Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a 'mini-Big Bang' but no black hole :(

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The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.

The scientists working at the enormous machine on Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November.

The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.

The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near Geneva.

Up until now, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator - which is run by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) - has been colliding protons, in a bid to uncover mysteries of the Universe's formation.

Proton collisions could help spot the elusive Higgs boson particle and signs of new physical laws, such as a framework called supersymmetry.

But for the next four weeks, scientists at the LHC will concentrate on analysing the data obtained from the lead ion collisions.

This way, they hope to learn more about the plasma the Universe was made of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

One of the accelerator's experiments, ALICE, has been specifically designed to smash together lead ions, but the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments have also switched to the new mode

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11711228

Well i was kinda hoping that we'd have a nice black hole sucking everyone in, but sadly all we ended up with was some hot plasma.

Ah well, better luck next time :D
 
I wonder regarding these systems.
When they speak of collisions caused at 100 times the temperature of the sun, what exactly do they mean? how do you judge and gauge temperature when the thing is basically vacuum, vacuum with a few lead ion bashing each other, isn't it utterly meaningless to talk regarding temperature?
Just a PR way of making the machine seem awesome to the masses?

Anyway, glad things are working for them, hopefully they'll come up with some nice useful results.
 
I wonder regarding these systems.
When they speak of collisions caused at 100 times the temperature of the sun, what exactly do they mean? how do you judge and gauge temperature when the thing is basically vacuum, vacuum with a few lead ion bashing each other, isn't it utterly meaningless to talk regarding temperature?
Just a PR way of making the machine seem awesome to the masses?

Anyway, glad things are working for them, hopefully they'll come up with some nice useful results.

Well you can estimate the temperature of a star from its colour and radius. In the LHC they will just study the thermal radiation.
 
i find it weird how they speak of everything as though it is fact ?

for example how the hell do they know that the universe was created from a plasma a millionth of a second after the big bang 13 million years ago ?

and what was it that smashed together these ions/protons all that time ago ?
 
i find it weird how they speak of everything as though it is fact ?

Because it's faster than writing "possible maybe this is what happened" at the start of every sentence.

The reason they talk about it that way is because as of right now it's the most likely explanation we have, if something comes along and points us in another direction, we'll go that way instead.
 
Some images from today's experiments:

lhc081.jpg

lhc082.jpg

Events recorded by the ALICE experiment from the first lead ion collisions, at a centre-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon pair.

ALICE Detector experiment
 
Well you can estimate the temperature of a star from its colour and radius. In the LHC they will just study the thermal radiation.

Studing what? The energy given off at xrays and gamma rays? down thru uv light and infrared? Thats not a temperature surely?

I don;t get how they quantify these things, in a sun there are billions of particles atoms ion etc, this thing is only smashing a few.
 
Having checked further they are using temperature as a value ascertained from the average kinetic energy of the ions. So basically making an individual ion move faster even within the vacuum will be classed as a temperature rise, rather than any ability to retain transfer or radiate the inherent energy.

It does seem to be a factor used to try and allow people to comprehend the energies involved.
 
Having checked further they are using temperature as a value ascertained from the average kinetic energy of the ions. So basically making an individual ion move faster even within the vacuum will be classed as a temperature rise, rather than any ability to retain transfer or radiate the inherent energy.

That's what temperature is. The faster things are moving, the higher the temperature.
 
That's what temperature is. The faster things are moving, the higher the temperature.

Thats what temperature is within a substance, vibration of the particles contained within, in this case single ions qualify as a substance. Are they actually vibrating, or travelling at ridiculous high velocities in a single direction?
Do they have waveform during their ejection onto the detectors? I've no idea, I can't find that answer currently.
 
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