Collisions at LHC! - March 30, 2010

[amyrose2712]

Collisions at LHC! - March 30, 2010

Today, after over fifteen years of planning, construction, delays and drama, the Large Hadron Collider began doing what it was built to do: colliding particles.

Just before 13:00 Geneva time, physicists guided two beams of protons moving at 3.5 TeV into collision points around the machine's 27 km ring. Moments later, cheers erupted from the control rooms of the machine's four main experiments, as shrapnel from the collisions flooded into the detectors.

The collisions end a long data drought for particle physicists, who haven’t had a new accelerator since the completion of the Tevatron's main injector in 1999 at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. In the US, particle physicists had hoped to replace the Tevatron with a new Superconducting Supercollider, but that projected was cancelled by Congress in 1993, in the face of enormous cost overruns.

The LHC is less powerful than the SSC would have been, but it's still far more powerful than the Tevatron. Initially the machine will collide particles at 7 TeV, over three times the energy of the Tevatron. After a year of running at that energy, the LHC will shut down for about a year to perform a series of upgrades. It will then (hopefully) reopen at 14 TeV, its original design energy.


http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/03/_collisions_at_lhc.html


(Are we still here?):silly: :silly:

[supernova]

1. If it's an alternate universe

how come I'm not rich and famous in this one?

:silly:

Great news and so cool. B-)

[realisticphish]

2. apparently

that black hole takes a LONG time to form ;)

Of course now we'll deal with people panicking for 2 years about 14TeV collisions

[lazarus]

3. I stayed up and watched this

on the webcast live. Very exciting when they announced the streams were aligned, and again when they said they were having collisions.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Great now my cat is

Both dead and alive, he's so confused.

Thanks CERN!

[pokerfan]

5. Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously

and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Why? What's its bearing on the collision?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. It's a film quote:

Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/quotes?qt0475898

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. Thanks, muriel. Total protonic reversal, eh? Just what I was thinking...

[Ready4Change]

8. In other news: The Earth ceased to exist today @13:00 Geneva time.

Lunch goers were distressed in London today as the Earth ceased to exist in the middle of their meals.

"Well, how am I to report back to work in time with all this going on?" remarked one perturbed diner.

But he would have been more accurate had he said 'all this NOT going on', as the Earth, and in fact our entire universe, winked out of existence, just a few minutes after 13:00 Geneva time.