Hey, now, this is some great news, right? The
trouble-plagued Large Hadron Collider looks to be doing a bang up job in some of its primary tasks. After breaking the energy record previously held by the Tevatron particle accelerator back at the end of November, 2009, reports are now coming in that the
LHC is, in fact, producing some extremely high energy collisions. A research team led by MIT, CERN and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest, Hungary have released a report detailing findings that the collisions are producing an "unexpectedly" high number of particles called mesons, subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark. The research is considered one of the first steps in the search for rarer particles, and the elusive, theoretical
Higgs Boson. The paper, published in the
Journal of High Energy Physics has led scientists to fine-tuning their predictive models for how many mesons will be found in even higher energy collisions. Hit the read link for the full, high energy news.
posted February 7th 2010 12:30PM
I hate this picture.
@dattebayo
It's either a picture of this or a picture of ATLAS.
I wonder if it can pound my steak for me before I cook it...
*Looks around*
Hey, the world is still here! In your face, doomsayers!
@Nitesh
in an alternate universe, the earth has already been destroyed by the LHC
@nicholasphan In an alternate universe, a stale cookie also caused the extinction of the human race. What's your point?
@Nitesh
I honestly expected the end in 2012 to be caused by the LHC but now they get out of the affair by simply having a power break in 2012.
Now the end is even more uncertain!
@Nitesh Uh, the world is still here because they haven't started looking for the Higgs Boson yet. It's only running at something like 25% power.
The fact that they're finding an "unexpected" number of particles already is frankly kind of worrying. Gee, what other "unexpected" results might they find as they ramp this thing up?
Its always good when a potential doomsday device produces "unexpected" results!
@Nitesh yes and "unexpectedly" is the kind of stuff you don't want scientists to be getting from their results.
At least we won't even notice when we are gone...
@Apocalyptic 0n3
In another universe the LHC is a cat.
@skylined
In another universe the LHC is known as the Large Hardon Collider.
@nicholasphan um, if something isn't physically possible, then it can't happen in any parallel universe. this thing does not have the abilities to produce an earth swallowing hole
@bowdown
What if we were the 1st fo the parallel universes to try it, and we're the ones that blew everything up?
@Apocalyptic 0n3 Actually, it was OUR LHC that ended another world in an alternate universe. We just have to make sure none of them activate THEIR LHCs and end our world!
@Gigaflop In that case we need to built 5 more before the others will!
LHC arm race GO!
Hey, they still have a little over two years of increasing collisions to end the world!
I am planning to go into astrophysics and areas like that so i love it when engadget does these articles. Personally i think smashing together two atoms at near the speed of light has more action and fireworks than any Michael Bay movie.
@0to60
transformers 3, higgs boson strikes back
@weirdo557 You, sir, win the day.
So can we say that no higgs boson exist and move on to a higgsless model yet or must we continue these shenanigans
@Edobe
Physicists love unifying models. They've been trying to make one since Newton.
Right now, the higgs boson is literally the only stray link in their all unifying model. They have the quarks and leptops as their contituents of matter. Forces are mediated by the exchange of particles, and the lifetime of these exchange particles dictates the range of the force. So there are gluons for the strong force, the W and Z bosons for the weak force, and photons for coulomb force. The only force that is missing an exchange particle is gravity.
Now if they find this higgs boson, they have the beginnings of a unifying theory for mass, energy, and force. Basically this would be like e=mc^2 or Quantum Physics for the 21st century.
@M3 This theory is largely already there and it's called the Heim Theory and it is higgless. Although the theory is still debated, some scientific research has shown that it might be correct: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM0L6OVGJE_0.html
@Black
Unfortunately that theory has had little to no peer review. There have been higgless models in the past. But, a Higgless model doesn't really sit well with the particle physics community. Thus the general conception in the community is that it exists, it just hasn't been found yet.
@Black
Thanks for the link to the article. Chuckled at mention of the "London moment"... maybe they can use that for a tourism promotion video, lol.
If I read the article correctly, it appears that they were able to generate some sort of a "strong" gravitational field. I wonder if it's possible to "reverse" it and make a flying saucer... or use the effect to produce artificial gravity in space...
I always thought it was funny how in high school we're taught that there are only 4 particles.
@B3astofthe3ast
4 PARTICLES!?
Well "La De Da" Mr. private school. My high school only had 3 particles and we got by just fine.
@NeoJew Well, we were taught about the proton, neutron, and electron, and they briefly mentioned the photon. So thats 4.
@B3astofthe3ast
No positrons or anti-protons? Damn, Asimov and other sci-fri writers would be turning in their graves!
@onlymyrailgun Nope, not until I decided to take a relativity course in my senior year.
Physics gives me a hadron.
@xbit
I see what you did there....
@xbit
maybe you should visit the large hardon collider
@weirdo557
I call homo >.>
@delphinus87
What? You never have hadrons when you get physical?
I feel so sorry for your (lab) partner.
I think the Twitter-powered popcorn popper wins hands down against this.
"In particle physics, mesons are subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark. They are part of the hadron particle family—particles made of quarks. The other members of the hadron family are the baryons—subatomic particles composed of three quarks. The main difference between mesons and baryons is that mesons are bosons while baryons are fermions—that is mesons have integer spin while baryons have half-integer spin—meaning that the Pauli exclusion principle does not apply to mesons."
Will ... i think i have a lot of readings ahead, the simple high school image of spherical atoms composed of electrons circulate nucleus (protons and neutrons) are no longer valid.
@Ahmed Alzayani
those weren't even valid when you learned them
Anyone else notice the unusually large number of earthquakes lately?
hmm...
;)
Someone school me...
What does stuff like this give to me, the consumer? or what does this do for humanity?
@Plazmic Flame
This does not have anything to do with the typical consumer. Because this is pure science and has nothing to do with production of mass market equipments. However, if the theory is established, then in some not so distant future, it will surely trickle down to some technology for the masses.
That has been the case with all of science, all the time. Because this is not Steve Jobs showing off iPad, but much much bigger than that.
@Plazmic Flame
I am only replying so I can be updated when someone answers your question. I want to know the same thing.
@Plazmic Flame
The person who invented the laser was working at MIT, and had his grant request denied on the base that "it's a useless experiment" by the Dean at that time. If he didn't continue following through we'd still be using VHS tapes to lug around our videos.
@Plazmic Flame School you? You would have been asking the same question if you had been watching Edison fly his kite. How are we supposed to school that?
@Plazmic Flame
It's give us a better understanding of the subatomic world and Quantum mechanics which will help us in many fields including nano technology.
The closet thing i can think of .... that LHC will help us in consumer electronics area, is to help us in resolving quantum tunneling issue once CPU's reaches a half-pitch of 11nm or less.
@davidD3
for the consumer?
nothing, at least not now, for humanity? Knowledge that will be shared among all countries freely (minus the billions it cost initially of course..).
think of this, if they can learn enough to control things like mass, we will be able to go into deep space in a matter of years, and not billions of years per journey!
@Plazmic Flame : Basic science like this gave us everything from electricity to bigger hard drives and Internet porn.
@Plazmic Flame
Do you think all of the technology we have today just came out of nowhere? No, it came from ideas made possible by our understanding of physics?
In best Bill Nye voice: "Science Rules!"
I'm certain that lone fire extinguisher will save us from imminent destruction.