Large Hadron Collider staying cool at just a hair above absolute zero temperatures
By Ross Miller 
posted October 16th 2009 9:29PM
posted October 16th 2009 9:29PM
Ah, Large Hadron Collider, our old frienemy, how close is thy doomsday clock now? Closer than it was last week, naturally, especially now that the temperature in each of its eight sectors has been dropped to 1.9 Kelvin, or -271 degrees Celsius / -456 Fahrenheit, depending on your equivalent measurement of choice. While pretty much lethal for humans, that's still twice as warm as the Boomerang Nebula some 5,000 light years away from our fair planet, making it a veritable vacation spot for those carnivorous inhabitants of the Centaurus constellation (not that they'd really want to make that big of a trek without some sort of pre-planned hotel accommodations, but we digress). The chill is all a part of the massive science experiment's ramp up to its second half of November relaunch -- assuming the personification of Higgs boson doesn't pop in via its proverbial TARDIS equivalent wearing a cape and carrying an anti-LHC particle gun, that is.
“this has never happened to us before.”
That's what HE said!
o_O
@chris
on december 2012 they say the world wont actually freeze, a dwarf sun will come in our solar system. but i'd take burning to death over freezing to death
I have a large hardon...I mean hadron
wait a minute, if its supposed to be -270 degrees celcius, why would they put a fire extinguisher there, what do they think will happen....
I thought fire just needed oxygen not heat to burn ?
The tunnel isn't at 1 K.
im not gonna lie, im not the smartest in that department, but could a fire really burn in that temperature? (serious question)
and you need 2 other things for fire to burn, i know that much
Well since fire is nothing but a chemical reaction the answer is no. That is unless you can find some new bizzaro element that does burn at that temperature. If you put an already burning fire into a room that temperature the answer is yes the fire would burn, but for varying lengths of time given the type chemical reaction in the fire.
Also, there is no explosion, it's just a few atomic sized particles shooting quicky out into the huge collector wall so they can be detected, it's only a small amount of radiation, not an explosion.
Imagine if there were any sort of leak -- all of a sudden the air would rush from the inner zone of extremely high pressure to the outside relatively low pressure, or the other way around if the chamber is depressurized. The resulting explosion would probably be so big that the fire extinguishers wouldn't help anyway. The fire would form, though, because such an explosion would generate a massive amount of heat.
Another reason is that they want to prevent anything nearby from catching fire. Fire near 300kelvin variations in temperature = bad
but wouldnt the explosion make like frost everywhere or something?
Is someone from Microsoft working in the photoshop department at Engadget now?
Are you just being a trolling dick?
Look I can do it too...
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.9+kelvin
Oh wait... that's where they got their comparisons from....
its going to be like the giant sphere from crysis when that thing blows!! its cold enough to freeze everything instantly
By my calculation, it would be -271.25 Celsius. Slightly less balmy.
Tardy article.