largehadroncollider
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Has the Higgs Boson been discovered by LHC rival? Are we still here? (Update: No Higgs discovery, and we're still here)
The Large Hadron Collider isn't the only bad boy on the block looking for the so-called God particle -- technically known as the Higgs Boson. A lesser known facility, the Tevatron -- located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois -- has also been furiously searching for the particle which would help to explain the origins of mass in the universe -- and it looks like they might have found it. A rumor has been swirling about recently that the found particle is a "three-sigma," meaning that it's got a 99.7 percent statistical likelihood of being correct -- but the lab itself has yet to confirm or deny. The Tevatron, which was completed 27 years ago, is the second largest accelerator in the world (after the LHC) and it's expected to be retired once the CERN facility is fully operational. Update: Well, that was fun for the few hours that it lasted. New Scientist has published a piece confirming that Tevatron is in fact denying the rumor, and no Higgs Boson discovery has gone down.
LHCsound brings the noise, asks how low Higgs boson can go
God particle. The Champagne bottle boson. Non-existon. Mysteron. The Higgs boson particle is certainly known by a lot of names, and now we can add another to the list: rock god. The UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council has created "LHCsound: the sound of science." It's a series of (confusingly organized) pages offering acoustic renditions of the Large Hadron Collider's greatest hits, like proton collision, detector sweeps, and, our favorite, simulated Higgs Boson delay, which you can hear after the break. The data created by the energy and frequency of particle decay is used to modify the sound of running water, resulting in a generally creepy effect. We think it'd be perfect for accompanying your next foggy exploration of Silent Hill, but perhaps the next episode of Half Life 2 would be more appropriate.[Thanks, John C.]
Large Hadron Collider to search for God Particle using 7 TeV proton collisions, via live webcast (update: first collisions, video!)
The Large Hadron Collider is about to turn useful, people. Having recently jacked up its particle acceleration power to create 3.5 TeV (trillion electron volts) collisions, the researchers are today pressing ahead with plans to go to a full 7 TeV, which -- you won't be surprised to hear -- has never been done before. Provided the requisite 3.5 TeV per beam is reached, sustained and properly channeled into creating useful collisions, CERN will finally have the data it needs to start its long-awaited physics program based off the findings provided by the LHC. Best of all? The latest world record attempt is being broadcast live over the web right now so why not hit up that link below to witness some history in the making? Update: The momentous first protonic collisions at 7 TeV have just taken place, at just past 1PM CET. Now the time comes for researchers to parse all the incoming raw data, pore over it, analyze it, etc. We'll leave that to them, it's not like you can expect the God Particle to be discovered instantly. To fill the time, we invite you to come past the break for our blow-by-blow updating adventure from this morning plus video of the big moment.
LHC breaks its own energy record, still less powerful than Lady Gaga
The Large Hadron Collider is no stranger to setting energy records: back at the end of November it broke the 0.98 TeV record by hitting the 1.18 TeV mark. Well, the problem beleaguered collider's just handily surpassed itself -- this time with a truly stunning 3.5 TeV -- with beams of protons on record as having circulated at 3.5 trillion electron volt. Now, we're not scientists or anything, but that sure is a lot of volts! CERN's moving on later this week and will begin colliding the beams so they can check out the tiniest particles within atoms in the hopes of finding out more about how matter's made up. We look forward to hearing all about that, too -- but until then, we made do by reading the source over and over.
Report: Large Hadron Collider producing tons of awesome collisions
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.
Large Hadron Collider schedules holiday for 2012, full 7 TeV power for 2013
It's good to know that even huge inanimate objects appreciate the need for a work-life balance. After a nice winter hiatus, Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider is coming back online soon, set to resume smashing protonic beams at one another with the force of 3.5 trillion electron-volts (TeV) per beam, or 7 TeV in total. We have to swallow hard when we hear such force described as "low-energy," but that's what the LHC designers consider it, and moreover we're learning they'll skip past the middle and go for the full 14 TeV potential smashes after a retooling break during 2012. Although this may delay the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, other physics research shouldn't be stalled in the meantime -- scientists claim they'll be able to extract data from the low-energy collisions that could lend us more information on aspects of string theory, extra dimensions, and supersymmetry. Doesn't all this sound like nerds trying to avoid getting real jobs?
Large Hadron Collider grinds to a halt... again
In an increasingly unsurprising turn of events, the Large Hadron Collider suffered a major power failure this morning, knocking the machine and its website out of service. The failure occurred in an 18,000-volt power line in Meyrin, Geneva where the LHC is housed beneath the ground, causing pretty much everything to shut down. The LHC's magnets maintained a temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (having to re-cool them would have been a pretty sizeable setback), however, and no long-term damage seems to have occurred. The trouble-prone Large Hadron Collider is expected to resume full operations sometime later today, and is currently operating on limited power from a backup supply. Regardless, the unfortunate event is sure to resurrect that zany Higgs boson time-travelling theory.
Large Hadron Collider breaks energy record, still won't power a toaster
CERN's Large Hadron Collider just made the record books for something other than the cost of building a 27km-long circular tunnel. After achieving its first collision on Tuesday, the LHC roared beyond a trillion electron volts (1.18 TeV to be exact) literally smashing the 0.98 TeV energy record held by the Tevatron particle accelerator in Chicago since 2001. So far the LHC had been operating at a relatively modest 450 billion electron volts as it pushes up to full capacity of some 7 trillion electron volts. All that's left now is the minor issue of unlocking the secrets of the universe when the real scientific testing gets underway early next year.
Large Hadron Collider reboots, makes first protonic bang!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that most epic triumph of human engineering and physics research has finally taken place, and strangely enough our planet's still in one piece too. The search for the Higgs boson particle resumed yesterday, somewhere under the Franco-Swiss border, with the CERN research team successfully executing what the LHC was built to do -- accelerating proton beams to nearly the speed of light, then filming the wreckage as they crash into each other. Having encountered a number of bumps in the road, the researchers have had to significantly scale down the energy at which their early collisions will take place, with the very first ones said to have happened at 900 billion electron volts. Still, plans are afoot for an imminent shift up to 1.2 trillion electron volts (TeV), which would be the highest energy level any particle accelerator has achieved yet, before a ramp up to 7 TeV over the coming year if all goes well.
Large Hadron Collider is online, Higgs boson be damned
"We have captured it! First circulating beam of 2009!" And with that tweet, researchers at CERN announced that they did in fact activate the Large Hadron Collider, after quite a long delay and despite warnings of a looming, nefarious Higgs boson. Whether or not we will have had total destruction as an unfortunate result of the device remains to be seen, but should the future find a way to either cease to exist or travel to the past in some time-bending paradox, we only hope linguists and physicists can work together and figure out the proper verb conjugations for this brave new world.
Large Hadron Collider staying cool at just a hair above absolute zero temperatures
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.
Might Higgs boson be a time-traveling ne'er do well out to destroy the LHC?
We've certainly seen our fair share of crackpot theories regarding the Large Hadron Collider, and quite frankly the whole thing is becoming rather old hat. That said, when the New York Times comes up with something as far out as this, we most certainly have to share it with you. It seems that way back in July, 2007 two theoretical physicists (Danish string theory pioneer Holger Bech Nielsen and the Japanese physicist Masao Ninomiya), proposed an unlikely explanation as to why the LHC and the Superconducting Supercollider before it seem to be particularly accident prone. According to science writer Dennis Overbye, the Higgs boson (which the collider has been designed to observe) "might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather." Makes sense, right? Of course, we don't have any idea how these elementary particles might actually conduct the business of destroying equipment, but that hasn't stopped the duo from proposing a novel way to test this theory. According to a paper published earlier this month, a simple deck of cards could be made, either out of construction paper or, if you're feeling high tech, simulated on a computer. The deck would have one card indicating that the LHC should be shut down, and a much larger number of cards (maybe 100 million or so) that indicate that everything is good to go. If you draw the death card, as it were, you can bet that the shadowy hand of the Higgs boson is stretching back in time, telling you to halt the operation. Between all this and the proposed hyperdrive propulsion tests we came across a couple days ago, things are starting to get very Philip K. Dick over at CERN. Can we make one suggestion? Instead of a random number generator, why not Tarot cards? Or a Ouija board? You know, go for a Halloween vibe. [Via New Scientist]
Physicist wants to test Hyperdrive Propulsion in Large Hadron Collider
How come news can never come out of the Large Hadron Collider that doesn't remind us of our planet's impending SciFi Techno-Apocalypse(tm)? When not busy being called a doomsday machine, being bedeviled by hackers and Chuck Norris (yuck!), or just plain failing, the facility could be used to test "hyperdrive" spacecraft propulsion. Seriously! And you know what that means -- someone is planning on escaping the planet, and fast. A physicist named Franklin Felber has been musing over a little known German paper from the 1920s ("The Foundations of Physics" by David Hilbert) which states, in part, that under certain conditions a stationary mass should repel a relativistic particle. If this is true, Felber, concludes, then shouldn't a relativistic particle repel a stationary mass? According to MIT's Technology Review, the LHC would be the perfect place to test this idea: Felber could "set up a test mass next to the beam line and measure the forces on it as the particles whiz past." The experiment could be run in tandem with the collider's other work -- and who knows? Mankind may soon be on its way to the stars at near-light speeds. Let's just hope we figure this out before the robots take over. [Via Technology Review]
Large Hadron Collider to run at half-power until end of 2010
After a series of setbacks, delays, and potential world-ending mishaps, it seems that the scientists at CERN have decided to take it easy with the Large Hadron Collider, and have announced that they plan to operate it at an energy of 3.5 TeV (or trillion electron volts) per beam when they start it up again in November of this year. If that goes well, they'll then cautiously ramp things up to 5 TeV per beam, before starting to shoot for a full 7 TeV per beam by the end of 2010. So, mark your calendars... while you still can.
Large Hadron Collider restart, end of the world pushed back to mid-November
Still undecided about what to do with those precious few months before the biggest doomsday since Y2K? Then you're in luck, 'cause the much anticipated / feared restart of the Large Hadron Collider has now been delayed yet again, almost exactly a month after the last delay. This time it looks like a couple of vacuum leaks are the culprit, and CERN says that the collider is now unlikely to restart before mid-November, which just so happens to coincide with the peak of the Leonids meteor shower. Coincidence? Yes, yes it is.
Large Hadron restart delayed again -- you can relax until October
If you were enjoying these warmer months, taking time away from terrestrial black hole spotting due to the continued deactivation of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, feel free to extend those summer vacation plans a little bit. The particle crasher and supposed non-threat to life as we know it was previously set to restart in September after some damage put it on the inactive list many moons ago. Now CERN's Head of Communications, James Gillies, is saying that the restart is likely to be smashed back a few more weeks into October, meaning New Englanders might just get in one more leaf peeping season before all we know is mashed into an incomprehensibly small ball of matter from which nothing can escape -- not even Gundam robots. [Via MSNBC]
Large Hadron Collider restart delayed till September
Oh, bollocks! When CERN's Large Hadron Collider started up this past September, we figured it was only a matter of time before the world as we knew it imploded. Thus, we did as any reasonable group of individuals would do and evaporated our life savings before being beamed up. Now, we're stuck waiting around (with four or five pennies) for this September, as that's the new restart date following the LHC's run-in with bad luck late last year. If all goes to plan this go 'round, the machine will run into autumn of 2010, when engineers will hopefully see collisions of lead ions. Needless to say, gurus are implementing a new enhanced protection system to keep things from going so wrongly again, but you never can tell what'll happen when smashing atoms, now can you?[Via CNET]
Large Hadron Collider damaged and we have the photos to prove it
Is it possible that shoddy workmanship has once again saved the planet from an untimely demise? Not really, but this next tale should give our paranoiac readers plenty to mull over regardless. CERN has recently released pics of damage wrought when an electrical fault caused a liquid helium leak a mere nine days after the Large Hadron Collider started smashing atoms in September, wrecking interconnects between the magnets in sectors three and four. According to CNET, the doomsday machine will be out of commission until at least summer of 2009. So breathe a sigh of relief, little ones... and pray that the grey goo or the replicant hordes don't get us in the meantime. Hit the read link for all the pics.
World's largest computing grid lives to go live
Contrary to popular belief, the world as we know it didn't implode after the Large Hadron Collider was flipped on. Sure -- someone, somewhere is growing a ninth arm and trying desperately to land a cameo on Fringe, but the planet at large is still humming along just fine. Now, the world's most ginormous computing grid (the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, or WLCG) has gone live, and the gurus behind it are celebrating the beginning of its momentous data challenge: to analyze and manage over 15 million gigabytes of data each year. The Grid combines the IT power of over 140 computer centers, 100,000 processors and the collaborative efforts of 33 countries. Unfortunately, there's no word on when the official WLCG-based Call of Duty 4 server will be green-lit for action, but we hear it's pretty high on the priorities list.[Via China View]
Hackers hit LHC computer system, deemed "scary experience"
Those already fearful of the Large Hadron Collider's potential Earth-ending capabilities may want to turn away for this one, as it looks like the situation has managed to get a bit more perilous, with a team of hackers apparently successful in mounting an attack on a system that is "one step away" from the computer system that controls of one of the LHC's massive detectors. According to The Telegraph newspaper, the group, calling itself the "Greek Security Team," left behind a half a dozen files on the system and damaged one CERN file, in addition to displaying the page above on the cmsmon.cern.ch website, which still remained inaccessible as of Friday. Somewhat disconcertingly, one of the scientists working at CERN simply described the incident as a "scary experience," with a CERN spokesperson further adding that they thought it was just someone "making the point that [the system] was hackable." Um, okaaaay.[Via CNET News]