Comments on: How to run the LHC

How to run the LHC

alby — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:10:02 -0800

CERN has published the full technical details of the design and construction of the LHC and it's six detectors (1589 pages, 115MB). [via]

By: Damn That Television

Damn That Television — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:12:20 -0800

Large hadron collider I HARDLY LARGE HADRON COLL-KNOW HER No but really as soon as this finishes downloading I'm going to geek out and spend all night reading it (or casually perusing it for intimidating data tables)

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:14:40 -0800

Oooh, data!

By: felix

felix — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:15:59 -0800

psh, neophytes. Any tyro could have seen the childish error on page 458; the sign should have been reversed. If they went into production with such a nuisance it could well destroy th

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:16:36 -0800

meh. Cover ups are getting more technical. FEAR THE HADRONS! THEY FEAST ON BRAINS!

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:19:23 -0800

this thing is gonna put the kingda ka to shame, dude!

By: zonem

zonem — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:20:27 -0800

Now, to make that higgs boson sandwich... numnumnum. err, if it exists. alternatively, hummus will do. at least until physicists correct the standard model. or find a less complicated way to add mass to my sandwiches.

By: oddman

oddman — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:26:01 -0800

Now all I need is the funding to build my own.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:27:48 -0800

tl;dr

By: echo target

echo target — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:28:55 -0800

oddman: wanna go halfsies?

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:29:26 -0800

No more comments until you people have read the fine article.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:31:29 -0800

Mister_A *just* beat me to teh snark. Damn.

By: mark242

mark242 — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:31:45 -0800

Who could have predicted that the instructions for destroying the Earth would take up less room on my iPod than Sgt Pepper's?

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:32:06 -0800

I just read it. It's kind oof dry, but the ending is worth the read.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:32:48 -0800

That one just kinda hung over the plate, Devils Rancher.

By: Science!

Science! — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:38:01 -0800

I'm going to build two homebrew fusion reactors, load them in my homebrew LHC and smash them into each other. I'll make a stable black hole or die trying.

By: dsword

dsword — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:42:12 -0800

The amount of data these detectors have to deal with is absolutely ridiculous.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:43:45 -0800

Science!: The second thing.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:44:22 -0800

Oh great, now terrorists will be able to build these and discover the fundamental constants of the universe themselves.

By: clearly

clearly — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:46:20 -0800

"No more comments until you people have read the fine article." Ok hold on a sec, I'm just going to print out the 6.4 MB pdf real quick.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:48:35 -0800

Message left on my whiteboard:

GONE TO SWITZERLAND. _{POCKET UNIVERSES} BBIAB, w/ ~~BLACK HOLES~~ FOR ALL XOXO —N@

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:53:12 -0800

I'll use these blueprints to make my own small hadron collider out of pallet crate lath and a couple motorcycle engines, and tow it around the usual circuit of county fairs. It can show the yokels a thorough debunking of string theory and maybe a couple more subatomic particles than they might've learned in school. That outta be worth five bucks a head, and cost less than running a Fried Coke cart. I'll clean up as long as they don't put the wagon too close to the titty show. And if the damn thing turns out a black hole, well, nobody's gonna to miss Idaho.

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:57:21 -0800

I just read it. It's kind oof dry, but the ending is worth the read. Yeah, I was kind of amazed that the Higgs boson turned out to be the LHC's sled from when it was a little kid.

By: brain_drain

brain_drain — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:58:45 -0800

Finally I can have a pet strangelet!

By: chillmost

chillmost — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:00:51 -0800

I find it quite clever how they wedged the flux capacitor in there.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:05:56 -0800

I wanted to make the obligatory large hardon joke this time. Is it too late?

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:07:31 -0800

It's hadron, yhbc. What is ya, dense?

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:07:34 -0800

Excellent. Now I know the exact location of the two-meter exhaust port. *bullseyes a wamp rat in his T-16*

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:10:15 -0800

By: Catfry

Catfry — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:25:55 -0800

It is kinda fun to look at the abstracts and scroll past the names of the hundreds of authors that contribute to these papers. It gives a sense of collaboration that seems a bit rare in other human endeavors.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:27:39 -0800

Nobody tell boingboing or the world will drown in a sea of papercraft LHC parts.

By: uosuaq

uosuaq — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:34:08 -0800

Is it me or is that a typo on page 881?

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:37:31 -0800

Well, XMLicious, you'll have to fly through a trench past a bunch of gun turrets and girders and stuff, unless you just decide to FLY A LITTLE HIGHER until you get to the exhaust port and then like get closer to it or something. Probably best to stay in the incredibly hazardous trench though. They realized this when they were making the old X-Wing game. To fix it they had to put in this whole goofy thing where the trench accelerated you or you had a booster pack that would only turn on in the trench or something, so that in the trench you went maybe ten times normal max speed. If you tried to leave the girder-dodging in the trench, I don't think normal speed was fast enough to survive all the turrets and enemy fire, plus it would take you an age of god to get to the exhaust port.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:29:56 -0800

The collider isn't needed. Open those things in Acrobat reader and the whole world will slow down to the point where Higgs Bosuns will just be sitting there for the picking.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:46:46 -0800

Oooh! Open source high-energy physics. You know, I still have this boy scout badge I never completed ....

By: elwoodwiles

elwoodwiles — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:48:43 -0800

Enough with the spoilers, people....

By: rusty

rusty — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:30:41 -0800

In b4 large hardon collider joGODDAMMIT YHBC.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:15:28 -0800

This should be on the front cover of Make magazine.

By: lukemeister

lukemeister — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:56:07 -0800

stbalbach, The real LHC has been designed with care, and probably won't destroy the universe, but I'm worried about the people who will build the kit in the next issue of Make.

By: saxamo

saxamo — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:24:38 -0800

Yeeeah you guys are kidding yourselves, this thing makes no sense.

By: symbioid

symbioid — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:33:02 -0800

DU: "Oh great, now terrorists will be able to build these and discover the fundamental constants of the universe themselves." DU, it's not the fundamental constants. It's the motherfucking black holes, man. Think about a bunch of suicidal religious nuts getting their hands on a black hole generator. I think this calls for national security to hid this document behind a heavy wall of red tape and black ink (and maybe even some duct tape, just to be safe). Will duct tape help save us from these mini black holes that Al-Qaeda will create with this readily available knowledge?

By: homunculus

homunculus — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:11:28 -0800

Europe Pulls Ahead of U.S. in Physics