On hadron colliders, dark matter and black holes

[jfrazierjr]

So, some facts and figures.

The LHC - Large Hadron Collider
(hadrons are composite particles - of which protons and neutrons are two examples. Always be careful when typing hadron not to get the d and r mixed by accident. Easy typo, completely different machine....)

And a totally different tool also.

26 659 m in circumference - the largest machine ever built
>10 years to build, and due to start this summer (first collisions predicted in August)
The magnets are kept at 1.9 degrees above absolute zero so they are colder than outer space. This is so they are superconducting.
This requires the world's largest fridge - >10,000 tonnes of liquid nitrogen.
This, combined with the detectors, will produce more than 800,000 GB of data every year and requires a whole new class of supercomputer to be designed to be able to handle it.

Umm so how much energy is this thing supposed to give us? If I got it all wrong, just let me know since I am not very physicy as you put it.

This of course is if it works as planned. We'll find that out later this summer.

Yea... it's this bit that has be worried about the state of the universe after you guys turn this thing on... Typically, anytime some one says "It's completely safe", or "There's no way anything can go wrong", or something like that, the worst possible thing happens.... of course, thats usually in movies, but art imitates life and once in a while life imitates art.

Besides, since RPMiller knows the world is going to end in 2012, something will happen to the project and you will have to delay for another 3 years before starting it up again... either that or it takes that long to blow us all to hell, take your pick.

Joe

[RPMiller]

Besides, since RPMiller knows the world is going to end in 2012, something will happen to the project and you will have to delay for another 3 years before starting it up again... either that or it takes that long to blow us all to hell, take your pick.

ROFLMAO!! This is exactly how conspiracy theories get started. I love it!

You know the Illuminati are watching and have plans already in motion to make this a reality.

oh and...

FNORD

[jfrazierjr]

ROFLMAO!! This is exactly how conspiracy theories get started. I love it!

You know the Illuminati are watching and have plans already in motion to make this a reality.

oh and...

FNORD

Which of course, just brings to mind one of my favorite sayings:

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me.

[RPMiller]

Which of course, just brings to mind one of my favorite sayings:

What are you referring to? That statement came completely out of the blue.

[töff]

What if the black hole sits there, getting larger and larger until it ate the world?

Larry Niven had a story based on the speculation that the Tunguska meteorite was in fact a black hole that went right through the Earth.

I've long been fascinated by particle physics, although I am an utter tyro. Cheers to everybody who's working to expand the collective knowledge of our species!

p.s. Yeh please don't suck the Earth into a black hole, kthnxbai.

[Midgardsormr]

(hadrons are composite particles - of which protons and neutrons are two examples. Always be careful when typing hadron not to get the d and r mixed by accident. Easy typo, completely different machine....)

Evidently not.

I have something of the opposite problem. Imagine my chagrin when I clicked on a link to what I thought was going to be an enormous hadron.




Okay, that didn't really happen.

[RPMiller]

So you aren't taking the warning to not cross the beams seriously then?

I think this whole project is really interesting. I think my biggest question is what do the participants hope to learn from it? I think that is the one aspect that I still don't quite understand. Will this provide a new energy source? Unlock some important information to improving life? That sort of thing?

[RPMiller]

I have a question. What is it going to be powered with, and how loud is it going to be when it fires up?

[torstan]

It gets powered off the standard electricity grid. They buy in a large quantity of electricity and that is drawn in from French power stations.

I don't think it will make much of a noise when it starts up - though you'd have to hope that it would make kind of whoooom-thrum-thrum-thrum noise. Sadly the noise of a hadron collider was never covered in my courses

I guess not a lot of noise though as there are no moving parts. It's a matter of large magnets and electrical currents - the same as a TV screen just on a much larger scale. So there's no obvious source for noise. As for the collisions themselves, they are very small and a very long way away from anyone who might be able to hear them. So I guess it's a matter of - does a colliding proton beam make a noise if there's no-one there to hear it?

Other news - it looks like the beam people have done their job and the ring is pretty much ready to take the beam. Now it is a matter of getting the two detectors (ATLAS and CMS) finished so that they can close the caverns and turn it on. This is good news and means there should be a beam in the ring in August, but it's looking like first collisions will be pushed back a little. There are conflicting reports from different people and no official news yet, so it's still a little unclear. I'll post more when I find out more.

Oh, and Yu-gnomi. Thanks for the comments. That's precisely the balance I've been trying to strike. I'm glad I'm succeeding to some extent!

[Midgardsormr]

I guess not a lot of noise though as there are no moving parts. It's a matter of large magnets and electrical currents - the same as a TV screen just on a much larger scale. So there's no obvious source for noise.

So I take it you're one of those lucky people who can't hear the flyback transformer in a TV.

Lessee, these particles are travelling near the speed of light, yes? So that's 299,792 km / s. The thing is 27 km in circumference, so that gives a frequency of about 11.1 kHz, which is about where the letter 'S' lives, if I recall my equalizer cheat sheet correctly.

So if it were exposed, it would sound like an enormous snake, but frequencies that high are easily absorbed by the earth, so I doubt anyone will be able to hear it.