You do know this is a european project don't you? It didn't cost any US Dollars, Euros, Pounds and of course all the previous european currencies involved in the building of the LEP which used to live in the same tunnel but not $:o)
It's built in Europe, largely because there was already a handy-dandy tunnel there, as you say. It is, however, an international project. twitter.com/USLHC is worth a follow.
Oh, also, anyone making a "hardon" joke or linking to the "webcams" from this point forward can just fuck off. The webcams did make me laugh. Once. Over a year ago.
I love how problems are reported almost instantly, but anything interesting and successful like first beams, first splash, or first collisions, takes a day. Or two.
I wonder if we will learn new physics by comparing the speed of bad news and good news. I think pointing-and-laughing might even be superluminal.
eV does equal V in a singly charged linear accelerator.
I see where you're going with this, and indeed that is the definition - the energy imparted to an electron as it passes through a p.d. of 1V.
But the differences are many: a current flows -against- electrons, and the electrons move at drift velocity. Current is not necessarily the individual electrons themselves moving at that energy. Current is probably not even a meaningful concept if you're talking about 1 electron charge. (I can't remember how many Coloumbs that is, but it ain't many.)
The rest mass of a proton is 1830 times greater, which alters all sorts of behaviours and tipping points when it comes to collisions/diffraction/scattering/interaction. (And the binding energy of nucleons is totally different to the various Pauli spin things that go on with leptons.)
The way a hadron beam deposits energy into a target is totally different to leptons at any energy.
Hadrons and leptons behave totally differently at any sort of subatomic scale and energy - even MeV.
The strong force is dominant in quark interactions; the electroweak force is dominant with electrons.
So you may be right in terms of energy flow, and I expect a mathematical physicist could prove your equivalence in terms of Lagrangians, but I'm still not convinced this is a useful analogy at any sort of level - unless you can think of one?
Of course we could all just work in metric mosquitos.:-)
Someone pointed out the cost to cool the magnets. How would that impact energy usage?
It's a strange situation. Once the current is circulating in the superconductor, there will be zero resistance which brings down power consumption massively. Normally you spend most of your electricity just passively heating the cable that's carrying the current.
Unfortunately, you have to use an awful lot of power to keep the superconductors cool in order to obtain the superconduction in the first place.
That said, I think most of the reason for using superconductors at CERN is because of the bigger currents you can carry that way, thus, stronger electromagnets - not because of the energy consumption considerations. In other words, superconducting electros are the only way you can build a strong enough field to steer and accelerate the beam at such high energies. The efficiency of the electromagnets once cold is just a bonus.
The combination of HUGE amounts of government funding
No. Firstly, the amounts are tiny compared with the spend on many, many other government activities. There is no "huge" government spend, therefore there is no argument possible against a "huge" spend. Next!
with a real lack of credibility when it comes to the science, means that the LHC is another prime candidate for exposing as fraud.
Well, again, the LHC is the ideal device for exposing which of the current theories is worth pursuing, and which is simply, as you suggest, a gravy train.
This is why I am a big fan of the good work being done by the folks over at LHC Defence.
Well, I hope they are a little more open-minded than the tone of your post.
We need a MUCH better idea of the risks involved
You are aware there have already been several such independent exercises, right? What do you still need to know?
(as well as get a better idea of how realistic the research is)
Erm, that's what it's for. Switch it off and you'll never know.
before we allow it to go any further or allow it to receive any more taxpayer funding.
Good one. Remind me which country pulled funding for the SSC?
As I said elsewhere, Higgs is the football of the physics world - its the big game so we convince ourselves its worth watching and stand around cheering while the game is on, although we all know the outcome is completely unimportant.
Maybe so, but that does not detract from the scientific value of the LHC. The media may be obsessed with the Higgs; the CERN projects, fortunately, are not, and have been doing real science relying on the passing kindness of cosmic rays during the downtime. The LHC is the next step in particle physics and to a large extent materials science in general; anyone here who doesn't think that's important had better switch off their PC, the LCD display, and the CD they are listening to and go back to your cave.
Recommended reading: The God Particle by Leon Lederman. He was head of CERN for a while and won his Nobel prize for discovering the bottom/beauty quark at Fermilab. This is THE best book I've read on the topic. Just bear in mind that when he wrote it the SSC was going to be the next big project and LHC is largely fulfilling that role instead, as it turns out.
The period of observation isn't really a factor, because one of the things that makes this tricky is that the heavier particles such as the hypothetical Higgs decay into something else very very quickly anyway.
You don't observe these kinds of particles directly; you see the cascades of particles that they decay into pass through your detector, and then you prove that the only way that combination of particles could have appeared travelling in those directions is if they are the product of the hypothesised particle.
This article talks about how Fermilab recently went through this process for a top quark, which is a pretty similar deal. The top quark is a heavy particle you won't see in most interactions until you get to some pretty big energy densities, just like the Higgs; the difference is the energies are somewhat lower, so Fermilab has got there already.
CMS and ATLAS are both designed to ensure you detect EVERYTHING known that comes out of the collisions so you can also work out what went straight through your detectors, by looking at what energy has not been accounted for in what you picked up.
Or, there might be a whole other bunch of particles produced at 7 TeV, and no Higgs at all; plenty of papers have been written on what you might expect to see instead. Other explanations for inertial mass are available.
so it's not even powerful enough as a ray gun to boil water, let alone burn the skin of those superpowered aliens.
You're right, but for the wrong reasons. The 7 TeV is the energy of A SINGLE PROTON in the beam. If you let 'em have it with the entire beam at full luminosity, it's the equivalent of 87kg of TNT.
I presume someone marked this overrated because it had some facts in, and, y'know, a useful update. Apparently Slashdot is allergic to those now. I'll go back to making useless quips and snarky remarks, sorry to trouble you!
Well, that does seem to imply some actual damage. Could you provide a link to the full document? I'm trying to find out some actual facts of the case instead of all this ridiculous speculation.
It also implies that a lot of security "professionals" in the DoD should be sacked, if not jailed for negligence. No-one in the Whitehouse seems to be proposing that, do they?
The article itself makes it clear in the very first sentence that his relatives expect him to commit suicide before he can be extradited. The slashdot summary would rather imply that the evil America would be killing him.
I can assure you that many British voters will conclude that the Home Secretary killed him.
I suspect that the reason why the pace has quickened now is because either of the opposition parties, whichever of them comes to power in May, will likely block this if for no other reason than to make a point, so the Labour government is forcing this through as quickly as they can so that doesn't happen and McKinnon doesn't get to thumb his nose at them.
I quite like this theory. It would explain why a senior cabinet minister has chosen to overrule the select committee and chosen to interfere with the process of law, which he doesn't really have the remit to do.
In fact the govt here have just set up a Supreme Court specifically as a message to say they don't want this kind of political interference with the law to go on... so there's hope yet that Johnson may realise he's overstepped the mark.
[quote]This seems to be a straightforward case of illegally breaking into government computers. His medical condition complicates the matter but it doesn't excuse the behavior. He was well aware of the fact he was breaking the law and compromising security.[/quote] Fair enough. But does this deserve 50 years in jail? Does it really?
Slashdot Mirror
...doesn't it? Multiple cores, strongly interconnected? What have Intel done that is new here?
Tell me when it actually does something interesting, like, say, particle collision.
Already has - AND the first paper has been published.
Fixed that for you.
You do know this is a european project don't you? It didn't cost any US Dollars, Euros, Pounds and of course all the previous european currencies involved in the building of the LEP which used to live in the same tunnel but not $ :o)
It's built in Europe, largely because there was already a handy-dandy tunnel there, as you say. It is, however, an international project. twitter.com/USLHC is worth a follow.
Oh, also, anyone making a "hardon" joke or linking to the "webcams" from this point forward can just fuck off. The webcams did make me laugh. Once. Over a year ago.
That is all.
is it possible someone has been sabotaging it from the inside or even outside?
Well, that about covers all the bases...
There's always "from above", using only a baguette.
Kilgore Trout, fictional writer of fiction, also appears in Illuminatus, a different work of fiction.
Offtopic, but anyone who reads this far down a "hardon" thread deserves it.
I love how problems are reported almost instantly, but anything interesting and successful like first beams, first splash, or first collisions, takes a day. Or two.
I wonder if we will learn new physics by comparing the speed of bad news and good news. I think pointing-and-laughing might even be superluminal.
eV does equal V in a singly charged linear accelerator.
I see where you're going with this, and indeed that is the definition - the energy imparted to an electron as it passes through a p.d. of 1V.
But the differences are many: a current flows -against- electrons, and the electrons move at drift velocity. Current is not necessarily the individual electrons themselves moving at that energy. Current is probably not even a meaningful concept if you're talking about 1 electron charge. (I can't remember how many Coloumbs that is, but it ain't many.)
The rest mass of a proton is 1830 times greater, which alters all sorts of behaviours and tipping points when it comes to collisions/diffraction/scattering/interaction. (And the binding energy of nucleons is totally different to the various Pauli spin things that go on with leptons.)
The way a hadron beam deposits energy into a target is totally different to leptons at any energy.
Hadrons and leptons behave totally differently at any sort of subatomic scale and energy - even MeV.
The strong force is dominant in quark interactions; the electroweak force is dominant with electrons.
So you may be right in terms of energy flow, and I expect a mathematical physicist could prove your equivalence in terms of Lagrangians, but I'm still not convinced this is a useful analogy at any sort of level - unless you can think of one?
Of course we could all just work in metric mosquitos. :-)
Someone pointed out the cost to cool the magnets. How would that impact energy usage?
It's a strange situation. Once the current is circulating in the superconductor, there will be zero resistance which brings down power consumption massively. Normally you spend most of your electricity just passively heating the cable that's carrying the current.
Unfortunately, you have to use an awful lot of power to keep the superconductors cool in order to obtain the superconduction in the first place.
That said, I think most of the reason for using superconductors at CERN is because of the bigger currents you can carry that way, thus, stronger electromagnets - not because of the energy consumption considerations. In other words, superconducting electros are the only way you can build a strong enough field to steer and accelerate the beam at such high energies. The efficiency of the electromagnets once cold is just a bonus.
Now you're mixing metaphors. Higgs isn't part of string theory. See what you mean, though.
The combination of HUGE amounts of government funding
No. Firstly, the amounts are tiny compared with the spend on many, many other government activities. There is no "huge" government spend, therefore there is no argument possible against a "huge" spend. Next!
with a real lack of credibility when it comes to the science, means that the LHC is another prime candidate for exposing as fraud.
Well, again, the LHC is the ideal device for exposing which of the current theories is worth pursuing, and which is simply, as you suggest, a gravy train.
This is why I am a big fan of the good work being done by the folks over at LHC Defence.
Well, I hope they are a little more open-minded than the tone of your post.
We need a MUCH better idea of the risks involved
You are aware there have already been several such independent exercises, right? What do you still need to know?
(as well as get a better idea of how realistic the research is)
Erm, that's what it's for. Switch it off and you'll never know.
before we allow it to go any further or allow it to receive any more taxpayer funding.
Good one. Remind me which country pulled funding for the SSC?
As I said elsewhere, Higgs is the football of the physics world - its the big game so we convince ourselves its worth watching and stand around cheering while the game is on, although we all know the outcome is completely unimportant.
Maybe so, but that does not detract from the scientific value of the LHC.
The media may be obsessed with the Higgs; the CERN projects, fortunately, are not, and have been doing real science relying on the passing kindness of cosmic rays during the downtime.
The LHC is the next step in particle physics and to a large extent materials science in general; anyone here who doesn't think that's important had better switch off their PC, the LCD display, and the CD they are listening to and go back to your cave.
Recommended reading: The God Particle by Leon Lederman. He was head of CERN for a while and won his Nobel prize for discovering the bottom/beauty quark at Fermilab. This is THE best book I've read on the topic. Just bear in mind that when he wrote it the SSC was going to be the next big project and LHC is largely fulfilling that role instead, as it turns out.
The period of observation isn't really a factor, because one of the things that makes this tricky is that the heavier particles such as the hypothetical Higgs decay into something else very very quickly anyway.
You don't observe these kinds of particles directly; you see the cascades of particles that they decay into pass through your detector, and then you prove that the only way that combination of particles could have appeared travelling in those directions is if they are the product of the hypothesised particle.
This article talks about how Fermilab recently went through this process for a top quark, which is a pretty similar deal. The top quark is a heavy particle you won't see in most interactions until you get to some pretty big energy densities, just like the Higgs; the difference is the energies are somewhat lower, so Fermilab has got there already.
CMS and ATLAS are both designed to ensure you detect EVERYTHING known that comes out of the collisions so you can also work out what went straight through your detectors, by looking at what energy has not been accounted for in what you picked up.
Or, there might be a whole other bunch of particles produced at 7 TeV, and no Higgs at all; plenty of papers have been written on what you might expect to see instead. Other explanations for inertial mass are available.
so it's not even powerful enough as a ray gun to boil water, let alone burn the skin of those superpowered aliens.
You're right, but for the wrong reasons. The 7 TeV is the energy of A SINGLE PROTON in the beam.
If you let 'em have it with the entire beam at full luminosity, it's the equivalent of 87kg of TNT.
Fantastic, thanks. Will read and digest, and hope to have an INFORMED opinion. INFORMED. Are you listening, Slashdotters?
I presume someone marked this overrated because it had some facts in, and, y'know, a useful update. Apparently Slashdot is allergic to those now. I'll go back to making useless quips and snarky remarks, sorry to trouble you!
Well, that does seem to imply some actual damage. Could you provide a link to the full document? I'm trying to find out some actual facts of the case instead of all this ridiculous speculation.
It also implies that a lot of security "professionals" in the DoD should be sacked, if not jailed for negligence. No-one in the Whitehouse seems to be proposing that, do they?
Now I suspect everyone with an agenda is looking for a system with a weak password.
Including the Pentagon, ironically.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8382066.stm
This is for a judicial review of the Home Office decision. So they've not played the European or the Human Rights cards yet.
And with that, my karma-whoring is complete.
The article itself makes it clear in the very first sentence that his relatives expect him to commit suicide before he can be extradited. The slashdot summary would rather imply that the evil America would be killing him.
I can assure you that many British voters will conclude that the Home Secretary killed him.
I suspect that the reason why the pace has quickened now is because either of the opposition parties, whichever of them comes to power in May, will likely block this if for no other reason than to make a point, so the Labour government is forcing this through as quickly as they can so that doesn't happen and McKinnon doesn't get to thumb his nose at them.
I quite like this theory. It would explain why a senior cabinet minister has chosen to overrule the select committee and chosen to interfere with the process of law, which he doesn't really have the remit to do.
In fact the govt here have just set up a Supreme Court specifically as a message to say they don't want this kind of political interference with the law to go on... so there's hope yet that Johnson may realise he's overstepped the mark.
Well, he won a peace prize. Maybe a symmetrical extradition agreement between two major world powers is something he could do to justify it.
[quote]This seems to be a straightforward case of illegally breaking into government computers. His medical condition complicates the matter but it doesn't excuse the behavior. He was well aware of the fact he was breaking the law and compromising security.[/quote]
Fair enough. But does this deserve 50 years in jail? Does it really?
Did he cause damage? Or did he just break into systems and look at stuff? Genuine question.
You have my vote, but for a different reason. If we start over, we might get rid of Flash, and that would be a good thing in so many ways.