Large Hadron Collider, DYK Fact #456

[goldenhinde]

Did you know? The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful and largest particle accelerator, is being turned on 10 September.

Athene_Nocuta this is more in your neck of
the woods located on the border between France and Switzerland, Cern.

There is the smallest possibility that our whole universe is a vacum bubble,
and a super large particle experiment could tear the fabric and cause a vacum
decay from which there is no retreat.
At the end of this article, see the section on particle accelerators
Cheers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_bubble

[Athene_noctua]

And they are going to look for the Higgs boson with that thing?

[goldenhinde]

Oh, yes !

[Athene_noctua]

Did you know? In a particle accelerator, particles are accelerated by electric fields and deflected by magnetic fields. I have just read about nuclear accelerators in the spread “Atoms and Subatomic Particles” under the section The Nature of the Universe of The Guinness Encylopedia.

[goldenhinde]

Athene_Noctua: Do you know when and where the first particle
accelerator in the world was built?
Answer: It was the Cyclotron in Berkeley built by Ernest Orlando Lawrence
in the 1930s.

Athene: The Large Hadron Collidor is being turned on Wednesday at Cern.
While there is almost no chance a black hole will be created to swall up everything. No chance is better than almost no chance

Also, a very toxic element in the Martian soil was found today which may preclude
life
if you get this post today go to
www.cnn.com
scroll down and look for the links
you may have some better British links
you always provide here

P.S. I'm listening to Bach's Violin Concerto in my car
these last few days, I can't stop

[goldenhinde]

Athene_Noctua:
quick look at my Large Hadron Collider update #456

[Athene_noctua]

We’ll see what happens when the accelerator is turned on on Monday.

[goldenhinde]

No, Athene_Nocuta. Tomorrow. about 03:30 Eastern time (USA)

you can follow the hoopla here
http://lhc-first-beam.web.cern.ch

Well it's been nice knowing you !





P.S. sorry I can't get that webb address above to
work for you but it was given in the New York Times.
you could watch the turning on of the Large Hadron Collider
tomorrow as it will be webb cam

)

[Athene_noctua]

Working LHC produces first images

Protons have made their first complete lap of the world’s most powerful accelerator to cheers and high fives from assembled physicists.

At 10:25 (local time) scientists sent a single beam of protons in a clockwise direction around the full 27 kilometres of the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

The journey began at 09:30 when LHC project leader Lyn Evans and his team launched protons into the ring. Progress was made in short steps of a few kilometres, so that physicists could learn how to steer the beam, which is travelling at 99.9998% the speed of light.

However, it will be several weeks before physicists accelerate two proton beams travelling in opposite directions to their full energy of 7 teraelectronvolts, and smash them head on.

More at New Scientist

[goldenhinde]

thanks for your update.

here's a trivia question

Do you know which piece of classical music was used

in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 ?

[George Law]

I read about accelerators in the third chapter of my textbook of particle physics this morning. Did you know? Particle accelerators can be linear or cyclic. They can be fixed-target machines or colliders as well. A cyclic collider which allows particle beams to be kept circulating for a long time – such as the LHC – is also called a storage ring.

[Sophie]

Tuesday 14 February 2012

LHC energy boost will aid hunt for Higgs boson

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will increase the energies of the bunches of subatomic particles called protons that it smashes together.

The boost should improve the collider’s chances of discovering “new physics” and definitively confirming or denying the existence of Higgs boson particle.

The proton beams’ energies will be increased by 14%, for a total collision energy of 8 trillion electron volts.

Full story at BBC News

[Sylvia]

Monday 13 February 2012

LHC boosts energy to snag Higgs – and superpartners

It has already broken the record for the most energetic particle collisions, but the world’s largest particle smasher is boosting its energy still further. Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider hope this will confirm or rule out tantalising hints of the elusive Higgs particle.

The LHC has already seen many events that could be signs of the decay of the long-sought Higgs boson, which is thought to endow other particles with mass. But more mundane reactions can also produce such events, so more experiments are needed to confirm or rule out the Higgs explanation.

Now the LHC’s management has decided to boost the energy of collisions to get a better chance of flushing the Higgs out into the open.

Full story at NewScientist

[Sylvia]

Did you know? The predecessor of the LHC was the LEP, the Large Electron–Positron Collider. I have just read about it in the sixth chapter of the book Antimatter by Frank Close.

[Nehushtan]

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Mystery boson earns Higgs status thanks to W particle

Say hello to Higgs. New data confirms that the unsatisfyingly named “Higgs-like particle” announced at CERN last year really is a Higgs boson.

There’s still an important distinction, though. “It is legitimate to call this beastie ‘a’ Higgs boson,” says Raymond Volkas, of the University of Melbourne in Australia, but not “the Higgs”.

New Scientist