Hey Americans! Remember the "Superconducting Supercollider?"
- From: "Obama = Jimmy Carter (God help us!)" <rander3127@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 06:52:09 -0700 (PDT)
Remember it being cancelled? That set American physics back 20 years,
at least. This is when you lost to Europe. But I'm sure the money
you saved paid for more welfare for criminally-oriented, sub-100 IQ
human garbage, where 70% of your GDP goes.
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News
CMS (Cern/M. Hoch)
The LHC has been in construction for some 13 years
Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous
experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the
Big Bang.
They have now fired two beams of particles called protons around the
27km-long tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash
particles together with cataclysmic force.
Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in
physics.
The first beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel
at just before 0930 BST. The second successfully circled the ring
after 1400 BST.
Cern has not yet announced when it plans to carry out the first
collisions, but these are expected to happen before the machine shuts
down for winter.
..
We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a
second after the Big Bang
Dr Tara Shears, University of Liverpool
What is the Large Hadron Collider?
"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed
its lap. There were cheers in the control room when engineers heard of
the successful test.
He added later: "We had a very good start-up."
The LHC is arguably the most complicated and ambitious experiment ever
built; the project has been hit by cost overruns, equipment trouble
and construction problems. The switch-on itself is two years late.
The collider is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear
Research - better known by its French acronym Cern.
The vast circular tunnel - the "ring" - which runs under the French-
Swiss border contains more than 1,000 cylindrical magnets arranged end-
to-end.
The magnets are there to steer the beam - made up of particles called
protons - around this 27km-long ring.
Infographic
Big Bang Day
Eventually, two proton beams will be steered in opposite directions
around the LHC at close to the speed of light, completing about 11,000
laps each second.
At allotted points around the tunnel, the beams will cross paths,
smashing together near four massive "detectors" that monitor the
collisions for interesting events.
Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge,
revealing fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos.
Major effort
"We will be able to see deeper into matter than ever before," said Dr
Tara Shears, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool.
"We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a
second after the Big Bang. That is amazing, that really is fantastic."
The LHC should answer one very simple question: What is mass?
LHC DETECTORS
ATLAS - one of two so-called general purpose detectors. Atlas will be
used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass
and extra dimensions
CMS - the second general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for
the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter
ALICE - will study a "liquid" form of matter called quark-gluon plasma
that existed shortly after the Big Bang
LHCb - Equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created in the Big
Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the "missing" anti-
matter
"We know the answer will be found at the LHC," said Jim Virdee, a
particle physicist at Imperial College London.
The currently favoured model involves a particle called the Higgs
boson - dubbed the "God Particle". According to the theory, particles
acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field
carried by the Higgs.
The latest astronomical observations suggest ordinary matter - such as
the galaxies, gas, stars and planets - makes up just 4% of the
Universe.
The rest is dark matter (23%) and dark energy (73%). Physicists think
the LHC could provide clues about the nature of this mysterious
"stuff".
But Professor Virdee told BBC News: "Nature can surprise us... we have
to be ready to detect anything it throws at us."
Full beam ahead
Engineers injected the first low-intensity proton beams into the LHC
in August. But they did not go all the way around the ring.
Technicians had to be on the lookout for potential problems.
Steve Myers, head of the accelerator and beam department, said: "There
are on the order of 2,000 magnetic circuits in the machine. This means
there are 2,000 power supplies which generate the current which flows
in the coils of the magnets."
If there was a fault with any of these, he said, it would have stopped
the beams. They were also wary of obstacles in the beam pipe which
could prevent the protons from completing their first circuit.
Superconducting magnet (Cern/M. Brice)
Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium
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.
After the beams make one turn, engineers attempt to "close the orbit",
allowing the beams to circulate continuously around the LHC.
HAVE YOUR SAY
I think it is disgraceful that huge sums of cash have been spent
on this project
Robert, Spain
Send us your comments
Engineers then try to "capture" them. The beams which circle the LHC
is not continuous; they are composed of several packets - each about a
metre long - containing billions of protons.
The protons would disperse if left to their own devices, so engineers
use electrical forces to "grab" them, keeping the particles tightly
huddled in packets.
Once the beams are captured, the same system of electrical forces is
used to give the particles an energetic kick, accelerating them to
greater and greater speeds.
Long haul
The idea of the Large Hadron Collider emerged in the early 1980s. The
project was eventually approved in 1996 at a cost of 2.6bn Swiss
Francs, which amounts to about £1.3bn at present exchange rates.
However, Cern underestimated equipment and engineering costs when it
set out its original budget, plunging the lab into a cash crisis.
FROM THE TODAY PROGRAMME
More from Today programme
Cern had to borrow hundreds of millions of euros in bank loans to get
the LHC completed. The current price is nearly four times that
originally envisaged.
During winter, the LHC will be shut down, allowing equipment to be
fine-tuned for collisions at full energy.
"What's so exciting is that we haven't had a large new facility
starting up for years," explained Dr Shears.
"Our experiments are so huge, so complex and so expensive that they
don't come along very often. When they do, we get all the physics out
of them that we can."
Engineers celebrated the success with champagne, but a certain brand
of beer was not on the menu.
.
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