CERN simulates Big-Bang

[Endri]

Source

First beam in the LHC - accelerating science

Geneva, 10 September 2008. The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN1 was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery.

“It’s a fantastic moment,” said LHC project leader Lyn Evans, “we can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”

Starting up a major new particle accelerator takes much more than flipping a switch. Thousands of individual elements have to work in harmony, timings have to be synchronized to under a billionth of a second, and beams finer than a human hair have to be brought into head-on collision. Today’s success puts a tick next to the first of those steps, and over the next few weeks, as the LHC’s operators gain experience and confidence with the new machine, the machine’s acceleration systems will be brought into play, and the beams will be brought into collision to allow the research programme to begin.

Once colliding beams have been established, there will be a period of measurement and calibration for the LHC’s four major experiments, and new results could start to appear in around a year. Experiments at the LHC will allow physicists to complete a journey that started with Newton's description of gravity. Gravity acts on mass, but so far science is unable to explain the mechanism that generates mass. Experiments at the LHC will provide the answer. LHC experiments will also try to probe the mysterious dark matter of the universe – visible matter seems to account for just 5% of what must exist, while about a quarter is believed to be dark matter. They will investigate the reason for nature's preference for matter over antimatter, and they will probe matter as it existed at the very beginning of time.

“The LHC is a discovery machine,” said CERN Director General Robert Aymar, “its research programme has the potential to change our view of the Universe profoundly, continuing a tradition of human curiosity that’s as old as mankind itself.”

Tributes have been coming in from laboratories around the world that have contributed to today’s success.

“The completion of the LHC marks the start of a revolution in particle physics,” said Pier Oddone, Director of the US Fermilab. “We commend CERN and its member countries for creating the foundation for many nations to come together in this magnificent enterprise. We appreciate the support that DOE and NSF have provided throughout the LHC's construction. We in the US are proud to have contributed to the accelerator and detectors at the LHC, together with thousands of colleagues around the world with whom we share this quest.”

“I congratulate you on the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider,” said Atsuto Suzuki, Director of Japan’s KEK laboratory, “This is a historical moment.”

“It has been a fascinating and rewarding experience for us,” said Vinod C. Sahni, Director of India’s Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, “I extend our best wishes to CERN for a productive run with the LHC machine in the years to come.”

“As some might say: ‘One short trip for a proton, but one giant leap for mankind!’ TRIUMF, and indeed all of Canada, is delighted to bear witness to this amazing feat,” said Nigel S. Lockyer, Director of Canada’s TRIUMF laboratory. “Everyone has been involved but CERN is to be especially congratulated for bringing the world together to embark on such an incredible adventure.”

In a visit to CERN shortly before the LHC’s start-up United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon said: “I am very honored to visit CERN, an invaluable scientific institution and a shining example what international community can achieve through joint efforts and contribution. I convey my deepest admiration to all the scientists and wish them all the success for their research for peaceful development of scientific progress.”
1 CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

[forre]

The full test is in October. Today they just ran the particles around in the collider. Interesting stuff, indeed. Thanks for bringing it up!

[Endri]

Oh, you're welcome.

It was said that it could be dangerous, though sciencists denied that. And, in fact nothing happened.

Here is the yesterday schedule:

September 10th: First Beam Day

09:16 - The webstream seems to be suffering so much traffic that it's extremely hard to watch it live at CERN. Euronews and BBC World are broadcasting a LHC special, a good watch...if you live in Europe.

09:17 - 13 minutes and counting.....

09:30 - In a few minutes the first beam will be injected

09:34 - THE FIRST BEAM HAS BEEN INJECTED!!!

09:35 - All looks well, next up is tuning the magnets

10:00 - Small 'electrical problems' have been reported, nothing serious. I will post more info once I know it

10:50 - Sorry for the long wait for the next update, some RL issues needed resolving. The beam has circulated 3 times now, all is going well!

10:51 - We are waiting for the beam going in the opposite direction

11:03 - Still waiting for beam 2, it could take a while. According to BBC4 optimism is very high, the previous machine (LEP) took 12 hrs to get to the point where the LHC is now.

11:08 - Beam 2 is expected to be injected around 12PM (CET), if all goes well then they will start finetuning and open the bottles of champagne!

11:17 - According to the BBC, some small software problems have been reported, but again it's nothing serious. Beam 2 is still planned for 12 PM (CET)

11:43 - BBC has posted the first beam event seen in atlas!!!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/...1030_atlas.jpg

12:18 - Beam 2 will not be injected yet because of some minor problems with the magnets.

12:19 - The cooling problem has been sorted out, according to control centre beam 2 is ready to go!!!

12:27 - Unfortunately the cryogenic problem hasn't been resolved yet.

12:33 - The delay will be a minimum of 15 minutes, so if you have to eat...I suggest you do it now

12:56 - Some magnets still appear to be warmer then they should be. According to the BBC the delay will be at least another 45 minutes before they start with beam 2

13:35 - According to Gia's facebookstatus, the 2nd beam could take a few hours before it's injected. Considering the fact that she is Brian Cox's wife (and a well respected writer), I think this information is probably correct.

14:01 - I was afk for a short while sorry, it appears that beam 2 has been injected!

14:21 - Both beams make a full round trip of the LHC

(from their Facebook group)

[dradeel]

CERN stimulates Big-Bang?


Anyways, I LHC. This is one of the biggest things to happen in ages. I'm really psyched about the findings after this project is finished.
Oh, btw: raise a flag if you've walked around inside the LHC tunnel and stood in the room where ATLAS was being built! Hehehe.

Originally Posted by Endri

It was said that it could be dangerous, though sciencists denied that. And, in fact nothing happened.

They didn't to the collision this time. This was the first time they turned it on. It's good to fine tune and triplecheck everything before the big test comes, you know. As forre said, this will happen in october.

Some hysterical propaganda-loving ignorant people think there's a huge risk that it will create a black hole that will suck up the earth. What they don't realize is that this is hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighly unlikely, and in the highly unlikelyhood that a black hole were to be made, it'll be so unstable that it will disappear sooner than it was created. Particles smash into our planet all the time. At CERN they've done tests with smashing together particles before, and oh my... somehow we're still alive. They know exaaactly what they're doing down there, and there are no risk to anybody except the ones that might work in CERN itself during the test. One person died during the building of the tunnel for instance. Those are the real risks that are being made.

I can't wait for the final experiment

[Endri]

Originally Posted by dradeel

CERN stimulates Big-Bang?

LOL,
someone should correct it:

CERN simulates Big Bang

forre: Fixed.

EDIT: Thx!

[freddie]

Strange matter, or "strangelets" are a bigger worry than black holes. A single stranglet particle can react with normal matter and cause a highly volatile chain reaction which might instantly at best turn the Earth into a glowing mass of strange matter glowing at 10 million degrees F. But that will never happen either since strangelets are positive charged, just like protons, which will make them repel each other natuarlly rather than destroy each other's charges in a cataclysmic event.

In any case! Looking forward to Oct.21st. Hope they finally find the god particle.

[taty994945]

How come you people know so much about physics? Do you read physics textbooks in your spare time or something? lol

[dradeel]

taty994945 - Hahaha Well, wikipedia and physics classes in high school is my excuse. Personally I got a 3FY-degree (Fy = Fysikk = Physics) in Norwegian high school, which means I can study "advanced physics" in university, but fuck no if I wanna do that. Hehe. I don't really know that much, to be honest