LHC Q&A

My main question is..... why?

Why are multiple governments pooling together 6 billion dollars to make this machine to study particle collision? What use is it? What technologies or applicable groundbreaking discoveries will come out of this project?

Why is this project a better descision than, say, spending 6 billion on alternative energy (unless this experiment will contribute advanced knowledge of nuclear fission/fusion) or medicine?

reply to post by Yarcofin


Amazing that many of the same nations on board are also combining efforts with NASA to create and pool technologies to create and build the first lunar base and outpost. From there the sky is the limit. I am glad to see the world working together for a common cause.

reply to post by Yarcofin


Well, answering the age old question "what is the universe?" is significant to our civilisation. LHC will solve the riddles of creation and explain how the big bang happened. Plus, what happened in those few seconds after it and understanding the Theory of Everything.

Also, the computer system controlling LHC - "The Grid" - will replace the internet in a decade.

Cheers for your input, much appreciated

I have one question.
Do you know what could happen if the machine (tunnel pipeline) breaks on collision impact? The unknown particles should enter the surrounding atmosphere, not?

reply to post by qonone


It's probably safe to say that they would fly off into space within a few microseconds of escaping.

Not sure if they would pose harm or not... many space particles can actually pass through matter... not sure if the LHC is recreating these same types of particles?

reply to post by TeraBlight


If the cooling system failed it would be catastrophic. the magnets would explode and pretty much destroy the 5.8 billion dollar experiment. If it failed while a beam was being accelerated, the beam would blast out of the side of the accelerator and bury a whole 100 meters deep into the wall. anyhow that probably wont happen they cool the magnets with liquid helium. why you ask helium? because of its neutral charge wont interfere with the experiment.

And the main goal of the LHC is to recreate the big bang to understand how matter is created from energy.

Other main goals

discovery of super symmetry. for every proton there is a proposed super symmetry ( no not the neutron) its another proton just with a hell of a lot more mass that exist in its own dimension. That is what super symmetry is.

discovery of the Higgs boson. The higgs boson is the theoretical particle that gives other particles mass. that is right this is the particle that is suppose to be responsible for all mass in the universe and therefore gravity

discovery of something not even expected. Extra dimensions, new particles, proof of god, whatever something not expected could be the biggest discovery of all.

There you go an explanation in simple terms.

Originally posted by qonone
Cheers for your input, much appreciated

I have one question.
Do you know what could happen if the machine (tunnel pipeline) breaks on collision impact? The unknown particles should enter the surrounding atmosphere, not?

im not a physacist so any more qualified please jump in if im wrong,

when the protons collide they imidiatley decay making them entirely harmless, so no

its not the protons the detectores read, its the remains of the poor dead protons

and as for the mini blackholes calculations showed that if they were created only 1 in 10 or 100 ish would get trapped by the earth and they would be so small they could actually travel through the empty space in solid objects and on the rare occasions they actual do collide it would take years for them to eat a single proton and exahust thm selves long before the millions of years they would take to start causing problems for anything bigger then stray particles

reply to post by noobfun


Your correct the particles the create are unstable and decay very rapidly.

Creating black holes is .001 % chance but your correct when you say there so small they would travel through solid objects. but there so small they will only last for a billionth of a second because the decay when they don't consume. and they don't consume in a vacuum that is the particle accelerator.

You were mostly right though

reply to post by Yarcofin


Or we will get our 1Gb p/s internet lines . I have read that certain matter, or a certain matter/whatever travel straight through our bodies on a daily basis, true as you say.

I am just thinking if (a big if) at collision in October the machine cracks or break. Those "unknown" particles they are searching for should surely enter our atmosphere and seeing it is unknown no one can truly be sure what would happen. Sure they have a back up, well i hope.

Scratch my thoughts (above), that is why it is so good to speak to people here. Thanks noobfun & oatie. Good to hear this, indeed! Well i wish the best to all..and ourselves

[edit on 9/10/2008 by qonone]

reply to post by qonone


dude, they already have developed a network capable of 100gb/s with this new chip developed by a small company. I read about it on www.engadget.com awhile back you can search for it if you want.

Same thing they said with Nuclear atom splittings, that if you split one atom it will start a chain reaction and the whole universe will disappear. Why can't people stop with the Propaganda and let some thing come out of an experiment and then question?

I dont know if anyone has mentioned this yet but the google is using the LHC as it's image.....

I thought this was kind of creepy.

You know what, someone has to say this as some time....

The tests being carried out by the LHC will prove NOTHING about the origins of our universe.

All it will do is prove one theory on the origins of our universe as possible.

Yes, it will likely prove that new matter (Higgs-particle) can be created through the interaction of extreme forces and particles of matter but there is nothing which will tell us that this is how the universe was actually created!

Let us not lose sight of reality.

I could go and make paper out of papyrus but this does not PROVE that all paper is made out of papyrus and that it is the ONLY way paper can be made - do you see what i mean?

All i'm saying is that this only makes one theory possible. There are many other just-as-speculative possibilities out there.

Which leads me to ask, why all this money and effort on something that, according to official statements, is made to "see what happens" and move forward in our understanding of matter and partical physics....

Not a good reason to invest $6,000,000,000 if you ask me


Also i wanted to comment on the media.

Am i the only one getting frustrated at ignorant lines such as "LHC device turned on and the world didn't end" - acting all "i told you so"...

I'm not saying that when the particles finally start colliding i think something disasterous will happen, but this holier than thou attitude displayed by the media is really annoying coz they seriously have no clue what they're talkin bout!

What else can you expect from the news media tho

Originally posted by Salvatore_Rubberface
Same thing they said with Nuclear atom splittings, that if you split one atom it will start a chain reaction and the whole universe will disappear. Why can't people stop with the Propaganda and let some thing come out of an experiment and then question?

Yep, its then when they also found out that the the stuff was highly radioactive, only a tad too late, which is why al the inventors lived not longer then a few months then a year

this would be scary to see from the space staishon.

www.youtube.com...

I've heard the news about the successful test today, but if my understanding is correct, no collisions and certainly no high energy collisions occurred. Only the first beam was fired and then five hours later, the opposing beam was started up.

When the high energy collisions begin on or after October 21st at the Large Hadron Collider, my main concern will be that dangerous phenomena moving at slow speeds generated by the accelerator will remain at or near Earth due to the artificial nature of the collisions. This is as opposed to what happens in nature, where high energy cosmic rays impact Earth and / or the atmosphere, possibly also producing unusual phenomena such as micro black holes that move at extremely fast speeds away from the planet. In the natural example, there would be no danger to Earth but in the LHC case, if for example an LHC generated micro black hole remains at or near zero speed, couldn't it expand?

Are my concerns valid?

What everyone should really be fearing is all of the nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable governments and not the LHC. There are black holes all over the universe and none of them have swallowed it whole yet...what I would like to read is something from a legitimate scientist in this field who can comment on what if anything we should fear about the LHC. Any particle physicists on ATS out there care to add something to this conversation?

RE: LHC Large Hadron Collider (Particle Accelerator)

Actually, as someone with a fairly scientific mind, I can tell you that
even the scientists get it wrong sometimes and that's my opinion after
I've actually read the numerous pages of engineering and physics
reports available publicly online!

The problem is of scale...at the final 7 Tera-Electron Volts of energy
that will comprise the beam of lead ions which will eventually collide
after October 21st, the scientists have insisted upon stating that the
total energy output is barely that of a flying mosquito.

While this is true, they have forgotton to state the Scale at which
this energy will be applied/dissipated during an LHC collision event!

What many of the general public and the mainstream media
does not understand is that those 7 Tera-electron volts is at
a scale of a few hundreds of femtometres (Quadrillionths of a Metre)
in size and thus the "Energy Density" is equivalent to the 100,000 times
that of the core of the sun in an area you can't even see.

Therefore if we were to scale up the size of the LHC's collision
area to the equivalent size (volume) of a mosquito, the total energy
output at the same energy density would be monsterous on the scale
much bigger than a few seconds or even tens-of-minutes output of
our sun (Which is a HUGE amount of total energy!).

Using an analogy, I can take one kilogram (or one litre) of water
and compress it to tens of thousands of PSI (pounds per square inch).
It's potential energy density has thus now increased to such an extent
that if that energy is released I can cut a 6 inch (15 cm) slab of steel
right in half with that compressed water!

Now imagine if I scaled that experiment upwards to 100,000 times
the original volume (i.e. 100,000 litres/kilos) of compressed water...
The total energy output is correspondingly increased to a
massive scale that would cause one hell of a lot of
destruction to anything nearby if that 100,000 litres of water
were compressed to tens of thousands of PSI and then
released all in one go!

In the case of the LHC, we are injecting a hell of a lot of energy
into a very small area so the actual energy output is in fact much,
much more powerful than our sun over very short periods of time.

The problem with the posssible LHC dangers, is that we are tampering
with below-Planck's Length nuclear binding forces that can cause
runaway energy release if the "Nuclear Straps" that hold the basic
particles (i.e. Quarks) of matter together SNAP and release all their
available energy or de-stabilize into unconvential states, which
on a total energy output basis, could be enough to cause what is
called a Quark Star or a Quark Gluon Plasma or Negatively Charged
Stranglets to form that will accrete the matter of our Earth or
change it's basic state to a glowing soup swirling about in space.

A STABLE microscopic black hole could also form that accretes matter
and then release that enormous energy via it's Hawking Radiation
to basically incinerate us back to the basic elements.

Do Remember! We are playing with the basic binding forces
of the Universe! Please note that it is the Stated Goal of the
LHC program to REPLICATE the origins of matter just after
the Big Bang and which is more commonly described as:

"Let There Be Light!"

---

On the positive side, finding mini black holes that dissipate
quickly would allow us to possibly use the Hawking Radiation
from those brilliant wisps of infinity to create, confine and use
UNLIMITED SOURCES OF ENERGY to power our modern civilization
if we are able to stabilize the production and dissipation
if those mini black holes in a routine manner!

Flying cars and personal Spaceships would then become a practical reality!
So it is an exciting time we have here, it's just that we have to be a bit
careful since we are still ignorant babes playing with big nasty matches
near a big pool of nuclear gasoline which could blow up in our faces
if we're not careful.

reply to post by StargateSG7


ok.. i read the whole thread.. and then got to you.. I know its all over my head... im just a high school graduate.. I was actually able to understand some of your post. and some of the other ones also.. but now yours threw me for a loop.. so do you think we are going to far with this experiment.. or are you just stating a way far out scenario???