LHC - Large Hadron Collider

What Will the LHC Find?

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:52:09 +0000

With the Large Hadron Collider almost ready to turn on, it’s time to prepare ourselves for what it might find. (The real experts, of course, have been preparing themselves for this for many years!) Chad Orzel was asked what we should expect from the LHC, and I thought it would be fun to give my own take. So here are my judgments for the likelihoods that we will discover various different things at the LHC — to be more precise, let’s say “the chance that, five years after the first physics data are taken, most particle physicists will agree that the LHC has discovered this particular thing.” (Percentages do not add up to 100%, as they are in no way exclusive; there’s nothing wrong with discovering both supersymmetry and the Higgs boson.) I’m pretty sure that I’ve never proposed a new theory that could be directly tested at the LHC, so I can be completely unbiased, as there’s no way that this experiment is winning any Nobels for me. On the other hand, honest particle phenomenologists might be aware of pro- or con- arguments for various of these scenarios that I’m not familiar with, so feel free to chime in in the comments. (Other predictions are easy enough to come by, but none with our trademark penchant for unrealistically precise quantification.)

Shutdown of the LHC

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:51:36 +0000

I came across a bizarre paper recently suggesting that the LHC might be shut down. Not because of the funding cuts that have been threatening particle physics projects around the world, nor because of law suits accusing the LHC of threatening life on Earth. (Not even because we at the LHC have recently been accused of having far too much fun rapping.)

Read more here.

Cern lab set for beam milestone

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:50:58 +0000

Engineers had previously brought a beam of protons - tiny, sub-atomic particles - to the “doorstep” of the LHC.

On 9 August, protons will be piped through LHC magnets for the first time.
The most powerful physics experiment ever built, the LHC will re-create the conditions present in the Universe just after the Big Bang.
There are over 5,000 magnets arranged end-to-end in a ring that runs for 27km through a giant tunnel under the French Swiss border.

Read more here.

CERN rap video about the Large Hadron Collider

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:50:29 +0000

Been having a tough time figuring out just what CERN’s Large Hadron Collider does? Worried that it will create a Möbius strip (a rip in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop)? Just love to jam? Watch this CERN-sponsored rap after the break, and have your universe totally destroyed. Er, but not for real.

Read more here.

CERN and the LHC

admin — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:29:33 +0000

The long awaited Large Hadron Collider
is almost ready for it’s first proton beam. I think that all the scientists at CERN are about to reveal some really cool stuff in the next couple of years. They will be firing up the LHC sometime in the next couple of weeks and will begin their quest to answer some long lived questions.

LHC experiments will address questions such as what gives matter its mass, what the invisible 96% of the Universe is made of, why nature prefers matter to antimatter and how matter evolved from the first instants of the Universe’s existence. - CERN, LHC Milestones

Read more here.

Cern’s Large Hadron Collider Approaching A Brisk -456°F - Soon To Be One Of The Coldest Places In The Universe

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:38:25 +0000

According to the BBC, Cern’s Large Hadron Collider is in the final stages of being lowered to a temperature of 1.9 Kelvin, which is about -456°F or -271°C. In order for the collider’s thousands of magnets to maintain a high magnetic field with minimal power consumption they’re required to be superconducting, so liquid helium is currently being used to cool them down.

Read more here.

Is there life after CERN?

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:37:37 +0000

Is there life after CERN? Will a black hole swallow the earth? Such titled PM magazine in its July issue that my husband bought and kindly showed to me upon my arrival in Germany. He means well, I should add, my blood pressure is often too low, especially after long-distance flights, and in such condition I’m not good for anything.

PM is a popular German magazine that reports in a usually entertaining way on science and engineering. I never much read it because to my taste there’s always been too much engineering in it, but it makes for a nice read on the beach or so. The PM article about black holes at the LHC is unfortunately a) in German and b) not available online, but you can look at the two-page illustration here and read the first paragraphs here. You get the flavor I presume, we’ve all seen numerous articles of that sort during the last months. For an extensive discussion of the key points, see our previous posts on Micro Black Holes, Black Holes at the LHC - again, Black Holes at the LHC - What can happen, and Black Holes at the LHC - the CERN Safety report.

Read more here.

Cern lab goes ‘colder than space’

admin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:37:49 +0000

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

A vast physics experiment built in a tunnel below the French-Swiss border is fast becoming one of the coolest places in the Universe.

The Large Hadron Collider is entering the final stages of being lowered to a temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) - colder than deep space.

The LHC has thousands of magnets which will be maintained in this frigid condition using liquid helium.

The magnets are arranged in a ring that runs for 27km through the giant tunnel.

Read more here.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Outer Space

admin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:36:40 +0000

Outer_space_big Based underneath the line that separates France and Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider has become the center of scientific endeavor for the general public to focus on. First prophesied to bring ruin to the whole universe (or at least that little bit that surrounds us), the LHC has now been deemed safe. Subsequently, knowing that it won’t blast us all (or suck us all) into a black hole, the LHC has begun commissioning.

Read more here.

A different look at the LHC

admin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:03:36 +0000

Terry Johnson is a science teacher in Arkansas, and he tipped me off to this extraordinary photoessay about the Large Hadron Collider and CERN, written by his friend Jeremy Lusk. The pictures are of a piece of art celebrating CERN and the human effort… but I won’t spoil it.

Original post.