Large Hadron Collider

AJUK · 10 Sep 2008 at 21:42

I was so disappointed on two fronts today. Firstly, the world did not end.

Secondly, all they were actually doing, so it seems, was tuning the engine so to speak. I reckon it was all a great big scientist joke.

Scientists 1 : Joe Public (scared witless of black holes) 0

I may not be a genius physicist but at least I can get laid. Losers.

Grrrrr · 10 Sep 2008 at 21:51

Radiation said:
Why do i need that to form an opinion on the information at hand?

No one has argued this happens exactly as the LHC in nature or in the atmosphere, yes there may be higher energy collisions with atoms at rest but these are single chance happenings, on the other hand here we have deliberately setup two confined beams of particles to collide at a single point billions of times a second at pretty high energy's over long periods of time, its simply not the same and you know it.

Have you read the safety report? It covers the exact things you have mentioned

yak.h'cir · 10 Sep 2008 at 21:51

Grrrrr said:
Time dilation and other effects proposed by general relativity have been confirmed in several different ways. For instance the GPS satellite system adjusts the time given by the atomic clocks to allow for time dilation from the earths gravitational field.

A cooler example is the muon particle decay, they actually live much longer then they should because they are travelling so fast, we can actually see their 'lives' lasting longer because of time dilation

yak.h'cir · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:08

Radiation said:
Why do i need that to form an opinion on the information at hand?

No one has argued this happens exactly as the LHC in nature or in the atmosphere, yes there may be higher energy collisions with atoms at rest but these are single chance happenings, on the other hand here we have deliberately setup two confined beams of particles to collide at a single point billions of times a second at pretty high energy's over long periods of time, its simply not the same and you know it.

There's nothing wrong with forming an opinion, but if you're not an expert in Physics you have to understand your opinion isn't going to have much weight. There's a reason very few people reach the level it takes to be able to work on something like the LHC and there's a reason why they all spent many years slaving over books etc. This is just have life works, consider the level of public opinion against the LHC now. If you had a vote I reckon the huge proportion of people would say we shouldn't build the LHC, that it's a waste of money/dangerous. Yet the governments know that these people have no idea what they're talking about and that we need to provide for science if we want our understanding of the universe and technology to improve, hence the public are suitable ignored.

You're agreeing to their already being higher energy collisions in nature, it's the energy that matters. It makes no difference that one particle may be still and the other moving. They sometimes use two beams in the LHC since this will enable us to have a higher energy collision then would be capable of using only a single beam. We could make the LHC much larger and then we'd be able to get the same energy with one beam, but this would be much more expensive and a bit silly.

Another reason for have a collision between two opposing beams is that this will cancel the momentum of either beam, meaning the results hang around so that they can be observed. If one were stationary any products would leave the collision at relativistic speeds, making it quite hard to measure them carefully.

As for the energy released in the LHC, each collision is releasing the same amount of energy being released when two mosquitoes collide, i.e. not very much. This energy is confined in a tiny space and dissipates extremely quickly.

Tefal · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:13

yak.h'cir said:
We could make the LHC much larger and then we'd be able to get the same energy with one beam, but this would be much more expensive and a bit silly.

I wonder how much the curve of the earth would affect a bigger one.

yak.h'cir · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:16

Tefal said:
I wonder how much the curve of the earth would affect a bigger one.

I was tempted to go dig out some old notes and work it out then but the feeling passed after about 3 seconds.

yak.h'cir · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:19

I'm not at all concerned by the LHC, however I am concerned about this

:

http://thecyclotronkids.com/

the cyclo kids said:
We are a group of three high school students building a cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator.

Tefal · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:20

yak.h'cir said:
I'm not at all concerned by the LHC, however I am concerned about this:

http://thecyclotronkids.com/

it's less than a foot in diameter, i doubt they could do too much damage

Iraklis F.C. · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:23

the energy each beam will have travelling at full speed is 350MJ (mega Joule) , how will the collision release the same amount of energy when two mosquitoes collide??

JBuk · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:23

Tefal said:
I wonder how much the curve of the earth would affect a bigger one.

in what sense?

Iraklis F.C. said:
the energy each beam will have travelling at full speed is 350MJ (mega Joule) , how will the collision release the same amount of energy when two mosquitoes collide??

big mosquitos?

Tefal · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:26

Iraklis F.C. said:
the energy each beam will have travelling at full speed is 350MJ (mega Joule) , how will the collision release the same amount of energy when two mosquitoes collide??

Cause the partials are very very small with very little mass.

JBuk said:
in what sense?

Well how much you would have to curve the ring to match the earth/ how much you'd have to build certain parts up/bury other parts to keep it flat.

Grrrrr · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:30

Tefal said:
Well how much you would have to curve the ring to match the earth/ how much you'd have to build certain parts up/bury other parts to keep it flat.

Ok this is a hazy memory rather than a firm claim but isn't the LHC not perfectly, or even near perfectly circular? With the deviations from a circle being controlled by the magnets?

Grrrrr · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:31

yak.h'cir said:
A cooler example is the muon particle decay, they actually live much longer then they should because they are travelling so fast, we can actually see their 'lives' lasting longer because of time dilation

I'm willing to bet average joe hasn't got a clue what muon decay is though

JBuk · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:31

Tefal said:
Well how much you would have to curve the ring to match the earth/ how much you'd have to build certain parts up/bury other parts to keep it flat.

ahh right you mean the actual technical side of building it

i suppose it would depend on the diameter but i think they would just choose the overall depth and make it from the lowest surface point

I dont think the Earths curvature would affect it unless it was hundreds of miles in diameter

Tefal · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:32

Grrrrr said:
Ok this is a hazy memory rather than a firm claim but isn't the LHC not perfectly, or even near perfectly circular? With the deviations from a circle being controlled by the magnets?

Well it probably is a a fair bit off/curved etc.

But i mean just how much can it be curved vertical (to match the earth) before it screws it up etc.

Fuzz · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:38

Iraklis F.C. said:
the energy each beam will have travelling at full speed is 350MJ (mega Joule) , how will the collision release the same amount of energy when two mosquitoes collide??

Mosquitoes already stuck to the windscreen of a freight train?

SourChipmunk · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:38

Ok, I'm not sure if this was already addressed in this thread, but the idea here is to smash these suckers to bits that are travelling at 99.99999% c. If both particles are travelling at opposite directions at this speed, will they actually collide at nearly 2x c?

Kind of like if two cars are travelling opposite eachother at 65 MPH, each will perceive the other as approaching at 130 MPH in relation to eachother.

Somehow I don't think that applies here. But I wonder what it would be like.

yak.h'cir · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:39

Iraklis F.C. said:
the energy each beam will have travelling at full speed is 350MJ (mega Joule) , how will the collision release the same amount of energy when two mosquitoes collide??

CERN safety page [url said:
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.htmll][/url] about microscopic black holes at the LHC refer to particles produced in the collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable to that of a mosquito in flight. Astronomical black holes are much heavier than anything that could be produced at the LHC.

Apologies, it was just one flying not two colliding. Just because they have that energy doesn't mean it will all be released. For example your computer mouse will have about 5 x 10^16 J of energy yet you don't worry about that destroying the Earth.

Grrrrr · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:44

Raist said:
Ok, I'm not sure if this was already addressed in this thread, but the idea here is to smash these suckers to bits that are travelling at 99.99999% c. If both particles are travelling at opposite directions at this speed, will they actually collide at nearly 2x c?

Kind of like if two cars are travelling opposite eachother at 65 MPH, each will perceive the other as approaching at 130 MPH in relation to eachother.

Somehow I don't think that applies here. But I wonder what it would be like.

No, when you approach speeds to that of light physics changes in almost incomprehensible ways. Special relativity is what you need to research

Tefal · 10 Sep 2008 at 22:45

Raist said:
Ok, I'm not sure if this was already addressed in this thread, but the idea here is to smash these suckers to bits that are travelling at 99.99999% c. If both particles are travelling at opposite directions at this speed, will they actually collide at nearly 2x c?
.

I didn't think they where anywhere near that speed?