Large Hadron Collider restart delayed till October
June 20, 2009
Large Hadron Collider. Photo: CERN
(AP) -- The world's largest atom smasher will likely be fired up again in October after scientists have carried out tests and put in place further safety measures to prevent a repeat of the faults that sidelined the $10 billion machine shortly after startup last year, the operator said Saturday.
The Large Hadron Collider was meant to restart in late September, but that will probably be pushed back two to three weeks, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research said.
"We're pretty confident about the dates," James Gillies told The Associated Press, adding that scientists believe they understand the error that happened last year and how to prevent it occurring again.
An electrical fault caused by a faulty splice in the wiring shut down the giant machine on Sept. 19, nine days after it was started up with great fanfare.
The 20-nation operator, known as CERN, expects repairs and additional safety systems to cost about 40 million Swiss francs ($37 million) over the course of several years, Gillies said.
Once it is running, scientists will use the machine to smash together protons from hydrogen atoms inside a 27-kilometer (17-mile) circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border near Geneva. By recording what particles are produced by the collisions they hope to better understand the makeup of the universe and everything in it.
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Dec 16, 2006 |
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For a more detailed summary of the technical details containing numerous references, see http://cern.ch/ls...port.pdf
Bottom line: Cosmic-ray proton-proton collisions at _MUCH_ higher energies have been occurring in the Universe and even within the Earth's own atmosphere for many billions of years --- yet the Universe is still here, and the Earth is still here. Therefore, the alleged `risk' is quite literally ASTRONOMICALLY SMALL. Anyone who thinks otherwise has not studied the relevant physics --- they've been reading propaganda from ignorant scaremongers who have no clue what they are talking about because their `knowledge' of `physics' comes from from comic books and bad fiction novels.
Bwahahahahaha!
There's a probability for you to turn in to a giant elephant right now, you better kill yourselves before you suffer such a horrible incident, please.
Read the report. As SpeakerToWolves said, it includes all relevant risks if it is comparing with what is already happening on higher energy scales and flows.
You ask how these things correlate. These are independent collisions, so already included by cosmic ray sources also being independent. This is also already happening with no ill effects.
But if you want to do the effort, that statistical independence should clue us in on how to do the math.
[Hint: The risk when multiplying ASTRONOMICALLY SMALL risks together is on the order of ASTRONOMICALLY SMALL^2, which is ASTRONOMICALLY SMALLer than the already ASTRONOMICALLY SMALL risk from each.]
[I put these as 'risks', because probabilities that aren't certain to be observable during a universe lifetime seems to me need some analysis to make sure they are meaningful, as the scaremongers and their supporters happily consider. If they exist, do we imply that we live in a multiverse? Or are the distributions existing just on the principle that these frequencies are in principle observable?]
My only problem is, why LHC was allowed to upgrade at all without such analysis. Now the civilization has only minimal control over further evolution of LHC experiments by now.
That changes the energy (and momenta), but again are well covered what is already happening at larger energy and momenta.
OK, I will try to give you an cheap & easy hint, how it could be really working in my broken English: cosmic ray protons are 10E{18} times more energetic, then LHC protons, right?
But the cosmic ray protons are colliding with stratosphere matter, which is 10E{6} thinner, then the underground of LHC. This increases a risk by six oders of magnitude or so.
Furthermore, the protons of cosmic ray are individual particles. But LHC protons are coming in bunches of 10E{6} higher proton density and frequency. This increases a risk by another six oders of magnitude or so.
In addition, the effective crossection is diminished by non-zero rest momentum toward Earth by six orders of magnitude. But at the case of head-to-head proton collisions the resulting momentum and velocity of products of collision may be zero, so they would have a lotta time to interact with their neighborhood. This increases a risk of disaster by another six orders of magnitude or so.
In such way, we have 10E{18} times increased risk of black hole formation for LHC collisions with compare to cosmic rays in stratosphere without any problem.
Now the only remaining question is: are the LHC proponents so giant trolls, they didn%u2019t even realize it - or they ignore this risk analysis purportedly? In both cases such people are simply incompetent to control such sort of experiments.
The analysis you ask for is already done, you should deal with it.
The muon pairs formation during recent Tevatron experiments in Fermilab well outside of collider pipe may be related to recent pentaquark and tetraneutron evidence and it can demonstrate the stabilization of large matter clusters via supersymmetry and the danger of strangelet formation.
We can understand the dark matter, WIMPS and supersymmetric bosons as a surface tension effects of gravitational field. At the case of large distances / energy densities the energy density of space-time curvature near large particle or galactic clusters can become a dominant force, because it manifests itself as a additional mass density of vacuum with antigravity effects.
In particular, the formation of tiny dense particle clusters can stabilize the exotic forms of matter due the hydrostatic pressure inside of tiny particle droplets like the neutrons inside of neutron stars or atom nuclei by such way, these droplets can escape from collider pipe and they can start the avalanche conversion of normal matter to another strangelets under development of giant explosion, which could vaporize a substantial portion of Earth.
Therefore the latests Fermilab results should serve as a very last warning of people before high energy LHC experiments planned. The confirmation of supersymmetry could become a supersymmetric event for science as well: the best triumph of mainstream science and it%u2019s very last mistake at the same moment.
I'm just saying: here are aparent safety risks following from these points:
1) head2head collisions, zero momentum of products toward Earth, they%u2019ve a lotta time to interact with it
2) multiparticle collisions: when some piece of heavy matter appears in the accelerator line, the whole content of LHC will feed it by new matter
3) proximity of dense environment with compare to stratospheric collisions of gamma rays
4) the strong possibility of formation of charged and magnetic black hole. As we know, real black holes have always charge and they rotate rapidly. But only gravitational interactions were considered so far, while gravity is way, way weaker, then EMG forces..
5) The surface tension effects of large dense particle clusters, which CAN stabilize the unstable forms of mater and interact with atom nuclei
6) The risk connected with formation of dense clusters of quite common neutral particles, which are stable well outside from LHC energy range, like the neutrons.
None such effect were mentioned in your security report. So I just want to see all of these risk factors reviewed and estimated in relevant probability analysis.
You could do the most detailed safety study in the world but it still wont cover everything.....
Especially mystical entities like black holes, dark matter and dark energy...
Here it is again for convenience:
http://public.web...-en.html
However your density worry is unfounded. Cosmic rays hit the moon, too, which takes matches density of the earth.
Furthermore cosmic rays hit white dwarfs, which are roughly six orders of manitude DENSER than the earth.
And white dwarfs survive at least long enough to cool down, and only seem to explode if matter is added to them to reach their limit of 1.4 solar masses.
And neutron stars are far denser even than white dwarfs. So cosmic rays with an energy eight orders of manitude higher than CERN can acheive (or 100 times higher than the entire bunch of protons) regularly smack into neutron stars roughly 14 orders of magnitude denser than the ground around CERN. And any resulting strangeness, even though initially moving near the speed of light, would slow down very quickly (in the first millimeter of the neutron star) and would have plenty of matter to munch on if it were hungry.
Since neutron stars survive cosmic ray bombardment long enough for their spins to slow down, CERN is not going to destroy the world.
Exactly! Batman, Superman and Peter Pan included! You name it.. ;o)
Now back to topic:
I think that the risk of black holes @ LHC can be safely excluded as those are only stable and/or able to gain mass at 2 very distant scales. One being at sub-atomic level (limited by what some call "neutron" repulsion force). And the other one being somwhere around 3-4 times the mass of our sun, compressed by star implosion below a specific critical radius (overcomming the repulsion). Meaning that at "our scale", even if there was a BH created, it would either last VERY shortly (and "decay") or it would not be able to gain any more mass as of the above mentioned repulsion force "not letting" any more mass to come close enough.
As for the momentum of the collisions being "non-zero" towards Earth - that is plainly impossible as it would require a perfect collision of perfectly identical particles, which is not going to happen. There will allways be rest momentum, and no 2 collided proton pairs will be the same.
So, in my humble opinion, if LHC is gonna destroy the world, it should not be by a BH :)
I can't wait for your next raving fit!
:-)
The only fact, is no one knows exactly all the outcomes. Good or bad has nothing to do with it.
Built to prove or disprove theories and assumptions that have yet to be backed by any solid, consistent real world proof about what actually is taking place or will take place inside the LHC at its highest energy level.
Accept all potential outcomes as neutral until real and consistent data/proof takes place from the LHC itself.
http://www.space....513.html
Before some years scientist believed, something like cold fusion is virtually impossible due the high potential barrier. And what happenned? Watch the video here...
http://www.lenr-c...Navy.htm
btw The life on surface of neutron stars is more safe with respect of possible strangelet impact. Magnetosphere of neutron stars behaves like Earth atmosphere with respect of meteorites or solar radiaton. Every faster charged particle would evaporate in contact with magnetosphere immediatelly well before it can reach the surface.
http://imgsrc.hub..._gif.gif
As for the people worried so much about charged black holes-how much charged black holes have you seen? How much event horizons has anybody seen? The answer of both things is ZERO. When I see a convincing evidences that this mathematical object called a black hole exist, then I'll worry about the possible creation of such black holes in LHC.
But you don't worry about that. You worry about black holes-objects that only popular press "really" know what they are and what they can do. The scientists are much less sure about them and they will continue to be unsure until gravitational wave detectors catch something (anything?!). Yes, there are astrophysical objects that look like black holes, but the key moments in black holes are the event horizon and the singularity in the centre-until we see them (or at least the first), these heavy objects are not black holes, but dark heavy objects. And since the space is full of dark heavy objects, I don't see a reason why we should freak out we could create a miniature versions of them.