The God Particle

[Wayne]

Theres some good live webcams feeds here:

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

[WhiteCrow]

They turn on the super particle collider, and the next week, two banks on the other side of the world collapse into a Black Hole. Coincidence? I think not!

[Jon Masters]

I realise now I should have told someone when I found that Higgs-Boson particle stuck in that old box at the back of the loft. Just think of all the money they could have saved.

More annoying was having to deal with students who wouldn't know a physics concept if it got up and bit them busily spouting off all last week about how we were all going to die.

Especially when they didn't

[Rob McCow]

Question time!

Is it right that if they prove that the Higgs-Boson particle exists, then you would actually have quite a few of them in your loft?

Logically, seeing as it takes the collapse of a big sun to make a black hole then why should two accelerated particles hitting each other even come close?

[WhiteCrow]

Logically, seeing as it takes the collapse of a big sun to make a black hole then why should two accelerated particles hitting each other even come close?

Quite easily. The problem is people's misunderstanding of what a black hole actually is. They're actually not as destructive as some people think.

Basically it's a body made of super-dense material, which defies the behaviour of normal science.

But the body has the same mass, it's just condensed into a point source.

So from a distance away, you feel absolutely no effect.

So if the Moon was replaced by a black hole of equal mass, that would be instant doomsday wouldn't it? Nope. Life on Earth would go on okay - we'd feel the same gravity.

The only problem is if we got really close. The mass of the Moon would probably be compacted into a pea-sized shape, get too close to that (about a couple of metres), and it would mess up your day.

[Antony Cox]

Basically it's a body made of super-dense material, which defies the behaviour of normal science.

Ah - like Ian Levine, then?

[Rob McCow]

The American Institute of Physics says:

The Large Hadron Collider, the largest and most expensive scientific instrument ever built in peacetime, begins operations on September 10 when a beam of high-speed protons begins shooting around the machine’s 16 mile (27 -kilometer) circular tunnel beneath Geneva, Switzerland. When the protons collide with each other inside the machine, one thing that scientists are certain won’t happen is the production of miniature black holes that gobble up nearby matter. A new study shows that the continuing existence of old stars in the sky is evidence that small black holes can’t swallow the Earth.

That is not to say that the new collider might not actually create mini-black holes as no one knows for sure what will emerge from the debris of the LHC collisions. Black holes are thought to represent the ultimate state of compressed matter, with gravity so powerful that any bit of matter, and even light, would be sucked inexorably inwards with no chance for escape if it gets too close to the black hole’s boundary.

That was the thinking about black holes before Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University scientist, came forth with the idea that even black holes can lose energy. The density of energy inside a black hole is so huge that some of it can be converted into creating new particles, he said. If this conversion happens right at the edge of the black hole, Hawking argued, some of those new particles could escape, taking energy with them. In this way black holes can lose energy. They can “evaporate.”

[Rob McCow]

The American Institute of Physics says:

The Large Hadron Collider, the largest and most expensive scientific instrument ever built in peacetime, begins operations on September 10 when a beam of high-speed protons begins shooting around the machine’s 16 mile (27 -kilometer) circular tunnel beneath Geneva, Switzerland. When the protons collide with each other inside the machine, one thing that scientists are certain won’t happen is the production of miniature black holes that gobble up nearby matter. A new study shows that the continuing existence of old stars in the sky is evidence that small black holes can’t swallow the Earth.

That is not to say that the new collider might not actually create mini-black holes as no one knows for sure what will emerge from the debris of the LHC collisions. Black holes are thought to represent the ultimate state of compressed matter, with gravity so powerful that any bit of matter, and even light, would be sucked inexorably inwards with no chance for escape if it gets too close to the black hole’s boundary.

That was the thinking about black holes before Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University scientist, came forth with the idea that even black holes can lose energy. The density of energy inside a black hole is so huge that some of it can be converted into creating new particles, he said. If this conversion happens right at the edge of the black hole, Hawking argued, some of those new particles could escape, taking energy with them. In this way black holes can lose energy. They can “evaporate.”

[Jason Thompson]

Question time!

Is it right that if they prove that the Higgs-Boson particle exists, then you would actually have quite a few of them in your loft?

Yes, and in the rest of your house, and in you.

Logically, seeing as it takes the collapse of a big sun to make a black hole then why should two accelerated particles hitting each other even come close?

Most black holes that we know about arose from the gravitational collapse of a huge star. They formed because there was so much mass crushed together so tightly that it became supercondensed into a tiny volume with massive density, a black hole. If you slam two particles together with enough force, they too could become condensed into a much smaller volume and potentially, if that volume is small enough, form a tiny black hole. The collapse of a star just makes this happen on a much grander scale. It's similar in some ways to the way nuclear fusion requires the huge mass of a star to occur naturally, but we can cause it on a small scale by compressing a container of hydrogen with extreme force, as in the hydrogen bomb.

[WhiteCrow]

Ah - like Ian Levine, then?

I wish he'd dissappear into a Black Hole - he had Omegan feelings of his overimportance.

[Dirk Gently]

I wish he'd dissappear into a Black Hole...

Preferable up his own.

[Paul Monk]

Last I heard the LHC had broken down.

Maybe there is a God after all and he's just trying to protect his professional secrets.

[Jason Thompson]

There's already a bunch of people mouthing off about what a waste of effort this thing was if it didn't work, all rather missing the point that the turn-on was a test to see if it did or not, and to fix any problems. The concept of testing is missed so widely by some people I wonder how they get anything done.

[cullsoft]

Indeed. I'm under the impression that the shutdown was somewhat expected, and merely a case of "there's thousands/millions of tiny, complicated bits and pieces in this thing; you'd be a naive fool to think there isn't going to be any small fault at some point". I gather this was just a case of stop it, sort it, start it again.

What annoyed me was that Yahoo! news were at it again, with the headline "Black Hole machine breaks down". At least I was wide awake enough to see past the presumptuous headline this time... I've really got to change my homepage.

[Si Hunt]

Hadron Discoveries "coming back through time to thwart their own creation"

Absolutely love this story!

Si.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Thanks for that - I'm going to have to reread that several times. Their claims are a bit huh!?!

[Perry Vale]

Of course if the LHC was traveling back in time to stop itself working, wouldn't it also travel back to stop these guys from having written their paper....?

[Stuart Wallis]

I reckon it's travelling back in time on a booze cruise.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Well before they've even got it reliably working at full power, it seems they're looking to the future ...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology...ectid=10635816

London Underground is in talks with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) about the possibility of using the 23km tunnel of the Circle Line to house a new type of particle accelerator similar to the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

Particle physicists believe the existing tunnel can be adapted to take a small-scale "atom smasher" alongside the passenger line at a fraction of the cost of building a new tunnel elsewhere in Europe.

They are understood to have approached London Underground with a view to announcing a feasibility study later this year.

Specialist engineers commissioned by Cern have already produced a preliminary report, seen by The Independent, which proposes installing supercooled magnets and collision detectors at strategic positions on the Circle Line.

The main collision experiment will be sited at the newly refurbished Westminster Station, directly below Portcullis House, the offices of more than 200 MPs.

Although there are still considerable technical problems to overcome, such as a geo-magnetic "kink" in the circuitry at Edgware Road station, Cern is quietly confident that it will be able to convince London Underground of the merits of the scheme, which should result in the first air-conditioned underground line as a spin-off of installing supercooled magnets below ground.

The idea was initially mooted in the mid-1980s as an alternative site to the 27km tunnel below Geneva but the idea was dropped. Now, with improvements in technology and miniaturisation of the equipment, Cern believes it can build a successor to the Large Hadron Collider within the Circle line by 2020.

It would mean that two beams of protons would be travelling in clockwise and counterclockwise directions at 99.999999 per cent of the speed of light, within feet of Circle line passengers stuck in perpetual immobility.

However, health and safety advisers to London Underground are understood to be concerned about the proposal, and have raised the prospect of a mini black hole being created at Westminster when the two proton beams collide to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang.

A spokesman for London Underground said the proposal is not as foolish as it first seems: "It has merits."

[Si Hunt]

Bit of a lame April Fool. Arn't they at least supposed to be half-believable?

Si.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I quite liked this, a good April Fools should have a good sense of ridiculousness about it. Nice bit of satire in there as well.

[Stuart Wallis]

An April Fool? And there I was hoping that it might improve services and dispose of a few hundred MPs if there were an accident on switch-on day!

[Antony Cox]

Ah, but they should have done their research a bit better! Surely everyone knows that the Circle Line isn't a circle any more?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/medi...tre/13686.aspx

[Stuart Wallis]

No blowing up MPs, Harry...

[SiHart]

Well it looks almost certain they've found it!