Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Plan to Build a Bigger LHC
ananyo writes "When Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started up in 2008, particle physicists would not have dreamt of asking for something bigger until they got their US$5-billion machine to work. But with the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the LHC has fulfilled its original promise — and physicists are beginning to get excited about designing a machine that might one day succeed it: the Very Large Hadron Collider. The giant machine would dwarf all of its predecessors (see 'Lord of the rings'). It would collide protons at energies around 100 TeV, compared with the planned 14TeV of the LHC at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva in Switzerland. And it would require a tunnel 80-100 kilometres around, compared with the LHC's 27-km circumference. For the past decade or so, there has been little research money available worldwide to develop the concept. But this summer, at the Snowmass meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota — where hundreds of particle physicists assembled to dream up machines for their field's long-term future — the VLHC concept stood out as a favorite."
the BFHC?
hmmm....I wonder where they could build it. Oh - I know. Dallas. The tunnel has been dug so all they have to do is drop in a few magnates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
On a more serious note, I though the next big project was going to be a linear accelerator. Anybody know why they picked the round one over the straight one?
It was planned to have an 87 KM circumference and is already partially built.
A cost of $10 billion is peanuts compared to the $3.2-4 trillion cost of the Iraq war or the $12.8 trillion cost of the bank bailout.. Even if these figures are not very accurate, VLHC is, comparatively, not expensive.
The trouble is that VLHC does not enrich the friends of the politicans and so will not be looked on favourably. When will mankind grow up?
In the Astronomy world, we call that Aperture Fever. It's an endless cycle of wanting more aperture so you can see more. Good luck ever quenching that thirst no matter how much money you though at it!
It is like road repair !! Spend a year to repave a road small sections at a time so to inconvience every driver for as long as possible !! Then a year latter rip it up to widen !! Money must grow on trees !!
I am sure that they like it but the question really is where to find the money. A 80-100 km tunnel surely cannot be cheap. Various sources on the internet indicate a cost of 0.04 to 4 billion dollars per kilometer. And that is for the tunnel alone... Maybe someone from the field could enlighten us?
Look likes some scientists did not liked the idea that the CERN catched the higgs at LHC and dream of a "bigger toy".
I know boys are in the I-got-a-bigger-one business, but think of it, when shoting, AFAIK, the LHC generate almost a third of this planet data by itself. I think this will already takes a long long time to digest all these data.
Meanwhile, the LHC is under mainenance for a higher energy stratum. Remember that before LHC there was the LEP in the same tunnels... so VLHC might be as well located in the famous CERN tunels between Swiss and France.
By the way remember that there is another "toy" that is also in progress in the south of France : ITER.
About building a major tool in Japan, although I understand japanese contribution is high but I am not sure that the country is safe enough (earthquakes, tsunami... ) to host new major world class facility. Russia on the opposite is fine (plenty of land location), but the political regime is not yet stable.
Are they just going to keep multiplying the size of the thing by a factor of 'X' every 'Y' years? ;-)
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Make no mistake, I don't mean my subject as anti-science - From my point of view, I'd gladly give one of these to every university in the world before I'd pay for one more bullet fired from one more drone to kill one more Arab in a desert far away.
But in planning for a future desired collision energy, they really should have some actual goal in mind to justify that design. Do they hope to find dark matter? Black holes? Do they actually think they can make the Higgs break down into something else at that energy? So... Why?
You pesky physicists just keep running around in circles asking for more, MORE MORE money.. Is all this really necessary or are we really just funding a pile of PHD student's research?
So, why don't we just cut to the chase here and go with the biggest possible? I'm starting to get tired of this "We need a bigger one now!" thing.
Seriously, So now that they've managed to find the Higgs boson we are done with the LHC? I'm looking for a really good reason we need a bigger collider here and I'm not seeing any given. Is there some theory we need to test or some additional advances in technology which depend on a better understanding of subatomic physics at such large energies? I'm no physicist, but I'm not seeing a reason for this expense, other than having a new, bigger and more expensive shiny toy.
Help us out, what will 100 TeV get you that your 14 TeV won't?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I mean particle physics is cool, but it doesn't do anything for the human spirit of exploration like a mission to Mars would.
... but he managed to get away just before the closing credits.
Which will later be succeeded by the Really Large Hadron Collider, then the Really REALLY Large Hadron Collider, and finally by the Planetary Hadron Collider, so large that the tunnel encircles the globe itself and is later appropriated for a VacTrain tube.
Reading the design study by Peter Limon (http://vlhc.org/Limon_seminar.pdf), I couldn't help but notice that it made rather liberal use of Comic Sans.
I'll probably burn some of my karma to say this, but I must say it: Nothing screams professionalism like Comic Sans.
They could come with an exact figure by just going to office.microsoft.com/templates/VLHC and download all the templates for Excel and Project. enter the numbers and BING! - they got a rock solid budget and timeline! I tell ya, those physicists!
After all, building these things is as routine as building a sub-urban home!
You might be right about the VLHC. I think the 100km circumference is meant considering current/near future magnet technologies. AFAIK when designing LHC to fit into LEP they planned for magnets that did not exist at that time. Maybe with a really good advance in magnet tech VLHC can fit inisde LHC tunnel ...
Shouldn't it be the Larger Hadron Collider?
meanwhile, in the great state of Texas, we have a very large hole with nothing to show for the effort. YAY JESUSLAND!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They should kickstarter the money for it. I'll throw in $50. Flex goals: Stargate; flux capacitor; warp drive.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
They already tried that in the Soviet Union --- care to join them in the dumps of history?
Meanwhile, I'm sure you'll continue to enjoy your lifestyle which profligately uses cheap network connectivity (courtesy of ARPANET), cheap oil (courtesy of our Saudi friends which our military props up), and satellite / cable TV (courtesy of the rockets which these ``boys'' provide the know-how for).
This is like the quest for horsepower. One guy gets a supercharger, the other gets twin turbos. One guy sees a car producing 1150 HP while his only produces 1100. Next thing you know he's ripping out parts just to get that little bit more. I think the scientists on the LHC are over-compensating, maybe we should just send them packages of Enzyte instead?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
At what percentage of C would a 100TeV proton be traveling?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Could that be possible? To build a particle collider in the orbit (or at a Lagrange point). Focusing of the beam wouldn't be easy, but it would be certainly doable. I'm thinking a straight collider or a giant laser like setup. I wonder how protected the system should be of outside interference?
The cosmic rays themselves probably randomly collide too with each other and create exotic byproducts. I wonder what's the actual chance of a natural head-on collision...
How are we ever going to get the amount of helium required to fill such a large tunnel? The LHC is already using a large amount of all the helium we have on this planet. It is going to become awfully expensive at least to get that much helium together, if we can manage it at all.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
These physicists wont be happy until they open a black hole that swallows the earth..
\gamma = E/m
E = 50 TeV, m = 938 MeV
v (in units of c) = \sqrt(\gamma^2 - 1)/\gamma
Or in other words, far more 9s than a double will hold. The rest is left as an exercise to the reader :)
If your Very Large Hadron lasts longer than 4 hours, you need to call your doctor.
WTF do we need another giant particle accelerator for? The Standard Model is good to 9 decimal places yet an entire generation of physicists are lost in the mythology of string theory. Why encourage them? Give it a rest for a generation until other technologies can advance sufficiently to support cheaper high-energy particle experimentation (and possibly string theory can advance sufficiently to suggest some useful experiments) .
Money for this accelerator would be better spent in other areas of physics.
"So we'll just have to try again." -Mad Scientists
They need to get a naming convention started.
If the present one is the Large Hadron Collider, the next one the Very Large Hadron Collider, then the following one should be the Ultra Large Hadron Collider.
1. Large Hadron Collider
2. Very Large Hadron Collider
3. Ultra Large Hadron Collider
4. Extremely Large Hadron Collider
5. Gargantuan Large Hadron Collider
6. Mammoth Large Hadron Collider
7. Unbelievably Large Hadron Collider
8. Inconceivably Large Hadron Collider
9. Budget Busting Large Hadron Collider
After this, there won't be money left to build any more.
Each new larger collider should be constructed with it's center at the same center point as previous colliders. Thus all of the colliders form a set of concentric rings. They can be called the Nine Circles of Collision.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
When the LHC was first built I was impressed by the multi billion $USD cost. Now we spend that much just bailing out a bank so they can pay bonuses to their never-indicted criminal executives.
It's funny how we can't afford to repair our bridges and schools, but when it comes to bailouts and worthless wars, cost is no consideration.
LHC = Larger Hadron Collider
These physicists are going to have to wash a lot of dishes to get that puppy in their xmas stocking.
You hit numerical problems if you calculate it that way. Wikipedia gives a series expansion that works well for large values of gamma:
v (in units of c) = 1 - 1/2 \gamma^(-2)
v = c (1 - 1.8e-10), or 0.99999999982 c
If enough euros are piled together in one place and zapped with high energy particles, then amazing new mathematics will appear to confuse funding parties even further. I swear... we are SO close! Sustainable fusion is just 20 years away...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I can top that if I put on my running keds.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Plaid
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Do we have some untested models or hypothesis that demand 100 TeV to verify? Otherwise, what are we building it for?
Back in my sciencey days, I was always taught that one had to have a question to be answered in mind before going off and designing cool experiments.
Have gnu, will travel.
Can it play Crysis?
Or let's just do a planet wide one.
> If you have just one ring, then you have to collide matter and antimatter
Your posting is as self-confident as it is wrong.
Please educate yourself using the internet before posting again.
> Then there are the problems with neutrino radiation
> (I'm not kidding - it can exceed allowable dose limits).
I'm wondering what size the neutrino-dosimeters everybody has to carry will be :-)
"There are however some possible....failure modes."
Like a black hole consuming the earth? ;)
We don't yet know. Isn't that terribly exciting?
Speaking as a particle physicist that's not really right. There is a lot of physics which we need to explain the universe but which we have not yet found. The one looming largest is Dark Matter. While we do not know, and cannot accurately predict, what a VLHC will find it is not true to say that we do not have a shopping list of what it might find - Dark Matter currently being on the top of that list. Even if the LHC solves that mystery first (we turn on in March 2015 with twice the energy so fingers crossed!) one possible solution is something called Supersymmetry. In such a case it is unlikely that the LHC will have enough energy to see all of SUSY and so the VLHC would be one way to find the missing sparticles.
Of course this is jumping the gun considerably since we have not found any new physics yet! If we find something like SUSY then there VLHC will receive a boost and may well get built next. However if there is no new physics found at the LHC my guess is that the next collider will be an electron-positron linear collider. This will do precision studies of the Higgs which is a good way to get hints at the next energy scale for new physics. Indeed it is the results from LEP (the e+/e- collider that predated the LHC) which told us that the Higgs mass was below 1TeV/c2 and so set the energy scale for the LHC.
The critical determining factor is the particle mass. The power radiated goes as 1/m^5 (IIRC) so a particle with a mass ten times smaller will radiate energy 100,000 times faster when accelerated. This means that for electrons any higher energy machine will be linear whereas for protons, with 500,000 times the mass, circular machines will be the winner for a long time to come.
"Do you really throw away $10B to save 2B?"
You do if it is politically motivated, and everything is at those cost levels.
Canadian example:
Long Gun Registry was supposed to cost X (I don't remember, but in the millions), and ended up costing like 3$ Billion (with a B). So way over budget.
The Conservatives wanted to get rid of it, and used the excuse that it was a waste of money and served no purpose.
One might argue about its merits or not, many thought it was useful, however purportedly it cost about 3$ million annually to maintain.
Which is silly. The analogy I like to make is it is like buying a 30,000$ car, and upon seeing that you have to pay 30$ a year to keep it running, you would rather throw it into the trash because you are not sure how much you will actually drive it!
(There you go Slashdot, car analogy!)
Ironically the Conservatives are the ones that like to pass themselves off as financially savvy and the PM has an economist background. In the end, it doesn't really matter, there is politically ideology, whatever justification you can make that you can swindle people into is good enough.
Put it on the Moon. Sounds goofy, until one realizes that is could be setup on the surface, and faster than digging a donut type tunnel. Also, the rent I hear is cheap on the Moon.
Russia on the opposite is fine (plenty of land location), but the political regime is not yet stable.
You may not agree with the political system in the Russian Federation these days, but I have never heard it called unstable.
The giant machine would dwarf all of its predecessors (see 'Lord of the rings').
See what? The movie with the little people?
Oh no, I see what happened. Someone copied and pasted the summary without due care and attention.
Have you read what it says on the Submit page?
Please try to use your own words; if you're quoting another source, make that clear.
Either, editors, police that rule, or just remove it. Might as well do the latter since very few people actually submit their own words, as far as I can tell.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The Superconducting Super Collider was to be about 87 km in circumference, and about 27 km of the tunnel has already been bored. Why not start the project from there?
This belongs at L5. Or may in a solar orbit but not in this biosphere. That way when a stable black hole are a stranglet cascade is formed, we may have a chance, to Do Something in time.
Thanks!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Only nuclear weapons destroy mass. QED only nukes are weapons of mass destruction.
An LHC the size of a garden gnome should be big enough for anyone.
Pnårp's docile & perfunctory page!