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CERN LHC (Large Hadron Collider) Goes Live 10th Sept 08

edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
At least for testing ;) and it'll be broadcast live.
Set your alarms and kiss the kids goodbye, CERN will be providing a live webcast of the Large Hadron Collider's "First Beam" maiden voyage on Wednesday. Let us know how it goes, we'll be holed-up inside grandpa's bombshelter with our canned turnips and 10th anniversary Heaven's Gate Nikes -- remember, two-knocks if it's safe else we'll assume you're a robot.
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Engadget [+other Engadget articles]

Excellent guide from the BBC on just what this is all about.

There was a programme on Discovery about the construction of this a little while back, it is truly a marvel. The scale, complexity and precision of this thing is extraordinary. Let's just hope it works as expected! :eek:
 
Live webcast. Sets reminder for it now. Will be pretty interesting but also probably pretty boring at the same time unless of course...
 
I'll give you 1,000 to 1 that it isn't. :p

Ring Of Fire

Love is a burning thing
and it makes a firery ring
bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire...

I fell in to a burning ring of fire
I went down,down,down
and the flames went higher.
And it burns,burns,burns
the ring of fire
the ring of fire.

The taste of love is sweet
when hearts like our's meet
I fell for you like a child
oh, but the fire went wild..

I fell in to a burning ring of fire.....[etc]​
 
Nothing's going to happen on the 10th of Sept that will even have a chance of creating anything that will end the world: the proton beam is just being sent a full lap around the pipe. In fact, the proton beam will not even be going close to its full operation speed, and it will only be going in one direction hence there will be no collisions. Seems a bit of a weird date for all the media to be gathering!
 
cristo said:
In fact, the proton beam will not even be going close to its full operation speed, and there will be no collisions. Seems a bit of a weird date for all the media to be gathering!
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Maybe it's not the big event, but it is an event none the less, and it's an event in the (apparently) largest most expensive experiment ever, and one which might lead to explaining the beginning of everything.

Given the crap reported on daily by the media, I'd say this is worthy of a little attention.

iJohnHenry: WTF http://up.*************/files/1/Images/Smilies/WTF.gif
 
I'm predicting that a large chunk of Switzerland and France will be launched into space.

Or maybe a scientist is found murdered, somehow the Pope is involved and the mystery is solved by using the most improbable parachute.

If none of the above occurs: the fuse blows with a little puff of smoke and absolutely nothing happens - how anticlimactic would that be!? :D
 
edesignuk said:
iJohnHenry: WTF http://up.*************/files/1/Images/Smilies/WTF.gif
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Read the terms of the bet, please.

If he wins, I owe him £10,000.

But I'll be a cinder, so it's really a no-brainer.
terical.gif


PS: A bank draft will be fine Much Ado, thanks.
 
edesignuk said:
Maybe it's not the big event, but it is an event none the less, and it's an event in the (apparently) largest most expensive experiment ever, and one which might lead to explaining the beginning of everything.
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I guess that day is as good as any; afterall, even when the collisions have started, it will take months before we actually hear anything related to finding any particle.
 
I've been following their infrastructure needs for storing the data they'll be collecting. I love this kind of stuff! :D

We need a geek smiley! how awesome would that be
 
My sister came home today and i mentioned this...she said that they had talked about it in her science class and that people were crying and getting really confused, thinking something bad was going to happen...how much do they really expect 12 year olds in a science class to understand?

It was also in the sun news paper today in very simple english...

It will be nice to actually see what happens.
 
mrwizardno2 said:
I've been following their infrastructure needs for storing the data they'll be collecting. I love this kind of stuff! :D

We need a geek smiley! how awesome would that be
Click to expand...

The grid for storing the data is indeed impressive, but more impressive still is the computer built into the detectors. At least for the ATLAS detector, only around 1/100 events are actually recorded and sent to the secondary system of computer for reconstruction. The detector thus needs to decide which of these events it's going to keep as an "interesting" event and pass the data on for. However, the fact that the speed of light is constant and finite then comes into play, since there is no enough time between the collisions of proton bunches for the detector to send its signal to some central processor, and for the central processor to make a decision, so each part of this huge detector has to "think for itself."

I've probably not done it justice, since I'm not an expert in experimental physics, but the detector alone sounded like an amazing feat of engineering when I heard a talk about it.. let alone the rest of the collider!
 
I wasn't particularly reassured, that with all the superb brilliance of the elite minds of the worlds scientific community, that they made a 'basic mathematical' error that resulted in an explosion and the dislodging of massive magnet on a test run. The scientist down below at the time were sh*tt*ng themselves, poisonous gas filled the tunnel and shards of metal flew all over! They had to replace 'some' of the magnets... Hmm, so if we face no threat if things go right, or go wrong but the machine functions alright - just what the hell happens if things go very badly wrong because of another 'mathematical error' - Europe will have a new dip the size of Geneva?

Link http://user.web.cern.ch/user/quicklinks/announcements/2007/LHCInnerTriplet_2.html

Funny quote on being asked did anything explode... "NO... The pipe ruptured, making a loud noise and releasing helium gas." Um, okay so I am not one of the elite scientific community but isn't that the definition of an explosion?
 
I love the many theories that I've read on what could happen when this thing fully fires up, amusingly, they all correlate on the world ending...

I find the death threats being sent to the scientists pretty pathetic, what's the point, your death threat won't stop them, so what if the world ends, it's not like you'll still have to finish paying off your mortgage...
 
edesignuk said:
Maybe it's not the big event, but it is an event none the less, and it's an event in the (apparently) largest most expensive experiment ever, and one which might lead to explaining the beginning of everything.

Given the crap reported on daily by the media, I'd say this is worthy of a little attention.

[/IMG]
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Agree completely; it sounds like an awesome event, just fascinating.

mrwizardno2 said:
I've been following their infrastructure needs for storing the data they'll be collecting. I love this kind of stuff! :D

We need a geek smiley! how awesome would that be
Click to expand...

A geek smiley would be apt; I agree. In common with you, I, too, love this sort of stuff. Also agree with Schtumple, in that it is absolutely pathetic to issue death threats to the scientists working on such a project; a real flat-earth mentality.
Cheers
 
Reminder: The World Ends In 24 Hours (Large Hadron Collider Discussion)

I'm sure if you've been following the news over the last few days, you would know about the Large Hadron Collider. It's a machine that is designed to collide particles at a speed almost as fast as the speed of light. I don't think there's one article out there that doesn't mention that it could cause the end of the world, either when it's launched, in a few months, or it'll create really, really small black holes that will take fours years to destroy the world. After tons of years in development and billions of dollars spent, it really is unique.

If you don't already know about it, this is a pretty good article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...N-atom-smasher-from-destroying-the-world.html

I'm not saying that it will destroy the world, but there's definitely the chance. Thoughts?
 
So after half a year of waiting for iPod touch updates...they come out...then we die.

Figures.

And life was going so good...
 
It's actually a 1 in 50 billion chance so I wouldn't couldn't on the world actually ending. As for the black holes, scientists have said they evaporate in a nano second once they are formed.

Don't worry about it. Read the articles carefully.
 
I'm sure we'll be fine. I'm actually excited to see what is discovered by this machine. I wish I were better at math, I find physics fascinating.
 
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