Massive physics experiment on Wednesday

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Particle physicists believe they will throw open a new frontier of knowledge on Wednesday when, 100 metres below ground, they switch on a mega-machine crafted to unveil the deepest mysteries of matter.

The most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will accelerate sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light and then smash them together, with the aim of filling gaps in our understanding of the cosmos.

It may also determine the outcome of novel theories about space-time: does another dimension - or dimensions - exist in parallel to our own?

After nearly two decades and 6 billion Swiss francs ($A6.6 billion), an army of 5,000 scientists, engineers and technicians drawn from nearly three dozen countries have brought the mammoth project close to fruition.

At 9.30am (1730 AEST) on Wednesday, the first protons will be injected into a 27-kilometre ring-shaped tunnel, straddling the Swiss-French border at the headquarters of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Read more: http://news.smh.com.au/world/massive-physics-experiment-on-wednesday-20080908-4byr.html

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we are in a brave new world. May we all stay brave and strong. GObama!

As long as I end up in the Universe where Barack Obama becomes President.

This is the experiment that has whack scientists all panicky, isn't it? Cool!

I don't like it here any more!

Shamless pimp! http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3946204&mesg_id=3946204">Palin-phobia! And the Adams/Obama Precident.

standing off to a side, me dressed in a mini skirt and cats eye glasses, he with long red hair and leather jacket...discussing the possibility of a black hole from these types of experiments. LOL!!!

Some sort of weird nerd pheromones...

and lately we seem to be in it.

In November of 2000, I was on a business trip and was watching election returns in a bar. They called it for Gore. I had another celebratory drink and went back to my hotel -- slept really well.

I woke up in the morning and found myself in another reality and haven't felt right since. I've developed this theory that I was hit by a car and killed on my way back to my hotel and that I'm now in a parallel universe where everything just doesn't make any sense.

Think about it -- in what sane world would Sarah Palin be taken seriously as a candidate to be president of the US. It is absolutely ludicrous. Postmaster general or treasurer of the US -- maybe, because I'm not sure they do anything other than sign their names. But, president of the US (which she could conceivably become in a very short time)????

I'm as fascinated as anyone by all the dirt that's been uncovered about her -- but I still can't get my head around the idea that this political flyweight with a half-page resume and an intellect below that of George Bush can be mentioned in the same breath as vice president without people just laughing her off the stage.

This is insane.

Like the reverse of the rapture, or something.

sometimes I just want to punch myself in the face for spite!!!

Gore did win the 2000 presidential election.

In that alternate universe, Al Gore is just as evil as George Bush:



Star Trek reference, for those of you too un-nerdly to know.

Some of the events of the past eight years and the behavior of the * mis-administration and the mainstream media during that time has been stranger than something out of a fiction novel. I have often found myself reading news articles and thinking "this can't be happening, this is absolutely bizarre, this defies reality"

This is definitely not the world I grew up in and I'm only 26! It really does seem like a parallel universe. I want to get off!

Well they called Florida for Gore, not the whole election, Bush could have iked out a win without it, you should have stayed up, your overcondifence jinxed us all. :P

:thumbsup:

LOL!

which was south of Dallas. Now, we are a second rate country when it comes to science and new discoveries.

that everyone loves to hate.

Ann Richards tried to save it. Bush I refused to veto. Why is Texas still red?

I got some kick ass professors out of it, though.

a world war instead! isn't that just as good??
:sarcasm:

...the Universe in the middle of Fundy Country. Everybody there knows
that Gawd created the universe 6,000 years ago and if you *DON'T*
know that, you don't know your ass from an uncompleted hole in
the ground!

Tesha

See you in the singularity! :D

No 9-11 hypefest, if the world ends on the 10th! :evilgrin:

we can make us a McBush!

Then we can really confuse the Republicans!

Oh boy.

B-)

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :nuke:

We couldn't be that lucky.

black holes will be created. Lots of testing and calibration to do.

When head-crabs start coming out of the hole, it's time to panic.

They're just going to turn on the machine and make a beam go all the way around the 17 miles (go left). And then they'll reverse the direction (go right). This is to check out the plumbing - so to speak - and more importantly, to check out their sensors.

Next month they'll shoot TWO beams - one going left and one going right - at hitherto unimaginable speeds. The beams will collide and the earth will go poof. (NOT).

:toast:

You only turn left? Then reverse it for a victory lap? Sheesh.

They think it will take until the start of October to tune things in so they can get collisions. With NASCAR, you are pretty much guaranteed a few collisions before the afternoon is over. Other wise, left turn, left turn, left turn, left turn....

The data analysis will take months. It is the biggest job ever in computing history.

I mean, all the correct paperwork has been on file
for centuries!

Tesha

Just 3 km, is what I read.

Tesha

With a few exceptions, reports about the LHC have been more about scare-mongering and sensationalism than anything.

Science is cool.

Maybe some real science answers will be discovered in a decade or less.

Is that a word?

I just hope Gorden Freeman is working that day or else we will be in a lot of trouble.

Lol.

or this:

Or Even Worse:

http://www.popgive.com/2008/09/gordon-freeman-spotted-at-cern.html


Well, I've got my crowbar ready.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200809010400/NEWS06/809010346

In the world of particle physics rap, Kate McAlpine is something like a rising star.

Her last video: 537,333 views on YouTube and counting.

The subject: the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, the world's largest particle accelerator.

The text: rhyming elucidations of dark matter, anti-matter; the Big Bang and Higgs Boson, all capped off with declarations that, when the collider is turned on Sept. 10, "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head."

"Rap and physics are culturally miles apart," said McAlpine, a 23-year-old Michigan State University graduate and a science writer at CERN, in an e-mail last week, "and I find it amusing to try and throw them together."

Other people apparently find it amusing, too. Even physicists.

"We love the rap, and the science is spot on," said CERN spokesman James Gillies.

"I have to confess that I was skeptical when Katie said she wanted to do this, but when I saw her previous science rapping and the lyrics, I was convinced," he added. "I think you'll find pretty close to unanimity among physicists that it's great."

and buy some duct tape and ammunition.

(or better) and masturbating furiously when the world ends.

Wouldn't they be orthogonal, not parallel?

:)

I think it is so kool...
I love physics...

:hide:

heard it on radio so it must be true

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2008/09/07.html#recap

The scientists seeking to recreate a Big Bang-like event on an atomic level at CERN are arrogant regarding the infallibility of their calculations-- it's possible that a mini-black hole could put Earth and humanity at risk, Hoagland commented.

Why aren't we electing him President and ruler of Atlamtis?

to know that this may not be a good idea.

No way should we be doing this.

Talk radio rots your brains.

He'd be down there tinkering with his sonic screwdriver, a piece of sticky tape, and a Ventruvian thingabihoozy.
What could possibly go wrong?

Please don't answer that. I have an overactive imagination. :scared:

barrier and make Time travel a possibility

here's to scientific discovery

:toast:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19726421.700-2008-does-time-travel-start-here.html

2008: Does time travel start here?

09 February 2008
Michael Brooks
Magazine issue 2642

AS YOU may have heard, this will be the year. The Large Hadron Collider - the most powerful
atom-smasher ever built - will be switched on, and particle physics will hit pay-dirt. Yet if a
pair of Russian mathematicians are right, any advances in this area could be overshadowed by
a truly extraordinary event. According to Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, the LHC might just
turn out to be the world's first time machine.

It is a highly speculative claim, that's for sure. But if Aref'eva and Volovich are correct, the
LHC's debut at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, could
provide a landmark in history. That's because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is
possible at all - as far back as the creation of the first time machine, and that means 2008
could become Year Zero: a must-see for the ...

terrabytes of numerical data over which the eggheads will wet themselves with excitement and which will be utterly incomprehensible to those of us with communications degrees.

"When the LHC begins operations, it will produce roughly 15 petabytes..."
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Computing-en.html

n/t

nt

Not. We aren't evolved enough to be messing around with some of this stuff. Well ok, the scientists are but the guys who ultimately end up owning the patents never seem to be.

:p

Big deal. Mythbusters does that all the time, except they usually use frozen chickens instead of particle beams. And what comes out is usually some gooey stuff that nobody wants to touch without a hazmat suit on.:-)

with his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator going after Bugs Bunny.

After 30 ears of construction ? Just abandon the multi trillion dollar project and its spinoff industries?

lol
fire it up, lets see what that baby can do !

and no one forgot to carry the 1

and its nicer, can we move there?

For all we know, this is how our universe began. Someone pushed a button and voila!

:rofl:

For the record, they won't actually be "doing" the experiment on Wednesday. They will attempt to turn on the proton beam. They will need the anti-proton beam to begin doing the collision experiments. It will be a few weeks at least before they actually begin the proton/anti-proton collision experiments.

This will be very interesting experiment. We won't destroy the universe but we might learn some interesting things about it.

:+

they won't include the Higgs Boson.

This will send the theorists back to their white boards and crack open a new study into the matter (pun intended).

When can we expect the results?

It has already taken two decades to get this far and it will take another two months just to get the proton beams colliding. The data recorded will fill around 100,000 DVDs every year but physicists may have to wait between five and 10 years before they get any significant results.

I've heard rumors that they were seeing it in the LEP data but just were not ready to call it because the statistics were not good enough. I'm fairly confident that it will be there. Based on past we should know in a few months. Both the accelerator technology and the data reduction are now well known technology.

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes,
an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn,
world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs.
Feed it off an aux speak,, grunt, no, strength,
The ladder starts to clatter with fear fight down height.
Wire in a fire, representing seven games, a government for hire and a combat site.
Left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck.
Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing!
Fine, then.
Uh oh, overflow, population, common food, but it'll do.
Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and the revered and the right - right.
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Apart from the possibility of destroying earth, the universe, time and space as we know it, and maybe some alternate universes while we are at it, I'm very excited about this project. I really hope it's successful and we can better understand how things work.

Not only is it fascinating to see science advanced in such a large step, the fringe benefits are excellent (as they are with almost every large public science project).

The detectors provide so much data that the world had to build a dedicated 10 Gb/sec worldwide network, with which the rest of us will someday be able to download assloads of porn and stolen music.

cf Little Blue Planet

"As Stan disputes that he should have the key, Kai states that Earth is at the darkest part of the Dark Zone and advices to leave as soon as possible. 790 then states that it is a type 13 planet that usually destroys itself at its particular stage, either by war or unintentionally condensed in a pea sized object by scientist trying to find the mass of the Higgs Boson particle."

There will be plenty of space for new religions and re-interpretation of the Bible