Large Hadron Collider

Anyone else interested in this?...
There was a good Lehman's guide in the Metro this fair morn.

Yeah, can't wait, but got a bad feeling they'll flick the 'on' switch.... distant hum

"Ok guys, check back in 15 years and we'll have something for you!"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7604293.stm

Comprehensive and comprehensible coverage from the BBC

well we are all still alive

Anyone else interested in this?...
There was a good Lehman's guide in the Metro this fair morn.

Lehmann's guide?

^Jeezus! What a fucktard i is.

Its also 'Big Bang Day' on Radio 4, they have coverage and talks about the science of it going on all day, needless to say my other half is at home listening to it and is rather excited.

From the tele-sales team in the office, overheard this morning "I was expecting to hear a bang this morning, but apparently the thingies in their are too small to hear".

I despair...

well we are all still alive

Can you be absolutely certain of that though. We may all seem to be alive, because we may all really be dead, or even have slipped into an alternative Universe. I found things a little odd on the way to work this morning I can tell you

Existentialist!

They have actually not collided anything yet. The plan is to fire particles in only one direction initially. Thats what the radio told me this morning, and I believe it because they have nice english accents.

All they are doing at the moment is checking that they can get the protons round all the way, one way, at (proton) walking pace.

All the exciting stuff will happen when the press have forgotton about them.

the beam they shot today was going at 20mph. at full speed, the beam will travel the LHC 11000 times a second.

now theyre gonna shoot a beam in the other direction.

sounds simple enough.

Lovely quote from the BBC Article:
"If there was a fault with any of these, he said, it would have stopped the beam. They were also wary of obstacles in the beam pipe which could prevent the protons from completing their first circuit.
Mr Myers has experience of the latter problem. While working on the LHC's predecessor, a machine called the Large-Electron Positron Collider, engineers found two beer bottles wedged into the beam pipe - a deliberate, one-off act of sabotage.
The culprits - who were drinking a particular brand that advertising once claimed would "refresh the parts other beers cannot reach" - were never found."

My holiday reading was "Fooled by Randomness" and "[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory"]The Black Swan[/ame]" by Nassim Taleb so
Probably won't just ain't good enough

No, they've already sent beams round in one direction, today is the day they start colliding, hence all the uproar and fanfair.

EDIT: This is bullshit

Nope, today the aim is to get the beam to travel the full 27km only, things are going well so they should easily be able to start some big bangs within the coming months as planned.

From their site:

It planned to circulate the first beams 10th September 2008. First collisions at high energy are expected about a month later with the first results from the experiments soon after.

(I like the liberal use of "soon after" here for the results... nothing too exciting will be processed/assessed for a year at least.)

Bring it.

No, they've already sent beams round in one direction, today is the day they start colliding, hence all the uproar and fanfair.

Sorry- not true.

All the world's media is going bananas over "first beam" day at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the world's most stupendous particle-punisher, which switched on this morning (following an initial hiccup which appeared to be fixed by the traditional expedient of turning it off then on again). Today, it is being strongly implied, is the moment of truth - today is the big day, when the LHC might unmask the elusive "god particle" - or alternatively destroy the world and indeed perhaps the entire universe.
There's just one snag with all that - it's cobblers. All the good, interesting stuff from the LHC - the Higgs deiton, the dark matter, the possibly planet-gobbling black hole dimensional portal threat and/or universe-buster runaway strangelet or monopole soup plagues, dessert topping apocalypses etc - none of that's on offer today. All of these excellent possibilities require the LHC boffins to actually collide some hadrons - well, duh. The clue's in the name. But they aren't ready for that yet.
What's happening today is the inaugural, gentle bowling of some initial protons around the entire 27-km subterranean ultrachilled superconductor magno-track. That's your lot.
In coming months the underground Alpine boffinry chiefs, once happy that they have hadrons whipping round the big ring properly in one direction, will fire up the opposing stream going the other way.
Only then, once the two unprecedentedly puissant particle cannons are reliably ripping out clips of protons on full auto both clockwise and anticlockwise, will the real fun begin. Only then will the boffins begin to seriously meddle with the very fabric of the universe, as they possibly rashly cross the streams of the two colossal energy guns, ramming protons into one another at almost light speed. Thus far, we are told only that this will happen "by the end of the year".

More http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/10/lhc_day_is_not_today/

No, they've already sent beams round in one direction, today is the day they start colliding, hence all the uproar and fanfair.

Thats not right... Today they are trying to make the beams circulate the thing for the first time.

"**The ****10th September 2008 is ****LHC **start up date .
Everything is now ready for the first injection of proton beams into the LHC on the 10th September 2008."

"Proton beams have already been injected into the first metres of the LHC, to test the injection process, but the first attempt to circulate beams all the way around the LHC will be on the official start up day. If everything proceeds according to plan the beam will circulate all the way around the 27 km long LHC. Over the following months the LHC scientists and engineers will commission the LHC, running beams at higher energy with the intention of beginning collisions, using relatively low energy (5TeV) beams, towards the end of 2008."

http://www.lhc.ac.uk/latest-news.html

Some good stuff on radio 4 all day. Simon Singh is on this afternoon and he presents stuff really well.

Bring it.

Haha! Agreed!

I was wondering where Tynan has been for the last couple of weeks . . clearly his search for a power source for the HHSB Light Sabre Post has been taken to another level

They start colliding in 4 weeks, so that's how long we have left. Party on! Woop, woop.

So let me get this straight....
The last Big Bang created a rather large thing called 'the universe'

And some dudes in a hole in the ground in Switzerland are trying to recreate it without knowing the full implications of it going slightly tits up.

places tinfoil hat on head

Coool.