http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090809/ap_on_sc/eu_sci_big_bang_machine

Particle collider: Black hole or crucial machine?

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press Writer – Sun Aug 9, 2:29 am ET

GENEVA – When launched to great fanfare nearly a year ago, some feared the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole that would suck in the world. It turns out the Hadron may be the black hole.

The world's largest scientific machine has cost $10 billion, has worked only nine days and has yet to smash an atom. The unique equipment in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel with cathedral-sized detectors deep beneath the Swiss-French border has been assembled by specialists in many countries, with 8,970 physicists eagerly awaiting the startup.

But despite the expense, thousands of physicists around the world, many of whom hope to conduct experiments here, insist that it will work and that it is crucial to mankind's understanding of the universe.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, said Friday it would restart the collider in November at half power under pressure from scientists eager to conduct experiments to unlock secrets of the universe.

But spokesman James Gillies told The Associated Press they would have to shut down yet again next year to finish repairs so that the Large Hadron Collider can operate at full energy of 7 trillion electron volts — seven times higher than any other machine in the world.

CERN has been working since late last year to repair the damage caused by a faulty electrical joint. The breakdown occurred nine days after the spectacular start up of the $10 billion machine last Sept. 10 when beams of subatomic particles were sent around the accelerator in opposite directions.

Fifty-three massive electrical magnets had to be cleaned and repaired after the failure. Tons of supercold liquid helium spilled out of the system, and a sooty residue had to be cleared from the tubes that are meant to be pristine, holding a vacuum in which subatomic particles can whiz around the tunnel at near the speed of light at temperatures colder than outer space.

Michio Kaku, a physics professor at City University of New York who is an outspoken critic of waste in big science projects, defends the CERN collider as a crucial investment.

"The Europeans and the Americans are not throwing $10 billion down this gigantic tube for nothing," Kaku said. "We're exploring the very forefront of physics and cosmology with the Large Hadron Collider because we want to have a window on creation, we want to recreate a tiny piece of Genesis to unlock some of the greatest secrets of the universe."

He said the biggest cause of the "bad accident" last year was "probably due to human error caused by rushing the project."

"But I view it as a temporary black eye. We'll get it up and running," Kaku said.

CERN expects repairs and additional safety systems to cost about 40 million Swiss francs ($37 million) over the course of several years, covered by the 20-nation organization's budget.

The collider emerged as the world's largest after the U.S. canceled the Superconducting Super Collider being built in Texas in 1993. Congress pulled the plug after costs soared, and questions were raised about the value of the science it could produce.

Gillies says all 20 of CERN's member nations have remained supportive and that four other countries — Cyprus, Israel, Serbia and Turkey — have asked to join. A fifth country — Slovenia — has expressed interest.

Japan, India, Russia and the U.S. are observer countries that have made sizable contributions to the CERN project.

CERN is now aiming to restart the machine in November with beams of subatomic particles initially running at 3.5 trillion electron volts, or TeV. That's only half the level the machine was designed for, but it's still 3 1/2 times higher than the second most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago. During last year's brief startup phase, the CERN collider only operated at half the Fermilab level.

Even as the machine is being calibrated this winter, scientists will be able to conduct experiments, collecting data on the collisions of protons and lead ions in the accelerator.

They hope the higher energy will enable them to see particles so far undetected, such as the elusive Higgs boson, which in theory gives mass to other particles — and objects and creatures — in the universe.

Physicists have used smaller, room-temperature colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles. And they still have other questions about antimatter, dark matter and particle mass they want to answer with CERN's new collider.

They hope the fragments that come off the collisions will show on a tiny scale what happened one-trillionth of a second after the so-called Big Bang, which many scientists theorize was the massive explosion that formed the universe. The theory holds that the universe was rapidly cooling at that stage and matter was changing quickly.

Some skeptics have expressed fears the high-energy collision of protons could imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

CERN and leading physicists dismiss the fears and maintain the project is safe.

The collider's teething problems are typical of complicated accelerators, but it has been especially frustrating to physicists from around the world, who already have been waiting for years to conduct their experiments on the machine.

"But the LHC is an example of an enormously complicated machine that is pushing the edge of accelerator technology, and it is not surprising that it has had some unanticipated problems," Neal Lane, former President Bill Clinton's science adviser and former director of the National Science Foundation.

If the collider can be started soon, it will produce valuable results, said Lane, now a a physicist and public policy professor at Rice University.

But, he added, "If there are many more surprises, further delays, failure to meet design specifications over the next few years, then the field of experimental particle physics, worldwide, could be set back for a decade or more. The stakes are very high!"

Gillies told the AP that CERN management decided at the beginning of the year that it would not try to repair all parts of the collider this year.

"Otherwise, we would never have had a beam before halfway through next year," he said.

Gillies said CERN experts have examined every one of the 1,600 superconducting magnets and each of the 10,000 electrical splices as well as copper protection to carry away any spillover current to prevent damage to the magnets if they heat up as happened Sept. 19.

They decided some of the splices need to be repaired before the collider goes to full power, but that they can operate safely up to 5 TeV without further repairs now.

That has been set as the highest energy for the collider before its next shutdown for maintenance, probably in November 2010. Then the further repairs will be made so that the energy level can be ramped up.

Rolf Heuer, who has taken over as CERN's director-general since the failure, said the collider has been studied very carefully and is much better understood than a year ago.

"We can look forward with confidence and excitement to a good run through the winter and into next year," Heuer said.

I really cannot wait until the data starts flowing in! Thanks for the news story.

I really cannot wait until the data starts flowing in! Thanks for the news story.

But data shall flow to the Grid, not to amateurs like us and the people of LHC@home (I am one of them, still patiently awaiting for some work). Luckily, I also have QMC@home and AQUA@home, just to stay away from biology and genetic engineering.
Tullio

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Welcome for the article :-)

CERN is now aiming to restart the machine in November with beams of subatomic particles initially running at 3.5 trillion electron volts, or TeV. That's only half the level the machine was designed for, but it's still 3 1/2 times higher than the second most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago. During last year's brief startup phase, the CERN collider only operated at half the Fermilab level.

The above quote is from the article. When the machine does start it will only be at half the level. So will the tests be worth it?? They had enough time to fix the
machine, why not go to full speed???

Thanks in advance for any replies, maybe to my stupid question.
Coco

This CERN Press release explains why;
LHC
Tullio

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Welcome for the article :-)

CERN is now aiming to restart the machine in November with beams of subatomic particles initially running at 3.5 trillion electron volts, or TeV. That's only half the level the machine was designed for, but it's still 3 1/2 times higher than the second most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago. During last year's brief startup phase, the CERN collider only operated at half the Fermilab level.

The above quote is from the article. When the machine does start it will only be at half the level. So will the tests be worth it?? They had enough time to fix the
machine, why not go to full speed???

Thanks in advance for any replies, maybe to my stupid question.
Coco

you don't take your brand new car out and red line it the first day. you also dont do that to your super collider if you have any concerns for your machine and what it cost you to build.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

you don't take your brand new car out and red line it the first day. you also dont do that to your super collider if you have any concerns for your machine and what it cost you to build.

LOL, i would do that if i could with the car. Cars are man made and so is the collider. I just thought they were cutting back because of the concerns of black holes. This story is the top of the news, least of all the concerns the world has over the LHC.

LOL, i would do that if i could with the car. Cars are man made and so is the collider.

All well and good if you're the reckless James T Kirk type!

Note that even today's modern engines still benefit from being gently "run in" until their first service.

I just thought they were cutting back because of the concerns of black holes. This story is the top of the news, least of all the concerns the world has over the LHC.

I read it that they were being prudently cautious of various electrical connections that were known to be at a slightly high resistance. Their aim now is to gain operating experience and acquire lots of science data to feed many hungry scientists.

Full power and whatever glory can wait a short while until they have at least collected some data to explore.

Happy crunchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Ohm's law still rules over particle colliders with supercooled magnets.
Tullio

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Another reason they need to start out at lower power levels is generate calibration data. That can compare results from LHC with old experiments run at different labs and assure that the results match.

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CERN, ‘the LHC schedule’

For the waiting world, and indeed for most of us here at CERN, ‘the LHC schedule’ simply means the date that the LHC will restart - and we only take notice when that end-date changes. But in fact the schedule is a constantly evolving intricate document coordinating all the repairs, consolidation and commissioning in every part of the machine. So, what actually goes on behind the scenes in timing and planning all the work on one of the most complex scientific instruments ever built?

read more here

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To the pessimists out there, the 3.5 TeV starting energy of the LHC will be like a half-empty glass. However, the thousands of physicists working at the experiments certainly do not share these feelings. On the contrary, they are as excited as ever since they will be the first to observe what happens to matter in these (still) unprecedented conditions

CERN bulletin 37-38/2009 released 4 September 2009

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/?name=CERNBulletin&ln=en&issue=37/2009

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/?name=CERNBulletin&ln=en&issue=37/2009

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Very interesting is the explanation of what a Tev is and what it is compared to a daily event like a 1 Kg. mass falling from a height of 1 m ....
(taken from the link provided by Byron Leigh...)
Cheers, Byron! How´re you doing?

Did you know?

What is a TeV?

1 TeV corresponds to 1012 electronvolts. The electronvolt is an energy unit particularly convenient in particle physics because, in absolute terms, the energies that particle physicists deal with are very small. If we take the LHC as an example, the total collision energy is 14 TeV, making it the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. Still, if we convert this into joules – the energy unit accepted by the International System – we obtain only 22.4 x 10–7 joules.

This is a very small amount of energy if compared, for example, to the energy of an object weighing 1kg and falling from a height of 1m, that is, 9.8 joules.

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Tera is a prefix meaning 10 exp 12 that is a thousand billion or a million million.
Tullio

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OMG!!!!!!!!!!!


The Cern lab is best known for its Hadron Collider

October 10, 2009

Nuclear engineer from Cern lab arrested for al-Qaeda links

Fears that al-Qaeda is planning an attack on the nuclear industry in Europe were renewed yesterday after French secret agents arrested a physicist working at an atomic research centre.

The 32-year-old man, who was detained with his brother, 25, is suspected of providing a list of terrorist targets to North African Islamic radicals. He worked for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, according to French police sources.

Agents were said to have intercepted messages in which the physicist, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, had suggested targets in France.

He is believed to have been in contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian-based terror organisation that joined Osama bin Laden’s network in 2007.

“He had expressed a wish or a desire to commit terrorist actions but had not materially prepared them,” an intelligence source said.

After he was identified, during an investigation into a French network that had sent Islamic radicals to Afghanistan, the man was put under surveillance for about 18 months. Last month Judge Christophe Teissier, an investigating magistrate specialising in terrorism, opened a formal inquiry into his activities.

The brothers apparently came to the attention of the secret services when agents monitored the internet as part of the inquiry into the recruitment of extremists to fight in Afghanistan. Several exchanges were recorded between the brothers and suspected al-Qaeda contacts.

The pair were arrested by the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (DCRI) at their home in Vienne, eastern France. Police seized two computers, three hard discs and two USB keys.

The men were taken for questioning at the directorate’s headquarters in Levallois-Perret, outside Paris. “Perhaps we have avoided the worst possible scenario,” Brice Hortefeux, the French Interior Minister, said. “We are in a situation of permanent vigilance and we follow the declarations of the leaders of certain organisations day by day. Our vigilance is never lowered. The risk is permanent.”

CERN, the leading European laboratory for the study of sub-atomic physics, said that the suspect had never been in contact with any elements that could be used for terrorist purposes.

The man who was arrested worked on analysis concerning the Large Hadron Collider but was not an employee of CERN and “performed his research under a contract with an outside institute”. None of his research had a potential military application, the organisation added.

In its previous incarnation as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb fought the Algerian authorities in an attempt to install an Islamic state at the cost of tens of thousands of lives in the 1990s.

Since joining al-Qaeda it has spread its activities to countries such as Mali, Niger and Mauritania. In June it claimed responsibility for the killing of Christopher Leggett, an American humanitarian worker, in Mauritania.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6868246.ece

Please let not one worry about the LHC ,LHC will not, and i repeat will not produce black holes,dark matter etc nor will it discover the higgs boson be assured, It will only add alittle to the knowlede we alreay know about the basic blocks that built up atoms and possible destroy itself once more time. As an intelligent spceies i dont think scientists need to smash there heads to learn the secrets of the universe ,for all that is out there is mostly known they just have to add the pieces together.

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We choose to go to the moon and to do other things, we choose to go to the moon not because its easy but because its hard. kennedy

Many people around the world think that the particle accelerator is down, but is that the TRUTH no it has been in action since the problem is it produces a mutagenic particle not the HIGS BOSON but something else that has a high affinity for dna

OPERATION IN SECRET

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We choose to go to the moon and to do other things, we choose to go to the moon not because its easy but because its hard. kennedy

The only article appearing in the New York Times on the LHC is the following:
LHC.
It says nothing of what your link says.
Tullio

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Tullio are you suggesting that ,i made my own personal link and planted my own story.NO i just share what i find was reported ,i personally dont believe in any new particle been found by any collider but only that the properties of those we already know could be improved i.e better understanding. But that was reported and i am not in new york.HOW SURE ARE YOU THAT ITS NOT OPERATIONAL,I AM NOT SURE AFTER ALL , ALL MILITARY PROJECTS OR PROJECTS WITH SUCH A POTENTIAL CAN BE RE CLASSIFIED AND CAN BE KEPT SECRET. YOU SEE LHC WAS BUILT AND THE AGREEMENT MADE THAT THE DATA WILL BE ANALYSED BY SCIENTISTS AROUND THE WORLD ,BY FAKING ITS BREAK DOWN SCIENTISTS AROUND THE WORLD ARE NOT REQUESTING FOR DATA NOW FOR ANALYSIS, AND SO THE MISSING GAP PHENOMENON, IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME WERE NATIONS TRY TO GET AHEAD OF ONE ANTHER ,WITH INTENTION TO DESTROY ONE ANTHER ,WHAT DO YOU THINK, WHOM DO YOU TRUST ?

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We choose to go to the moon and to do other things, we choose to go to the moon not because its easy but because its hard. kennedy

I am a physicist and have visited CERN, although I never worked there. I am sure it not a military laboratory like Los Alamos or Livermore and the researches done there have no military importance. I am following the CERN site via internet and often see photos of technicians welding cables and doing other works prior to the startup. I also follow LHC@home, where crunchers are disappointed because they get no data to crunch. People at CERN come from all nations in the world and are simply doing science. If some secret plan existed it would be put in Internet after one or two days. There is no secrecy at CERN.
Tullio

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