Big Bang 2 -- Subatomic Boogaloo

TrooperBari · Jun 30, 2008

From the "science that's too damn cool to ignore" file:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/cern

The Large Hadron Collider -- dubbed science's most ambitious, and expensive, experiment -- starts its work soon after 20 years of preparation. It's going to accelerate particles to 99.99% of the speed of light and crash them together, all in an attempt to recreate conditions not seen in the universe since the Big Bang.

Some facts and figures on the project that cost $10 billion to create:

· The Large Hadron Collider at Cern has been installed in a tunnel 27km in circumference, buried 100m underground.

· It will produce head-on collisions between two beams of particles travelling through a vacuum comparable to outer space.

· Each beam will consist of almost 3000 bunches of 100 billion particles each.

· At full power, each beam will be about as energetic as a car moving at 1600 kph.

· At near light speed, a proton in the LHC beam will make 11,245 laps a second.

· A beam might circulate for 10 hours, travelling more than 10 billion kilometres - far enough to get to the planet Neptune and back.

· 3000km of wires and fibres will carry information at the rate of 3200 terabytes per year, equivalent to around 3 billion books.
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Why drop all that cash on a subatomic speedway, you ask?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/cern.particle.physics1

But what is it for? The stock answer is that after years of effort from thousands of scientists, from dozens of countries and a cost of almost $10bn, we are finally about to find out whether an elementary particle called the Higgs boson exists or not. Unless you are one of those thousands of scientists who have worked towards this moment, you might wonder if any subatomic particle, however exotic-sounding, is worth so much money.

But look more carefully at exactly what all this fuss is about. The two great pillars of 20th century physics are quantum mechanics (the theory describing the tiny world of atoms and below) and Einstein's theory of relativity (describing the cosmic world of stars, galaxies and even the whole universe). Between them, they account for the four fundamental physical forces of nature, but the problem is they don't agree with each other and it has troubled physicists for decades. Einstein himself spent the last part of his life trying to find a way around the problem but ultimately failed.

Relativity theory describes gravity, while the other three fundamental forces (electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces) are explained by quantum mechanics or, to give it its current name, the Standard Model of particle physics. This is the culmination of 20th century effort to understand and catalogue what makes up matter. It describes not only how atoms behave but zooms down deeper to the elementary particles, of which the electron is just one.

It does not answer everything, however. Why, for example, are some particles light while others are heavy? Why do we see small differences between the properties of matter and antimatter? How are the three subatomic forces related and can they be unified in a single theory?

Some of these questions will be answered if the LHC finds evidence for a particle proposed in the 1960s by a modest physicist called Peter Higgs (see p.13). The Higgs boson is the missing ingredient in the Standard Model, the so-called "God particle" that explains the origin of mass. The more something interacts with a Higgs boson, the more massive it is. Finding the particle would help confirm the Standard Model as the correct picture of the subatomic world.
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And in case you're worried about strangelets or mini-black holes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/cern.particlephysics1

zebracoy · Jun 30, 2008

TrooperBari said:

And in case you're worried about strangelets or mini-black holes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/cern.particlephysics1
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Because of Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, there is a tiny chance that anything will occur. There is a chance that firebreathing dragons will be produced by the LHC.
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We're doomed!

In all seriousness, I think this stuff is fascinating. But thank goodness for that link, because I've honestly been scared shitless about the possibility that Europe goes flying off the planet.

Armchair_QB · Jun 30, 2008

I remember when the gubmint tried to build one of these things in north Texas back in the late 80s/early 90s. They got most of the facility built then cut the funding in the mid-90s. The county it was built in got stuck with the land and the buildings have sat empty for about 15 years.

Inky_Wretch · Jun 30, 2008

zebracoy said:

TrooperBari said:

And in case you're worried about strangelets or mini-black holes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/cern.particlephysics1
Click to expand...

Because of Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, there is a tiny chance that anything will occur. There is a chance that firebreathing dragons will be produced by the LHC.
Click to expand...

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If a firebreathing dragon is produced by this thing, it would be worth the $10B spent.

zebracoy · Jun 30, 2008

No kidding.

Oh, and major props on the thread title. Nice work.

Bubbler · Jun 30, 2008

I, for one, welcome our new subatomic masters.

trifectarich · Jun 30, 2008

Could one of these scientists do something to prevent my cable from going out twice a week?

alleyallen · Jun 30, 2008

trifectarich said:

Could one of these scientists do something to prevent my cable from going out twice a week?
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Or boost my AM radio reception without having to go to XM or Sirius?

Football_Bat · Jun 30, 2008

I'll wait for Big Bang 3D, thanks.

2muchcoffeeman · Jun 30, 2008

What we have here is failure to check the archives. A D_B of a D_B.

The D_B: http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/58092/

The original (from February, dammit!): http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/53251/

And my thread title was way cooler than the D_B titles.

Dickens Cider · Jun 30, 2008

2muchcoffeeman said:

What we have here is failure to check the archives. A D_B of a D_B.

The D_B: http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/58092/

The original (from February, dammit!): http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/53251/

And my thread title was way cooler than the D_B titles.
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Disagree. TrooperBari's thread title was best.

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