MetaFilter posts tagged with CERN

This may well be the last post on MetaFilter

shii — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:59:51 -0800

CERN has successfully circulated beams in the Large Hadron Collider. This news was announced via Twitter, where they will be accepting questions for an upcoming press conference; in the meantime, check out explanatory videos on their YouTube channel, some lively podcasts, or an overview of particle physics on their website. The home of the Web has done a pretty good job keeping up with technology. (previously)

Is someone trying to tell us something?

sk381 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:03:41 -0800

Is The Large Hadron Collider Being Sabotaged from the Future? A couple of distinguished physicists posit that this indeed might be the case! [NYT Article]

I love my LHC

tellurian — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:13:29 -0800

Episode 4 - Problems "Okay, sometimes I almost want to give up everything." A fascinating insight into the Large Hadron Collider (loving the soundtracks too). YTL

Bringing the end of the world to your iPod

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:05:31 -0800

CERN Podcast - Lighthearted chats at the CERN laboratory with "a bit of particle physics thrown in". Featuring visits from British satirists and comedians, including Chris Morris and Kevin Eldon.

Big Ol' Large Hadron Collider Accident ... (But We're Not All Doomed)

WCityMike — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:46:04 -0800

BBC: Hadron Collider forced to halt. An underground tunnel fault released one ton of liquid helium, which had been acting as coolant, into the tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider, causing 100 supercooled magnets to heat up by an extra 100°C and then fail. Vacuum was lost as well.

Quark-Gluon Plasma

netbros — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:33:33 -0800

The ALICE Collaboration is building a dedicated heavy-ion detector to exploit the unique physics potential of nucleus-nucleus interactions at LHC energies. The aim is to study the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities, where the formation of a new phase of matter, the quark-gluon plasma, is expected. This website aims both at introducing non-initiates to the field of physics covered by ALICE and at providing regular information on the evolution of the experiment, with detailed reports of its results and analysis.

Hacking the Hadron

fixedgear — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:17:15 -0800

Hackers attack Large Hadron Collider Hackers have mounted an attack on the Large Hadron Collider, raising concerns about the security of the biggest experiment in the world as it passes an important new milestone.

T-Minus...

chuckdarwin — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:51:21 -0800

In a scant few hours, scientists will make the first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider. Terrified of nothing, a few deeply misguided morons have sent death threats to the CERN team, probably because of Faith-Based Science. *sigh* Anyway, what follows is the Just Some Of The Cool Shit About The LHC:

When the accelerator is fired up, two parallel beams of particles will be blasted around the underground ring in opposite directions. At four locations on the circuit, superconducting magnets will bend the beams so that groups of protons smash into each other in a giant chamber rigged with equipment to record the collisions and their aftermath.

Around 300 computer centres in 50 countries will handle data from the vast atom smasher for the next decade, marking what will be the biggest computing exercise in history. Handing the deluge of data will mark a test for the next generation of computing, called The Grid or "the cloud", and the biggest development in global communication since Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the internet, wrote "www" on a blackboard in 1989 on the site of the huge machine. The backbone of the grid will be computer centres filled with thousands of PCs linked together. The biggest concentration is the 80,000 PCs in a "farm" at the Large Hadron Collider, part of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN, near Geneva. When the experiments get running at the LHC, the four great "eyes" of the machine start observing collisions, they will generate 15 million gigabytes of data every year, that is equivalent to one thousand times the information printed in the form of books annually. "If you put them on CDs and stacked them up, that stack would be more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) tall." said Dr Bob Jones, Director of the EGEE, Enabling grids for e-science project, which is co-funded by the European Commission. Or, in terms of iPod data, the annual output of the atom smasher is equivalent to a song running for 24,000 years.

When activated, it is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would be a significant step in the search for a Grand Unified Theory, which seeks to unify three of the four known fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, leaving out only gravity.

BBC Radio 4 will devote a day of programming to the LHC, including covering first injection of beams live on the Today programme. See the BBC website for programming, background etc. You can try your hand at running the LHC and interpreting collisions on the simulator at www.particledetectives.net Good luck to all involved. Previously

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]

The Universe is Finite

snsranch — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 17:52:17 -0800

Remember CERN from The Da Vinci Code? And their mega-project the Large Hadron Collider(previously mentioned here?) This BBC Horizons show, The Six Billion Dollar Experiment, does a good job illustrating why such an experiment is so cool, important and fascinating. Apparently, the universe is finite. (Includes Google Video-last link)

Live from CERN!

PenDevil — Fri, 07 Nov 2003 03:54:25 -0800

Not happy with the level of scientific discourse on The Discovery Channel Fed up with missing out all those keynote addresses by top scientists at various conferences around the globe? Fear not! The Cable Science Network is gearing up for launch. Billing itself as 'a C-Span for science' they hope to use television to counter some of the crap and misinformation that usually rides the airwaves.

joshua — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 16:27:45 -0800

Science may be left totally unable to explain mass. "The most saught after oject particle in physics, the Higgs boson, may not even exist." As devistating as it sounds to science, I just couldn't help but laugh.