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fenix83
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Sep 9, 2008, 2:41 PM
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This is soooooo cool. I really hope we don't break the time-space continuum or somesuch
CERN Fires Up New Atom Smasher To Near Big Bang
http://www.metroobserver.com/news/?200889220960445
-F
*edited title because I posted before my first coffee...
(This post was edited by fenix83 on Sep 9, 2008, 5:09 PM)
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rrrADAM
Sep 9, 2008, 4:23 PM
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I've been watching this news on other sites anxiously. 
I think we'll be fine, as it isn't likely microblackholes will be created, as it just isn't powerfull enough. Particles more energetic than the LHC can produce hit the atmosphere daily, and we're still here. Even if it were, and we did manage to create one, it would be so small and have such a high temperature that they would evaporate in microseconds.
(This post was edited by rrrADAM on Sep 9, 2008, 4:25 PM)
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blonde_loves_bolts
Sep 9, 2008, 4:29 PM
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Umm... by 'since' did you mean 'science'? And by BLB, did you mean me?
I mean, I did excel in biology when I took it online after failing it my sophomore year of high school... and then I was pretty much at the top of my class in rocks for jocks in college... but yeah... math, science? Not my forte.
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reno
Sep 9, 2008, 4:36 PM
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I think perhaps Fenix was thinking of BG (blondgecko), not BLB.
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frogclimber
Sep 9, 2008, 4:52 PM
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3 of the 5 most likely ways science will kill us involve the LHC:
http://www.cracked.com/article_16583_5-scientific-experiments-most-likely-end-world.html
Don't believe it? You should. It's science.
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blonde_loves_bolts
Sep 9, 2008, 4:58 PM
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Probably... I can think of worse people to be confused with.
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traddad
Sep 9, 2008, 5:07 PM
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rrrADAM wrote: I've been watching this news on other sites anxiously. I think we'll be fine, as it isn't likely microblackholes will be created, as it just isn't powerfull enough. Particles more energetic than the LHC can produce hit the atmosphere daily, and we're still here. Even if it were, and we did manage to create one, it would be so small and have such a high temperature that they would evaporate in microseconds.
What are the best English language sites on which to watch this? Any real time stuff? What time (Phoenix time) is the switch being thrown? Are they actually going to really do anything with it the first day or are they going to ramp it up slowly? I want to vent some plasma from the giant Tokamak sitting in my back yard that I got off of Russian Ebay. Sort of a "salute".
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fenix83
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Sep 9, 2008, 5:09 PM
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reno wrote: I think perhaps Fenix was thinking of BG (blondgecko), not BLB.
I did mean science and I did mean BG... this sort of thing happens when I post before my first caffeine booster...
-F
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petsfed
Sep 9, 2008, 6:52 PM
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Should be pretty awesome stuff.
Fortunately, Einstein has our back. E=mc^2 is the rest mass-energy equivalency, so to destroy something on the scale of the universe, you're gonna need all the energy in the universe. Likewise for the planet, or even a small city.
Unfortunately, watching a particle accelerator in operation isn't all that interesting. They turn off all of the lights in the tunnel, then switch on some detectors at (or very near) the target. The particle is moving too fast to be seen (even if it was big enough to be seen) while traveling down the pipe, and (if memory serves), the impact does not radiate in visible wavelengths, so you don't actually see anything.
Now the Z-Machine looks fuckin' rad when its in operation.
(This post was edited by petsfed on Sep 9, 2008, 6:54 PM)
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blonde_loves_bolts
Sep 9, 2008, 7:02 PM
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OK, question:
Has anyone ever seen Dark City?
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blondgecko
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Sep 9, 2008, 7:33 PM
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fenix83 wrote: This is soooooo cool. I really hope we don't break the time-space continuum or somesuch CERN Fires Up New Atom Smasher To Near Big Bang http://www.metroobserver.com/news/?200889220960445 -F *edited title because I posted before my first coffee...
The countdown to our doom.
Yeah, I've been watching. How could I not? This thing is by far the biggest, most complicated anything ever built by mankind, and it's a science experiment. The ATLAS detector alone will apparently, when fully operational, take 90 million readings 600 million times a second... even at 1 bit per reading, that's almost 7,000 terabytes per second. A 27 kilometre long tunnel that contains a vacuum ten times stronger than on the surface of the moon, it's colder than deep space, it uses enough superconducting (zero resistance) wire to stretch from the earth to the sun a few times over, and it's cooled by a fluid with zero viscosity. Everything about this thing is just mindblowing.
Seriously, though, it's not going to destroy us, but it's almost certainly going to teach us a hell of a lot. There's around 10,000 scientists directly associated with it who are going to be kept off the streets for at least a couple of decades working it all out.
... and if nothing else, there were some huge engineering challenges to overcome in making the whole thing. I'm sure that there will be all sorts of spin-offs from that - better MRI machines, better electricity grid, better fusion reactors...?
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Arrogant_Bastard
Sep 9, 2008, 7:41 PM
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traddad wrote: rrrADAM wrote: I've been watching this news on other sites anxiously. I think we'll be fine, as it isn't likely microblackholes will be created, as it just isn't powerfull enough. Particles more energetic than the LHC can produce hit the atmosphere daily, and we're still here. Even if it were, and we did manage to create one, it would be so small and have such a high temperature that they would evaporate in microseconds. What are the best English language sites on which to watch this? Any real time stuff? What time (Phoenix time) is the switch being thrown? Are they actually going to really do anything with it the first day or are they going to ramp it up slowly? I want to vent some plasma from the giant Tokamak sitting in my back yard that I got off of Russian Ebay. Sort of a "salute".
It sounds like they're going to fire each beam separately first and make sure things are running properly before doing the first collision.
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Arrogant_Bastard
Sep 9, 2008, 8:18 PM
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blondgecko wrote: it's colder than deep space
How do you figure that, lack of radiation from the sun?
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blondgecko
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Sep 9, 2008, 8:37 PM
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Arrogant_Bastard wrote: blondgecko wrote: it's colder than deep space How do you figure that, lack of radiation from the sun?
Well, the cosmic background radiation has a temperature of about 3K, which more-or-less sets a bottom limit on temperature in space without active cooling. The interstellar medium within the Milky Way galaxy apparently measures upwards of 10K. The LHC is cooled to 1.7K (-271.45 Celsius or, for the cave people, -456.6 Fahrenheit).
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petsfed
Sep 9, 2008, 8:39 PM
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Arrogant_Bastard wrote: blondgecko wrote: it's colder than deep space How do you figure that, lack of radiation from the sun?
Well, the solar atmosphere actually extends out past Pluto, and is millions of Kelvin. Its just so low density (what we might call a vacuum) that we don't run into hot particles that often. But to answer your question, the coldest parts of the interstellar medium (aka deep space) are still 10 or 20 kelvin. Liquid helium is, by comparision, around 5 K, which was first liquified on Earth in 1908. Its really not that difficult to get it that cold.
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petsfed
Sep 9, 2008, 8:42 PM
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Well, I only used wikipedia for the bit on liquid helium.
I checked my ISM textbook for the rest. So  .
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clausti
Sep 9, 2008, 8:46 PM
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im sorry that is really funny.
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blondgecko
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Sep 9, 2008, 8:53 PM
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petsfed wrote: Well, I only used wikipedia for the bit on liquid helium. I checked my ISM textbook for the rest. So .
The helium's actually chilled to the point of superfluidity, which is far cooler (in every sense of the word) than ordinary old liquid helium.
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Arrogant_Bastard
Sep 9, 2008, 8:57 PM
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blondgecko wrote: Arrogant_Bastard wrote: blondgecko wrote: it's colder than deep space How do you figure that, lack of radiation from the sun? Well, the cosmic background radiation has a temperature of about 3K, which more-or-less sets a bottom limit on temperature in space without active cooling. The interstellar medium within the Milky Way galaxy apparently measures upwards of 10K. The LHC is cooled to 1.7K (-271.45 Celsius or, for the cave people, -456.6 Fahrenheit).
Oh, I didn't realize the background radiation is that "high".
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petsfed
Sep 9, 2008, 10:38 PM
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blonde_loves_bolts wrote: OK, question: Has anyone ever seen Dark City?
Yeah. What has that got do with this? Other than Keifer Sutherland being hilarious?
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hafilax
Sep 10, 2008, 12:28 AM
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They're not actually going to collide anything for a while.
More interesting than baby black holes is the bet by Hawking that they won't find the Higgs. There'd better be some new physics coming out of this thing or at least technologies.
I find particle physics data analysis a little fishy but the folks that understand it better than I do seem to think it's legit.
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rrrADAM
Sep 10, 2008, 3:02 PM
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blondgecko wrote: petsfed wrote: Well, I only used wikipedia for the bit on liquid helium. I checked my ISM textbook for the rest. So . The helium's actually chilled to the point of superfluidity, which is far cooler (in every sense of the word) than ordinary old liquid helium.
Feynman did a lot of research in this area back in his Cal-Tech days:
In reply to: Feynman did significant work while at Caltech, including research in: . . . Physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, where helium seems to display a lack of viscosity when flowing. Applying the Schrödinger equation to the question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical behavior observable on a macroscopic scale. This helped with the problem of superconductivity; however, the solution eluded Feynman. It was solved with the BCS theory of superconductivity, proposed by John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer.
(This post was edited by rrrADAM on Sep 10, 2008, 3:04 PM)
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