Large Hadron Collider sets new record for beam energy -- 3.5 TeV

March 19, 2010 By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS , Associated Press Writer
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

Operators of the world's largest atom smasher on Friday ramped up their massive machine to three times the energy ever previously achieved, in the run-up to experiments probing the secrets of the universe.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said beams of protons circulated at 3.5 trillion electron volts in both directions around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel housing the under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

The next major development is expected in a few days when CERN starts colliding the beams in a new round of research to examine the tiniest particles and forces within the atom in hopes of finding out more about how matter is made up.

The collider in December had already eclipsed the record of the next most powerful machine, the at outside Chicago, which has been running just shy of a trillion electron volts, or TeV.

The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of and matter. Scientists hope also to approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

A screenshot of the main LHC display screen this morning, after the successful ramp in energy
Enlarge

A screenshot of the main LHC display screen this morning, after the successful ramp in energy

CERN has reported a series of successes since the collider was restarted last year after 14 months of repairs and improvements following a spectacular failure when scientists initially tried to get the machine going.

CERN improved the machine during a 2 1/2-month winter shutdown to be able to operate at the higher energy.

"Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC's overall design, and the improvements we've made since the breakdown in September 2008," said Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators and technology.

More information: * Record-breaking LHC collisions offer first glimpse of physics at new energy frontier - http://www.physorg … 4590515.html

©2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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broglia
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
LHC reached 5 GeV in 2008, but it crashed during this. The accident occured on September 12, when the energy was being raised from about 4 to 5.5 TeV, which required between 7000 and 9300 amps of current.

Royale
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
If it's not steady does it not count as a record? If that's true broglia, maybe they don't count things before the break down as record setters? Seems a bit weird that they wouldn't though.
Drumsk8
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
Broglia have you a link to the sauce of this information I would love to take a look =)
broglia
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
Seems a bit weird that they wouldn't though.
Why they should do? They tried to cover the scope of the whole accident to avoid lost of grants... First photos of accident revealed for publicity just after three months after accident.

http://www.newsci...lhc.html

@Drumks8: http://m.discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/12-inside-view-hiccups-at-lhc
CreepyD
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
Isn't that like saying a car broke a landspeed record, but exploded in the process - it's ok it still counts..?
Have we seen any real science yet? I keep reading that it's running and working well, but no scientific info.
MRD
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
The collisions from Dec., which weren't much higher than the previous record in terms of energy, confirmed the predicted results. Real science but not really newsworthy.
El_Nose
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
not enough information collected to say real science is there yet -- it will take months of collisions and about 3 months of anaylsis on the data to find anything useful
LeeSawyer
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
CMS has already published a paper on minimum bias events taken during the Fall 2009 run. My experiment, ATLAS< submitted a min bias paper this week. It is not a trivial exercise to turn-around data-taking into a paper, especially when you are still trying to understand your detector's performance with real events.

Isn't that like saying a car broke a landspeed record, but exploded in the process - it's ok it still counts..?
Have we seen any real science yet? I keep reading that it's running and working well, but no scientific info.

Drumsk8
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
Thanks Brogila here is an alternative link since yours didn't work for me.

http://m.discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/12-inside-view-hiccups-at-lhc/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=

It's understandable now why they didn't report the 5GeV since this was only sector testing and not circular beam testing in it's fullness. And certainly not collision testing.

Fingers crossed the newly installed copper sheathings will hold until it's revamp in 2011.
Drumsk8
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
oops make that TeV*
Royale
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
CreepyD, I guess that's what I was asking, although it's clear now that they weren't collision even energies, so no it doesn't count, but as you mentioned with the car analogy; wouldn't that still count as the world record even if the car didn't make it back home? Was the first person to make it to the peak of Everest counted or the one who made it up and back? I think i'd count the first person, regardless of his trip back. I don't know though I guess we'd need a better definition of "record".
Drumsk8
Mar 19, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
The problem here Royale, CreepyD is that the injection energy's for segments of the rings where at this level, but there was never a fully circulatory beam. This is the equivalent of the car getting near the speed in fragments and then blowing up. would you record that as a record breaker, personally no. But when they have full beams traveling around all 27Km of the LHC this is more a yes, because even before collisions could take place, they at least have one full revolution of the beam consistently at this energy. Also the machine broke so not really the compliment sandwich you want to feed your supporters and critics.
srikkanth_kn
Mar 20, 2010

Rank: not rated yet
Great! ( We're still alive ! )
Lets move further to peta-electron volts
seneca
Mar 20, 2010

Rank: 1 / 5 (5)
so what USEFUL things will the LHC do? Anything we can actually use?
The relative advance of collider research is a product of intensive nuclear research and cold war arm race. So far, during seventy years of collider research we have no practical usage for any particle, prepared in accelerators. So we can extrapolate safely, no potential finding of LHC could be used during next fifty years. In fact, the relative advance of collider experiments makes troubles for civilization, because scientists aren't apparently able to estimate their results reliably. Which would make no problem, if it would be low energy scale experiments. And high concentration of money brings up undesirable traits of human personality in emergent way. How?

Well, inside of stars every particle attracts their neighbors quite slightly - but when such attraction gets multiplied, a strange things occur at the center. Of course, every particle involved feels no personal responsibility for this result, as usually.
seneca
Mar 20, 2010

Rank: 2 / 5 (4)
From pure economical perspective, it will be more advantageous to continue in collider experiments later, when the general advance in technology would allow us to carry out it in more safe and CHEAPER way.

During playing strategic game like the Civilization game it has no meaning to invest all resources into research, until we have no usage for such research. We cannot spend all free money into Pluto or Higgs boson research just because such research is feasible - some priorities must always be postulated there. And when the rest of word gets poorer and poorer, I feel less and less ethical to spent large amount of money into such research, while we ignoring of cold fusion or room Tc superconductivity findings. The science should help to survive all people - not just some close privileged group of scientists.

One could say, we can never get enough of research - but it's not quite true, because poor civilization cannot absorb the results of expensive experiments at all.
physis78
Mar 22, 2010

Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
So far, during seventy years of collider research we have no practical usage for any particle, prepared in accelerators. So we can extrapolate safely, no potential finding of LHC could be used during next fifty years.


So, you haven't heard about something called the internet?

http://public-old...-en.html

just for one...
seneca
Mar 27, 2010

Rank: 3 / 5 (4)
Internet browser is not elementary particle - we aren't investing billions into collider research just for development of HTTP. It's logical, such high concentration of money attract clever people and another inventions - but this still doesn't replace the original purpose of research and its failure in practical applications.

With such demagogy we could consider even the WWW II as the best investment of civilization with respect to high number of technologies, which were developed during it. Maybe we should thank Hitler or Stalin in the same way, like Tim Berners-Lee? Such demagogy is just a logical extension of previous demagogy.
physis78
Mar 30, 2010

Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
I'd rather advance science by smashing particles (or attempting to) than by making wars. The truth is that advances have almost always come as side effects of more fundamental quests, and the WWW is just an example. Besides, it was something they DID need for their research.

The optics technology that provided glasses for everyone who needs them was developed after the discovery of the telescope by Galileo, when all the scientists wanted one, and the opticians began refining their techniques.

The discovery of evolution didn't seem something very practical until medicine turned out to benefit from it.

Particle physics in the early XX century was also beyond science fiction, but today we have positron emission tomography.

String theory seems to have lots of similarities to the high-Tc superconductivity theory, so you should welcome string theorists too...

How many more examples do you need?
Rank 4.4 /5 (27 votes)
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