Scientists hope for surprises in Big Bang experiment - The Orange Room

Raficoo

SOURCE: Scientists hope for surprises in Big Bang experiment | U.S. | Reuters

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists involved in a historic "Big Bang" experiment to begin this week hope it will turn up many surprises about the universe and its origins -- but reject suggestions it will bring the end of the world.

And Robert Aymar, the French physicist who heads the CERN research centre, predicted that discoveries to emerge from his organization's 6.4 billion euro ($9.2 billion) project would spark major advances for human society.

"If some of what we expect to find does not turn up, and things we did not foresee do, that will be even more stimulating because it means that we understand less than we thought about nature," said British physicist Brian Cox.

"What I would like to see is the unexpected," said Gerardus t'Hooft of the University of Michigan. Perhaps, he suggested, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine at the heart of the experiment "will show us things we didn't know existed."

Once it starts up on Wednesday, scientists plan to smash particle beams together at close to the speed of light inside CERN's tightly-sealed Large Hadron Collider to create multiple mini-versions of the primeval Big Bang.

Cosmologists say that that explosion of an object the size of a small coin occurred about 13.7 billion years ago and led to formation of stars, planets -- and eventually to life on earth.

A key aim of the CERN experiment is to find the "Higgs boson," named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who in 1964 pointed to such a particle as the force that gave mass to matter and made the universe possible.

But other mysteries of physics and cosmology -- supersymmetry, dark matter and dark energy among them -- are at the focus of experiments in the 27-km (17-mile) circular tunnel deep underneath the Swiss-French border.

FEARS OF DISASTER

CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, says its key researchers -- and many ordinary staff -- have been inundated by e-mails voicing fears about the experiment.

There have been claims that it will create "black holes" of intensive gravity sucking in CERN, Europe and perhaps the whole planet, or that it will open the way for beings from another universe to invade through a "worm hole" in space-time.

But a safety review by scientists at CERN and in the United States and Russia, issued at the weekend, rejected the prospect of such outcomes.

"The LHC will enable us to study in detail what nature is doing all around us," Aymar, who has led CERN for five years, said in response to that review. "The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction."

Cox, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Britain's Manchester University, was even more trenchant. "I am immensely irritated by the conspiracy theorists who spread this nonsense around," he said.

When the experiment begins soon after 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on September 10, disaster scenarists will have little to work on.

In the first tests, a particle beam will be shot all the way around the LHC channel in just one direction. If all goes well, collisions might be tried within the coming weeks, but at low intensity. Any bangs at this stage, said one CERN researcher, "will be little ones."

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hmm Black holes? dam hope things don't get "sucky"

Salome

Yalla 10 minutes, and it starts!!! I cant wait for the resulst!!!

From CERN:

10 September: the LHC’s first circulating beam
05/09/2008.

On 10 September, a first beam of protons will circulate in the LHC. The first moments in the life of the LHC will be an exciting time for the CERN staff, and will be captured by more than 250 media organizations from all over the world.

The first injection of the beam into the machine will be between 9:00 and 10:00 a. m. At 9:15 the LHC project leader, Lyn Evans, will give a brief explanation of the day’s proceedings in French followed by some words from Robert Aymar, CERN Director general.

CERN personnel are invited to follow the first beam day events, which will be shown in the following rooms around CERN:

All day:
Council Chamber, Main Auditorium, IT Auditorium, AB Auditorium Prévessin, Conference Room 40-S2-A01, Conference Room 40-S2-C01.

Afternoon:
AB Auditorium Meyrin, AT Auditorium.

Please note that the event will also be webcast but, given the limited number of connections, this option is intended for use of the public outside CERN. CERN personnel are encouraged to follow the event from the conference rooms.

Libnene Qu7

Omg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're all gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Salome

Quote:

Originally Posted by Libnene Qu7

Omg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're all gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cooooooooool

Can you wish for a better death than being swallowed by a black hole?

Dalzi

Those who are saying that there's a threat are being ridiculed by some scientists... I don't think they'd go for it had they believed it's going to kill us all :D.

Salome

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dalzi

Those who are saying that there's a threat are being ridiculed by some scientists... I don't think they'd go for it had they believed it's going to kill us all :D.

Unless CERN is owned by an Israeli and their aim is to create a black hole exactly above the HA headquarter:D:D

More infos about the topic: Scientists send first beam round atom-smasher | U.S. | Reuters

Layyouss

نجاح تشغيل اكبر نظام لتسريع الجزيئات في العالم لكشف اسرار نشوء الكون

10 أيلول 2008
أعلن العلماء في سويسرا إن جهاز "صادم الهدرون الكبير" المعروف اختصارا بـLHC نجح في إجراء أول تجربة رئيسية من خلال إطلاق أول شعاع من جسيمات تسمى البروتون على امتداد 27 كيلومترا وذلك في أكبر محاولة من نوعها لفهم كيفية نشوء الكون. ويوفر الجهاز الضخم، الذي كلف إنشاؤه في المنطقة الحدودية بين فرنسا وسويسرا نحو 10 مليارات دولار أميركي، للعلماء قوة أكبر من ذي قبل لتهشيم مكونات الذرات في محاولة لرؤية ما يشكلها. وتدير المنظمة الأوروبية للبحوث النووية المعروفة باختصارها الفرنسي سيرن جهاز الصادم. وأعطى مدير المشروع، لين إيفانز، الأمر لإرسال البروتانات إلى جهاز التسريع الواقع تحت الحدود السويسرية الفرنسية. وبعد سلسلة من التجارب، تمكنت البروتونات من قطع المسافة الكاملة الممتدة على طول جهاز (LHC). ويأمل العلماء أن تكون تجربة الأربعاء بمثابة الخطوة الرئيسية باتجاه فهم كيفية نشوء الكون.
والتمعت نقطتان على شاشة أحد أجهزة الكمبيوتر، مشيرة إلى أن البروتونات وصلت إلى النقطة النهائية المحددة لها.
وانتظر نحو 9 آلاف عالم فيزيائي في مناطق مختلفة من العالم بشغف انطلاق التجربة، ومن المقرر أن يشاركوا في تحليل المعطيات والبيانات المتأتية من التجربة على أمل معرفة أسرار مكونات الذرات من خلال تهشيمها.
ويحاول العلماء محاكاة الظروف التي ارتبطت بنظرية الانفجار الكوني الكبير والتي يقول العلماء إنها قادت إلى نشوء الكون.
ومن المقرر في وقت لاحق إرسال البروتونات في اتجاه معاكس بهدف تهشيم الجسيمات بقوة جبارة.
وعبر بعض منتقدي هذه التجربة عن خوفهم من أن تصادم البروتونات ببعضها بعضا قد يحدث ثقبا أسود يؤدي إلى نهاية العالم، لكن علماء الفيزياء الذين أجروا التجربة رفضوا هذه المخاوف.
وتشير أحدث الملاحظات الفلكية إلى أن المادة العادية مثل المجرات والغازات والنجوم والكواكب تشكل نسبة 4 في المائة من مجموع الكون.
أما بالنسبة إلى باقي أجزاء الكون فتتشكل من المادة السوداء بنسبة 23 في المائة والطاقة السوداء بنسبة 73 في المائة.
ويعتقد علماء الفيزياء أن جهاز الصادم يمكن أن يقدم المفاتيح لفهم طبيعة هذه "المادة" الغامضة.
وتبلورت فكرة إنشاء صادم الهدرون الكبير في أوائل الثمانينيات من القرن الماضي، لكن لم يُعتمد المشروع سوى في عام 1996 بميزانية مبدئية هي 1.3 مليار دولار أميركي. لكن مع بدء الأشغال، ازدادت التكاليف، ما أدى إلى تعرض المختبر الكبير إلى أزمة مالية. واضطر القائمون على المشروع إلى اقتراض مئات الملايين من اليورو لضمان إكمال إنشاء جهاز الصادم.

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Rors

From what i understood, this machine will only be put to practice today. The proton smashing experiments will only occur as of next month... then things should get interesting.

By Alan Boyle
Science editor
MSNBC
updated 6:25 a.m. ET Sept. 10, 2008

After 14 years of preparation, a new scientific wonder of the world opened for business Wednesday with the official startup of Europe's Large Hadron Collider.

The $10 billion particle accelerator is the biggest, most expensive science machine on earth, designed to probe mysteries ranging from dark matter and missing antimatter to the existence of extra, unseen dimensions in space.

Scientists, journalists and dignitaries watched from the control room at Europe's CERN particle-physics center on the French-Swiss border, near Geneva, as beams of protons were sent all the way around the collider's 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring of supercooled pipes for the first time.

LHC by the numbers :

• Cost: $6 billion to $10 billion
• Years in the making: 14
• Top energy: 14 trillion electron volts
• Peak power consumption: 120 megawatts
• Number of collaborators: More than 10,000

... Once the machine is in full operation, two streams of invisible protons will be whipped up in opposite directions around an underground racetrack to 99.999999 percent of the speed of light. When the two waves of protons slam into each other, scientists expect particles to melt into bits of energy up to 100,000 times hotter than the sun's core — a state that should replicate what the entire universe was like just an instant after it came into being.

Full article HERE.

Salome

LHC progress report, week 1

Geneva, 18 September 2008. After a spectacular start on 10 September, the LHC enjoyed a mixed first week of commissioning with beam. To get beams around the ring in both directions on the first day exceeded all expectations, and the success continued through the night, with several hundred orbits being achieved.

The next step in the commissioning process is to bring in the radio-frequency (RF) system that keeps the beams bunched, rather than spreading out around the ring, and will eventually accelerate them to 7 TeV. The RF system works by ‘capturing’ the beam, speeding up the slower moving particles and slowing down the faster ones so that the beam remains bunched into fine threads about 11 cm long. Without it, the beam quickly dissipates and cannot be used for physics.

On Thursday night, 11 September, beam two, the anti-clockwise beam, was captured and circulated for over half an hour before being safely extracted from the LHC. The next step is to repeat the process for beam one, and that is set to begin this week.

The intervening time has been spent recovering cryogenic conditions after the failure of a power transformer on one of the surface points of the LHC switched off the main compressors of the cryogenics for two sectors of the machine. The transformer, weighing 30 tonnes and with a rating of 12 MVA, was exchanged over the weekend. During this process, the cryogenics system was put into a standby mode with the two sectors kept at around 4.5 K. Since the beginning of the week the cryogenics team have been busy re-cooling the magnets and preparing for operation with beam, which is currently forecast for today. The next stage of the commissioning will be single turn studies using beam one, followed by RF capture and circulating beam in both rings.

The LHC is on course for first collisions in a matter of weeks. Next update 24 September at the latest.

CERN

Osiris

LHC experiment hits major snag with helium leak, two-month delay likely news
22 September 2008

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is beset by problems yet again. After successfully overcoming paranoid efforts to stop the project, the world's largest science experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) started off to worldwide applause on 10 September 2008. (See: World's largest science experiment begins with the powering on of the LHC)

Soon after the rousing beginning, a transformer failure shut down the cooling plant, which was repaired only last Thursday. Even before the euphoria over the repairs had subsided, that disaster struck. And this time it may be serious enough to throw the entire experiment schedule out of gear.

On Friday, the LHC had its biggest setback till date. This time, the electrical link between two of the particle accelerator's massive 30-ton superconducting magnets has failed, causing a magnet quench event. Due to having to warm up the section of the tunnel containing the magnet in order to conduct repairs, and then cool it back down to its -271°C operating temperature, these repairs will take at least two months.

The exact sequence of events is as follows. Following Thursday's successful repairs, the LHC was cranked up on Friday for a routine test. During this test, one of the bus bar connections that linked cables between the magnets failed, and melted thus causing roughly a ton of liquid helium to leak into one of the tunnel sections. The fire brigade had to be called to handle the situation. CERN said strict safety regulations had ensured there was no risk to people from the malfunction.

"It seems to be a badly made connection - but this all has to be confirmed once we have had the chance to take a look at it," said Dr James Gillies, director of communications at CERN. ''It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out."

These superconducting magnets, by their very nature, require extremely low temperatures to operate. Warming up them to effect the necessary repairs, and then cooling them down again would reportedly take two months. This would put the actual task of colliding opposing proton beams originally scheduled for late October, on a tight schedule as facility shuts down during the winter to save on energy costs. If the problems are not solved till then, the experiment will have to be pushed back to 2009.

"Because the LHC is a superconducting machine that works at very low temperatures, in order to get in and fix it we've got to warm it up, then we go and fix it, and then we cool it down again, and that's a process that's likely to take two months," Gillies said.

However, the concerned scientists are not a worried lot. Considering the huge investments made on the LHC in terms of time and money - 20 years and $8 billion plus - a two-month delay seems but a trifle.

"If you keep an eye on the big picture, we've been building the machine for 20 years. The switch-on was always going to be a long process," said Gillies, who went on to say that "A year or two down the line, this moment will be a distant memory, and we'll be running smoothly."

When the LHC starts up at full speed, it will be able to engineer 600 million collisions every second between protons traveling around its 27-km (17-mile) underground chamber at 99.99 per cent of the speed of light.

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