LHC Hits an Energy of 3.5TeV

Inovaovao writes "As announced on Twitter by the CMS experiment, the LHC has finally accelerated both beams to 3.5 TeV for the first time. It thus broke the previous energy record of 1.18 TeV it had set last fall, about a month since operations started again this year. It'll be a while yet before we see stable beams and collisions at 3.5 TeV. You won't get much of a clue to the timetable by reading the General Manager's pompous announcements. If you want to follow what's going on, look at the Status Ops."

Comments

Where did I leave my crowbar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do these stories always make me want to go play Half Life again?

Re:Where did I leave my crowbar?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd think you meant Another World.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_World_%28video_game%29

It starts with an accelerator.

Prepare, my friend, prepare....

[Anonymous Coward]

...and don't let them eat your brains.

The press release is one week old

[Bananenrepublik]

The press release you called 'pompous' is one week old -- when the record energy hadn't yet been reached. Apparently going to CERN's front page is too much effort for slashdot's editors. Anyway, here's the current press release

Re:The press release is one week old

[bucky0]

Also, IIRC the general director's first language isn't english, so I think the "pompous" the submitter saw was just stemming from that. From what I've heard, he's a nice guy.

Re:The press release is one week old

[kiehlster]

Actually, the press release came out today when they reach 3.5 TeV, which is when they actually breached the space-time continuum, thus sending their PR department back in time one week resulting in this back-dated press release.

Re:The press release is one week old

[MRe_nl]

That's not pompous, that's just German thoughts translated into English ;).

Re:The press release is one week old

[ceoyoyo]

The release wasn't pompous anyway. It was clear, outlined what their goals are and put their (nearly) current status in perspective.

Doesn't Slashdot have editors to turn crappy submissions into reasonable summaries?

All right, I just exceeded my sarcasm quota for the day in a single statement.

Re:The press release is one week old

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not pompous, that's just German thoughts translated into English ;).

You seem to have confused country and language. Those are Swiss thoughts translated into English.

(Most) Americans speak English (granted, a bastardized form thereof). But that does not make them Her Majesty's subjects ;)

Re:The press release is one week old

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I think Slashdot has noticed more people comment when they inject editorials into stories. If the past is any indication, it'll be a year or two before this settles down.

Re:The press release is one week old

[Ohrion]

Why is this moderated Interesting? Funny at least I could understand.

Re:The press release is one week old

[OrwellianLurker]

That's not pompous, that's just German thoughts translated into English ;).

You seem to have confused country and language. Those are Swiss thoughts translated into English.

(Most) Americans speak English (granted, a bastardized form thereof). But that does not make them Her Majesty's subjects ;)

It's funny how the English think that their language originated from their little island.

Re:The press release is one week old

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That's not pompous, that's just German thoughts translated into English ;).

You seem to have confused country and language. Those are Swiss thoughts translated into English

Schwyzer Duetsch? Make it twice pompous!

Re:The press release is one week old

[maxwell demon]

Probably because Funny doesn't earn you Karma.
Or maybe the moderator just misclicked. Shit happens.

Re:The press release is one week old

[mzs]

Exactly, if you want to call anyone pompous it's not Heuer. One of his predecessors on the other hand...

Re:The press release is one week old

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how the English think that their language originated from their little island.

Only if you are American...but then English always sounds funny to Americans.

Re:The press release is one week old

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how the English think that their language originated from their little island.

Well, it would be funny if your comment was made to a post that suggested that it did. Alas, it was not.

Re:The press release is one week old

[Chris Burke]

Well that's good, because in the article he says that they hope to have an "inverse femtobarn" of data. Femto is 10^-15, so an inverse femtobarn would be 10^15 barns full of data.

Which, okay, is a lot of data, but I still wouldn't be acting too pompous if I kept my data in a barn instead of a library like civilized people. I mean what if your sheep eat the data, huh?

Though it makes me wonder if the German Parliament has their own barn, and if its the largest data barn in

Re:The press release is one week old

[Anonymous Coward]

Rolf Heuer IS german - not swiss...

Re:The press release is one week old

[Sulphur]

Misclick happens.

Re:The press release is one week old

[MRe_nl]

Rolf-Dieter Heuer (born 1948) is a German particle physicist and the Director General of CERN.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf-Dieter_Heuer

Why would he have Swiss thoughts? Other than the usual (Hmmm, molten cheese and chocolate...)

Granted, i don't know if he wrote the txt, or just signed it.

Re:The press release is one week old

[Anonymous Coward]

Most American's speak American, an offshoot of English ;)

Re:The press release is one week old

[Chousuke]

Doesn't Slashdot have editors to turn crappy submissions into reasonable summaries?

Maybe in Soviet Russia

Re:The press release is one week old

[nneonneo]

Particle physicists have their own terminology for things. The inverse femtobarn is a particular unit of measurement related to data collection on collisions.

Re:The press release is one week old

[Chris Burke]

Wha? You mean physicists don't REALLY measure data in terms of books stacked up in a barn, and Germans don't use barns as libraries? I never would have guessed that I was actually just making a "How many Libraries of Congress is that?" joke!

Re:The press release is one week old

[GNious]

(Most) Americans speak English

Where-as most people you're likely to meet in America, don't.

Re:The press release is one week old

[ozbird]

Schwyzer Duetsch? Make it twice pompous!

No, that's just doubly wrong. Try: Schweizerdeutsch.

Re:The press release is one week old

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Aber so heisst es nur in Deutschland, nicht wahr?

1.21 gigawatts?

[Mekkah]

1.21 gigawatts? 1.21 gigawatts? Great Scott!

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[JWSmythe]

    I'd explain it all to you, but we don't have time! Well, time is very relative. When it reaches 3.6 TeV, it will open a rift in time that will launch the entire planet back in time. Most likely none of us will ever remember it, so we'll let it happen over and over until ...

    [LHC reaches 3.6 TeV, and the loop begins again....]

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Most likely none of us will ever remember it, so we'll let it happen over and over until ...

Yeah, where is Lt.Cmdr. Data when you need him...

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[JWSmythe]

I wish you'd stop saying that. I don't know how many times I've read that comment.

    oh...

    shit...

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

No, No, No. Time will go forward, and we will remember it, but it'll only be for 137 seconds.

It'll all be the fault of a few charming British scientists. But, luckily, we'll put a drunk, a neurotic guy that will die in the near future, and a hot lesbian in charge of investigating this matter. /Can't wait 'till March 28th //After Lost is gone in May, this'll keep me going ///Off course, this was ABC's intention, obviously hiring Penny and Charlie. ////Slashies

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[JWSmythe]

    In this loop, your domain still doesn't work. You should fix your domain, or your tagline. And remember to keep changing it until we do finally go forward. ... why is your nose bleeding?

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Damn! haven't noticed that the Hacker Key wasn't available anymore. The project seems to be dead. Thanks for pointing that out. It was a sort of geek code 2.0, with a bigger focus on technology, programming and Unix.

The nose-bleeding incident made me remember Charlotte. So. Fucking. Hot.

Flashforward's already got Penny. If they somehow get Kate, Charlotte, Ana Lucia, and the rest of the hot stuff on Lost after May, we might have a winner! ;)

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[JWSmythe]

    It took me a little bit to get your Lost reference. :) Once I got it though....

    There is a wealth of fictional material that relates to infinite time loops. I think the story line has been going on for just about as long as we've had the concept of time travel being a valid plot element. Most of them involve the traveler as being the focus and the only one (or ones) aware of the loop. Here are a few that I can think off, off the top of my head, that are loops. I dug around, and found plenty of other shows and movies with loops, but I couldn't find one to be particularly old.

    12:01 (1990 & 1993)
    Groundhog Day (1993)
    Stargate SG1 - Window of Hope (August 2000)

    There was some mid-90's B movie that did it too. It wasn't half bad, except for the terrible acting. That one was different in that every step of the loop pushed them a little closer to their goal, but if another person was close to the machine that caused it, they started looping too.

    As far as I know, beyond the loops in Lost, the parallel existence is new(ish). I only just caught up with it a few weeks ago. I was like 2 seasons behind, so had to do a marathon watch of it. :) Since me and my ex watched the first 3 seasons in just a couple weeks, it felt appropriate (and much more satisfying) to watch it that way. :)

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't a Lost reference. Time travel in Lost is, as almost anything else said about time travel, based on Wells and Asimov's work (On The Time Machine and The End of Eternity, respectively).

Time travel in lost goes forward, backwards, and it includes parallel stories. Anyway, as we can see in The Constant, it looks like it's only people's mind that travels in time.

My reference was to Flash Forward. The idea is similar to the one in the Lost universe, except it's only a vision of the future (not an actual travel). And it's triggered apparently by a scientific experiment. Watch it on ABC, it's great. surfthechannel.com has all 10 Episodes so far, and the rest of Season 1 returns March 28th.

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[JWSmythe]

    Ahh, that's a show I've been meaning to watch, but haven't successfully caught yet. Too much happens in real life, so I usually don't get to the TV until it's all infomercials. They're not quite as entertaining, unless you're looking for a flowbee, snuggle, shamwow, the exercise equipment of the week, a variety of diet aids to make you look like a model, and want to watch college girls getting drunk and naked. :)

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[Phaedra]

I believe you are thinking of the movie "Primer": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)

Re:1.21 gigawatts?

[JWSmythe]

    I think I've seen this one. At one point, there's a time travel coffin in a storage unit, right?

    The one I was referencing was out in the desert somewhere in the Southwest US. If I remember right, the time travel machine was somewhere in a cave, and there was at least a good guy (the protagonist), bad girl who was helping the good guy, a bad guy (antagonist) who was also either a serial killer or just had a rather angry streak and would kill anyone for any reason. The good guy may have been a scientist involved, but I don't exactly remember. There was a also a cop, and I believe he was killed off quite a few times. It really was a B movie. Like one of the made for scifi channel (err, syfy), that should have never seen the light of day and they probably only ever played once. :) .. and for some reason, I'm feeling a little masochistic and want to see "Hot Tub Time Machine". I already know it's going to be awful. Well, John Cusack is in it, so it may not the worst I've ever seen.

Help!

[Maximus633]

Help me Gordon! Help me! GORDON!

Overclocked It

[MrTripps]

So they have overclocked the LHC? I hope they upgraded the stock heat sink and fan.

O Really?

[oldhack]

Meh. Wake me up when they hit 4.7.

Re:O Really?

[2names]

Wake ME when they reach 7.0 for the Sixth time...

Re:O Really?

[djscoumoune]

That's scheduled for december 2012

Not pompous,

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty outrageous calling the Director General's web update pompous. Someone clearly has an axe to grind. His web page seemed like quite a reasonable summary for the time it was posted. Part of his job is to promote the value of the billions of Euros being spent on CERN.

Re:Not pompous,

[OzPeter]

It's pretty outrageous calling the Director General's web update pompous.

I'd say you were new around here (as kdawson is not known for his intellectual musings), but damn it Anonymous Coward, you've been posting here for longer than I have - so you should know better than to write crap like that.

Re:Not pompous,

[Futile Rhetoric]

Probably a Fermilab fanboy.

Re:Not pompous,

[youn]

>but damn it Anonymous Coward, you've been posting here for longer than I have - so you should know better than to write crap like that.

rofl... that was hilarious :)

How many Libraries of Congress

[iprefermuffins]

is 3.5 TeV?

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[Em Emalb]

1024.

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you mean Library of Congresses.

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[iprefermuffins]

Wait, are we talking TeV or TieV?

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's 1023.

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

it's 6.24*10^-24/m Libraries of Congress,
where m is the mass of the Library of Congress in kg

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

With kinetic energy of the books in the Library of Congress:
1 LoC = 20 million volumes * 200 pages (assumed) * .005 lbs/page (assumed at 1/2 a sheet of 20 lb paper) = 200M lb = 90B grams = 7.6B moles = 3.8*10^32 atoms
3.8*10^32 * 3/80 eV (average kinetic energy [thermal]) = 1.42*10^31 eV/LoC
1 LHC beam = 3.5TeV = 3.5*10^12 eV/LHC beam
3.5*10^12 eV / 1.42*10^31 eV/LoC
1 LHC beam = 2.46*10^-19 LoC

Alternately, if you annihilate the books of the Library of Congress:
1 LoC = 9*10^10 grams (see above)
1 GeV = 1.783 × 1027 kg * (3*10^8m/s^2)^2
1 LoC = 4.5*10^54 GeV
1 LHC beam = 3.5TeV = 3.5*10^3 GeV/LHC beam
1 LHC beam = 7.8*10^-50 LoC

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[mcgrew]

Turn in your nerd card; "libraries of congress" refers to computer storage space. TeV is trillions of electron volts. 3.5 is three and a half, which ain't five and ain't two, neither.

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[maxwell demon]

Of course the correct way to do it would be to multiply the information of the LoC with k*T ln 2 where k = Boltzmann constant, T = temperature of the Library, ln 2 to change from base 2 logarithm (information entropy) to natural logarithm (thermodynamic entropy).

Let's take the 20 million volumes * 200 pages from your calculation, and assume 250 words per page, 4.5 letters per word and 1.4 bits per letter (see directly above table 1, the value for longer text; I've taken the middle, rounded up). With this data, we get a total information content of the LoC of 6.3*10^12 bits. Let's further assume the temperature of LoC is about 290K, then we get the energy equivalent of the LoC as about 0.11 TeV.

Therefore 3.5 TeV is about 32 LoC.

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[lanceran]

How much energy would that equal when expressed in Ballmers, with one Ballmer equaling to energy required to throw an average chair by a CEO in vacuum?

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny cause it's maxwell demon.

Heh.

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[maxwell demon]

Infinity. There's no lower limit for throwing a chair in vacuum (the thrown chair can be arbitrary slow). Therefore one Ballmer is an infinitesimal energy, making any finite energy to be infinitely many Ballmers.

Alternatively, a CEO will die in vacuum, so he'll not be able to throw a chair, therefore the chair's energy is zero.

BTW, does "CEO" mean "Chair-throwing Enraged Officer"?

Re:How many Libraries of Congress

[rubycodez]

ah, but Ballmer threw the chair across his office to hit a table. Using round numbers, assume a ballistic lob with starting height of 1 meter to peak of 2 meters high to table 5 meters away also of one meter height with 20kg Aeron chair in 10 m/s gravitational field. chair will fall that one meter vertically in sqrt((2d)/a) =~ 0.5 seconds, so up and down in 1 second. And that's the time the horizontal travel must take, so horizontal initial velocity is 5 m / second. Vertical initial velocity is a*t for half the lob = 10 * 0.5 = 5 m / s also. Vector sum is sqrt(25 + 25) = 7 m/s. BallmerChairEnergy (BCE) is thus 0.5 * 20 * 7^2 =~ 500 joules.

Kdawson is the problem

[hexghost]

What I want to know is - when will kdawson not be such a tool?

Re:Kdawson is the problem

[pz]

What I want to know is - when will kdawson not be such a tool?

Worst Slashdot editor, ever. There's no hope, other than to stop reading Slashdot when he's approving submissions.
 

Re:Kdawson is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, kdawson is the problem, but his submissions lately have not been so FUDdy so perhaps there is still hope.

Re:Kdawson is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I think I would rather be reading submissions by ... Katz ... actually, never mind, just pass me the Rum.

Re:Kdawson is the problem

[Jeng]

You can go into your account settings and set it to not show you his submissions.

I would not be surprised if they keep a metric of who has been blocked the most.

Re:Kdawson is the problem

[pz]

You can go into your account settings and set it to not show you his submissions.

I would not be surprised if they keep a metric of who has been blocked the most.

Perfect, thanks! Ah, the quality of Slashdot just went up.

Re:Kdawson is the problem

[sa1lnr]

When Europe disappears into a black hole?

Re:Kdawson is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that he also approves some submissions that are obviously good on his watch. So blocking all his submission approvals gets rid of the crap, but also some good stuff.

Re:Kdawson is the problem

[bill_mcgonigle]

What I want to know is - when will kdawson not be such a tool?

When you learn to use Slashdot's preferences system.

Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[jameskojiro]

Because the world will come to an end as a Higgs Boson Particle is created and all the mass fo the earth is sucked into space equal to the size of a small pea.....

Re:Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[Anonymous Coward]

But you'll never experience it. Each timeline where that happened terminates. Your only memory will be of the one where that doesn't happen.

Re:Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I contend that no one ever dies (at least in their eyes). Ever have those dreams where you are killed? Seem very real? Then bam!! you wake up and it was just a fleeting memory while the memories of your current life start flooding in. Then up and into the shower.

You died on another time line and your loved ones mourned.

Re:Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[ooshna]

What happens when you are riddled with cancer or are in some crazy ass POW camp? I for one hope your wrong.

Re:Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[Dachannien]

It's called quantum immortality.

(Except for that freaky dream thing.)

Re:Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[Firkragg14]

Wait when the world is ending and all the matter is being sucked into a black hole your really going to need somone to call you and tell you its happening?

Re:Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[madpansy]

Unfortunately, if you are riddled with cancer, society will not allow you to end your world line peacefully. They will instead force you to live through an extended world line of little value, filled with terrible suffering.

Re:Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[Anonymous Coward]

Think this through a bit...

Consider how often you have those dreams vs. how often other people around you die. The rates just don't match.

Re:Call me when it gets to 13.13131313131313TEV

[jameskojiro]

Yo Way oh.....

No one, not even the many Nerds here got the reference......

Guess I will go back top my job as a security guard class 4....

Press release vs Status Ops

[OzPeter]

The Press Release tells me what they have achieved in terms of goals, and what goals they hope to achieve over the next year or so. On the other hand the all Status Ops tell me is whether or not the LHC was plugged in over the last 12 hours. Both datasets have their place and both tell me something that the other doesn't or can't.

New here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently going to CERN's front page is too much effort for slashdot's editors.

You must be new here. Nine out of ten times, going to Slashdot's front page is too much effort for Slashdot's editors.

Re:New here?

[SillySixPins]

Haha

Energetically Equivalent to...

[GeordieMac]

About 3 1/2 mosquitoes. I had no idea how tiny the amounts of energy they are using. http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/Science/Glossary-en.php#E

Re:Energetically Equivalent to...

[ceoyoyo]

Per particle.

The designed nominal total beam energy of the LHC is in the range of the kinetic energy of an aircraft carrier travelling at a significant speed.

Re:Energetically Equivalent to...

[GeordieMac]

That's what I was missing...

Re:Energetically Equivalent to...

[DigiShaman]

According to Wiki, the Nimitz class aircraft carrier at full speed (30 knots / 56 kmh) with a maximum of 260,000 bhp or 190 Megawatts of energy.

Sound about right?

Re:Energetically Equivalent to...

[ceoyoyo]

http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/beam.htm

362 MJ. But they're talking about the kinetic energy of the aircraft carrier, not the energy output of it's engines that is required to keep it at speed, so if the carrier in question is American, it would have the equivalent energy when it was moving at about 5 knots.

Things you won't hear at LHC

[Wowsers]

3.5TeV, did the earth move for you honey!?

They did have stable beams

[rminsk]

It'll be a while yet before we see stable beams...

From the CMS e-commentary ."..the beams were extremely stable during this period and had a very long lifetime."

Re:They did have stable beams

[chtephan]

From the CMS e-commentary ."..the beams were extremely stable
during this period and had a very long lifetime."

Yes, but only for about two minutes, then they were dumped because the protection system was acting up. That's a major PITA when running such machines. The protection system is overly sensitive and needs to be carefully tuned to safely detect "safe" conditions and only report minor deviations. Since it has never been run at that energy with beam it it, there are still a few things to sort out, which needs a bit of time (and a certain amount of trial and error). Well, better safe than sorry.

And, by the way. The beams were stable is not what is meant by the term "stable beams". The latter usually refers to the state when they are actually declared stable by LHC operations. When they are declared stable, the experiments can safely turn on their detectors since LHC then guarantees that no beam will go awry and shoot particles into sensitive parts while they are on high voltage. When LHC declares stable beams, this usually means that they are well measured, well positioned and brought to collisions. The "stable" referred to in the blog just means that they were staying in the LHC and not getting into troublesome resonances and scratching collimators and such. (which is a good thing, since beam optics depend on the beam energy, which means LHC was able to keep things under control while ramping, which by the way they did in an amazing short amount of total ramp attempts, which IIRC you can count on one hand)

If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Low Ranked Craig]

Does that make the collision 7 TeV? Serious question - I'm not sure I completely understand the physics. OK. I almost completely don't understand them. I have read that the LHC produced collisions of 14TeV, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt and that the most energetic cosmic rays are 10^8 TeV. If all that it true, doesn't it completely and totally kill the whole "LHC will destroy the world" bullshit?

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if we're talking about anyone with half a brain. That's the problem with reactionary doom-saying Luddites - they routinely are born with only a brain stem.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Werthless5]

LHC physicist checking in - yes, that will make the collisions 7 TeV. Note that there are no collisions yet, we're still doing work to make sure that the beams are stable and focused properly. Once we have collisions, we'll run at this energy for about a year and a half before shutting down for a year to perform maintenance.

The LHC never produced 14 TeV collisions, the highest collision it will perform this year is 7 TeV. It is designed to produce 14 TeV collisions, and it will hopefully do that after we finish taking data at 7 TeV. It is true, however, that cosmic ray collisions completely kill the "LHC will destroy the world" bullshit.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. That's been one of the counterarguments against all the sensationalist fear mongering from the get go.
Well... I should temper that statement: it only completely and totally kills the whole "LHC will destroy the world" bullshit for reasonable, rational people. Unfortunately they aren't so much the target audience for the aforementioned sensationalist fear mongering.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Anonymous Coward]

From their press release:

"The first attempt to collide beams at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) will follow on a date to be announced in the near future."

Source: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2010/PR05.10E.html

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Hurricane78]

If all that it true, doesn't it completely and totally kill the whole "LHC will destroy the world".

You are exactly right. And it’s the failure of every “expert” interviewed who didn’t mention this, and of course of the media hype machine, that that is not well known to everyone.
Oh, and of course mostly to the loonies who want to stay ignorant.

and that the most energetic cosmic rays are 10^8 TeV.

To imagine this: Those particles are so fast that they have the mass of an apple or orange. A subatomic particle! This gives you some feeling for the power.
And yes, that does mean that they create those tiny black holes all the time in our atmosphere.
If this would create black holes, earth would have never existed.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Clueless Moron]

It is true, however, that cosmic ray collisions completely kill the "LHC will destroy the world" bullshit.

Ah, but you forget that cosmics ray hadrons are natural and organically grown, unlike those nasty synthetic LHC ones which cause obesity, cancer and black holes. Plus they don't taste as good.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[skudenfaugen]

Obligatory - http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[MartinSchou]

I think you'll find that if you get hit by the beams from the LHC, you won't have to worry about obesity or cancer. And the only black hole you'll notice is the one that is the entry into your body where it hit you.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Anonymous Coward]

"there are no collisions yet,"
I guess that means you'll save some money on your car insurance...

Say I wonder if the LHC has 'earth-destroying black hole insurance? I suppose there would be some difficulty in making a claim.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to clarify, I think they have the energy (roughly) of an orange moving at a human-scale speed like 20 meters per second (10^8 TeV being about 16 Joules). Your statement could have been interpreted as meaning they have the energy of the *rest mass* of an orange, which is enormously larger. If a particle with energy 10^8 TeV was stopped by your body, I guess you would feel a force like a hard punch. If a particle with energy equal to the rest mass of an orange hit you, you'd probably vaporize instantly. Since we're not all feeling punches all the time, I guess there's not a huge number of these things hitting us (either low flux or low interaction rate).

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[amRadioHed]

I highly doubt you'd feel an impact with a single particle regardless of it's momentum. It would just blow right through you like an X-Ray or gamma ray without you knowing, but potentially damaging some DNA on its way.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[amRadioHed]

And yes, that does mean that they create those tiny black holes all the time in our atmosphere.
If this would create black holes, earth would have never existed.

Potentially, but we haven't yet proven that micro black holes can be created by particle collisions. If it turns out they can be created however, it would certainly imply that they are not a risk to the planet.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Tablizer]

Potentially, but we haven't yet proven that micro black holes can be created by particle collisions. If it turns out they can be created however, [cosmic ray-created blackholes] would certainly imply that they are not a risk to the planet.

Maybe the core of the Earth *is* full of mini-blackholes and the Earth would be a few thousand miles larger in volume if not for them. We always assumed the weight was due to an iron core, but maybe it's mostly holes instead.
           

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[nebelkerze]

Yes, the energy of cosmic rays is larger, but the frequency is much smaller. Thats one reason why one needs collider like LHC. A large number of interactions is needed in order to see also rare processes.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Low Ranked Craig]

True, the web cams are still active. http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Hurricane78]

No. On earth the (a-)holes live on the surface. And nowadays they easily can outweigh an iron core. ;)

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[QuantumG]

Hey, maybe you could answer this question for me.. how much shielding do you think manned spacecraft need from galactic cosmic rays? I've heard people say that the best thing you can do with galactic comic radiation is let it hit you.. of course that's a little hard if you're already shielding for solar radiation.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[Tablizer]

Indeed! They're infesting Congress.

Re:If both beams are 3.5 TeV

[gargarxp]

Ah, but you forget that cosmics ray hadrons are natural and organically grown, unlike those nasty synthetic LHC ones which cause obesity, cancer and black holes. Plus they don't taste as good.

Plus they've got electrolytes.

A related story

[roguegramma]

http://www.everything2.com/title/Stop+killing+me+now

Requires some knowledge of the many worlds interpretation or the anthropic principle though.

Re:A related story

[maxwell demon]

http://www.everything2.com/title/Stop+killing+me+now

Requires some knowledge of the many worlds interpretation or the anthropic principle though.

Of course, according to MWI, you are killed all the time even without the LHC. After all, if it can happen, and be it with absurdly low probability, then it will happen in some world. There are worlds where the whole earth collapses into a black hole not because of some LHC experiment, but just due to an unusually large quantum fluctuation. There are worlds where is just happens that no oxygen molecule finds its way into your nose for several minutes, and you suffocate. There are worlds where the nucleons in your body just tunnel into a new configuration, and you turn into a block of lead. Or into a heap of gold dust. There are worlds where an asteroid hits you just now, and others where an earth-destroying asteroid just hits. And there are worlds where all that happens at the same time.

Re:A related story

[Hurricane78]

The whole text is based on the arrogant, ignorant and retarded Fermi “paradox”.
It is arrogant and ignorant because it states that we don’t see any aliens, so there must be no aliens, so where is everybody?? Which is just as retarded as a blind man going “i don’t see humans, so there must be no humans, so where is everybody??”
Or your doc going “There is no cure to this disease.”. When in reality he should say “I don’t know a cure to this disease.”.
The arrogance and ignorance of making this type of statement, boggles the mind.

It is a shame that educated people fall for such a Glenn-Beck-worthy “logic”.

Who cares?

[Schickeneder]

I don't mean to offend anyone, but why is this even such a big deal? Sure it's a new record, but why is it posted seemingly every week. Tomorrow we can expect another headline reading 3.6TeV.

Didn't they design this thing to run at much higher energy levels anyway?

Perhaps considering the frequency of problems they have been experiencing, the merit here is that it is, for the time being, running without something else exploding, leaking or burning up.

I'm more interested in the actual results of experiments when they finally get around to doing them.

Re:Who cares?

[Steve Max]

Actually, this goes in steps. They went from ~1.18TeV (which was already the highest energy for a proton beam ever achieved in lab) to 3.5TeV. The experiments will run at 3.5TeV for some time, then another shutdown to get them to the design energy of 7TeV per beam (14 TeV per collision). All is happening as planned.

The "problems" you mention happened with every single collider, ever. When you get to a new scale, you expect things to happen differently from your original idea; so you plan to allow time to solve problems. The accelerator itself is an experiment, and one that is going very well.

You want hard results? ALICE published a science paper on collisions almost four months ago. You can see more from ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb. Lots of simulations, descriptions and detection methods, but at least the two "smaller" groups (LHCb and ALICE) have measurements already, at one sixth of the energy they were designed to work on. In fact, LHCb will only have actual b hadrons to see when they start colliding protons at 3.5TeV; but they still could find a meaningful result to publish, sooner than anticipated by anyone with even passing understanding of collider physics. Is that enough? Or do people actually believe things go like this?

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check arxiv -- CMS and ATLAS also have published papers based on the brief 2009 run.

Re:Who cares?

[Steve Max]

I was surprised that those articles weren't in Spires, I was sure I saw them before. Thank you for confirming I'm not crazy.

If you want updates ...

[damn_registrars]

I though the best way to get updates was to just hack into a computer at the LHC.

luminosity

[Lawrence_Bird]

What is lost on most people is that the luminosity will be relatively low and that while 7 TeV CM is impressive, its not all that matters. Fermilab is down, but not quite out yet!

Re:luminosity

[rminsk]

In past and present colliders the luminosity culminates around L = 10^32c^-2 s^-1, in the LHC it will reach L = 10^34cm^-2 s^-1. This will be achieved by filling each of the two rings with 2835 bunches of 10^11 particles each.

Re:luminosity

[Lawrence_Bird]

my point was that this has not yet happened, has it? and IIRC most colliders have taken some period of time to meet their initially designed luminosities.

But...

[SnarfQuest]

Is 3.5 TeV enough to power my Delorian?

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming your DeLorean needs 2.12GW, then that will power it for 3.5 TeV / 2.12 GW = 4.6E-16 seconds, or about half a femtosecond.

So yes it will power your DeLorean, but just don't plan on any long trips.

Oh thank god its colliding hadrons

[Anonymous Coward]

The telegraph was reporting a hardon collider operating at these energies. I know the french-swiss are a little light in the loafers, but that seems dangerous no matter your persuasion...

Whatever you do...

[zawarski]

...don't cross the beams!

Few things humble me like this

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if it's actually pompous, or an artifact of translation, or both. But I mean really, out of all the things that a person could in fact be pompous about in the world, this is one of those times where I say have at it. Even if it's not news this week, or not as impressive as where it's supposed to be in two years, it's still among the most newsworthy and impressive things in my lifetime, and certainly our entire history. I would love if we valued and over-glorified this right here like we do organized sports. Far from boring or yawn-worthy, I think it's amazing that the tiny and incremental power steps we make every week with this thing makes the progress that was made in a whole millennium look like little children running around playing with sticks. And just imagine that we'll look back on this period of history in a similar fashion in 100 years. I love this.

3.5 TeV? Pffft!

[bunratty]

Didn't they hear? Stanford broke the PeV barrier in October 2009!

Postel's Law

[pizza_milkshake]

be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept

LHC Webcam

[Temujin_12]

This is good news. Check out their webcam.

Re:LHC Webcam

[Anonymous Coward]

That's been kicking around for a while.

pompous?

[vaderj]

I would say the guy in charge of the largest and most expensive machine in the known universe has a right to be a little pompous

When it hit's 1.2 gigawatts you can go back in tim

[Joe The Dragon]

When it hit's 1.2 gigawatts you can go back in time!

So what's this thing supposed to do again?

[chewthreetimes]

All I hear is how they keep turning it on and shutting it down.

Re:When it hit's 1.2 gigawatts you can go back in

[Sulphur]

When it hit's 1.2 gigawatts you can go back in time!

Back where, and in time for what?

Dr. Breen?

[winomonkey]

Is it just me, or does the good Dr. Rolf Heuer resemble a slightly shaggier Dr. Breen? Huh ...

I very much doubt that will happen...

[sonic_assault]

...after the purple pterodactyl drops a scone into a random 2mm wide tube which serves as an exhaust port for a tragically-placed air conditioning unit near the accelerator ring.

Re:I very much doubt that will happen...

[JWSmythe]

    Like I told you before, there haven't been Pterodactyls in this or any parallel universe for over 65 million years. This has already been proven through examining the far side of Einstein-Rosen bridges and exchanging information with our peers on on the other sides that we've discussed the matter.

    Don't you remember the loop where the operations at Area 51 were made public. It did shut up the alien conspiracy folks, at least until the LHC got up to speed again at ....

    Oh...

    You don't remember...

    Shit.

Momentary confusion

[VocationalZero]

You won't get much of a clue to the timetable by reading the General Manager's pompous announcements.

What?

Posted by kdawson

Oh

Well hello there Mr. fancy pants o.O

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how this thing is getting me a time traveling DeLorean or a pay raise! pfft.

In other news

[d_54321]

Best typo this week

Effort's

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently going to CERN's front page is too much effort for slashdot's editors.

That requires TWO efforts. "GOING" and "READING".

Review of Long-Term Black Hole Risks

[LHC Safety Review]

An independent review of the long-term risks associated with possible black hole production at the LHC:

http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/LHCrisk.pdf