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Laura · #1 08-22-2008, 10:59 PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai.../scilhc121.xml

Quote:

First particles injected into Large Hadron Collider atom smasher

By Jad Marrouche
Last Updated: 7:01pm BST 21/08/2008

The first particles have been injected into the biggest atom smasher on the planet, marking the start of the countdown to probing the secrets of the universe.
The LHC is the world's most powerful particle accelerator, producing beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine, and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance, probably by 2010.
The protons injected into the giant machine are obtained by removing electrons from hydrogen gas and are then accelerated in bunches.
For the tests, the proton bunches were first accelerated by the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), a smaller 4.3 mile ring, before injection (like a lane merging onto a motorway) into the LHC, which has to be timed to the nanosecond to work.
Once the individual detectors around the LHC are ready (the "eyes" that study the effects of collisions between particles), further injection tests will attempt to ensure two counter-rotating proton beams circulate throughout the machine.
Capturing the remnants of high energy collisions between these beams will then become possible, setting the stage for the LHC to potentially rewrite the laws of physics as we know them.
Tests will continue into September to ensure that the entire machine is ready to accelerate and collide beams at an energy of 5 TeV per beam, the target energy for the end of 2008 - this is equivalent to each particle having the energy of a flying mosquito squeezed into a space a million million times smaller.
Withstanding any major setbacks, the LHC will see its first circulating beam on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV). Once stable circulating beams have been established, they will be brought into collision, and the final step will be to commission the LHC's acceleration system to boost the energy to 5 TeV, taking particle physics research to a new frontier.
'We're finishing a marathon with a sprint,' said LHC project leader Lyn Evans. 'It's been a long haul, and we're all eager to get the LHC research programme underway.'
One aim of the machine is to improve current theory about the forces that bind together the particles in every atom. Known as the Standard Model, this is one of the triumphs of 20th-century science and fits in with the results of all experiments ever done on sub-atomic particles.
Key to that will be to find a crucial ingredient, the Higgs particle, whose existence goes some way to explain why atoms contain particles that have weight.
Others hope that a menagerie of new particles will be seen when the LHC is switched on - and perhaps some of them will help account for the "dark matter" that astronomers cannot see, although they can detect its existence via the gravitational forces it exerts on other particles.

Laura · #2 09-02-2008, 06:40 PM

More about the Large Hadron collider, from Science News:
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080821_collider

Quote:

New collider promises to transform physics
Aug. 21, 2008
Courtesy UCSC
and World Science staff
Phys*ics is poised to en*ter un*known ter*ri*to*ry with the startup of a mas*sive new par*t*i*cle smash*er—the Large Had*ron Col*lid*er—in Eu*rope, sci*en*tists say. The first beam of pro*tons, fun*da*men*tal com*po*nents of atoms, is sched*uled to start speed*ing through the ma*chine Sept. 10.

The white curve marks where the tracks of the Large Had*ron Col*lider lie un*der*ground. (Cour*tesy CERN)
A par*t*i*cle col*lider has a sim*ple bas*ic pur*pose: to smash to*geth*er atoms or their part*s—the so-called fun*da*men*tal par*t*i*cles of na*ture—to find out what’s in*side them.

The re*sults are of*ten sur*pris*ing and seem*ingly il*log*i*cal, but have re*vealed plen*ti*ful in*sights in*to na*ture over dec*ades. Phys*i*cists are hop*ing for more an*swers from larg*er, stronger col*liders.

The Large Had*ron Col*lider, or LHC, would test hotly de*bat*ed the*o*ries as it pro*duces moun*tains of da*ta.

Po*ten*tial break*throughs in*clude an ex*plana*t*ion of what cre*ates mass and what is the mys*te*ri*ous “dark mat*ter” that makes up most of the mass in the uni*ver*se, phys*i*cists say. More ex*ot*ic pos*si*bil*i*ties in*clude ev*i*dence for new forc*es of na*ture or hid*den ex*tra di*men*sions of space and time.

“We don’t know what we’ll find,” said Abra*ham Sei*den, di*rec*tor of the San*ta Cruz In*sti*tute for Par*t*i*cle Phys*ics at the Uni*ver*s*ity of Cal*i*for*nia, San*ta Cruz, a U.S. par*ti*ci*pant in the proj*ect. About half the U.S. ex*pe*ri*men*tal par*t*i*cle-phys*ics com*mun*ity has fo*cused its en*er*gy on the col*lider’s two larg*est par*t*i*cle de*tec*tors, called AT*LAS and CMS, ac*cord*ing to Sei*den.

LHC is huge in eve*ry way—its size, the en*er*gies to which it can ac*cel*er*ate par*t*i*cles, the amount of da*ta it would gener*ate, and the size of the in*terna*t*ional col*la*bora*t*ion in*volved in it. The pow*er*ful beams of par*ti*cles are to cir*cu*late around the 27-km (16.8-mile) un*der*ground tube at CERN, the Eu*ropean par*t*i*cle phys*ics lab based in Ge*ne*va. Af*ter some test*ing, the beams are to cross paths in*side the de*tec*tors to make the first col*li*sions.

Sci*en*tists say the de*bris from those crash*es—show*ers of sub*a*tom*ic par*t*i*cles—will rev*o*lu*tion*ize our un*der*stand*ing of na*ture. A key hoped-for mile*stone is disco*very of the Higgs bos*on, a hy*po*thet*i*cal par*t*i*cle that would fill a gap in the “s*tan*dard mod*el” of par*t*i*cle phys*ics by en*dow*ing fun*da*men*tal par*t*i*cles with mass. This should oc*cur by 2010, Sei*den said, if the Higgs ex*ists at all; na*ture may have found an*oth*er way to cre*ate mass. “I’m ac*tu*ally hop*ing we find some*thing un*ex*pect*ed,” he said.

The Higgs is part of a frame*work called elec*tro*weak the*o*ry, which pro*poses a deep un**ity and sym*me*try among cer*tain forc*es and par*t*i*cles, but al*so claims this sym*me*try was “bro*ken” long ago so that it’s not ob*vi*ous. The LHC will re*veal how this “sym*me*try break*ing” oc*curred, said phys*i*cist How*ard Ha*ber at the uni*ver*s*ity. But de*tect*ing the Higgs is hard, he added, be*cause oth*er events can mimic its pre*dict*ed sig*nals.

Ev*i*dence for an*oth*er ma*jor the*o*ry, “supersym*me*try,” could al*so show up in the col*li*der data. This the*o*ry pre*dicts each known par*t*i*cle has a mas*sive, un*seen “su*per*part*ner.” The scheme cre*ates a tidy cor*re*spond*ence be*tween two fam*i*lies of par*t*i*cles, those that make up mat*ter and those that trans*mit forc*es. As a bo*nus, supersym*me*try pre*dicts the ex*ist*ence of par*t*i*cles that could be the dark mat*ter—a stuff as*tro*no*mers say they have de*tected through its gravita*t*ional ef*fects, but that oth*erwise seems in*vis*i*ble.

Supersym*me*try is in many ways a more ex*cit*ing pos*si*bil*ity than the Higgs, said the*o*rist Mi*chael Dine at the uni*ver*s*ity: “by it*self, the Higgs is a very puz*zling par*t*i*cle, so there have been a lot of con*jec*tures about some kind of new phys*ics be*yond the stand*ard mod*el. Supersym*me*try has the eas*i*est time fit*ting in with what we know.”

Iron*ic*ally, the*o*rists say the LHC will be a huge ad*vance even if noth*ing turns up, pre*cisely be*cause cur*rent the*o*ries so strongly de*mand that cer*tain things should. “If noth*ing were found be*yond what we know to*day, that would be so rad*i*cal, be*cause it would be in vi*ola*t*ion of a lot of ex*tremely fun*da*men*tal prin*ci*ples,” Dine said.* * *

Laura · #3 09-08-2008, 09:02 AM

from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai.../scirap126.xml

Quote:

Rap about world's largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 06/09/2008

The start up of the biggest experiment on the planet has inspired a science rap song that has become an unlikely global hit. Roger Highfield reports.

After 14 years, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, known by its French acronym CERN, is preparing to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to seek out new particles including the long-awaited Higgs boson responsible for making things weigh what they do, the possible source of gravity called dark matter, as well as probe the differences between matter and its "evil twin" antimatter.

Now a larky but accurate rap song explaining the point of the 17 mile circumference machine, which formally starts up on September 10, has made a star of Kate McAlpine, 23, aka "alpinekat", who stars with her friends in a YouTube video that has been downloaded more than 400,000 times.
"We love the rap," says James Gillies, CERN spokesman. "The science is spot on, and all the feedback that's come to me from physicists is positive. I think that Kate is a little bowled over."
At the time she made the video, she was working in the press office of the giant machine.
Written during the tedium of her 40-minute commute by bus and tram from Geneva to CERN, her rap gives a rhythmic tour of the mysteries of modern physics and the workings of the LHC, noting that "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head."

"Some more academic people are not too happy and they think it kind of cheapens the science and dumbs it down," she says. "But I think mostly people are excited to have this rap out there. And a lot of people at CERN just think it's great, so that's exciting."
The dancing and rapping segments were filmed on location at the lab, in the LHC's tunnels and the cavernous underground halls that contain the detectors, the "eyes" of the machine that look at the fallout of particle collisions.
"We got some strange looks. I mean you get a strange look just walking around CERN in a lab coat," says McAlpine. "Nobody wears lab coats."
"She managed to get a couple of afternoon's access to the CMS and ATLAS detectors and, impressively, succeeded in sweet-talking a bunch of us into appearing in the video," adds Colin Barras, who came second in the 2007 Telegraph/Bayer science writer competition and now works for New Scientist.
"By the time we filmed this, construction work on the detectors had almost finished - in fact, if you look past the dancers (hard though that is) these are some good shots of the detectors at their most impressive, just before they were closed off," says Barras. "There are also a couple of very confused looking engineers in the background."
Barras has admitted to being one of the dancers (they are anonymous for reasons that are obvious if you see the video).
"Sadly there haven't been as many complimentary comments about the dancing, but as my mum told me this weekend, 'that's because the dancing is awful'. You can't win them all..." says Barras, whose brother, Will, took the vocal track and produced a dance track to go with it, adding a drunken Stephen Hawking-style voice for extra effect.
Will Barras explains how they created the soundtrack: "Katie McAlpine wrote the lyrics and recorded it 'acapella' into her laptop computer while she was working at CERN.

"I received an MP3 of that vocal recording by email with a request to put some music to it, and I put the track together around the vocal (which is really the reverse of how songs are usually recorded, but was quite an enjoyable challenge).
"Thinking of programmes like Sesame Street, which often had educational songs, I deliberately created a sort of 1980s-retro-hiphop style for the track. I used the distinctive "woo-yeah" sample of James Brown, which was frequently used in 80s hiphop.
"I added the computer voice as an irreverent nod to MC Hawking. I then emailed the finished track back to Katie and forgot about it - all this was in April."
McAlpine, who counts Eminem as one of her inspirations, is surprised by the reaction. In the video's first day on YouTube it attracted more than 50,000 views. She denies rumours that envious physicists at other labs now want to employ her to raise the profile of their own projects with a well aimed rap.
It is not the first time she has turned hard core physics into music. "When I was working for the American Physical Society I wrote this neurochip rap that was just sort of a silly project that I did in the morning writing the rhymes and I just sent it over to my boss, James Riordon, and he was like "Good, we'll make an MP3." So I did that and he said: "All right, we need a video. So then once I knew that I could do a rap video, even if it's terrible and low-quality."
While alpinekat hasn't yet signed with a record label, she's now working on a rap, written during a summer research program at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. "It contains too much jargon, but it's still fun."

Laura · #4 09-09-2008, 05:35 PM

The Large Hadron Collider explained:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1066
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd090808s.gif

Laura · #5 09-15-2008, 09:15 AM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...scicern112.xml

Quote:

Large Hadron Collider: Scientists launch competition for a funkier name

Last Updated: 9:01am BST 12/09/2008

The Large Hadron Collider may do exactly what it says on the tin but, in an unusual move, scientists have asked members of the public to come up with a catchier name. Stephen Adams reports.
Have Your Say: Does the LHC need a new name?
Full coverage of the Large Hadron Collider atom smasher
The LHC: Your questions answered CERN helps us understand the world
Glossary | LHC Facts| How it works
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) - perhaps motivated by a little professional jealousy at the media attention given to the physics experiment - has launched a competition to find a new moniker for the atom smashing machine buried beneath Geneva.

Dr Richard Pike, its chief executive, has said that the name "fails to reflect the drama of its mission, or the inspiration it should be conveying to the wider public".
The organisation has launched a competition, with a £500 prize, to find what it considers to be "the best alternative name ... which most effectively captures the imagination of both young and old, whether interested in science, or merely sceptical onlookers."
The LHC is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
Its function is to get different particles whizzing in different directions around the 17-mile long circuit at the speed of light, to make them collide head-on.
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Results obtained from tests should, theorize the scientists, help to answer some of the most fundamental questions about the nature of the universe.
While most people without a working knowledge of sub-atomic physics have struggled with what it actually does, a large proportion have also had problems with the basic spelling of Large Hadron Collider.
Web users have had particular trouble with the unfamiliar "hadron" - the collective name for the particles used in the experiments.
Their misspellings have given rise to a range of alternative websites [warning: explicit content] that have nothing to do with the multi-billion pound device or the search for the so-called 'God particle', the elusive Higgs boson particle.
The competition, at www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2008/RenameLHC.asp, "will close at noon on Wednesday 17 September 2008 - after one week's safe operation of the LHC. But the RSC warns that the prize will not be awarded if the Earth is destroyed before this time."
In launching the challenge, the RSC has laid itself open to accusations that it has launched the competition purely out of professional jealously at the amount of money the physics community has received.
Dr Pike said: "As the universe is 13 billion years old, this means that for more than 99.99 per cent of its existence chemistry has played a dominant role. Physics is therefore getting an enormous boost through funding of the LHC, in effect, to explore the first fleeting moments of why we are here.
"I would make a claim that chemistry, if it received pro rata funding, would be up for trillions of pounds to investigate the mechanisms of the origins and development of life, which would have immediate application within the community. That might be the basis of an RSC funding claim next year..."

Laura · #6 09-23-2008, 09:09 AM

from msnbc:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26843434/

Quote:

Accident puts atom-smasher in limbo

Damage could delay high-energy collisions until next year, scientists say

CERN
Magnets like these stretch all the way around the Large Hadron Collider's 17-mile underground ring on the French-Swiss border. Officials at CERN say a magnet meltdown led to a large helium leak, resulting in the shutdown of the collider.

Interactive

Click to go inside the big bang machine

Slide show

Building the biggest collider
Get a look inside the caverns and tunnels that house the Large Hadron Collider.
more photos

Interactive panoramas

360-degree views
Click to view interactive, high-definition pictures of the Large Hadron Collider's highlights.

By Alexander G. Higgins
(AP) updated 7:55 p.m. ET, Mon., Sept. 22, 2008

GENEVA - Scientists expect startup glitches in the massive, complex machines they use to smash atoms.
But they say unique qualities of the world’s largest particle collider mean that the meltdown of a small electrical connection could delay its groundbreaking research until next year.
Because the Large Hadron Collider operates at near absolute zero — colder than outer space — the damaged area must be warmed to a temperature where humans can work. That takes about a month. Then it has to be re-chilled for another month.

As a result, the equipment may not be running again before the planned shutdown of the equipment for the winter to reduce electricity costs. That means Friday’s meltdown could end up putting off high-energy collisions of particles — the machine’s ultimate objective — until 2009.“Hopefully we’ll come online and go quickly to full energy a few months into 2009, so in the long term, this may not end up being such a large delay in the physics program,” Seth Zenz, a graduate student from the University of California, wrote on the site of the U.S. physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN.
“It’s obviously a short-term disappointment, though, and a lost opportunity,” he wrote.
Winter shutdown looms
CERN spokesman James Gillies said the repair operation will last until close to the usual winter shutdown time at the end of November. There has been some discussion that the new equipment could operate through the winter, but no decision has been made, he said.
Judy Jackson, a spokeswoman for Fermilab in Illinois, said it's too early to predict whether bringing the collider back into operation will take two months or even longer.
"Until we know what the root cause was, I don't think we can really estimate how much time it will take to recover," she said. Fermilab is the home of the world's No. 2 particle collider, the Tevatron, and helps coordinate U.S. involvement in the LHC project.
The melting of the wire connecting two magnets would have taken only a couple of days to repair on smaller, room-temperature accelerators that have been in use for decades, Gillies said.
Gillies said particle accelerators using superconducting equipment at Fermilab and at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state had similar problems starting up, but have been operating smoothly since then.
“Once they settled in, they seem to be pretty stable,” Gillies said.
Working through a ‘weakness’
At the Sept. 10 launch of the collider, beams of protons from the nuclei of atoms were fired first at the speed of light in a clockwise direction though a fire-hose-sized tube in the tunnel. Then proton beams were fired in the counterclockwise tube.
Jos Engelen, CERN’s chief scientific officer and deputy director-general, said the startup showed that the LHC can handle complex operations.
“We have encountered a weakness in one particular connection during very final hardware commissioning,” Engelen told The Associated Press by e-mail. “It is tough, but it can happen. We will make the repair and resume the very successful operation of the accelerator.”
A transformer failed outside the cold zone about 36 hours after the collider’s launch. That was repaired, and the machine was ready again a week after it was shut down.
But the goal of the LHC — shattering protons to reveal more about how the tiniest particles were first created — was still weeks away because the equipment has to be gradually brought to the higher energies possible at full power.
“This was the last circuit of the LHC to be tested at high current before operations,” Gillies said. “There are an awful lot of these connections between wires in the machine. They all have to be very well done so that they don’t stop superconducting, and what appears to have happened is that this connection stopped being superconducting.”
Superconductivity — the ability to conduct electricity without any resistance in some metals at low temperatures— allows for much greater efficiency in operating the electromagnets that guide the proton beams.
Without the superconducting, resistance builds up in the wires, causing them to overheat, he explained.

The Big Bang Machine
Chapter 1: Super-smasher targets mysteries
Chapter 2: Boon or doom? LHC fuels debate
Chapter 3: Biggest ‘Big Bang Machine’ switched on
Chapter 4: Europe leaps ahead on physics frontier
Chapter 5: Big-bang brouhaha sparks big reaction

“That’s what we think happened,” Gillies said. “This piece of wire heated up, melted, and that led to a mechanical failure.”
On Monday, Gillies said experts were still inspecting the damage done in the LHC's 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel, 330 feet (100 meters) under the Swiss-French border to inspect the damage.
Gillies said there is plenty for scientists at CERN to do between now and the startup of experiments, including studying cosmic rays that pass through collider’s massive detectors.
This report includes information from AP writer Patrick McGroarty in Berlin as well as from msnbc.com.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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