Success for 'Big Bang' experiment

[Nambe]

Source: BBC

Three decades after it was conceived, the world's most powerful physics experiment has sent the first beam around its 27km-long tunnel.

Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash particles together with cataclysmic force.

This will re-create conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang. ...

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/7604293.stm

[Darth Lenore]

1. But wait, if they sent a beam around aren't we all supposed to be dead now?

Those lying bastards! Getting our hopes up for nothing....

[Frank Cannon]

4. They haven't done the beam collision yet

Apparently, that's when the black hole is supposed to be formed that will devour the Earth, if not the entire Solar System.

Don't you listen to Coast-to-Coast AM every night?

[MannyGoldstein]

8. And Even After That, It Will Take A Few Years

For the black hole to finish its meal.

[Javaman]

16. first there will be cheering by the repukes when France is swallowed up, but...

then there will be the rapture bands when the rest goes. LOL

I'm really excited and glad to hear that this test was successful. I can't wait for the full on procedure.

[dysfunctional press]

46. dec 21, 2012, to be more precise.

:evilgrin:

[Darth Lenore]

41. Coast-to-Coast AM

Ah, no, I don't listen to it. That must be where I've gone wrong!

[Indi Guy]

9. OK - A "Black Hole" is also known as a "Singularity" (if you watch Star Trek)...

A singularity cannot be reproduced! (unless you watch the {plural} reruns)

[Darth Lenore]

42. Dude, your sig pic...

...is trying to eat my soul. I'm afraid!

[Frank Cannon]

43. Yeah, I've wondered about that too

I assume that pic's some kind of subtle joke. In which case, ha ha.

[CarbonDate]

2. Sweet! The black holes didn't consume the earth!

Things really are looking up.

:beer:

[freedomnorth]

5. looking good

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

:tinfoilhat: :shrug:

[high density]

11. lol, I'll stay tuned to that site for updates!

[kedrys]

20. Found this in the page source

<!-- if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn't yet updated
please email [e-mail] to receive a full refund -->

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[EOTE]

37. Refresh your browser, maybe it hasn't updated yet.

If that doesn't work, try clearing your cookies. I'm fairly certain we're all doomed.

[TechBear_Seattle]

15. Even if it *did* form a black hole...

The smaller the mass of a singularity, the shorter its lifespan. If it were possible to create a black hole by crashing two protons together, it would be no more massive than the two protons. Probably, it would have less mass than a single proton, as a lot of the mass would be carried away in the radiation caused by the collision and collapse. But assuming a mass of two protons, the singularity would evaporate almost instantly as it emitted Hawking radiation. The chance that a black hole of that mass could live long enough to even be identified as such, much less destroy the planet, is extremely tiny. You are more likely, through quantum uncertainty, to teleport instantaneously to the surface of Mars.

[Peace Patriot]

40. Quatum uncertainty? Is that where you turn over vote counting in the whole U.S.A.

to rightwing Bushite corporations, who run it using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls--and hope for the best?

-----

"The chance that a black hole of that mass could live long enough to even be identified as such, much less destroy the planet, is extremely tiny. You are more likely, through quantum uncertainty, to teleport instantaneously to the surface of Mars." --TechBear_Seattle

-----

We are more likely, through 'TRADE SECRET' code uncertainty, to teleport instantaneously to the surface of Mars, than to elect a sane (vs. insane) president and vice president of the country, but there is always that "quantum uncertainty" chance that either--or even both--could happen. I could end up on the surface of Mars, just as we beat down the machines and elect a sane president and vice president, and I don't even get to drink champagne and dance in the streets (with all the problems of being on Mars and all).

Too bad Douglas Adams is not writing our Corpo election 'news' narratives (and Karl Rove is). He wouldn't strand me on Mars without champagne, and my dancing shoes.

[dysfunctional press]

45. all they've done so far is calibration...no actual collisions for weeks or months yet.

check back later.

[Gillian]

3. It will be at least three months before they are ready to go BANG

[Orsino]

13. Yep. But now the pinheads will forget about it.

It's already on, and the world didn't end. They'll move on to fearing something else, like books.

[RobertSeattle]

6. Sarah Palin saw an Apple drop once - She's practically Sir Isaac Newton when it comes to Physics

[harun]

7. I heard she saw a few episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation so the

administration wouldn't even need to hire a science adviser, because she knows the universe.

[webDude]

10. not only that, she's a proctologist, because one day she...

wiped...

Okay, I'll stop.

Comedy law of threes.

[chiefofclarinet]

12. Isn't this just a glorified calibration?

From what I read (from both the BBC and AP), the only thing that happened is that a proton beam went around the LHC tunnel. Yes, it's great that the instruments are working, but I'll get excited when there are real experiments (ramming proton beams together, seeing the fusion of antimatter and matter together, etc.) going at the LHC.

[conrad25]

14. Black Hole

Maybe that explains why I am watching a black ball growing in the middle of my street. It's getting bigger and swallowing up my neighbor's car.

[mcg]

17. Google's logo for today 9/10/2008 ...

http://www.google.com

[architect359]

18. Nice! n/t

[slackmaster]

19. I noticed when I woke up that the planet is still here, and teh air still breathable

Hi, everybody!

:hi:

[Bake]

22. Neither of which may last much longer if McLame gets in office ...

Just sayin' ...

Bake

[slackmaster]

23. McCain doesn't have what it takes to destroy the whole planet

He's a lightweight.

[snooper2]

21. Watched a cool show on this yesterday..

The History Channel actually had a good program not Hitler related :)


Apparently, if you where to stand in the tunnel next to the collider tube when it is turned on you would be killed instantly by the radiation. ( It goes away when turned off )

And the reason it's underground is so cosmic/sun crap we are bombarded with will not effect the tests.


Also, they have to keep the magnets and electronics cool with liquid helium.

[Hugin]

24. K&R

:)

[Oak2004]

44. Yeah about the radiation

I worked at a particle accelerator once. As the lowest on the totem pole, I got the desk in the "hottest" corner. It wasn't especially radioactive, but it was a tad bit unnerving nonetheless, listening to the detector located about ten feet from me audibly ticking off the hits when the machine was running.

If it had been highly radioactive two things would have been true: I would have heard something that sounded more like static than like discernible individual strikes, and the detectors around the building would have triggered a safety system to automatically turn off the machine. Since the machine is radioactive like an x-ray machine (no power, no radiation), not like nuclear waste (streaming particles due to spontaneous decay for umpteen billion years, with or without human intervention), the radiation would cease, and the scientists would have to implement additional safety measures before they could continue the experiment.

I'm not a physicist, just a wanted-to-be-a-physicist-once-but-couldn't-hack-it, but the hysteria that accompanies the opening of every particle accelerator has always baffled me. Is there really a segment of the population that thinks that physicists care so little about themselves and their families that they dream up and build doomsday machines? Or is it really the subject matter being investigated that ultimately spooks a segment of the population out? Modern physics has, for over a century now, not been kind to those of a know-nothing, "common sense", anti-intellectual bent. Maybe it's not the end of their world they fear, but the end of their world-view.

[Veruca Salt]

25. K&R

[eowyn_of_rohan]

26. what success is this?

their BBs went around the tube? This was a partial test run - not the real experiment.

[IndianaGreen]

27. This is not the experiment that may create mini black holes

They just fired one beam around the track. In due time they will fire two beams going in opposite directions and have them collide, that's when a rip in time space could occur. Or they could discover why gravity is the weakest force, perhaps because it is leaking into unseen dimensions.

[IndianaGreen]

28. Hawking reveals 'Big Bang' bet

Related story on Stephen Hawking's bet the Higgs boson won't be found (video on webpage), which would lead to a review of standard model of universe:

Professor Stephen Hawking has revealed he has a bet that the LHC will not find the Higgs boson - the most highly sought-after particle in physics.

But he did tell the BBC's Christine McGourty that "the most exciting result would be something we don't expect".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7608465.stm

[lovuian]

36. Whoopee somebody did something right for a change

but we haven't seen the collision yet

[RedEarth]

29. Global computer network behind the Big Bang probe

Source: (AP)

The world's biggest physics experiment, the Large Hadron particle collider that began running Wednesday in a 17-mile tunnel below the French-Swiss border, produces so much data that even the massive computing power at the European Organization for Nuclear Research can't sift through it all.

So the Geneva-based lab, known by its old French acronym CERN, is sharing that burden among dozens of computing centers around the world. The result is the LHC Grid, a network of 60,000 computers that will analyze what happens when protons are hurled at each other inside the collider.

Scientists will need the additional computing power to sift through the mountains of data produced when the colliders' four giant detectors — 10 times more accurate than any previous instruments — measure activity at the subatomic level.

"You can think of each experiment as a giant digital camera with around 150 million pixels taking snapshots 600 million times a second," explains CERN's Ian Bird, who leads the grid project.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/09/10/financial/f082408D38.DTL

[Warpy]

30. I noticed when the damn crime copter buzzed my house early

this morning that the world had failed to end on schedule.

[kurth_]

31. No Windows Vista either

It's pretty much all Linux.

[stox]

32. Worth noting

A great deal of the computational work is being done here in the States. Fermilab and Brookhaven labs has built enormous computer farms to process the data. In turn, this data is distributed to academic institutions. Although I am saddened that the experiment is not here, I can be proud knowing that Americans are making significant contributions to the research.

[snooper2]

33. Interesting tidbit of information...

So much data will be produced, that in a single day all the data would fill EVERY hard drive in the World! Thats why they are only analyzing appproximately 100 collisions at a time...

[The2ndWheel]

34. I'm sure the NSA, credit card companies, and all the rest will keep an eye on it

[Taverner]

35. They should open this up to the public like SETI did

Let us all run the crunching on our systems when idle

[ozu]

39. Folding@home

The Folding@home project has increased it's computational power something like 6 fold since the release of the PS3 client and it now sustains over 3 petaFLOPS.

This projects should be able to utilize similar avenues.

[scrinmaster]

38. No resonance cascade?

I had my crowbar ready and everything.

[Behind the Aegis]

47. Israeli scientist: 'Big Bang' experiment going better than expected

A member of the 50-strong team of Israeli scientists participating in an international experiment aiming to simulate the "Big Bang" that created the universe told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday that the progress was going better than expected.

Experiments using the underground Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, the biggest and most complex machine ever made, could revamp modern physics and unlock secrets about the universe and its origins.

Professor Giora Mikenberg of the Weizmann Institute told Olmert that the experiment was making greater progress than expected and added that he is optimistic regarding its success.

Mikenberg said that Israeli technology systems - among the most advanced in the world - were being used in the experiment. He said that the experiemnt involved cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian scientists, as well as with scientists from the Arab world, which he said would advance peace between Israel and the Arab world.

Physicists around the world, some in pajamas and others with champagne, celebrated the first tests on Wednesday of the huge particle-smashing machine.

more...and video at link