Really?! Oh, please hire me! Oh please! I am so in need of a job!! After noone hires people with Ph.D.s from IV league colleges these days!:( Afterall, I would work just for bread and water sir! -- but only if you give me enough money to space-qualify the latest Intel Itanium! Oh, I should tell that to Pat when he visits us next. Honestly, he might be interested...
And if you are such a space guru, do us a favor and buy yourself a one-way ticket on the next Soyuz flight. Will you??
And when we power up the LHC, who knows maybe we'll send a 7TeV beam in your general direction... Afterall, that's how CERN pays its best people;)
So you are a space-program software expert. Oh-no! Don't I have a lot to say to you!
First of all, I dont work for NASA! I am not an engineer; I am a scientist. I worked on a science experiment for the ISS which is now delayed beyond the shuttle schedule so probably will never feel weightless! I know plenty of NASA engineers but none with an attitude like yours, I must admit!! Surely, they might throw around their weight a bit, state that they are just bloody smart when it comes to *foo* but noone at NASA had yet thrown me the "I'm rich" clause, which do me, sounds pathetic. Who cares?! You realize that you are not the richest guy hanging out on this/. thread surely?! And if you are so bothered and if you are "so" rich, surely, you can always make a "little more money" and put your money where your mouth is! -- Pedantic point is that I had meant that the American government will never pay the Chinese to put astronauts to space,.. but ok, that point has been long lost! And yes, I do want to see a team of 50 Chinese engineers build something that goes past "low earth orbit"! Please dont give me sub-orbital crap! I simply couldn't care less! We are discussing the Saturn V here, afterall!
It takes money to do the design, and it's expensive to test, but all the engineering exists, is accessible, and to put it bluntly, not difficult.
Second, I am not talking about computers. I used to be a *hardware* person for our ISS project. After I saw the software system that we had to use to control our experiment and downlink our data from the ISS, I ran away! (Ok, we were going to strain the system quite a bit as we were going to be largest data-producer on the ISS. ) And really, from the way that you put it, it is clear that you have no clue how much testing one has to do. You only see it as "expensive." It is expensive for a reason; it *is* just bloody *difficult*! That's what I am trying to say! Lots and lots of things fail in testing and you have to go back to the drawing board... And remember, any test that NASA does for shuttle components are for "low-earth-orbit"... For anything that goes beyond low-earth-orbit, requirements get tougher; tolerances get tighter. If you think it is not difficult to put stuff beyond "low-earth-orbit," please go out and make what your think is "little more money" and do it! Prove me wrong! I am dying to see that!
Third. I am probably wasting my time here. If you worked as a software guy for NASA for long and still dont get how damn tough it is for the hardware guys, you simply will never get it...
I am not working for NASA! And I am definitely not an engineer! I have five degrees and none include engineering. And really, you haven't been reading your science news, sir! Space science is not the most expensive science project we do anymore!!! (Besides, there is hardly any science left on the ISS...)
I am a guide and I know that the CERN visits service is overwhelmed with requests. So if you want a tour, contact the experiment's secretariats directly and ask for a tour. This works a lot better. The major experiments that one should see are ATLAS and CMS. I dont know who to e-mail for CMS but for ATLAS, send e-mail to Atlas.Secretariat@cern.ch
And I have to add... It takes a lot more than 50 engineers to do this. Right now, I am working on what I think is the Saturn-V equivalent of our age, and we are 2000-strong, have sunk about 5 billion dollars into it and still feeling like this monstrous thing we are building is a lot bigger than we can do... ( If you can't guess what I am working on, you haven't been reading your Science news. )
First, a pedantic point: Anything that is built to fly Americans, will never be built by Russians or the Chinese.
Second, most materials that NASA uses are *ancient* for it takes eons to space-qualify materials for manned space-flight. Note that I say "manned" here. The requirements are not as stringent for unmanned space flight equipment. To qualify some material for the shuttle, you have to do temperature cycling under vacuum, check outgassing, pass all sorts of tough radiation tests, check again that it does not outgas, do another temperature cycle, then vibration test it, shock test it, make sure it does not break, document the whole thing to ridiculous detail, then go back do that all over again, and again, and after you have made sure that it ain't going to break, the shock test it to destruction and document how it breaks. I've space-qualified a few items for the ISS and I would not want to do that again. And really, NASA does not use any cutting-edge materials technology for the obvious reason that it is just damn expensive.
So you can argue that we could built the Saturn V out of materials qualified for the Shuttle program. But those may not be good enough beyond low earth orbit. And it is a whole different story to cross the van Allen belts... Even then the materials used in the Shuttle program are 20 years old technology. The newest stuff will take 10 years to trickle down/up to space.
In some sense, we have lost the know-how. You are only thinking of computer parts, I think. But a lot of the technology that went into building very large engine nozzles and things like that are lost...
You are absolutely right. I talked to one of the astronauts on Apollo 16/17 (I can't remember which one) while he was helping out at the Saturn V exhibit at KSC. He was a test-pilot for several things which I can not recall... He said that the know-how is lost and NASA could not build the Saturn V again in a reasonable time-scale anytime soon... There was some talk of a Mars mission even back then in 2002 and I remember that he simply laughed when we asked him about that.
My own experience with NASA can only confirm that. Especially the material science of space-flight qualified equipment is absolute black-magic and the black-art of the Apollo missions has been lost with the retirement of the Saturn V. The shuttle is a whole different ball game afterall... Low earth orbit is only 250miles away!
This AC is right on track. It is an awfully tough job, requires years and years of training. And then you have to get into this tiny little capsule and do not have much to do unless something goes wrong! Imagine having trained for something for 5-6 years and having waited 5-6 years for the flight, and then finally, you are about to ride on a massive mostly-uncontrolled explosion... Only if something goes wrong, you get to do something! Your fate is in the hands of others and of nature.
Personally, I know that I would need a stiff drink before that -- and well, there goes another reason why I am not an astronaut -- but I know a few astronauts and I know they have nerves made of steel... I doubt that such drinking is common among astronauts -- though I would bet that it is common place for cosmonauts! The other question here is, what it means to be "drunk". Maybe the limits are tighter than those for driving a vehicle? If you have one shot of whiskey before launch, does that make you "drunk" by NASA standards?
What part of such an LHC-observation scenario do you find as "total nonsense"? Afterall, physics (especially the LHC) needs two things: 1) a multitude of theories to debunk and 2) money. There are theorists which will "die" if the LHC does not observe large extra dimensions. So most such theorists say: "if this theory is correct, then large extra dimensions must be small enough so that we havent observed them before but are large enough to be observed at the LHC." I can see nothing that can be called total nonsense here -- as long as the clause "if this theory is correct" is included.
And I am an experimentalist. With very little taste for things that theorists believe to be true. So there you go... I spend my days hoping to reproduce a mini-singularity one day...;)
Hm... That's a really very tough one. First of all, take dark matter... I can count 7 (much-publicized) theories off the top of my head. Which one are you going to fix?
Second. Well, there has been a few theories about dark energy but none of them have been greatly publicized. The truth is they are more whackier than dark matter theories. Now, you are suggesting that we go and fix the errors in them?! Huh? We dont even know which one is the one that matches reality most closely.
Third. Yes, astrophysicists did try to put dark energy under the rug for a few years. But they failed as the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) precision measurements require a dark energy component. There is no way that you could get the same observables otherwise. So, really, you can not blame them for fixing their observations to meet their theory. There was no theory about dark energy until after it was observed.
I agree with you. RMS has made his position clear several times over. He gave a talk at CERN a few weeks ago. A video of his talk *used* to be available in the free ogg format through this
site. But then someone probably high up in IT, objected evidently, and they sent off an e-mail to RMS, asking him to approve that it should also be released in the CERN-IT approved standard formats. Now, I dont know what that format is, but I am guessing that it is proprietary! And so, I doubt RMS will ever approve it... Anyways, back to the point... I was there for his talk and also downloaded the ogg back when it was available and here is a short transcript of what he had to say about Torvalds. After insisting that GNU be included in the name of the distribution to give credit to the free software developers and to avoid confusion, he said "This confusion led people to think that the whole system was
Mr. Torvald's work and [..] think that the whole system came from his vision of the world." And continued with...
"Torvalds does not support the ideas of freedom that I have been telling you about. He never did. [..] He calls himself apolitical which refers to the political position that we should make important political decisions according to short term practical convinience. He says he values powerful reliable software and that's all. He is against the idea that all users should have freedom and he has demonstrated this by conspicious involvement with non-free software. Ten years ago, he worked for a company in which his job was to develop non-free software. Five years ago, he used a non-free program in a very public way for the development of Linux which sent the wrong message to the community and I criticised him for that. Well, he has the right to his views. [..] What I object to is that people think that our work was done by him and when our work serves as the platform for him to state his views and to drown us out. And that's what happens if you call the system Linux. It's not fair to do that because it means you are failing to give us credit for our work. [..] So please call the system GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux. [..] But, there is something more important at stake and that's called freedom. There are people who would like to take away your freedom. The only way to keep your freedom is if you are prepared to defend it. "
Great, except the fact that the concept of a "year" will be lost on future generations. If not that, still, it will be different. So better define it somewhere in your poem.
Well, the US has got several valuable neutrino projects, which often gets overlooked. Don't forget LIGO... Also, the US has a lot of potential for doing science (particularly particle physics) in space, which is a boat that it is missing by stopping the shuttle program and concentrating on Mars... which is sad... Big science is hard to fund, when the administration is this ignorant. But still, there are lots of small, cute particle physics experiments cropping up everywhere, from dark matter detection to measurement of "G" and those dont require as high budgets, so there is still hope!! I am worried about the ILC, however...
If you are physics undergrad at a US university, I highly recommend the CERN summer student program. You can probably get NSF or DOE to fund you. It is totally worth applying to, although the chances of getting in are slim. To be at CERN when the LHC starts up next summer, is an experience worth fighting for! And really, I would not worry about finding work if I were you... If you already know what ITER is, you are in good shape.
Ok, so this is off topic, but might be interesting to those curious about what's happening at CERN.
Allan Cameron and Ron Howard was at CERN last week. Here is a photo.
Tom Hanks will be here in two weeks to visit the LHC and in the fall, Angels and Deamons will be filmed at CERN... Why the hurry? It has only been two months since the cast has been selected?! Presumably, they want to shoot before the LHC closure sometime in March... ?
It is so hard not to be jealous sitting at CERN. But, it is a good sort of jealousy really. I just hope I get data one day... You guys over there in Fermilab are doing an awesome job! Keep up the good work!:)
I wish we were all at the SSC right now, but oh well...
Both really! Both of the two huge detector collaborations have had some trouble getting the detectors together and functioning. They are called ATLAS and CMS. ATLAS detectors are slightly better integrated than CMS right now -- especially the fact that CMS is missing part of their endcap-calorimeters is unfortunate. (This is due to the difficulties in manufacturing the crystals in their calorimeters.) Such a deficiency effects their missing-E_T measurement, which is crucial in finding a dark matter candidate. I am hoping that CMS can complete this detector before startup. ATLAS, on the other hand, has all detectors installed now, but is having some trouble getting the cooling in the inner detector region stably running. So if the LHC was starting up in November, both detectors would be running in less-than-ideal conditions. Presumably, this delay now gives both a chance to complete missing parts or to be able to operate them under stable conditions.
Storing all the data is also a problem. Both of the detectors' data models are larger now than previously thought. This increases the requirements on storage and also the computing power necessary. Not only that, but the computing centers have not ramped up as fast as we thought they would... May sounds like a reasonable time scale to solve both of these problems.
Yes. But (1) deserves more mention. It is also to minimize the impact of the environment on the machine. The LHC is right outside of Geneva, in what is essentially a residential area. To build tunnels/bridges for roads everytime it has to go across the LHC ring, would be awful and probably end up costing more in the long run. Moreover, by building something under the ground, the vibrations that effect the beam are minimized as well as the day/night, summer/winter temperature variations.
As a physicist at CERN, I'd love to see Fermilab publish some 5-sigma signal on something just as the LHC starts up. I think this would be a huge morale booster for **physicists in general** -- not just for Fermilab or, even a smaller sub-set of that, American physicists. And note, I am saying here a 5-sigma signal! Not necessarily the Higgs. Any other high-energy discovery which then the LHC would confirm and continue on, would be awesome. (Cascade B is simply not high-energy enough!)
Such a high-profile discovery would boost the morale here at CERN significantly. I think almost everyone has this fear, which often people are scared to put into words, that we might turn the detectors on and really, see nothing. There are lots of talks from theorists lately which hide the Higgs, and then hide other physics away by using different mechanisms, suggesting that we might, indeed, see nothing... That is absolutely the worst scenario!
aside I see that a lot of/.ers here think the Fermilab/CERN race as some sort of an American/European race. This is completely bull! There are ~800 Americans working at CERN and vice versa. Half of my research group at CERN is or has worked at Fermilab... I think if Fermilab discovers something, I think most of CERN would be delighted! Afterall, chances are Fermilab might be able to discover something but will not be able to measure the properties of said-particle, such as spin. Presumably, the LHC should be able to do this better... Seeing something at the LHC that is new, even if "just-discovered" by Fermilab, is better than the prospects of "seeing nothing."
Yes, it is completely not related to the Higgs. The person writing the gist should have consulted with a physicist or someone before writing it! This particle is at 9GeV and the Higgs is at least at 114GeV. That's quite far away in energy...
The supposed Higgs signal seen at D0 is an excess of H->bb events around 160-180GeV. There is a bump, of fairly high significance, about 4sigma deviations from the calculated background, but the background is not well-understood and this will probably turn out to be due to a detector effect or some other background. The other experiment at Fermilab, CDF, is not seeing such an excess so it is highly unlikely that this is real! (These are the rumors going around in the CERN cafeteria, which are not to be trusted. But, there you do, rumors are rumors.) There is also some talk that the luminosity that the detector has so far seen is not enough by Standard Model calculations, to be sensitive to such a signal, so that this would require it to be a non-Standard Model Higgs, if confirmed.
I dont believe I am propogating such rumors. But it is, in any case, at least, somewhat physicially plausible, unlike what the gist suggests, that a 9GeV particle could trigger rumors about a particle which is about ~10 heavier!
While I am at it, I should mention my favorite LHC factoid: that a ~1/3 of the world's helium supply will be in the LHC. It is what is needed to keep all the 27km of LHC ring at 2Kelvin.
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Really?! Oh, please hire me! Oh please! I am so in need of a job!! After noone hires people with Ph.D.s from IV league colleges these days! :( Afterall, I would work just for bread and water sir! -- but only if you give me enough money to space-qualify the latest Intel Itanium! Oh, I should tell that to Pat when he visits us next. Honestly, he might be interested...
And if you are such a space guru, do us a favor and buy yourself a one-way ticket on the next Soyuz flight. Will you??
And when we power up the LHC, who knows maybe we'll send a 7TeV beam in your general direction... Afterall, that's how CERN pays its best people ;)
Congrats sir! You made it! Wow, the American dream...
Honestly, for me to spend it all, well, all it takes is writing a check to UNESCO. Well, ok, maybe a few smaller ones to Oxfam, FSF and others.
So you are a space-program software expert. Oh-no! Don't I have a lot to say to you!
First of all, I dont work for NASA! I am not an engineer; I am a scientist. I worked on a science experiment for the ISS which is now delayed beyond the shuttle schedule so probably will never feel weightless! I know plenty of NASA engineers but none with an attitude like yours, I must admit!! Surely, they might throw around their weight a bit, state that they are just bloody smart when it comes to *foo* but noone at NASA had yet thrown me the "I'm rich" clause, which do me, sounds pathetic. Who cares?! You realize that you are not the richest guy hanging out on this /. thread surely?! And if you are so bothered and if you are "so" rich, surely, you can always make a "little more money" and put your money where your mouth is! -- Pedantic point is that I had meant that the American government will never pay the Chinese to put astronauts to space,.. but ok, that point has been long lost! And yes, I do want to see a team of 50 Chinese engineers build something that goes past "low earth orbit"! Please dont give me sub-orbital crap! I simply couldn't care less! We are discussing the Saturn V here, afterall!
It takes money to do the design, and it's expensive to test, but all the engineering exists, is accessible, and to put it bluntly, not difficult.
Second, I am not talking about computers. I used to be a *hardware* person for our ISS project. After I saw the software system that we had to use to control our experiment and downlink our data from the ISS, I ran away! (Ok, we were going to strain the system quite a bit as we were going to be largest data-producer on the ISS. ) And really, from the way that you put it, it is clear that you have no clue how much testing one has to do. You only see it as "expensive." It is expensive for a reason; it *is* just bloody *difficult*! That's what I am trying to say! Lots and lots of things fail in testing and you have to go back to the drawing board... And remember, any test that NASA does for shuttle components are for "low-earth-orbit"... For anything that goes beyond low-earth-orbit, requirements get tougher; tolerances get tighter. If you think it is not difficult to put stuff beyond "low-earth-orbit," please go out and make what your think is "little more money" and do it! Prove me wrong! I am dying to see that!
Third. I am probably wasting my time here. If you worked as a software guy for NASA for long and still dont get how damn tough it is for the hardware guys, you simply will never get it...
Oh dear! You need a clue or two!
I am not working for NASA! And I am definitely not an engineer! I have five degrees and none include engineering. And really, you haven't been reading your science news, sir! Space science is not the most expensive science project we do anymore!!! (Besides, there is hardly any science left on the ISS...)
I am a guide and I know that the CERN visits service is overwhelmed with requests. So if you want a tour, contact the experiment's secretariats directly and ask for a tour. This works a lot better. The major experiments that one should see are ATLAS and CMS. I dont know who to e-mail for CMS but for ATLAS, send e-mail to Atlas.Secretariat@cern.ch
And I have to add... It takes a lot more than 50 engineers to do this. Right now, I am working on what I think is the Saturn-V equivalent of our age, and we are 2000-strong, have sunk about 5 billion dollars into it and still feeling like this monstrous thing we are building is a lot bigger than we can do... ( If you can't guess what I am working on, you haven't been reading your Science news. )
Nope! You are dreaming!
First, a pedantic point: Anything that is built to fly Americans, will never be built by Russians or the Chinese.
Second, most materials that NASA uses are *ancient* for it takes eons to space-qualify materials for manned space-flight. Note that I say "manned" here. The requirements are not as stringent for unmanned space flight equipment. To qualify some material for the shuttle, you have to do temperature cycling under vacuum, check outgassing, pass all sorts of tough radiation tests, check again that it does not outgas, do another temperature cycle, then vibration test it, shock test it, make sure it does not break, document the whole thing to ridiculous detail, then go back do that all over again, and again, and after you have made sure that it ain't going to break, the shock test it to destruction and document how it breaks. I've space-qualified a few items for the ISS and I would not want to do that again. And really, NASA does not use any cutting-edge materials technology for the obvious reason that it is just damn expensive.
So you can argue that we could built the Saturn V out of materials qualified for the Shuttle program. But those may not be good enough beyond low earth orbit. And it is a whole different story to cross the van Allen belts... Even then the materials used in the Shuttle program are 20 years old technology. The newest stuff will take 10 years to trickle down/up to space.
In some sense, we have lost the know-how. You are only thinking of computer parts, I think. But a lot of the technology that went into building very large engine nozzles and things like that are lost...
You are absolutely right. I talked to one of the astronauts on Apollo 16/17 (I can't remember which one) while he was helping out at the Saturn V exhibit at KSC. He was a test-pilot for several things which I can not recall... He said that the know-how is lost and NASA could not build the Saturn V again in a reasonable time-scale anytime soon... There was some talk of a Mars mission even back then in 2002 and I remember that he simply laughed when we asked him about that.
My own experience with NASA can only confirm that. Especially the material science of space-flight qualified equipment is absolute black-magic and the black-art of the Apollo missions has been lost with the retirement of the Saturn V. The shuttle is a whole different ball game afterall... Low earth orbit is only 250miles away!
I agree, especially when there are people who are sabotaging flight equipment! Who would do that and why??
Here is a link to the story.
This AC is right on track. It is an awfully tough job, requires years and years of training. And then you have to get into this tiny little capsule and do not have much to do unless something goes wrong! Imagine having trained for something for 5-6 years and having waited 5-6 years for the flight, and then finally, you are about to ride on a massive mostly-uncontrolled explosion... Only if something goes wrong, you get to do something! Your fate is in the hands of others and of nature.
Personally, I know that I would need a stiff drink before that -- and well, there goes another reason why I am not an astronaut -- but I know a few astronauts and I know they have nerves made of steel... I doubt that such drinking is common among astronauts -- though I would bet that it is common place for cosmonauts! The other question here is, what it means to be "drunk". Maybe the limits are tighter than those for driving a vehicle? If you have one shot of whiskey before launch, does that make you "drunk" by NASA standards?
What part of such an LHC-observation scenario do you find as "total nonsense"? Afterall, physics (especially the LHC) needs two things: 1) a multitude of theories to debunk and 2) money. There are theorists which will "die" if the LHC does not observe large extra dimensions. So most such theorists say: "if this theory is correct, then large extra dimensions must be small enough so that we havent observed them before but are large enough to be observed at the LHC." I can see nothing that can be called total nonsense here -- as long as the clause "if this theory is correct" is included.
And I am an experimentalist. With very little taste for things that theorists believe to be true. So there you go... I spend my days hoping to reproduce a mini-singularity one day... ;)
Hm... That's a really very tough one. First of all, take dark matter... I can count 7 (much-publicized) theories off the top of my head. Which one are you going to fix?
Second. Well, there has been a few theories about dark energy but none of them have been greatly publicized. The truth is they are more whackier than dark matter theories. Now, you are suggesting that we go and fix the errors in them?! Huh? We dont even know which one is the one that matches reality most closely.
Third. Yes, astrophysicists did try to put dark energy under the rug for a few years. But they failed as the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) precision measurements require a dark energy component. There is no way that you could get the same observables otherwise. So, really, you can not blame them for fixing their observations to meet their theory. There was no theory about dark energy until after it was observed.
Wow. I thought the whole world had heard about this one... Any google search on Torvalds and bitkeeper will tell you: http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/05/02/18OPopen ent_1.html
I agree with you. RMS has made his position clear several times over. He gave a talk at CERN a few weeks ago. A video of his talk *used* to be available in the free ogg format through this site. But then someone probably high up in IT, objected evidently, and they sent off an e-mail to RMS, asking him to approve that it should also be released in the CERN-IT approved standard formats. Now, I dont know what that format is, but I am guessing that it is proprietary! And so, I doubt RMS will ever approve it... Anyways, back to the point... I was there for his talk and also downloaded the ogg back when it was available and here is a short transcript of what he had to say about Torvalds. After insisting that GNU be included in the name of the distribution to give credit to the free software developers and to avoid confusion, he said "This confusion led people to think that the whole system was Mr. Torvald's work and [..] think that the whole system came from his vision of the world." And continued with...
"Torvalds does not support the ideas of freedom that I have been telling you about. He never did. [..] He calls himself apolitical which refers to the political position that we should make important political decisions according to short term practical convinience. He says he values powerful reliable software and that's all. He is against the idea that all users should have freedom and he has demonstrated this by conspicious involvement with non-free software. Ten years ago, he worked for a company in which his job was to develop non-free software. Five years ago, he used a non-free program in a very public way for the development of Linux which sent the wrong message to the community and I criticised him for that. Well, he has the right to his views. [..] What I object to is that people think that our work was done by him and when our work serves as the platform for him to state his views and to drown us out. And that's what happens if you call the system Linux. It's not fair to do that because it means you are failing to give us credit for our work. [..] So please call the system GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux. [..] But, there is something more important at stake and that's called freedom. There are people who would like to take away your freedom. The only way to keep your freedom is if you are prepared to defend it. "
Great, except the fact that the concept of a "year" will be lost on future generations. If not that, still, it will be different. So better define it somewhere in your poem.
Well, the US has got several valuable neutrino projects, which often gets overlooked. Don't forget LIGO... Also, the US has a lot of potential for doing science (particularly particle physics) in space, which is a boat that it is missing by stopping the shuttle program and concentrating on Mars... which is sad... Big science is hard to fund, when the administration is this ignorant. But still, there are lots of small, cute particle physics experiments cropping up everywhere, from dark matter detection to measurement of "G" and those dont require as high budgets, so there is still hope!! I am worried about the ILC, however...
If you are physics undergrad at a US university, I highly recommend the CERN summer student program. You can probably get NSF or DOE to fund you. It is totally worth applying to, although the chances of getting in are slim. To be at CERN when the LHC starts up next summer, is an experience worth fighting for! And really, I would not worry about finding work if I were you... If you already know what ITER is, you are in good shape.
Ok, so this is off topic, but might be interesting to those curious about what's happening at CERN.
Allan Cameron and Ron Howard was at CERN last week. Here is a photo.
Tom Hanks will be here in two weeks to visit the LHC and in the fall, Angels and Deamons will be filmed at CERN... Why the hurry? It has only been two months since the cast has been selected?! Presumably, they want to shoot before the LHC closure sometime in March... ?
It is so hard not to be jealous sitting at CERN. But, it is a good sort of jealousy really. I just hope I get data one day... You guys over there in Fermilab are doing an awesome job! Keep up the good work! :)
I wish we were all at the SSC right now, but oh well...
Storing all the data is also a problem. Both of the detectors' data models are larger now than previously thought. This increases the requirements on storage and also the computing power necessary. Not only that, but the computing centers have not ramped up as fast as we thought they would... May sounds like a reasonable time scale to solve both of these problems.
Brilliant! That explains why I could not find my way to work this morning!!
Yes. But (1) deserves more mention. It is also to minimize the impact of the environment on the machine. The LHC is right outside of Geneva, in what is essentially a residential area. To build tunnels/bridges for roads everytime it has to go across the LHC ring, would be awful and probably end up costing more in the long run. Moreover, by building something under the ground, the vibrations that effect the beam are minimized as well as the day/night, summer/winter temperature variations.
As a physicist at CERN, I'd love to see Fermilab publish some 5-sigma signal on something just as the LHC starts up. I think this would be a huge morale booster for **physicists in general** -- not just for Fermilab or, even a smaller sub-set of that, American physicists. And note, I am saying here a 5-sigma signal! Not necessarily the Higgs. Any other high-energy discovery which then the LHC would confirm and continue on, would be awesome. (Cascade B is simply not high-energy enough!)
Such a high-profile discovery would boost the morale here at CERN significantly. I think almost everyone has this fear, which often people are scared to put into words, that we might turn the detectors on and really, see nothing. There are lots of talks from theorists lately which hide the Higgs, and then hide other physics away by using different mechanisms, suggesting that we might, indeed, see nothing... That is absolutely the worst scenario!
aside I see that a lot of /.ers here think the Fermilab/CERN race as some sort of an American/European race. This is completely bull! There are ~800 Americans working at CERN and vice versa. Half of my research group at CERN is or has worked at Fermilab... I think if Fermilab discovers something, I think most of CERN would be delighted! Afterall, chances are Fermilab might be able to discover something but will not be able to measure the properties of said-particle, such as spin. Presumably, the LHC should be able to do this better... Seeing something at the LHC that is new, even if "just-discovered" by Fermilab, is better than the prospects of "seeing nothing."
Yes, it is completely not related to the Higgs. The person writing the gist should have consulted with a physicist or someone before writing it! This particle is at 9GeV and the Higgs is at least at 114GeV. That's quite far away in energy...
The supposed Higgs signal seen at D0 is an excess of H->bb events around 160-180GeV. There is a bump, of fairly high significance, about 4sigma deviations from the calculated background, but the background is not well-understood and this will probably turn out to be due to a detector effect or some other background. The other experiment at Fermilab, CDF, is not seeing such an excess so it is highly unlikely that this is real! (These are the rumors going around in the CERN cafeteria, which are not to be trusted. But, there you do, rumors are rumors.) There is also some talk that the luminosity that the detector has so far seen is not enough by Standard Model calculations, to be sensitive to such a signal, so that this would require it to be a non-Standard Model Higgs, if confirmed.
I dont believe I am propogating such rumors. But it is, in any case, at least, somewhat physicially plausible, unlike what the gist suggests, that a 9GeV particle could trigger rumors about a particle which is about ~10 heavier!
No, NASA uses the word "issue" instead of the word "problem" actually.
While I am at it, I should mention my favorite LHC factoid: that a ~1/3 of the world's helium supply will be in the LHC. It is what is needed to keep all the 27km of LHC ring at 2Kelvin.