Francis Shanahan[.com] » LHC

Poor Little Hadron

Francis — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:13:00 +0000

Well it had to happen. Call it "boson peer pressure". The Large Hadron Collider has broken and needs repair[LINK]. What’s worse is it’ll have to heat up so the repairs can take place, otherwise the workmen would DIE in the cold. The collider will be out of commission until spring 2009. So the secrets of the Universe, the Higgs boson a.k.a. god particle, strangelets etc. will all have to wait.

Maybe they can get it turned on in time for the end of the world as predicted by the Mayan calender in 2012?

LHC in RAP

Francis — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:51:00 +0000

Nice job on the rap and science here which pretty much sums up the Large Hadron Collider

The beams start flying EARLY Wednesday morning…[LINK]

The Large Hadron Collider

Francis — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:35:00 +0000

Great photos here of the soon to be turned on "Large Hadron Collider" in Switzerland/France [LINK].

This thing is amazing; 10 years to build, thousands of scientists involved around the world, 27km of "track". The basic idea is they release particles into the thing, then speed them up and guide them using magnets. One particle goes clockwise, the other anticlockwise. When they get up to incredible speeds which I don’t even understand they smack them into one another and see what spills out.

They’re looking for all sorts of things such as the Higgs Bosons, Stranglets and other weird stuff. Again, I need to sit down and understand this better but this is exciting.

The first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire LHC is scheduled for 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled, on 21 October 2008.