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LHC's 'Heart' Starts Pumping Protons Before Restart

Posted by Soulskill on from the pumped-up-to-crash-particles dept.

astroengine writes: While on its long road to restart, yet another milestone was reached at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) over the weekend. Protons were generated by the LHC's source and blasted through a "daisy-chain" of smaller accelerators before being intentionally smashed into a metaphorical brick wall. The particle beam didn't reach the LHC's famous 17-mile (27-kilometer) accelerator ring — they were stopped just short — but the event was used to begin calibration efforts of the massive experiment's detectors before the whole system is powered back up again early next year. "These initial tests are a milestone for the whole accelerator chain," said the LHC's chief engineer, Reyes Alemany Fernandez. "Not only was this the first time the injection lines have seen beams in over a year, it was also our first opportunity to test the LHC's operation system. We successfully commissioned the LHC's injection and ejection magnets, all without beam in the machine itself."

50 comments

  1. Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sensationalize much ?

    1. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      I know, right. Also, can we get some Americans in charge of that thing?

      With Europeans being on vacation half the year it seems they spend more time with thumbs up their backsides than actually running experiments.

    2. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Congratulations, you're an idiot. Well done.

    3. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We'll call when we've finished blowing it up.

    4. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please don't, it's got a much much better uptime than the American SSC.

    5. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by Thanshin · · Score: 3, Informative

      I know, right. Also, can we get some Americans in charge of that thing?

      Are there Americans under the age of about 35 who have studied enough physics to even know what a particle collider is?

      Or you meant put American immigrants in charge of the big toy.

    6. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by dbIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The experiments break stuff and it takes years to rebuild it.
      In a lot of cases that's what science is - a lot of hard work over a long time for a few hours of experiments.

    7. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot posters are now at the point where they're not smart enough to tie their own shoes.

    8. Re: Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      RTFA... the title is from Discovery News, not Slashdot.

    9. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by PPH · · Score: 1

      It's alive!

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    10. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by werepants · · Score: 1

      Most particle accelerators spend a good portion of their time in maintenance, perpetually, and that includes American ones. The cyclotron at Texas A&M, for instance, is closed for the first quarter of the year, every year. And that isn't even a facility that is new and still gearing up - it has been running that way for many decades, yet it still requires that much downtime.

      So stop being a nationalistic douchebag. But who am I kidding, I'm responding to an AC here.

    11. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by werepants · · Score: 2

      Hey, OP is a nationalistic idiot, but responding with more nonsense generalization doesn't fix things.

      I happen to be an American, under 35, with a degree in physics, who occasionally works at particle collider facilities. The average state of scienctific literacy might not be fantastic here, but there's no denying that many of the best minds in physics today are from the U.S.

    12. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I happen to be an American physicist, non-immigrant, under age 35, working at CERN. If anything, there's a disproportionately large number of Americans here... especially considering that the US isn't a CERN member state.

    13. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by RubberDogBone · · Score: 1

      This is 'merica. In 'Merica, we don't accelerate protons around a track. We accelerate the track around the protons.

      This just takes Texas-sized amounts of time.

      --
      Sig for hire.
    14. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by RubberDogBone · · Score: 1

      there's no denying that many of the best minds in physics today are from the U.S.

      Maybe so but it is approaching midnight on that day and things will change soon.

      --
      Sig for hire.
    15. Re:Heart starts pumping.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Other countries producing more and more great physicists doesn't mean the US isn't producing many great physicists.

  2. Oh noes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's going for 14 TeV.

    Black hole next.

    Sucks.

  3. Dry firing by Slagothor · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't a dry fire stress the components more? I mean, we are not talking about toy magnets. I guess they've determined that it is completely acceptable so I will certainly defer to their judgment. I need to read up some more on its power generation and magnetic systems.

    1. Re:Dry firing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess they've determined that it is completely acceptable so I will certainly defer to their judgment.

      Oh, thank you, we were about to shut the whole project down for someone called Slagothor, but if you'll defer judgement....

    2. Re:Dry firing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Normally they just eyeball everything and just "fire that sucker up" when they are ready. In this case they figure it is okay to be more careful. After all, once they light that thing up at full power it will mean the end of the world as we are all sucked up into a black hole. In practical terms it means that this Thanksgiving I can finally tell my Fox News watching uncle what I really think of him since I will likely not see him next year anyway.

    3. Re:Dry firing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you make an effort and read beyond the second sentence, you'll find this:

      I guess they've determined that it is completely acceptable so I will certainly defer to their judgment.

      And if you really try your best, you get yet another sentence:

      I need to read up some more on its power generation and magnetic systems.

    4. Re:Dry firing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Woosh....

    5. Re:Dry firing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [...] After all, once they light that thing up at full power it will mean the end of the world as we are all sucked up into a black hole. In practical terms it means that this Thanksgiving I can finally tell my Fox News watching uncle what I really think of him since I will likely not see him next year anyway.

      Please do this, and be sure to post a video of it to YouTube.

  4. Hawking radiation by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Funny how everyone has heard of Hawking and knows he's famous but there's still a popular perception that little black holes are going to last longer than an eyeblink and become big ones.

    1. Re:Hawking radiation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ironically you've hit upon one of the more interesting bits of a black hole. Consider this, time is dilated by the singularity. So if matter were to fall in, accelerating down to the singularity and closing in on infinity, would not an eon be the same as an instant? As the black hole evaporated trillions of years in the future that matter would suddenly catch up with the rest of the universe, but be as youthful as the day it fell...

    2. Re:Hawking radiation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      would not an eon be the same as an instant?

      No, it would not. Look into actual sources on general relativity, as something like undergrad level course notes might even illustrate this with pictures. The stuff that falls in reaches the center of the black hole in finite time from its own view, and will reach the center long before light from future events has a chance to reach it. There is no infinite blue shift that causes the entire future of the universe to come into view (unless you had an infinitely powerful rocket and infinite fuel, and stopped before crossing the event horizon).

    3. Re:Hawking radiation by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      All the diagrams I've seen are from the perspective of an observer falling into a static black hole, with the mass concentrated as a singularity in the centre. For the outside observer, it takes infinite time for something falling in to cross the event horizon.

      So suppose black holes actually do evaporate. An infalling observer could find the event horizon retreating from him as the hole shrank.

    4. Re:Hawking radiation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So suppose black holes actually do evaporate. An infalling observer could find the event horizon retreating from him as the hole shrank.

      Not unless that black hole evaporates on the timescale of a a few seconds, as seen by a far away observer. Look up a Eddington-Finkelstein diagram, where you have clear indication of light rays from infinity coming in, and can be thought of as regular pulses from a distant clock. The infalling observer still reaches the center on a very short timescale compared to both the the outside and their own clock. To find away for the infalling observer to miss the event horizon of a stellar sized or larger black hole due to evaporation, you would have to reach beyond GR.

    5. Re:Hawking radiation by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Not unless that black hole evaporates on the timescale of a a few seconds

      Much less than that unless you can collapse the mass of a small moon into a black hole.

    6. Re:Hawking radiation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When talking about an infalling observer literally, as in a person or even a piece of equipment falling in, you need a much larger black hole than that in order to even survive the stresses to get to the event horizon. The GP did qualify the discussion as being specific to stellar sized or larger for that reason. Regardless, what was said applies even to the mass of a small moon or even a small comet... considering a black hole with more than a couple hundred tonnes of mass would have an evaporation time longer than a couple seconds.

    7. Re:Hawking radiation by dbIII · · Score: 1

      A black hole with that much mass is going to take a lot more than the LHC to get it going.

    8. Re:Hawking radiation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The entire side-track isn't really relevant to blackholes anywhere near the realm of what current particle accelerators could make (assuming they could make the, as that is still an open question). Black holes on that size would have such a small cross-section, even if they lived much, much longer than predicted by Hawking radiation, nothing would be falling into them. The question of what an infalling observer, literally or just a piece of matter, experiences according to GR is irrelevant when the vast majority of time any passing matter would missing the black hole anyway.

    9. Re:Hawking radiation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quick thought experiment:
      For the outside observer, it takes infinite time for something falling in to cross the event horizon.
      So if you throw something in you can see forever.
      So you can see everything that was ever thrown in.
      So the light from all objects that have fallen in hits your eyes at once.
      So your eyes melt because the black hole is so bright....
      So a black hole is so bright that nothing can fall in to it because of all the radiation pushing it out again...

      Something seems silly.

    10. Re:Hawking radiation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The light from the infalling object will quickly red-shift and dim in intensity to an outside viewer. The power emitted decreases (rather quickly too), so there is not much light coming out from past things falling in, and likely much more light from the things about to fall in that have been heated up by various processes associated with accretion or stresses near smaller black holes.

    11. Re:Hawking radiation by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      I'm not a physicist, so if I've made a mistake I hope someone can point it out.

      Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates reparameterise the Swartzchild coordinates (t,r,thea,phi) with (v,r,thea,phi) where v = t + r* and r* = r + 2M log(r/2M -1). Note that r* -> -infinity as r->2M so as r->2M v -> t + infinity. For an outside observer, the ticks of a clock at the event horizon are infinitely far apart. Similarly, dt/dr -> infinity as r->2M.

      From another perspective, for an outside observer we're not interested in infalling light rays, we want to know about escaping ones. Pulses emitted from an infalling light clock will appear to us to be farther and farther apart (and more and more redshifted) until they are infinitely far apart at the horizon.

      From the perspective of the outside universe, it takes an infinite amount of time for anything to reach the event horizon. A black hole that evaporates on any timescale for an observer at a distance should have an event horizon that retreats from anything infalling.

      There does seem to be a conflict between the outside observer and the falling one. It seems to me this is resolved in much the same way the twin paradox is in special relativity. If the infalling observer were to stop just before the event horizon and return to the outside observer, he would find that, while accelerating away from the hole, the outside universe was enormously blue shifted, making up for the blue shift he did not observe while falling inward. When he met up with the outside observer and compared notes he'd find that his clock had been running much slower.

      In another way of looking at it, to the infalling observer the universe behind him is accelerating away and he would expect it to be redshifted, but it is not. The universe on the other side (light skimming the event horizon for example) IS enormously blue shifted.

    12. Re:Hawking radiation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In another way of looking at it, to the infalling observer the universe behind him is accelerating away and he would expect it to be redshifted, but it is not. The universe on the other side (light skimming the event horizon for example) IS enormously blue shifted.

      There is only an enormous blue shift if you stop before the event horizon, and the process requires an enormous amount of energy and power in order to get an enormous blue shift. But at this point you are not an infalling observer, you're a stationary one. Once you cross the event horizon, GR solutions don't allow you to stay in one place, and even with an outrageous engine that would have let you see billions of years pass by outside the event horizon would still result in you reaching the center of the black hole in a very, very short time. And if you are in free fall, even before the event horizon you'll see the outside universe red shifted, not blue shifted.

      And you can't just say things are resolved by changing what happens to the infalling observer, which is why that perspective is very relevant, including the timescales involved. This doesn't conflict with what the outside observer sees and changes on the long time scale would change what the outside observer sees, not what happens to the infalling observer. The stationary observer, is just an outside observer anyway with a different passage of time.

  5. Missing the real news here by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    before being intentionally smashed into a metaphorical brick wall.

    Surely the real news here is that they've been able to make functional use of abstract concepts.

    Next they'll announce that they've slashed the electricity bill by powering the magnets with love.

    ---

    The article could have told us what the protons were actually smashed into, instead...

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Missing the real news here by CaptainLard · · Score: 1

      No, the real news here as far as /. is concerned is that pretty much every knowledgeable user is gone.

      These stories used to take off and have comments that genuinely added to the article by actual scientists and sometimes even people working on the project. Now they struggle to get 50 comments where half are trolls, 1/4 are weak jokes, 1/8 are armchair physicists quoting junk science, 1/16 were trying for first post in a different article and the remainder is divided up into legitimate questions and responses. The numbers probably aren't all that different but apparently the informed user base has dropped below a critical mass. Its too bad because as the LHC shows, when we learn new things these days its on the grandest scale. If anyone has suggestions on where to go for such insight please let me know. /. can shine on as a repository for political circle jerking, shills, and (in far greater numbers) accusers of shills.

      Oh, and to answer your question*, the metaphorical brick wall is actually "21.6 tons of graphite, aluminum and copper known as “beam dumps." - source: the article

      *Note: In my rant I didn't bash the /. tradition of not RTFA. Thats the glue that holds us together.

    2. Re:Missing the real news here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As an actual scientists working in a related field, I find this article is pretty boring and mostly hype. It is not that the work being done is unimportant, but it is one step short of a "everything is okay alarm." It is good things are still working, and yes progress is being made, but this isn't a big milestone or much in the form of news, even for many people in the field.

      Slashdot has always had a lot of junk science and trolls in science articles. Things have gone downhill slightly, but is not crossing some sort of critical mass threshold in general (each person on the other hand may have their own cumulative BS threshold, which is why I left over sites). In some sense, it seems the general masses provide some buffer, as places that were much more science-centric with a lot more attention from knowledgeable people also get flooded with crackpots a lot quicker.

    3. Re:Missing the real news here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "... but apparently the informed user base has dropped below a critical mass."

      Beta decay.

  6. Hydrogen atoms by TropicalCoder · · Score: 1

    From the FA: "hydrogen atoms are stripped of their electrons, leaving the positively-charged protons behind". So I wonder where they get the hydrogen atoms? Hydrogen doesn't like to exist in atomic form. It much prefers company, in the form of H2. I don't think you can have a bottle of hydrogen atoms, as opposed to hydrogen molecules. Ionizing hydrogen molecules does not break apart the molecules, I wouldn't think. Maybe the article misspoke?

    1. Re:Hydrogen atoms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I googled "Proton source", image search, and this popped up:
      http://blog.vixra.org/2011/05/29/new-luminosity-record-for-lhc/

      At first glance a nice overview. This picture http://vixra.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/proton-source.jpg is your source. See the bottle of hydrogen there? :)
      It says "Linac 2" in the background, the first accelerator at Cern, for protons.

    2. Re:Hydrogen atoms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "[The H2] is piped into a duoplasmatron. Hydrogen molecules are made of two hydrogen atoms each of which contains one proton and one electron. The duoplasmatron uses some strong electric fields to tear the molecules and the atoms apart so that the protons move freely in a not plasma."

      So they used a "duoplasmatron"! I should have guessed. :)

      Thanks for the link

    3. Re:Hydrogen atoms by TropicalCoder · · Score: 1

      Oops. That was me. It appears that clicking on the "You are posting as" check box works backwards to what is intuitive. In fact, that is a funny UI, where there is what appears to be a check box to post by your account name, and a little gear symbol to post as Anon. I would expect standard radio buttons instead of this original invention. Maybe Web UI has different conventions then software? Can't be. This UI makes no sense and is unintuitive.

    4. Re:Hydrogen atoms by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ionizing hydrogen DOES break apart the molecules. The molecules are held together by their electrons, removing those breaks the bond.

      --
      Not a sentence!
    5. Re:Hydrogen atoms by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      Ionizing H2 will absolutely break apart the molecules. You know that atomic bonds are made by the electrons, right? Two protons really don't like to be anywhere near each other unless there are electrons and/or neutrons involved.

    6. Re:Hydrogen atoms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's more funny they are actually stripping the electrons from the atoms, crashing the remaining protons together at significant portions of speed of light, and you get stuck on how they are able to separete some molecules.

  7. money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's my plan:

    1) build LHC

    2) destroy the universe

    3) _____

    4) money!

    I have a pretty good idea for step 3. What I have not yet figured out is how I will spend the money once the universe no longer exists.

  8. So whens the world Killing Super black hole? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that I would pay to see !!