Slashdot Mirror
CERN, LHC Sets New Luminosity World Record
An anonymous reader writes "Since last night, the Large Hadron Collider is officially the most powerful accelerator in the world. While a record energy level had been reached last year, the new luminosity level, surpassing Fermilab's capabilities, is a new achievement. 'Higher intensity means more data, and more data means greater discovery potential,' as CERN Director General Rolf Heuer says."
haha
Back to the future!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Miles upon miles, ... or forefathers' fruit
Nailed! Higgs, here we come!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The future is bright, you must wear shades.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Does this mean the world is going to end in a white hole instead of a black one?
physics penis! Always the compensation instead of cooperating.
Seem very bright.
OOI as someone who has no connection with the LHC and doesn't even know much physics beyond a few modules as part of a mathematics degree, are the scientists working with it particularly bright? My understanding has been that, so far, it's a very high maintenance (albeit necessary) way of checking various existing theories in the mound of increasingly untested theoretical physics. IOW, it's more of an engineering feat than a scientific one. Or are unexpected observations being made leading to new physics?
Call me when all this actually serves some purpose...
So far all I have seen from LHC is a boatload of data noise and computers crunching thru it all in the hopes of making sense of... randomness...
Don't need LHC to create random bytes...
I for one welcome our luminous rotating light-speed overlords.
Find and replace "discovery" for "disaster"
I for one, welcome our new black hole overlords.
Insert marshmallow.
The future is bright, you must wear shades.
Ah, that would explain the omnipresent lens flare in the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(film)
The PR departments must love these releases. The collider is designed to do all this stuff, but they get to release it as an achievement. Yay!
The next release will be... LHC HAS SPLIT THE ATOM! Yes, gentle folk, the LHC, with it's unprecedented power, has split atoms into their component parts! Who would have thought this day would come? Soon, possibly even later today, the LHC will be able to track the paths of those sub-atomic particles and gain information about what they are!
Let's hear it for Science!
My understanding has been that, so far, it's a very high maintenance (albeit necessary) way of checking various existing theories in the mound of increasingly untested theoretical physics. IOW, it's more of an engineering feat than a scientific one. Or are unexpected observations being made leading to new physics?
Um. How are they supposed to be able to tell ahead of time when unexpected things will happen?
Leaked internal memo (or more likely hoax) is claiming sighting for a low mass Higgs: http://blogs.plos.org/badphysics/2011/04/22/115gev/
"With 37.5~pb1 data from 2010 and 26.0~pb1 from 2011, we observe a resonance around 115~GeV/c2 with a significance of 4. The event rate for this resonance is about thirty times larger than the expectation from Higgs to in the standard model. This channel H is of great importance because the presence of new heavy particles can enhance strongly both the Higgs production cross section and the decay branching ratio."
In the end, the answer was always in front of them. They will probably die not knowing.
So where is the most powerful brake when you need it?
WTF are these guys doing with this thing? They use it like a toy. Nothing of value has come of it that I've read about. I know research takes time, but they're just data collecting. What distinguishes this collider from any other collider in the world? What do they get from building this machine that they wouldn't from another one? I know this one is bigger... Does that mean more resolution? Was the extra resolution necessary?
I wondered whether they're being made, not whether they're hoping/expecting to make them. Although certain exercises are more likely to lead to new discoveries than others, and there's a difference between exploring new ideas as you develop theories and merely verifying an existing body of work.
are the scientists working with it particularly bright?
I don't think CERN scientists have a higher ratio of photon radiance in the visible spectrum (or even outside it) than scientists in other institutions.
how long until
What I want to know is this: when will this technology be used to make HID headlamps even brighter? 5,000 lumens from 55W isn't enough! :-)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I'll bet these scientists wear sunglasses at night.
are the scientists working with it particularly bright?
I don't think CERN scientists have a higher ratio of photon radiance in the visible spectrum (or even outside it) than scientists in other institutions.
I can tell from your data that you didn't actually collide that question at CERN.
Or are unexpected observations being made leading to new physics?
You mean like jet quenching which is a signature for a new state of matter called quark-gluon plasma where protons and neutrons "melt"?
However you are labouring under the false assumption that only signatures not predicted by theorists are indications of new physics. New physics requires both experimental evidence AND a theoretical model sometimes the model comes first, sometimes the data. Finding data which confirms a new theory would be just as unexpected as finding data which did not agree with any theoretical model.
Seem very bright.
Bright enough to know that the LHC has been the most powerful accelerator for a while. Power is energy per unit time, with a beam energy >3.5 times that of the Tevatron we need less that a third of the luminosity to beat the Tevatron in terms of power. This press release was about breaking the luminosity record i.e. the number of protons per area per second which is not the same as power.
> the Large Hadron Collider is now officially the most powerful accelerator in the world.
INES Level 10 event: Despite warnings, overdriven LHC creates mini black hole, which then grows ever larger via eating up the entire Solar System
INES Level 9 event: Antimatter annihilation based powerplant explodes with a force of 50,000MT due to Stuxnet infection of control systems, planet Earth splits in half
INES Level 8 event: Fusion based large power reactor explodes, leaving the better part of a continent or continental sized country/region fully devastated
INES Level 7 event: Fukushima BWR NPP, Stuxnet worm infection induced total backup control failure causes explosions, 2011
INES Level 7 event: Chernobyl, CIA data retention derived nuclear excursion and massive explosion, 1986
INES Level 6 event: Mayak plutonium reprocessing plant boiler explosion, USSR, 1957
INES Level 5 event: Three Mile Island PWR NPP core meltdown, USA, 1979
INES Level 0-4 event: insignificant events, like a light bulb went of in the crew lavatory, while someone was seated
Finding all of the existing physics is important as it helps calibrate the instrument and gives confidence it is working as expected.
I've been spending some time on arXiv looking at LHC related papers. So far they are saying, "No new physics beyond the standard model has been detected." WRT the Higgs, it hasn't been detected yet either. Tighter constraints have been put on it's mass - Due to the combined efforts of the Tevatron, LHC , LEP2 and DZERO. It's very early though. Experts in the field say we should wait until 2013-14. Scientists need the time to collect and analyze more data.
'A Quantum Diaries Survivor' is a blog by a physicist working at the LHC. His posts use real, recent data from the various experiments listed above. An entry posted today (22 April, 2011) is particularly relevant:
http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/did_atlas_just_see_higgs-78316
yyyyeeeaaahhh!!!!
Perhaps they will be able to create a new element that can more safely power the Iron Man suit?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1228705/
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The LHC set a new world record for beam intensity at a *hadron* collider (i.e. for (anti)proton-proton collisions). It reached a luminosity of 4.67 x 10^32 cm^-2 s^-1.
The world record for luminosity is 2.1 x 10^34 cm^-2 s^-1, so almost 50 times higher, and is held by the KEKB accelerator in Japan, which is an electron-positron collider. Just saying ...
The reason e+e- colliders typically operate at much higher luminosities than hadron colliders is that the cross sections in hadron collisions are much higher because they are determined by the strong rather than electroweak interactions. (Essentially, the Tevatron at Fermilab is mostly a quark-antiquark collider, while the LHC is mostly a gluon collider.)
To be pedantic, the most powerful CW proton accelerator in the world is IIRC at Paul Scherrer Institute. Most powerful pulsed source is SNS at Oak Ridge both produce about a MW I think. LHC is highest luminosity which is different.
In other news... Greenpeace says LHC creates too much CO2
newton62 (56617) Karma: Bad
While they're breaking power records, Fermi is still banging out real work and making important discoveries every year. It's a shame they're looking down the barrel of a budgetary death sentence.
Gotta keep paying for all our wars and welfare though, I guess.
are the scientists working with it particularly bright?
I don't think CERN scientists have a higher ratio of photon radiance in the visible spectrum (or even outside it) than scientists in other institutions.
But we won't know for sure until we load them up, smash them together and see what comes out.
No keyboard detected. Press F1 to continue.
"Higher intensity means more data, and more data means more science!"
I'll bet these scientists wear sunglasses at night.
Interesting enough the lead scientist was wearing a monitoring device over his left eye. When the power level was surpassed he announced the achievement to the entire world. Video here...
All I'm doing is applying your argument about physics to your domain, mathematics. I'm confident that you will now question math PhD programs, because application of your argument is logically based. Happy now?
Why is Snark Required?
> WRT the Higgs, it hasn't been detected yet either.
As I understand it, ruling out the Higgs would be new physics.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Seem very bright.
OOI as someone who has no connection with the LHC and doesn't even know much physics beyond a few modules as part of a mathematics degree, are the scientists working with it particularly bright? My understanding has been that, so far, it's a very high maintenance (albeit necessary) way of checking various existing theories in the mound of increasingly untested theoretical physics. IOW, it's more of an engineering feat than a scientific one. Or are unexpected observations being made leading to new physics?
Where would Theoretical Physics and Pure Mathematics be without Engineering? You know, Applied Physics and Mathematics that tests whether theories are all BS.
You're reading more into my post than was written.
Anyway, comparing the investment in mathematics PhDs with one of the most expensive pieces of scientific experimentation kit ever built is just silly. No group of mathematicians(*) in a particular field has ever demanded a budget of $9 billion.
(*) We do not include economists, even though they have an at least passing notion of numbers and freshman algebra and calculus. If we did, I'd concede the argument immediately, as economology is the biggest exploiter of time and waster of money on this planet.
You are right, we should all become Wiccans and Live At One With Nature.
To do anything else is a brutish male-domination fantasy, and a scandalous waste of money.