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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...)"
... for certain values of "solved"
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
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.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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).