The easiest answer is that it is for understanding the underlying world better than we do today. The whole scientific world can be worked up in a hierarchical structure.
The fundamental layer is where the deeper understanding of the universe and interactions are explained, the four interactions that we know now, the elementary particle content etc.
Then comes the layer that has atomic physics that explains how the fundamental particles behave in combined systems, how they can interact in complex structures and what rules there are about such reactions etc.
That information is then usable for other fields like chemistry, the rest of physics, etc. And on top of that come the applied sciences like biology, material science, etc.
So whenever a fundamental discovery is made in the lowest possible layer it slowly propagates upwards over a substantial period of time. If you think on the discovery of electron and quantum mechanics that then explained the electromagnetic interactions, then over quite a period of time you finally reach the point that you have computers. Without the original fundamental discovery of electromagnetic interaction this would not have been possible. Without understanding the strong force and electroweak force we couldn't have nuclear energy (I'll just wait until someone goes off on a nuclear bomb tangent here). Without electroweak interaction we wouldn't have had X-ray machines.
So it all comes down to the fact that if fundamental research is not done, then those huge leaps will simply not happen. Yes, there are plenty of avenues still to explore in the higher layers and there's probably work left for centuries, but if we don't do the fundamental research this speed of progress will slow down and probably stop at some point. We have actually been in this position once. Around the end of 19th century when a lot of physicists thought that the physical explanation of the world is complete and the applications were ranging far and wide only to be shattered by unification electrostatics and magnetism and not long after the discovery of weak interaction.
Soo... long story short. LHC is looking at the fundamental layers of the universe and if we should have a discovery of similar magnitude, like say the discovery of the Higgs particle and the associated Higgs field would add a new interaction to the map. This would be the fifth interaction and so far every single new interaction has brought revolution in science and technology and a huge amount of new energy sources.
You know Maxwell was considered a nutcase for working with magnets while he could have been a respectable doctor or smth. But we wouldn't be having this discussion here if he hadn't done those experiments. It's just that we have gotten so far in the search that we have to look at higher and higher energies to hunt the new knowledge hence the big colliders and hence the excitement over new energy regions reached.
But if you don't care about any of the other stuff, then you probably care about the MRI machines. From what I know the machines are these days possible because a full industry for superconducting magnets was created when the Tevatron experiment had to be built. Once it was done the same production capabilities allowed for a lot of new things to be done. The same goes for LHC related construction work that has also sparked a lot of engineering progress that is being used already now. And any kind of diagnostic imaging system is a direct descendant from particle physics detectors as they essentially do the same thing on a lower scale.
Ok, I agree the first sentence might be misleading, it was meant only as an introduction to the second one and pointing to the first time possibility of collisions at 2.36 TeV.
And after re-reading the press release I have to admit that I originally misunderstood that both beams had circulated at 1.18 TeV, but not at the same time when I read the press release in the internal circulation. The reason was that with the 450 GeV beams they did the circulations separately before even considering keeping both beams in the machine. Guess they went faster than I had expected at the time.
But the long and frustrating picking on details that don't even matter aside. The essence of the post is that LHC reached collisions at 2.36 TeV. Collisions are the places where the physics actually happens. If you can store a beam of 7 TeV, but can't collide it with another one coming the other way, then it's pretty much useless as it'll become a fixed target experiment when you dump it in the beam dump. And for that fixed target experiment to be of equivalent value (at least collision energy wise) it would need the beam to be above 2780 TeV (if I did the math right from the top of my head). So breaking the single beam record of 980 GeV of Tevatron is a marginal achievement in comparison to the achievement of above 2 TeV collisions. Not that either one would be a marginal achievement taken separately.
It was meant figuratively. Of course there is no special barrier at 1 TeV per beam or 2 TeV collisions. That "barrier" was the currently reached energy of Tevatron, which is 980 GeV per beam (which is close enough to round to 1 TeV).
That few years was where I meant the first year of commissioning to around say 100-200 inverse picobarn at 10 TeV and then a year or so running at 14 TeV. I'm not 100% sure the first year of 14 TeV would deliver 10/fb, hence it could take two years at full energy. In any case broadly saying it'll take a few years as I guess Higgs isn't really findable at 10 TeV energy and 200/pb luminosity.
Ok, this is silly, but... did you even click on the link? Here, let me give you a quote from that page (it's quite high up on the page, you should make it that far)
"On Tuesday evening, December 8th, 2009, the LHC achieved for the first time 2.36 TeV collisions and ATLAS recorded their first events at this record energy."
Do you guys even read the post? The news is the COLLISION. Not just accelerated beam in both directions, but also the fact that the beams collided head on in points 1 and 5 i.e. Atlas and CMS. Atlas even has a fancy picture of the di-jet event at 2.36 TeV center of mass energy. THAT is the new result. There have not been collisions at center of mass energies beyond 1.96 TeV, now there are, hence the new record.
And with regard to following CERN twitter or not understanding physics, I'm actually a member of one of the LHC collaborations so I'd guess I do know something of this thing. I only linked here the public results, not that there would be THAT much more internally, but there's plenty to say that there were collisions.
Maybe you should re-read the previous news. Yes, LHC has been in stable operations with beams of 450 GeV per beam for the past two weeks with intermittent other tests going on. Last night was the first time two beams were ACCELERATED in the opposite directions and reached 1.18 TeV per beam. If you don't believe me, just go to http://twitter.com/CERN which is the official CERN twitter and you can find there (I quote):
"Last night the LHC accelerated both beams to 1.18 TeV with 2 bunches per beam for the first time."
The reason to collide particles coming in from opposite directions is from kinematics. If you shoot a 1 TeV beam at a fixed target you only get roughly 50 or GeV as the center of mass energy (if I remember right it's ca sqrt(2*m_proton*1000)). That square root is a bitch there. If you shoot them head on to each other at equal energy, then you have the full energy at your disposal. Any other configuration will only reduce the effective energy.
If I remember right the LHC dipole magnets are created in such a way that they automatically accelerate particles in parallel beamlines in opposite directions if the particles are of the same charge so it's a nice feat allowing for best efficiency. However you have to understand that the particles are effectively for your local observation traveling at the speed of light. They make ca 11500 circuits every second and you have to keep them in orbit. At the same time the bunch is made up of same charge particles that all want to get away from each other. So the technical difficulty is controlling the magnets in sync with the beams to keep them going and if you have two beams going in opposite directions it just become tougher. Hence the slow testing in baby steps (though they are in general huge steps I'd say).
In general I hope some accelerator engineer can chime in and explain the precise background.
The most optimistic scenario for Higgs discovery would take a few years of running. But there are plenty of other theories to test that can show their first signs already after a few months of running in physics configuration (7 TeV or 10 TeV energy that'll probably be around in January/February). Things like supersymmetry, lepton flavor violation etc.
Slashdot Mirror
The easiest answer is that it is for understanding the underlying world better than we do today. The whole scientific world can be worked up in a hierarchical structure.
The fundamental layer is where the deeper understanding of the universe and interactions are explained, the four interactions that we know now, the elementary particle content etc.
Then comes the layer that has atomic physics that explains how the fundamental particles behave in combined systems, how they can interact in complex structures and what rules there are about such reactions etc.
That information is then usable for other fields like chemistry, the rest of physics, etc. And on top of that come the applied sciences like biology, material science, etc.
So whenever a fundamental discovery is made in the lowest possible layer it slowly propagates upwards over a substantial period of time. If you think on the discovery of electron and quantum mechanics that then explained the electromagnetic interactions, then over quite a period of time you finally reach the point that you have computers. Without the original fundamental discovery of electromagnetic interaction this would not have been possible. Without understanding the strong force and electroweak force we couldn't have nuclear energy (I'll just wait until someone goes off on a nuclear bomb tangent here). Without electroweak interaction we wouldn't have had X-ray machines.
So it all comes down to the fact that if fundamental research is not done, then those huge leaps will simply not happen. Yes, there are plenty of avenues still to explore in the higher layers and there's probably work left for centuries, but if we don't do the fundamental research this speed of progress will slow down and probably stop at some point. We have actually been in this position once. Around the end of 19th century when a lot of physicists thought that the physical explanation of the world is complete and the applications were ranging far and wide only to be shattered by unification electrostatics and magnetism and not long after the discovery of weak interaction.
Soo... long story short. LHC is looking at the fundamental layers of the universe and if we should have a discovery of similar magnitude, like say the discovery of the Higgs particle and the associated Higgs field would add a new interaction to the map. This would be the fifth interaction and so far every single new interaction has brought revolution in science and technology and a huge amount of new energy sources.
You know Maxwell was considered a nutcase for working with magnets while he could have been a respectable doctor or smth. But we wouldn't be having this discussion here if he hadn't done those experiments. It's just that we have gotten so far in the search that we have to look at higher and higher energies to hunt the new knowledge hence the big colliders and hence the excitement over new energy regions reached.
But if you don't care about any of the other stuff, then you probably care about the MRI machines. From what I know the machines are these days possible because a full industry for superconducting magnets was created when the Tevatron experiment had to be built. Once it was done the same production capabilities allowed for a lot of new things to be done. The same goes for LHC related construction work that has also sparked a lot of engineering progress that is being used already now. And any kind of diagnostic imaging system is a direct descendant from particle physics detectors as they essentially do the same thing on a lower scale.
*shakes head in frustration*
Ok, I agree the first sentence might be misleading, it was meant only as an introduction to the second one and pointing to the first time possibility of collisions at 2.36 TeV.
And after re-reading the press release I have to admit that I originally misunderstood that both beams had circulated at 1.18 TeV, but not at the same time when I read the press release in the internal circulation. The reason was that with the 450 GeV beams they did the circulations separately before even considering keeping both beams in the machine. Guess they went faster than I had expected at the time.
But the long and frustrating picking on details that don't even matter aside. The essence of the post is that LHC reached collisions at 2.36 TeV. Collisions are the places where the physics actually happens. If you can store a beam of 7 TeV, but can't collide it with another one coming the other way, then it's pretty much useless as it'll become a fixed target experiment when you dump it in the beam dump. And for that fixed target experiment to be of equivalent value (at least collision energy wise) it would need the beam to be above 2780 TeV (if I did the math right from the top of my head). So breaking the single beam record of 980 GeV of Tevatron is a marginal achievement in comparison to the achievement of above 2 TeV collisions. Not that either one would be a marginal achievement taken separately.
Plus they collided last night ... just a small detail, but ...
It was meant figuratively. Of course there is no special barrier at 1 TeV per beam or 2 TeV collisions. That "barrier" was the currently reached energy of Tevatron, which is 980 GeV per beam (which is close enough to round to 1 TeV).
That few years was where I meant the first year of commissioning to around say 100-200 inverse picobarn at 10 TeV and then a year or so running at 14 TeV. I'm not 100% sure the first year of 14 TeV would deliver 10 /fb, hence it could take two years at full energy. In any case broadly saying it'll take a few years as I guess Higgs isn't really findable at 10 TeV energy and 200 /pb luminosity.
Ok, this is silly, but ... did you even click on the link? Here, let me give you a quote from that page (it's quite high up on the page, you should make it that far)
"On Tuesday evening, December 8th, 2009, the LHC achieved for the first time 2.36 TeV collisions and ATLAS recorded their first events at this record energy."
The URL I'd note starts with: http://atlas.web.cern.ch/ so it's the official site.
Do you guys even read the post? The news is the COLLISION. Not just accelerated beam in both directions, but also the fact that the beams collided head on in points 1 and 5 i.e. Atlas and CMS. Atlas even has a fancy picture of the di-jet event at 2.36 TeV center of mass energy. THAT is the new result. There have not been collisions at center of mass energies beyond 1.96 TeV, now there are, hence the new record.
And with regard to following CERN twitter or not understanding physics, I'm actually a member of one of the LHC collaborations so I'd guess I do know something of this thing. I only linked here the public results, not that there would be THAT much more internally, but there's plenty to say that there were collisions.
Maybe you should re-read the previous news. Yes, LHC has been in stable operations with beams of 450 GeV per beam for the past two weeks with intermittent other tests going on. Last night was the first time two beams were ACCELERATED in the opposite directions and reached 1.18 TeV per beam. If you don't believe me, just go to http://twitter.com/CERN which is the official CERN twitter and you can find there (I quote): "Last night the LHC accelerated both beams to 1.18 TeV with 2 bunches per beam for the first time."
The reason to collide particles coming in from opposite directions is from kinematics. If you shoot a 1 TeV beam at a fixed target you only get roughly 50 or GeV as the center of mass energy (if I remember right it's ca sqrt(2*m_proton*1000)). That square root is a bitch there. If you shoot them head on to each other at equal energy, then you have the full energy at your disposal. Any other configuration will only reduce the effective energy. If I remember right the LHC dipole magnets are created in such a way that they automatically accelerate particles in parallel beamlines in opposite directions if the particles are of the same charge so it's a nice feat allowing for best efficiency. However you have to understand that the particles are effectively for your local observation traveling at the speed of light. They make ca 11500 circuits every second and you have to keep them in orbit. At the same time the bunch is made up of same charge particles that all want to get away from each other. So the technical difficulty is controlling the magnets in sync with the beams to keep them going and if you have two beams going in opposite directions it just become tougher. Hence the slow testing in baby steps (though they are in general huge steps I'd say). In general I hope some accelerator engineer can chime in and explain the precise background.
The most optimistic scenario for Higgs discovery would take a few years of running. But there are plenty of other theories to test that can show their first signs already after a few months of running in physics configuration (7 TeV or 10 TeV energy that'll probably be around in January/February). Things like supersymmetry, lepton flavor violation etc.