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CERN's LHC Powers Down For Two Years
An anonymous reader writes "Excitement and the media surrounded the Higgs boson particle for weeks when it was discovered in part by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). But now, the collider that makes its home with CERN, the famed international organizational that operates the world's largest particle physics laboratory, is powering down. The Higgs boson particle was first discovered by the LHC in 2012. The particle, essentially, interacts with everything that has mass as the objects interact with the all-powerful Higgs field, a concept which, in theory, occupies the entire universe." We covered the repair announcement last month.
Don't these people realize we're in the 3D printing epoch now? Can they just print out a new LHC in less than two years?
More like the UN got a death threat from the intergalactic Splugorthian empire to cease with our efforts to open an unregulated worm hole. It was ALIENS I tell you!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
And they wonder why there is a kerfluffle about what people call the "God particle?" Seriously, this hyperbole really has to be toned down.
or that's what the LHC *wants* CERN to believe.
This downtime means that some parts that aren't open to visits during operations, will be for quite a while. Science tourism rocks!
There's nothing like $HOME
HOW WILL SCIENCING GET DONE!?
So without the LHC the universe is in danger of imploding now? Or exploding? Run this singularity business by me one more time here.
I've been involved in enough large scale projects to know why you bring up parts, or underpower the system, and run them to see what breaks. And stuff does break, it's the name of the game.
Still, it's pretty frustrating to watch this shut down for 2 years. We'll be getting results from the Pluto probe about the time this thing comes back up.
Actually, businesses rarely looks farther than 5 years in a business plan.
If a research project can't make a profit in that time, they don't pursue it.
The LHC took 10 years to build, from 1998 to 2008. Therefore nearly all of the physics research that has been performed and its resulting discoveries and breakthroughs would never have happened if it was left to the "free market".
Science and understanding can not progress through simple theory. The ideas must be tested and validated. That's the reason for facilities like this.
But now that they've found the Higgs boson, what are they going to do with it? Can they manufacture an anti-Higgs? Can they sheild against the Higgs field? Can they enhance the field, or generate Higgs bosons artificially? I need an antigrav to move some heavy stuff, and once I get it into orbit, I'll need to have something to keep the martini in the glass.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That's why business funded alternative energy research during the 1990s when oil dropped to $10 a barrel. Oh wait...
There is also the issue of externalities. Discovering something new about the universe would benefit many people, not just the investors who paid for the science. When you have a situation where lots of people will benefit, but the cost tends to be concentrated, you have a good reason for government funding.
understand it through more experimental observation maybe....
More that the quality (which is most assuredly is an issue) the material is a more important factor. Know any good ways to print copper plates, or cryostat vessels etc. because we cannot make all our detector out of plastic and those that are plastic usually need to be very transparent and I don't imagine 3D printing will achieve anything like the clarity we need.
However, if anyone has a 3D printer and the time we do have detailed 3D models of the detector geometry that we use for simulations. There has already been a Lego model of ATLAS developed so, if you are up for a challenge, how about a 3D printed model of ATLAS? It would be great to have for outreach talks at high schools!
But now that they've found the Higgs boson, what are they going to do with it?
I don't know it depends on what clever ideas people come up with. At the moment we are not even sure if it is the Higgs we have produced so we need to study it more. This precisely illustrates why industry will never fund research like this: it is too far ahead of any practical application and may even turn out to just be a stepping stone with no applications of its own but which leads to something amazingly useful. While I could make wild conjectures about what we might be able to discover the best way to understand the case for fundamental science like this is to look back.
In the early 1900's Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus and you could have wondered exactly the same thing: what is anyone going to do with it now we know it is there. Well 40 years later it lead directly to a new source of power. However indirectly it let us understand atoms far better. That understanding, along with quantum mechanics gave use an understanding of materials that led to the invention of the silicon transistor, an invention that has literally transformed the entire planet. I very much doubt Rutherford, or anyone on the planet at the time, had even the tiniest clue that this would be the result of this discovery.
Sadly it seems that the cry for immediate, short term applied science is getting stronger and stronger. What the industry types who are calling for this need to understand is that they are turkeys asking for christmas. Sure it might be nice to have all those fundamental research dollars wrapped up under the christmas tree and given to you to build a better widget but once those presents are opened and gone there will be no more fundamental research you can apply to build the next generation of widgets. It's then that they will realize who society will eat for dinner...
We'll be getting results from the Pluto probe about the time this thing comes back up.
Cool. We'll need the LHC to analyze the mass relay under Charon's ice...
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
"Useful" and "Profitable" are two very different things.
Yeah!
Like that travesty that is NASA...if there was value to space exploration at all, then the free market would have stepped up in the 1960's and put a man on the moon!
Oh, wait a minute. There was no short-term profit and the R&D cost was so amazing only a government could pull it off.
Well, it isn't like there's long list of tangential advances that benefit all the rest of us now and which allow corporations to profit directly from.
Oh, wait.
Sure the government's main job is common defense, but seriously, if everything was left up to the free market we'd be no where near what we have now. I'm not even going to get into what NIH has done for the common good.
Sybok: I couldn't help but notice your pain!
"god": My pain?
Sybok: It runs deep, share it with me!
Actually, businesses rarely looks farther than 5 years in a business plan.
If a research project can't make a profit in that time, they don't pursue it.
Untrue. Many businesses spend many many many years in research and development before getting any return on that investment. For example, on average, it takes about 10 years to get a new drug onto the shelf. Pharmaceuticals not only invest a decade into each new product, but they also sink about a billion USD by the time they start recovering those costs (if they do at all, not every medicine is a home run).
The fact is the market not only could but would step in to fill some first rate research, and do it faster and cheaper by most accounts, if it were given the chance, i.e. when the competition doesn't receive such an ungodly amount of head start subsidized funding, making any kind of practical attempt comical.
Truckin like the Doo-Dah man...
Rutherford worked with, maybe, a thousand dollars worth of gear, and was producing results (ie world record radio transmission distances).
Right. So if we are going to start looking at things outside fundamental research you may possibly have heard of something called the world wide web - if not try Googling it. ;-) Now, look up where it was invented and why. Doing fundamental research can have spinoffs just as much now as it did in Rutherford's day.
As for the cost of research yes it does cost more to find the Higgs - we need protons with about one million times more energy than the alpha particles Rutherford used. Since nature does not provide a nice portable source of these like there are for alpha particles we have to make it which is more expensive.
As for the practicality as I was explaining fundamental research is almost always non-practical when it is first discovered as was the case for Rutherford's nucleus. It takes time to apply this knowledge to the benefit on mankind. What your ignorance may be blinding you to is the fact that all new "widgets" that IT companies produce today rely on an understanding of the fundamental physics of ~100 years ago. If you stop fundamental research then, once the ideas based on out current understanding of physics are used up that's it - no more new widgets. A colleague of mine had a good way of putting it: no amount of applied research will give you the electric light bulb starting with a candle: you have to have fundamental research to be able to make that leap.
July 2012
The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN have just announced the discovery of a new particle which is consistent with a Standard Model Higgs boson. There is still a lot of work to do to confirm whether this really is the Higgs, and if so whether it is a Standard Model Higgs, but this is a major result
February 2013
The Higgs boson particle was first discovered by the LHC in 2012
Did I miss the "lot of work" between July 2012 and December 2012 that confirmed that the particle "is the Higgs, and if so whether it is a Standard Model Higgs".? Wow, I must have been asleep. According to this maybe not.
However some kinds of extensions to the Standard Model would also show very similar results based on other particles that are still being understood long after their discovery, it may take years to be sure, and decades to fully understand the particle that has been found.
And what is the difference between Big Pharma and the LHC? Answer that question and your whole argument becomes moot.
"A concept which, in theory, occupies the entire universe" - an excellent example of mistaking the map for the territory.
Garry Knight
just for the record, in order to warn any non-western members:
"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]
source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report
ISBN: 9290831693 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en
Most "developed" new medication is not better than the old one. That's why countries created drug evaluation facilities where the quality of drugs is measured. Furthermore, pharma companies do not do much basic research, it is more or less all applied research. This includes the development of plants or bacteria to produce certain substances. Base research is to investigate how cells work. Adding genes and evaluating results is what the companies do.
There are some exceptions. In the past IBM did some interesting research on magnetic particles. However, the field was very narrow. And they had applied science waiting for the results.
The LHC, however, helps us to understand the universe a little better. The discovery might change things in future. It also might not have a technical application. No one invests in such things without an outcome. Therefore these things must be government funded. The market is not solving all problems. And it is not solving many problems in the best way. It is a tool for certain areas.
Sounds like a good case for crowdfunding!
the great and powerful! If you want to see the boson you must bring me an 11th dimensional super string. That shouldn't take you more than 2 years.
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Ummmmm, so HOW did the lunar missions benefit us?