming that commissioning goes well in the next year. I believe the LHC is currently on schedule to come up to design specs in about a year from now. So we should expect to see a Higgs discovery paper sometime in the 2-2.5 year timeframe (allowing time for the data to be validated and the analyses to be completed).

Re:Higgs

[toruonu]

That few years was where I meant the first year of commissioning to around say 100-200 inverse picobarn at 10 TeV and then a year or so running at 14 TeV. I'm not 100% sure the first year of 14 TeV would deliver 10 /fb, hence it could take two years at full energy. In any case broadly saying it'll take a few years as I guess Higgs isn't really findable at 10 TeV energy and 200 /pb luminosity.

Re:Higgs

[frogjimmy]

Damn, I thought you were talking about a very wrong variety of tea at the end...

Re:Higgs

[Jesus_666]

Why translated? That's the original title!

In the US, of course, it was merged into Robotech.

Re:Higgs

[Chris Burke]

Are you absolutely sure that "Lepton flavor violation" isn't some sort of horribly translated import-only hentai?

That's exactly what it is, and the LHC experiment is to see if a beam of 7 TeV protons is sufficient to wipe out the memory of having seen it. So far all experiments at the CERN Pub have shown no results.

Cool Displays

[Sponge Bath]

Those Atlas collision displays would make an awesome computer desktop gadget if you could get timely updates from a central server. Maybe add in some sound effects like "boing-oing-oing!" on each update.

Next week on slashdot....

[BeardedChimp]

The LHC becomes the first particle accelerator to collide protons at energies twice the speed of the tevatron!

Re:Next week on slashdot....

[JamesP]

Actually the speed is pretty much the same, because of relativistic effects...

So instead of "double" it's another 9 as in "the speed is 99,9999% instead of 99,999% of the speed of light"

Re:Next week on slashdot....

[bill_mcgonigle]

The LHC becomes the first particle accelerator to collide protons at energies twice the speed of the tevatron!

Please explain the Google service or iPhone tie-in.

Re:Next week on slashdot....

[The_Wilschon]

FWIW, Tevatron is 99.99995% of c, and LHC at design energies will be 99.9999991% of c.

Breaking news.

[LWATCDR]

A herd of Lamas have escaped a local zoo and nibbled on the Christmas lights at CERN. The short caused the cooling system to go off line and the LHC will be off line for five months.

Re:Breaking news.

[Yvan256]

The Lamas were heard shouting "stop whipping our ass" and seen trashing any PC running WinAmp.

Re:Breaking news.

[bunratty]

Look out! There are llamas!

Re:Breaking news.

[svtdragon]

I knew it! "Free Tibet" is just a front organization for the Association of Avian Baguette Bombers. Sent from the future.

Re:Breaking news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. I was there. They were chanting "Free Tibet" on their way to CERN installations.

Re:Breaking news.

[tool462]

Those responsible for the llama escape have been sacked.

The LHC will come back online in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.

Re:Breaking news.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have know idea what a Tibetan Buddhist holy men were doing at a zoo... shouldn't they be at a lamasery?

moriremo tutti!1!!!11

[OMFG it's Rici]

Moriremo tutti!!!111!11 (We are all doomed in italian)

Re:moriremo tutti!1!!!11

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, no. Moriremo tutti means "We'll all die".

Yes...

[Dartz-IRL]

Yes, but are we any closer to using it to shoot pigeons?

Re:Yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean to use the pigeons as the ammunition or as the target?
If the former, may I suggest the sun as the target?
Either way, I like your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Yes...

[Tellarin]

Why? Retaliation for the pigeons having shot the LHC first?

Wait for the conflict escalation. WW3 here we go.

Re:Yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, hypodermic injection. After proper liquefaction, of course.

At 2.36TV...

[jd2112]

You only need about 0.5mA to send a DeLorian back in time!

Re:At 2.36TV...

[mea37]

Yeah... if only a volt (unit of electrical potential, symbol V) and an electron-volt (unit of energy, symbol eV) were the same thing...

Re:At 2.36TV...

[Yvanhoe]

Well, you just need 0.5 milli electron-ampere then...

Re:At 2.36TV...

[sharkey]

Bart: Come on Homer, these are just crappy knocks-offs.
Homer: I know a genuine DeLorian when I see one. And look! They've got Chevrolait and Toyoter.

Re:At 2.36TV...

[Hurricane78]

TeV! Tera Electron Volt! That’n the kinetic energy an electron gets, when passing through a 1 volt electrostatic potential difference. Unless your DeLorean is made of a single electron, I highly doubt that that would get the flux compensator going. ^^

My Qualculate! tells me that 2.36 TeV to V is 378.1138 nA*V*s. ^^ Can anyone tell me what that means? (Despite being calculator humor for “Dude, you’re comparing apples and oranges!”)

Jiggawatts

[sagematt]

Dammit Slashdot, at least learn to use Jiggawatts instead of TeV or whichever crazy measure Europeans have, don't forget about your American audience!

Re:Jiggawatts

[OMFG it's Rici]

How many miles is that??

Re:Jiggawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit Slashdot, at least learn to use Jiggawatts instead of TeV or whichever crazy measure Europeans have, don't forget about your American audience!

I know you're being funny, but eV is the standard unit for measuring particle energy because it's really simple: 1 eV is the energy an electron has after being accelerated through 1 volt. Since they probably know the potential of their devices, this makes their calculations just a simple multiplication problem.

Re:Jiggawatts

[markx4]

Nautical or geographical?

Re:Jiggawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

Survey

Re:Jiggawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

Scottish.

Re:Jiggawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

2.36 teraelectron volts = 3.78113645 × 10-16 gigamegamicrojoules

Re:Jiggawatts

[Verdatum]

African or European?

Re:Jiggawatts

[The_Wilschon]

It is about 5.2 × 10^-23 miles. http://www.google.com/search?q=hbar+*+c+%2F+(2.36+TeV+)+in+miles. Yes physicists really divide hbar*c by energy to get length. It's a useful thing to do sometimes.

Re:Jiggawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

Also the energy of a proton. It's just going in the opposite direction

Re:Jiggawatts

[mjwx]

Dammit Slashdot, at least learn to use Jiggawatts instead of TeV or whichever crazy measure Europeans have, don't forget about your American audience!

Just how may Jiggawats are in 1 TeV?

And I want this compared to the amount of heat energy (Measured in BTU's for irony) produced by burning the Library of Congress.

Re:Jiggawatts

[jmv]

don't forget about your American audience

Then shouldn't that be BTUs -- or slug*feet^2/second^2 ?

Effect of using the same ring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe some physicist could give a overview of the issues of using the same ring for both directions?
I would think that this is magnetic acceleration, but it must involve extremely rapid switching, or? Would a unidirectional ring double potential energy, and could this be connected to one of the old accelerators with a tunnel?

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[toruonu]

The reason to collide particles coming in from opposite directions is from kinematics. If you shoot a 1 TeV beam at a fixed target you only get roughly 50 or GeV as the center of mass energy (if I remember right it's ca sqrt(2*m_proton*1000)). That square root is a bitch there. If you shoot them head on to each other at equal energy, then you have the full energy at your disposal. Any other configuration will only reduce the effective energy. If I remember right the LHC dipole magnets are created in such a way that they automatically accelerate particles in parallel beamlines in opposite directions if the particles are of the same charge so it's a nice feat allowing for best efficiency. However you have to understand that the particles are effectively for your local observation traveling at the speed of light. They make ca 11500 circuits every second and you have to keep them in orbit. At the same time the bunch is made up of same charge particles that all want to get away from each other. So the technical difficulty is controlling the magnets in sync with the beams to keep them going and if you have two beams going in opposite directions it just become tougher. Hence the slow testing in baby steps (though they are in general huge steps I'd say). In general I hope some accelerator engineer can chime in and explain the precise background.

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[bucky0]

To accelerate particles in opposite directions using the same magnetic field, you'd need to accelerate both positive and negative charged particles (positives go one way, negatives go the other), The Tevatron does this (protons one way, antiprotons the other). You only have to build one ring to contain the particles, but it's a tradeoff because you have to generate the anti-particles, which is an expensive process (basically, take regular particles, slam them into a fixed target and you get some % out the other side as antiparticles.).

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[TooMuchToDo]

Once you've generated the particles you need, can't you keep them in the recycler (like we have at the Tevatron) until you need them? True, you've got the cost of creating them, but I'd think that being able to recycle them until needed is better than not using anti-particles in the experiments.

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[domanova]

Acceleration is done by RF power : the magnetic fields bends the particles round the ring, and focusses the beams (yes, that is an acceleration, but ramping up to the TeVs is RF)

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[arminw]

....LHC dipole magnets are created in such a way that they automatically accelerate particles....

In a particle accelerator, including the LHC, magnets don't accelerate anything. Magnets are used purely for focusing and guiding the beams. The acceleration of the beams takes place in RF cavities, which are fed energy generated by klystrons. Klystrons are high-power vacuum tubes especially designed to generate/amplify high-frequency radio waves. Klystrons are also commonly used in powerful radar systems.

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[jinxed_one]

Just a side note: the LHC uses to separate beams that collide at 4 points along a single tunnel. Which is required since they're using proton-proton or larger nuclei (particularly lead) in the experiments. The Tevatron uses proton-antiproton allowing them to use the same beam equipment. Unfortunately, the cost of creating antilead nuclei is too high right now, so they opted for 2 beams instead.

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[students]

The LHC is designed to have a higher brightness, so a hypothetical recycler would be emptied much faster than it could be refilled.

Also, proton-proton collisions have different backgrounds, so they make some signals easier to detect.

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[bucky0]

by acceleration, I meant centripetal acceleration to bend the particles in a circle. You're right, the acceleration to boost the energies is linear RF cavities

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[bucky0]

yeah, you certainly can, and in fact, the particles in modern accelerators each particle makes many many many rotations whizzing by the counterrotating particles, which is the only way we get any collisions since the probability per crossing of an interaction is so low. Problem is, we're not perfect at containing the beams, and they bleed off little by little by collisions with the walls, etc.. so take an already rare process of antiparticle production and shave off a big amount of that due to losses, and you see where a lot of difficulty producing luminosity (brightness) comes from.

Re:Effect of using the same ring?

[Anonymous Coward]

You only have to build one ring to contain the particles

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

Still?

[Interoperable]

I've been following the LHC's progress fairly closely because I find the project absolutely fascinating. On the other hand, I think /. might be overdoing it a bit regarding news on the subject. Half the summary was devoted to explaining what exactly was different from the last posting. As all of the previous posting have explained, it will be a few months before anything truly exciting happens and years after that before the first really valuable scientific discoveries start occurring. Much of the discussion has become: "Are we there yet?" "No." "How about now?" "No." "And now?" "Still no."

Re:Still?

[SirBigSpur]

If they don't over do it now they may never be able to report on it. Soon as that thing runs at full capacity were all doomed!

Re:Still?

[Majestix]

But it keeps us occupied. I could be spamming my users, or "breaking" a server just for something to do. :)

Re:Still?

[UU7]

The summary is also dead wrong ..

1.18 TeV with 2 bunches per beam for the first time.

That is the achievement. Nothing do do with the fact that they are in both directions since that was the case the last time.
Counter rotating beams are a regular occurrence since shortly after this phase of commissioning started.

Re:Still?

[Oxygen99]

I take your point, but the Large Hadron Collider is the pre-eminent technological achievement of our civilisation. It knocks the complexity of the moon landings into a cocked hat and operates at energy frequencies intended to rip the very fabric of space apart. It's the most complicated and wondrous machine ever built by our, and possibly by any species, and we're doing all this to understand the processes that govern life, the universe and everything.

That, my friend, is what gods do.

I think a little "are we there yet?" journalism is forgiveable in that context.

Re:Still?

[drsquare]

On the other hand, I think /. might be overdoing it a bit regarding news on the subject.

If a few years back we could have an article every time WoW gained a subscriber, or every time someone at Google farted, or some pirate got busted, I think we can have an article when a particle physics record is broken.

Re:Still?

[toruonu]

Maybe you should re-read the previous news. Yes, LHC has been in stable operations with beams of 450 GeV per beam for the past two weeks with intermittent other tests going on. Last night was the first time two beams were ACCELERATED in the opposite directions and reached 1.18 TeV per beam. If you don't believe me, just go to http://twitter.com/CERN which is the official CERN twitter and you can find there (I quote): "Last night the LHC accelerated both beams to 1.18 TeV with 2 bunches per beam for the first time."

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

and we're doing all this to understand the processes that govern life, the universe and everything.

That, my friend, is what gods do.

I thought gods were supposed to have CREATED the processes that govern life, the universe and everything, not merely trying to understand them. Although it is always possible that they just created something at random and are now furiously trying to figure out what it actually is...

Re:Still?

[UU7]

Maybe you don't understand the physics, at least follow the cern twitter more closely.
"Last night the LHC accelerated both beams to 1.18 TeV with 2 bunches per beam for the first time."

Now.. lets look at the other 1.18 run..

A new record. Both beams in LHC reach 1.18 TeV at 00:42 on 30 November.

Go back to school, news here is 2 bunches at 1.18..

Re:Still?

[Idiomatick]

They are smashing rocks together..... really tiny rocks.... reallllly fast. It isn't complex from that angle.

Re:Still?

[UU7]

"Three hours later both LHC beams were successfully accelerated to 1.18 TeV, at 00:44, 30 November."
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR18.09E.html
Again, you fail..

Re:Still?

[toruonu]

Do you guys even read the post? The news is the COLLISION. Not just accelerated beam in both directions, but also the fact that the beams collided head on in points 1 and 5 i.e. Atlas and CMS. Atlas even has a fancy picture of the di-jet event at 2.36 TeV center of mass energy. THAT is the new result. There have not been collisions at center of mass energies beyond 1.96 TeV, now there are, hence the new record.

And with regard to following CERN twitter or not understanding physics, I'm actually a member of one of the LHC collaborations so I'd guess I do know something of this thing. I only linked here the public results, not that there would be THAT much more internally, but there's plenty to say that there were collisions.

Re:Still?

[toruonu]

Ok, this is silly, but ... did you even click on the link? Here, let me give you a quote from that page (it's quite high up on the page, you should make it that far)

"On Tuesday evening, December 8th, 2009, the LHC achieved for the first time 2.36 TeV collisions and ATLAS recorded their first events at this record energy."

The URL I'd note starts with: http://atlas.web.cern.ch/ so it's the official site.

Re:Still?

[Tellarin]

I thought gods were supposed to have CREATED the processes that govern life, the universe and everything, not merely trying to understand them.

Unless it's the God of Reverse Engineering. :-P

Re:Still?

[UU7]

Having trouble reading your own work ?
"Yesterday evening the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for the first time accelerated protons in both directions of the ring to 1.18 TeV. Even though the 1 TeV barrier per beam was first broken a week ago, this marks the first time that the beam was in the machine in both directions at the same time, allowing possibly for collisions at a center of mass energy of 2.36 TeV" That whole statement is demonstrably false.

Not the 1st time the beams have been accelerated in opposite directions at 1.18TeV.

Again, your summary is wrong.

Re:Still?

[badzilla]

Can anyone explain what this thing *actually does?* I am not an atom scientist but I still feel I ought to be excited about it. When I read yet another article explaining they cranked up another trillion volts or they might discover a new snarkle particle it just leaves me cold. So what? Is that good somehow? What is it *for?*

Re:Still?

[toruonu]

*shakes head in frustration*

Ok, I agree the first sentence might be misleading, it was meant only as an introduction to the second one and pointing to the first time possibility of collisions at 2.36 TeV.

And after re-reading the press release I have to admit that I originally misunderstood that both beams had circulated at 1.18 TeV, but not at the same time when I read the press release in the internal circulation. The reason was that with the 450 GeV beams they did the circulations separately before even considering keeping both beams in the machine. Guess they went faster than I had expected at the time.

But the long and frustrating picking on details that don't even matter aside. The essence of the post is that LHC reached collisions at 2.36 TeV. Collisions are the places where the physics actually happens. If you can store a beam of 7 TeV, but can't collide it with another one coming the other way, then it's pretty much useless as it'll become a fixed target experiment when you dump it in the beam dump. And for that fixed target experiment to be of equivalent value (at least collision energy wise) it would need the beam to be above 2780 TeV (if I did the math right from the top of my head). So breaking the single beam record of 980 GeV of Tevatron is a marginal achievement in comparison to the achievement of above 2 TeV collisions. Not that either one would be a marginal achievement taken separately.

Re:Still?

[toruonu]

The easiest answer is that it is for understanding the underlying world better than we do today. The whole scientific world can be worked up in a hierarchical structure.

The fundamental layer is where the deeper understanding of the universe and interactions are explained, the four interactions that we know now, the elementary particle content etc.

Then comes the layer that has atomic physics that explains how the fundamental particles behave in combined systems, how they can interact in complex structures and what rules there are about such reactions etc.

That information is then usable for other fields like chemistry, the rest of physics, etc. And on top of that come the applied sciences like biology, material science, etc.

So whenever a fundamental discovery is made in the lowest possible layer it slowly propagates upwards over a substantial period of time. If you think on the discovery of electron and quantum mechanics that then explained the electromagnetic interactions, then over quite a period of time you finally reach the point that you have computers. Without the original fundamental discovery of electromagnetic interaction this would not have been possible. Without understanding the strong force and electroweak force we couldn't have nuclear energy (I'll just wait until someone goes off on a nuclear bomb tangent here). Without electroweak interaction we wouldn't have had X-ray machines.

So it all comes down to the fact that if fundamental research is not done, then those huge leaps will simply not happen. Yes, there are plenty of avenues still to explore in the higher layers and there's probably work left for centuries, but if we don't do the fundamental research this speed of progress will slow down and probably stop at some point. We have actually been in this position once. Around the end of 19th century when a lot of physicists thought that the physical explanation of the world is complete and the applications were ranging far and wide only to be shattered by unification electrostatics and magnetism and not long after the discovery of weak interaction.

Soo... long story short. LHC is looking at the fundamental layers of the universe and if we should have a discovery of similar magnitude, like say the discovery of the Higgs particle and the associated Higgs field would add a new interaction to the map. This would be the fifth interaction and so far every single new interaction has brought revolution in science and technology and a huge amount of new energy sources.

You know Maxwell was considered a nutcase for working with magnets while he could have been a respectable doctor or smth. But we wouldn't be having this discussion here if he hadn't done those experiments. It's just that we have gotten so far in the search that we have to look at higher and higher energies to hunt the new knowledge hence the big colliders and hence the excitement over new energy regions reached.

But if you don't care about any of the other stuff, then you probably care about the MRI machines. From what I know the machines are these days possible because a full industry for superconducting magnets was created when the Tevatron experiment had to be built. Once it was done the same production capabilities allowed for a lot of new things to be done. The same goes for LHC related construction work that has also sparked a lot of engineering progress that is being used already now. And any kind of diagnostic imaging system is a direct descendant from particle physics detectors as they essentially do the same thing on a lower scale.

Re:Still?

[Tablizer]

and further, it makes for great conspiracy AND doomsday jokes. Apollo rarely had doomsday conspiracies with it, just conspiracy.

Re:Still?

[Kamineko]

I know there's a chemical element song, but I don't know about any partical physics records.

Re:Still?

[zildgulf]

Two more miles...Five more minutes.

Repeat ad nauseum.

Re:Still?

[clone53421]

Long story short version.

Subatomic particles are basically energy fields. We suspect there is a tiny bit of matter in the very middle, but we can’t really see it on account of its energy field. When it interacts with other subatomic particles, even this is really just an interaction of the two energy fields. It’s like sumo wrestling in 10-foot hamster balls.

By smashing two particles together with extremely high amounts of energy, they’re attempting to overcome the energy fields surrounding the actual matter so that they can examine the matter itself... break it, smash it, get it to actually touch other bits of matter instead of bouncing off the energy fields surrounding them.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

Particle. PARTICLE, argh. Sorry.

Re:Still?

[lec8rje]

Have you not heard of the cernettes. http://www.youtube.com/user/cernettes

Re:Still?

[Hurricane78]

One wrong does not make the other wrong right. You fail at logic. Please hand in your geek card and refrain from programming prolog. ^^

Illuminati Alert!

[Wargames]

Someone needs to watch the back of them antimatter-collecting scientists, we don't need no pope wannabe's trying to blow up The Vatican.
.

Recently enjoyed the "Angels and Demons" movie. It had some rocket-takeoff-countdown-esq video sequences of the supposed(realistic???) powerup of CERN. Interesting q&a on antimatter at: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

"Luke, I felt a disturbance in the force"

[peter303]

We've been warned.

Energy consumption numbers

[Geoffrey.landis]

The amount of power they used in mere minutes during this experiment could have powered millions of homes and businesses for a significantly longer period of time.

About a minute worth of googling shows that the site draws a peak load of about 180 MW when it's running, of which about 120 MW is for the LHC itself. And it doesn't run all the time.

Typical homes are about 2 kW or so, give or take, so that's hardly enough to power "millions of homes and businesses".

Population of Europe is abour 830 million, by the way, so LHC represents approximately zero percent of the energy consumption of Europe (to two significant figures).

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[jbeaupre]

Image the power of the bastard that is making these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-energy_cosmic_ray.

What is that, a 10^7 difference in magnitude? And a whole lot cheaper to observe the collisions.

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[Rich0]

LHC represents approximately zero percent of the energy consumption of Europe (to two significant figures).

Uh, the numbers 0, 0.00, and 0.00000000000 do not have any significant figures.

0.00000000000000001 only has one.

Yup - we order-of-magnitude guys aren't very significant...

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[radtea]

And a whole lot cheaper to observe the collisions.

Not if by "observe" you mean "observe with multiple layers of detectors that the collision happens inside of", which is the only sense of the term anyone would use in this context.

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[Steve Max]

The LHC accelerates a huge bunch of particles (around 3x10^10 particles per bunch during the physics run) in each direction, and records their collisions. UHECRs come to the Earth at a rate of around one particle per square kilometer, per century. There is ~1000 times more energy in a single LHC bunch than on a single UHECR, and more energy running on it at a given moment than the whole UHECR flux on the planet.

Also, you can't observe UHECR collisions. You don't know where they will collide in the atmosphere to put your ATLAS/CMS in position; and even if you could do so, recording a few events per year would be useless to do particle physics. We need a lot of events to be able to work statistically on them.

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Population of Europe is abour 830 million, by the way, so LHC represents approximately zero percent of the energy consumption of Europe (to two significant figures).

Being pedantic, "significant figures" are from the first non-zero digit in a number, so 0.003045 to three significant figures is 0.00305. So you can't get zero percent when rounding to significant figures, what you mean is just good old rounding, rounding 0.003045 to three figures gives 0.00. ;-)

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[Biogenesis]

To give a bit more perspective: the aluminium smelter at Tomago, just North of Newcastle, Australia, uses 900MW. Together with the smelter at Kurri Kurri (Just West of Newcastle, ~350MW) they use ~14% of all base load capacity in NSW. So next time you're complaining about the LHC just remember that the aluminium in that can of soda came at the energy cost of ~54MJ/kg.

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[MrPhilby]

I just spent HOURS going from Gamma ray bursts to the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event to Magnetars. Thank you.

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[jbeaupre]

Actually, no, I don't mean your narrow version of observe. And no, your version is not the only sense anyone would use in this context. For example, the whole scare about creating a black hole that could destroy the earth was empirically disproven by observation of UHECR. What? Observation, cosmic rays, and particle accelerators referenced in the same sentence? Madness, eh?

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[jbeaupre]

So the total amount of energy is what counts? Then why bother going for 10 TeV collisions? Why not just set a forest on fire? (that's a rhetorical question)

So if you can't observe UHECR collisions, what are these guys doing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Resolution_Fly's_Eye_Cosmic_Ray_Detector I guess the interesting science they've done is bunk.

My point, that many people missed, was that good science is being done with respect to particle collisions millions of times more powerful at a much lower cost. The same science, no. People did seem to grasp that focusing on TeV vs EeV isn't as important. It's what's being done with those particles that matters.

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[Steve Max]

First of all, I work with cosmic rays. You don't need to tell me that there is science to be made with Hi-Res, Auger, IceCube, etc. But that's not the point.

You can't observe a CR collision in the same way that you can observe a collider collision. In a UHECR experiment, you just measure events, hoping to reconstruct the energy, direction and type of primary with some accuracy. You can't identify the exact reaction that happened: all you can see is a bunch of photons, muons, neutrinos and electrons. All hadronic interactions yield that, given a "long" time to develop. If the Higgs, or any new physics, is formed on any CR interaction, the fingerprint of that interaction is lost long before we can see it.

The money is spent on the LHC (and the Tevatron before, and the ILC after) because it's the only way to examine closely the results of an interaction, trace the particles and find out what happened. If you wanted to do that with UHECRs, good luck. You would need a lot of that, and time, and money. In a collider, you know exactly the energy of each particle, its direction, the position of the interaction, etc; you can observe the collision completely. Important science is done in both types of experiments; but that doesn't mean we should dump one, just because the other is doing well.

Re:Energy consumption numbers

[jbeaupre]

It looks like we are arguing the same thing. My original point was that if all the excitement is over getting the biggest collision, there are bigger collisions you can observe cheaply. My intent was to point out the LHC must be more that just trying to make big splats because bigger splats already occur. The universe has got us beat in that competition. Phrasing it in hyperbole as the devils advocate just seemed get people all worked up.

I never said the LHC should be replaced by observing cosmic rays. In fact, as you said, they complement each other.

OMG People ...

[abbynormal brain]

... get a life. It's Norway! It's just a Rave dance party.

In other news...

[HigH5]

... LHC also broke the record for working for the longest uninterrupted time.

Bah.

[sootman]

Yesterday evening the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for the first time accelerated protons in both directions of the ring to 1.18 TeV

640GeV ought to be enough for anybody.

2.36 TeV - How much is that...

[alephnull42]

in standard media units
- Two female mosquitos colliding at 1.652 km/h? http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/lhc_glossary.htm
- An unladen African swallow falling off a grain of sand?
- The calorific value of 1 cornflake unleashed over the space of a fortnight?

Re:2.36 TeV - How much is that...

[mea37]

Your third bullet conflates energy with power. You could put it in terms of the calorific value of 1 cornflake (that would be energy, which is also what eV measure), but time has nothing to do with it.

Anyway, 2.36 TeV = 3.78 * 10^-7 J

So if my math is right, that's about enough to heat a shot glass of water by 1/10,000,000 of a degree C.

Re:2.36 TeV - How much is that...

[Thud457]

- the amount of energy required to move 2.36 Libraries of Congress through a electric field potential of 1 volt.
or to move 1 Library of Congress through a electric field potential of 2.36 volts.
(I never realized LCs were charged particles before...)

Re:2.36 TeV - How much is that...

[LanMan04]

Agreed. But remember this is energy *per particle*, and there a hell of a lot of particles flying around the ring.

Re:2.36 TeV - How much is that...

[Nemyst]

Difference being that this whole energy is applied to something with a mass in the order of 10^-27 kg and a radius of something around 10^-15 meters. Were you to apply this proportionally to a mass of one kilogram, you would have energies of 0.2 Gigajoules... Or, if all energy was kinetic, a speed of around 21,000 m/s.

Re:2.36 TeV - How much is that...

[mea37]

Yeah, I'm not passing judgement on the energy levels; just answering the question.

Honestly if a single hadron collision carried enough energy to seem significant in everyday terms, I'd be a little worried.

Re:2.36 TeV - How much is that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Disingenuous. You're not factoring for the increased mass of the mosquitoes.

I'm not sure what the mass of the moving particle is. Could someone please do the math? Here's the pseudoalgebra:

mosquito_collision_energy = ( particle_collision_energy ) * ( mosquito_mass / particle_mass )

So how fast would the mosquitoes have to be moving? Oh, the mosquitoty!

I, for one, welcome our new paradoxical mosquito-rights-violating overlords.

Insensitively yours,
- AC

Re:2.36 TeV - How much is that...

[Anonymous Coward]

That amount of energy sounds so harmless, until you consider the tiny tiny TINY space it's focused on to. Also consider that the energy of a man falling 3 feet to the ground out of bed is all that's present in a .45 ACP round perfectly capable of killing a man. The realization of what focusing a seemingly harmless amount of energy on a small area can do is pretty amazing.

what's a lama?

[circletimessquare]

did you mean llama?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llama

or perhaps lamia, a child-eating female demon? that would be sexy but would certainly mess up cern

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamia_(mythology)

they were attacked by hawaiian trees?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyros_sandwicensis

they were attacked by a ukranian pop band?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama_(band)

ohhh, you meant tibetan religious leaders! why won't those damn buddhist fundamentalists leave science alone!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama

unfortunately, they may know lama, so they'll certainly kick your ass after knocking out cern with a tibetan white crane style kick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama_(martial_art)

Re:what's a lama?

[Captain Spam]

So you're suggesting it was a Lama-trained Lamia Lama playing for Lama under a Lama?

Man, when Lima hears about this...

Re:what's a lama?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow .. how much time did you spend on that?

Re:what's a lama?

[zildgulf]

Lama.

Re:what's a lama?

[MiniMike]

unfortunately, they may know lama, so they'll certainly kick your ass after knocking out cern with a tibetan white crane style kick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama_(martial_art)

Of course they were wearing Cowboy boots made by Tony Lama while kicking ass (No, I don't own any.)

Re:what's a lama?

[sootman]

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. The meaning is obvious when someone says the Lamas.

*yawn*

[PhasmatisApparatus]

Wake me up when it's "over nine thousaand" teraelectronvolts.

god as in a fake goa uld

[Anonymous Coward]

god as in a fake goa uld

Picking nits...

[clone53421]

the 1 TeV barrier per beam was first broken a week ago

That is not a barrier, that is a record.

A barrier is something that provides actual resistance. The speed of sound is a barrier. The speed of light is a barrier. AFAIK, there is no barrier at 1 TeV.

Re:Picking nits...

[Chris Burke]

Here's a nit: Words are often used figuratively.

Re:Picking nits...

[clone53421]

Nah. I don’t buy that explanation, in this case.

They used “barrier” to describe a limit that was based on “we didn’t spend the money to build a powerful enough accelerator to achieve 1 TeV per beam until just now.” That’s not a barrier, it’s a record.

A barrier is located where your marginal rate of increase exhibits a local minimum.

Re:Picking nits...

[geekoid]

You can't get to 2TeV without braking the 1TeV barrier~

Re:Picking nits...

[Chris Burke]

They used "barrier" to describe a limit that was based on "we didn't spend the money to build a powerful enough accelerator to achieve 1 TeV per beam until just now." That's not a barrier, it's a record.

A barrier is located where your marginal rate of increase exhibits a local minimum.

That's the literal definition. However in a figurative sense, you can describe 1 TeV as a psychological barrier. It's like when the 1 GHz "barrier" was crossed in processors. It took an advance in technology to cross (just like with the LHC, there's more to it than just spending money), but not in a way notably different than the previous or subsequent small steps. Yet in the process of approaching and then exceeding a threshold value that is symbolically meaningful to humans, it feels as though a barrier has been crossed.

Figuratively of course.

Do you have a reason to think they meant to use the word in a strictly literally sense "in this case"? Or is the fact that the nit goes away and the sentence makes perfect sense if you take it to mean a figurative mental barrier just not sufficient evidence for you?

Re:Picking nits...

[toruonu]

It was meant figuratively. Of course there is no special barrier at 1 TeV per beam or 2 TeV collisions. That "barrier" was the currently reached energy of Tevatron, which is 980 GeV per beam (which is close enough to round to 1 TeV).

Seems to me they played...

[Anonymous Coward]

...with a single beam on full throttle! A few days ago i was checking the project stats (http://www.lhc-facts.ch/index.php?page=news) when the "Energy" reading on top of the black display showed >7 GeV. It was for very short time. Did anybody else notice? I failed to take a screenshot of that...

Re:Seems to me they played...

[Rising Ape]

Rather more likely to be some bug or glitch than actually have a beam at that energy. I doubt they'll be bold enough to ramp up the magnets to full strength just yet.

Definitely a rocket launch

[starglider29a]

http://gfx.nrk.no/YOYD2X1CgNBSeaPse9LjVwT6ymkkphv7Q7x0aibAWJwg.jpg

as evidenced by the trail from over the horizon. Note the wind shear... Sorry, Russia. Denial denied!

Re:Definitely a rocket launch

[Tablizer]

I have a theory about this event: Yes, there was a rocket launch that made odd patterns, but it has been "tweaked" by pranksters. I've seen other rocket launches myself that looked quite eerie in the twilight because the sun strikes the vapor trails up high while the rest of the atmosphere, which is now in shadow because it's lower, is nearly dark.

However, some prankster Photoshopped it to make it look more regular than it was and spread it around the web. If any real news organization investigates, they find that there was indeed something odd in the sky (the real rocket launch), but cannot confirm nor deny the existence of the regular-shaped spiral. They only can verify that witnesses did see *something*. Thus, they ignore the spiral claim, which of course fuels the conspiracy even further.
     

Re:Definitely a rocket launch

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this theory is that it was photoed/filmed by a lot of different people separated by 100th of miles...

So yes, whats shown is what people saw.

Re:Definitely a rocket launch

[Tablizer]

Ok, I'm wrong.

First black hole has emerged in northern Norway

[Anonymous Coward]

There can be no doubt about it

http://www.tv2nyhetene.no/innenriks/mystisk-lysfenomen-kan-vaere-russisk-rakett-3051472.html

please stop telling uabout every increase in .1TeV

[t35t0r]

Just tell us when you find the Higgs Boson. We don't care about every .1 increase in TeV

It was a russian rocket

[juletre]

..or so the theory goes. Norway's largest newspapers all did stories on this earlier today. Here is from one of them: Vg.no, and here is another dagbladet.no.

The first image from vg is taken with a long shutter time (or long exposure, or what the english expression is) on a tripod.
americans might consider these newspapers NSFW. Most norwegian ads contain a fair amount of tits and ass. just sayin'.

Re:It was a russian rocket

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's pretty bizarre that the second site links to a story about the execution of Kenneth Biros.

You really don't have enough news of your own?

Re:It was a russian rocket

[Vohar]

Thanks for the links. I guess I should have added the disclaimer, "in languages I can read" to what I was searching--Associated Press, Reuters, etc.

*turns off AdBlock and looks for the T&A*

Re:It was a russian rocket

[DerekLyons]

The first image from vg is taken with a long shutter time (or long exposure, or what the english expression is) on a tripod.

In other words - what the photograph show isn't what was seen by the naked eye. (In particular the neat concentric rings in that photograph strike me as being an artifact.) Comparing it to the very different image in your second link (also obviously a time exposure) is interesting.

Re:It was a russian rocket

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Man, I am loving these Norwegian news sites. It looks like English and Norwegian have some similar words due to their common Germanic origin. But what's interesting is the fact that there seem to be many more false friends, which makes for amazing headlines like this one: "Innbrudd hos Nicky Hilton - Jeg hater folk som stjeler, twitrer søstera Paris". Which of course I interpret as "Inbred hos Nicky Hilton and her sister Paris hate folks who twitter".

Re:It was a russian rocket

[u38cg]

I particularly liked one comment halfway dopwn the page, consisting of two words: "Naturfag fail".

Re:It was a russian rocket

[u38cg]

Sir, I wish to protest in the strongest possible terms. Having read your warning about the prurient nature of Nordic current affairs publications, I at once proceeded to their World Wide Web site. I am disappointed - nay, dismayed - to note that I in fact had to look quite hard before I could find any "tits and ass", and in fact, the tits I did find were covered with an (opaque) brassiere. I demand that you retract your position at once. I further demand some hyperlinks meeting the promising description previous offered.

Yours, Henry Arthur George James Smitherington-Smitherington-Smitherington-Smitherington-Smitherington-Smitherington-Smitherington-Smitherington-Smythe (Mrs).

Re:It was a russian rocket

[juletre]

Try dagbladet again.

In case it drops of the first page before you get there, this was the picture.

Killjoy...

[hellfire]

Someone goes to all the effort to make a perfectly reasonable Back to the Future joke and you have to kill it with your infernal logic. Great Scott, how dare you! This is so heavy.

Re:Killjoy...

[Tablizer]

a perfectly reasonable Back to the Future joke and you have to kill it with your infernal logic.

Zap the basturd with a Flux Capacitor!
   

Re:Killjoy...

[Loadmaster]

Heavy? You keep saying things are "heavy." Is there something wrong with the gravity in your LHC blackhole created alternate universe?

Thanks! You're a life saver!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks! I've got 40K in student loads and 1K on my credit card and 300K in mortgage on my home (which is now worth half that).

So if you want me to send you -341K dollars, I'll be happy to obligue. :-)

Re:Thanks! You're a life saver!

[chaos579]

hey i want a piece of this action. if we are handing out free (tax free) money i could use a decent car

Re:Thanks! You're a life saver!

[daveime]

Perhaps you could try doing things the old-fashioned way ?

i.e. actually saving up *first* for that house / car / appliances you want, instead of just joining the "me first, me now, credit, credit, credit" crowd running up debt and then moaning about it when you lose your job ?

Re:please stop telling uabout every increase in .1

[geekoid]

You may not, but I do.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks shopped

The summary is incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

On November 30 the LHC accelerated two beams in opposite directions at an energy of 1.18 TeV per beam. What was different about last nights experiment was the LHC accelerated both beams to 1.18 TeV with 2 bunches per beam for the first time. The November 30 event was just one bunch of protons per beam.

Re:The summary is incorrect

[toruonu]

Plus they collided last night ... just a small detail, but ...

Re:The summary is incorrect

[Lawrence_Bird]

It is also kind of meaningless when the Tevatron has still a much higher luminosity and thus total power.

Re:The summary is incorrect

[toruonu]

That is true, the amount of statistics currently available at LHC is negligible. The main good thing higher energy does is open up channels that were kinematically impossible at Tevatron. But that's also negligible considering the increase of ca 400 GeV only. Once we go to 7 TeV collisions in January or so the statistics might not mean THAT much anymore. As far as I know some channels (like ttbar production) go up in cross section with the energy so many orders of magnitude that LHC should best Tevatron already in the first year, but then again there will be plenty of other channels that will need years of running to match Tevatron :) So I hope they don't shut Tevatron down the moment LHC passes them in some channels, but do let the two compete for a while :)

Math still works?

[Comtraya]

Do numbers still add up like normal at relativistic speeds?

barrier not the same as threshold

[pz]

The summary makes it sound like there's some immense wall that must be climed or broken in order to pass 1 TeV. There is no barrier at 1 TeV, but rather an arbitrary threshold put there by humans because the numeric representation of that energy level has a lot of zeros in the scale we happen to use. LHC did not pass a barrier, but a threshold.

This is science, and important science, so it's critical to get it right. Especially so for the non-scientific public.

Evidence....

[Anonymous Coward]

If the LHC ends up on top of Mt.Everest covered in chocolate pudding somehow: We need to start worrying.

Awesome

[glwtta]

Make sure to keep us updated about every 0.2 TeV increment.

Re:What?

[Tablizer]

Can the Singularity enlarge certain parts of the masculine anatomy too?

Yes, your adam's-apple will swell up like a pregnant camel. Stock up on soup.
     

Summary

[ProfessionalCookie]

Or to summarize, whether or not something is efficient is often simply a matter of time.

Re:please stop telling uabout every increase in .1

[apoc.famine]

To some extent I agree. However, the title of this was somewhat misleading. If you dig into it, they were only running the beam one direction at 1TeV before. This time, they're running it both ways, so there could actually be 2.36 TeV collisions. That's the important part.

MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

This is class-A material

Webcam

[elmartinos]

Webcam from the LHC is here

Round numbers are not barriers

[JoeBuck]

"Even though the 1 TeV barrier per beam was first broken a week ago ..."

Um, no. There's nothing magic about 1 TeV. It's not a barrier.

Mach 1 was a barrier, because the aerodynamics is very different for a plane flying faster than the speed of sound. This means that new design principles had to be worked out. But nothing magic happens when you ramp up from 0.999 TeV to 1 TeV other than the flying champagne corks.

Likewise, new principles (optical proximity correction and phase shift masking) had to be invented so that we can manufacture ICs whose feature size is smaller than the wavelength of light (UV actually) used to expose the masks. That's an example of a barrier being broken.

But Slashdot should disallow the use of the word "barrier" just because a round performance number has been bettered. Alternatively, we can all just mock the editors every time they do it; you decide.

Re:Round numbers are not barriers

[clone53421]

That’s what I said, but nobody seemed to agree with me. :(

Re:What?

[clone53421]

The user you replied to is not even human. I can tell you without looking that the post was made at 30 minutes past the hour, of some hour. They always are... check its posting history.

Slashdot -

[smoker2]

News for nerds, actually a place for assholes to spout off. There are less than 5 comments relating to the actual event in the summary. Go somewhere else to talk shit, and preferably stay there. You are adding nothing to this discussion.

This is the premier science experiment on the planet and you lot would rather make shit up and talk about star trek. Fucking idiots. I'm ashamed to be associated with you.

Re:Slashdot -

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, your erudite and informative post has more than made up for the lame posts you refer to. Your insightful exposition on the operation of the LHC will no doubt be rewarded by the moderators.

Re:Doom Blue lights over Norway

[Anonymous Coward]

At last, this must be the cause of the blue lights over Norway!?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/09/1450230/LHC-Reaches-Record-Energy?from=rss

A one-L-lama is a priest, and a two-L-llama...

[snowwrestler]

A one-L-lama is a priest, and a two-L-llama is a beast, but a three-L-lama is a major fire in Boston.

[say it out loud]

CERN=we have to beat the Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Look the Americans are down, kick them hard and make them feel guilty because we buy our own products and they don't...

F.U. europe!!!! you need to start inventing and spending yourselves into bankruptcy in research and development so we can leach off of you now..

bastards!!!!