CERN : Large hadron Collider

Limerick Dude

Im posting up a link to a BBC documentary about the new particle accelerator at CERN. It will be ready in November and they hope it will recreate the events a billionth of a second after the big bang. Really interesting stuff for anyone who is interested in that kind of thing.

http://www.spikedhumor.com/Article.aspx?id=106571

projectmayhem

interesting stuff alright.. other then the cern thing i'm sure a lot of the other info has appeared in previous horizon docs...

Zombrex

This thing is always mentioned as "going to tell us such and such, so long as it doesn't create a black hole and destroy the solar system"

Personally I would rather they didn't destroy the solar system, since I live there

Not being that well up on my advanced astro-physics, can someone who is assure me that they do actually know what they are doing and they aren't going to rip open space time?

Son Goku

Wicknight wrote:

This thing is always mentioned as "going to tell us such and such, so long as it doesn't create a black hole and destroy the solar system"

Personally I would rather they didn't destroy the solar system, since I live there

Not being that well up on my advanced astro-physics, can someone who is assure me that they do actually know what they are doing and they aren't going to rip open space time?

CERN's collision energies will never exceed the energies of muon collisions on top of snow capped mountains. Those collisions have been running ever since the Earth formed and nothing has ever happened.

humbert

I can't watch the vid where I am but what are the conditions for a black hole in hadron collisions? Came across them very briefly in astro in terms of the collapse of neutron stars due to gravitational force exceeding that due to neutron degeneracy.

Zombrex

Interesting Horizon (Horizon has been "dumbed down" in the last few years so they tend to be more annoying than informative)

If I understood correctly over all these scientists are looking for the thing that causes some fundamental energy particles to "clump" to form particles with mass. And the Higgs field is a theoretical method that that can happen

humbert

They are looking for the higgs boson.

Son Goku

According to the Standard Model of particle physics all particles are actually massless. It is due to their interaction with the Higgs Field that they gain mass.

If you excite a field you produce the particles associated with it.
If CERN sees Higgs boson particle, they know the Higgs field exists and hence the Standard Model is right.

Zombrex

Son Goku wrote:

According to the Standard Model of particle physics all particles are actually massless. It is due to their interaction with the Higgs Field that they gain mass.

If you excite a field you produce the particles associated with it.
If CERN sees Higgs boson particle, they know the Higgs field exists and hence the Standard Model is right.

So what would that make "mass", simply a state that a particle can be in while being excited by the Higgs field?

Son Goku

Wicknight wrote:

So what would that make "mass", simply a state that a particle can be in while being excited by the Higgs field?

Essentially, yes.

However, in an even deeper sense it ultimately means mass is fake. I'll try to explain if you're interested.

Over on the creationism thread you've probably heard me use the words "Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking" alot. I'll just call say SSB in this post.

An simple example of SSB is an electron in a magnetic field.
An electron will naturally spin clockwise in a magnetic field, because spinning clockwise doesn't take any energy, because the magnetic field doesn't fight against clockwise spinning. When it spins anti-clockwise it has to fight against the magnetic field. So an anti-clockwise electron has more energy in a magnetic field than clockwise electron. It gets the extra energy from the fight it puts up against the field, where as the clockwise electron doesn't have to fight so it doesn't have any extra energy.
Eventually an anti-clockwise electron will lose its energy and hence lose the fight and the magnetic field will force it to start spinning clockwise.

Now imagine there is an alien race who haven't yet found that magnetic fields exist. There's a huge magnetic field around their whole planet but they can't detect it. Some of their scientists eventually discover electrons. Some of these are spinning clockwise and others anticlockwise. The anticlockwise electrons will be fighting against the planets magnetic field and thus have more energy.

The alien scientists measure the energy of the electrons and use E = mc^2 to get their mass. The problem is because they can't see magnetic fields they don't realise that the anticlockwise electron's extra energy comes from its fight against the magnetic field and mistakenly think that extra energy is actually extra mass. They think that the anticlockwise electron is heavier and then conclude that it is a different, heavier particle than the clockwise electron.

The Alien scientists think they've discovered two different particles one heavier than the other and one stuck spinning anticlockwise and the other clockwise. They call one particle A and the other particle B.

Now above I said that eventually the anti-clockwise electron will lose its fight against the electromagnetic field and spin clockwise. When this happens on the alien planet, their scientists think an A particle has suddenly turned into a B particle. They then think A particles decay into B particles.

Eventually their theoretical physicists come up with a Grand Unified Theory that says A particles and B particles are the same particle and the difference comes from an object called the magnetic field. They build a particle collider like CERN to find a particle of the magnetic field called a photon.

According to the Standard Model this is what is going one here one Earth and across the whole Universe. There is a giant Higgs field spread across the universe but we can't detect it. Due to this, we think particles decay and have a property called mass. In truth though it is all fake, we simply haven't been able to see the Higgs Field all along. Just like the Aliens couldn't see the magnetic field.

Hope that helps, if there's any questions feel free to ask.

ZorbaTehZ

Holy shít! That is damn cool (about the Higgs Field)
*Goes to Wikipedia*

Zombrex

Son Goku wrote:

Hope that helps, if there's any questions feel free to ask.

Interesting

So the theory is that particles that we associate with having "mass" would not have mass if not excited by a Higgs field, they would be energy just like other particles?

Do we have a theory as to why some "mass-less" particles are not excited by the Higgs field while others are? Is it to do with the amount of energy they contain as in your electron example or something else?

BTW to me the Higgs field if confirmed by the LHC, and more generally the idea that "mass" is simple a funny state of energy, could be a fundamental shift in how we view the reality of nature of Darwinian proportions.

Of course having said that is it also possible that we are looking in the wrong place or assuming something must exist to make the maths fit. It sounds very familiar to the idea from the late 19th century that light must be a wave through some substance that spans the entire universe

Limerick Dude

Could someone please explain the Higgs field to me

Son Goku

Wicknight wrote:

So the theory is that particles that we associate with having "mass" would not have mass if not excited by a Higgs field, they would be energy just like other particles?

Yes.

Do we have a theory as to why some "mass-less" particles are not excited by the Higgs field while others are? Is it to do with the amount of energy they contain as in your electron example or something else?

It's to do with how susceptible they are to the influence of the Higgs field. Just like how electric charge dictates how easily particles are effected by electromagnetism, there is a Higgs charge that determines your reaction to the Higgs Field.

BTW to me the Higgs field if confirmed by the LHC, and more generally the idea that "mass" is simple a funny state of energy, could be a fundamental shift in how we view the reality of nature of Darwinian proportions.

Definitely, hence the excitement about it. It'd really be incredible if mass was truely just some second-hand effect.

Wicknight wrote:

Of course having said that is it also possible that we are looking in the wrong place or assuming something must exist to make the maths fit. It sounds very familiar to the idea from the late 19th century that light must be a wave through some substance that spans the entire universe

The Higgs Field was originally thought up theoretically as a way to get electroweak theory to work. Basically if you assume it exists you get a bunch of equations for the electroweak force. Since then those equations have been shown to be true. Most physicists now think there is a good chance the Higgs field exists.
However if the Higgs boson isn't found, then we will be in a very confusing situation. If the Higgs didn't exist, why are the equations it gives correct?

The difference between this and the Aether, is that you never needed the Aether to obtain Maxwell's Equations.

humbert

Isn't it possible they'll find it at the tevatron first?

Son Goku

humbert wrote:

Isn't it possible they'll find it at the tevatron first?

Yeah, the tevatron already has data that people suspect contains the Higgs. Unfortunatly the tevatron can only explore the lower ends of the Higgs Mass* scale. The Higgs mass could be anywhere from 114 GeV to 144 GeV and the tevatron peaks at 118 GeV.

*The Higgs actually has mass which it gets from interacting with itself.

Professor_Fink

Wicknight wrote:

This thing is always mentioned as "going to tell us such and such, so long as it doesn't create a black hole and destroy the solar system"

Personally I would rather they didn't destroy the solar system, since I live there

Not being that well up on my advanced astro-physics, can someone who is assure me that they do actually know what they are doing and they aren't going to rip open space time?

It won't. There was some discussion about the possibility of creating microscopic blackholes (and I am aware of at least one claim of detecting one), but whether that happens or not it is irrelevant to our safety. Blackholes evaporate through Hawking radiation, and the amount of time for such a miniscule black hole to evaporate is tiny. They're not in any way stable, so there is no chance of forming something on a macroscopic scale.

JC 2K3

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

Holy shít! That is damn cool (about the Higgs Field)
*Goes to Wikipedia*

I share your enthusiasm!

Sev

That was a really good post, btw, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

Son Goku wrote:

Essentially, yes.

However, in an even deeper sense it ultimately means mass is fake. I'll try to explain if you're interested.

Over on the creationism thread you've probably heard me use the words "Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking" alot. I'll just call say SSB in this post.

An simple example of SSB is an electron in a magnetic field.
An electron will naturally spin clockwise in a magnetic field, because spinning clockwise doesn't take any energy, because the magnetic field doesn't fight against clockwise spinning. When it spins anti-clockwise it has to fight against the magnetic field. So an anti-clockwise electron has more energy in a magnetic field than clockwise electron. It gets the extra energy from the fight it puts up against the field, where as the clockwise electron doesn't have to fight so it doesn't have any extra energy.
Eventually an anti-clockwise electron will lose its energy and hence lose the fight and the magnetic field will force it to start spinning clockwise.

Now imagine there is an alien race who haven't yet found that magnetic fields exist. There's a huge magnetic field around their whole planet but they can't detect it. Some of their scientists eventually discover electrons. Some of these are spinning clockwise and others anticlockwise. The anticlockwise electrons will be fighting against the planets magnetic field and thus have more energy.

The alien scientists measure the energy of the electrons and use E = mc^2 to get their mass. The problem is because they can't see magnetic fields they don't realise that the anticlockwise electron's extra energy comes from its fight against the magnetic field and mistakenly think that extra energy is actually extra mass. They think that the anticlockwise electron is heavier and then conclude that it is a different, heavier particle than the clockwise electron.

The Alien scientists think they've discovered two different particles one heavier than the other and one stuck spinning anticlockwise and the other clockwise. They call one particle A and the other particle B.

Now above I said that eventually the anti-clockwise electron will lose its fight against the electromagnetic field and spin clockwise. When this happens on the alien planet, their scientists think an A particle has suddenly turned into a B particle. They then think A particles decay into B particles.

Eventually their theoretical physicists come up with a Grand Unified Theory that says A particles and B particles are the same particle and the difference comes from an object called the magnetic field. They build a particle collider like CERN to find a particle of the magnetic field called a photon.

According to the Standard Model this is what is going one here one Earth and across the whole Universe. There is a giant Higgs field spread across the universe but we can't detect it. Due to this, we think particles decay and have a property called mass. In truth though it is all fake, we simply haven't been able to see the Higgs Field all along. Just like the Aliens couldn't see the magnetic field.

Hope that helps, if there's any questions feel free to ask.

MooseJam

so what actually causes the higgs filed, a magnetic field is caused by a magnet and a higgs field is caused by ?

Son Goku

MooseJam wrote: »

so what actually causes the higgs filed, a magnetic field is caused by a magnet and a higgs field is caused by ?

Nothing causes the Higgs field and funnily enough nothing causes a magnetic field either. A bar magnet is made of protons, neutrons and electrons. I'll ignore protons and neutrons because they don't matter do much in magnetic effects.

The electrons themselves are simply lumps of a field called the Dirac Field. Photons, the particles of light, are lumps of the electromagnetic field. The Dirac Field and the electromagnetic field interact with each other. Neither is the "cause" of the other. What happens in a bar magnet is that the Dirac field lumps (or quanta to use the correct term) are arranged in such a way that they excite the electromagnetic field and produce its lumps, photons. When there are enough electrons (trillions, like there are in a bar magnet), the photons will smear together into what looks like one large classical field called the magnetic field.

This isn't a one way thing though, electrons can create photons. However Photons can also create electrons. Electrons can be deflected from each other by exchanging photons, however photons can be deflected from each other by emitting electrons.

Physics is a bunch of interacting quantum fields, with none the cause of the other.

MooseJam

thanks for taking the time to explain

great unwashed

Son Goku wrote: »

The alien scientists measure the energy of the electrons and use E = mc^2 to get their mass. The problem is because they can't see magnetic fields they don't realise that the anticlockwise electron's extra energy comes from its fight against the magnetic field and mistakenly think that extra energy is actually extra mass. They think that the anticlockwise electron is heavier and then conclude that it is a different, heavier particle than the clockwise electron.

The Alien scientists think they've discovered two different particles one heavier than the other and one stuck spinning anticlockwise and the other clockwise. They call one particle A and the other particle B.

Now that's a neat explanation. Thanks for that.

dlofnep

My concern is that scientists can't 100% calculate the outcome of this and they are risking our existence just to feed their habits. No matter how minimal the risk is, the international community should have a say in this.

I'm not a scientist, physicist or any other ist - but alot of the "qualified" people I've seen posting don't appear to be absolutely sure of the outcome.

I think this whole experiment should be cancelled without question.

Can someone answer this for me.

What is the outcome of this project. If successful, what benefits will we see? Is it worth the risk?

Podge_irl

dlofnep wrote: »

I'm not a scientist, physicist or any other ist - but alot of the "qualified" people I've seen posting don't appear to be absolutely sure of the outcome.

If we were sure of the outcome there would be little point in performing the experiment.

they are risking our existence just to feed their habits

I wouldn't worry yourself too much

Some great posts there Son Goku, thanks for the explanation.

As dlofnep said though, is the experiment worth the risk and what can we look to take out of it, or do we know ?

MooseJam

Professor_Fink wrote: »

Blackholes evaporate through Hawking radiation, and the amount of time for such a miniscule black hole to evaporate is tiny. They're not in any way stable, so there is no chance of forming something on a macroscopic scale.

Hawking radiation is just a theory though, it's never been observed so it might not be a good idea to base the safety of the world on it

kevmy

dlofnep wrote: »

My concern is that scientists can't 100% calculate the outcome of this and they are risking our existence just to feed their habits. No matter how minimal the risk is, the international community should have a say in this.

I'm not a scientist, physicist or any other ist - but alot of the "qualified" people I've seen posting don't appear to be absolutely sure of the outcome.

I think this whole experiment should be cancelled without question.

Can someone answer this for me.

What is the outcome of this project. If successful, what benefits will we see? Is it worth the risk?

Right so then we won't leave our cave and go over the hill because we're getting on grand over here and you never know there could be bad thing on the other side of the hill. Oh wait Jimmy's gone over - he found what?? Loads of food and water great.

Great so you say there's something called the photoelectric effect well done Einstein. Now we have no proof and we're just supposed to believe you. Well done - wait you means there tons of applications fantastic we'll take that.

It's not worth your time creating a laser what will that ever do? I mean some James Bond villain might it buts thats about it. I mean it could never be used in anything interesting like medicine, industry or communications right?


Grow up would you history is dotted with millions of incidents where people say something is going to go wrong and kill everyone. Guess what it never happened and we're way better off that people took the risk. Science is in essence the search for ultimate truth and knowledge. Humanity is compelled to find answers and have to perform experiments to find them. As for benefits most people never see them initially and only later on discover them after they have time to digest the new information

sei046

I cannot stand people who live with the advances of physics all their life but say we can go no further. Anyone who feels the questions the lhc could answer do not warrant the risk probably didnt know the questions existed in the first place.

It seems as if they will trust that their microwave will work, or their oven will work, or their phone will work and they take physicists word for it. But then when it comes to something like this the physicists suddenly have no idea what they are at. And absolutely no offence to anyone on this board but the people in charge of this project are the people who know. However positive we are about the acceptable risks, they are surely a lot more optimistic.

If it were left to some people we would still be without fire.

Crazy Ivan

Guys, these conversations always descend into a load of unfounded "we shouldn't jeopardise the planet" discussions. Look, there are particles with energies far far far exceeding those generated by terrestrial accelerators bombarding the Earth every second of every day, year in year out.

I know because I work in the field of high energy astrophysics. We detect particles entering (and penetrating) the atmosphere with 1000 times the energies being discussed here. I have yet to detect a blackhole, destroy a solar system or get sucked into another Universe (although... where the hell am I?). Believe me, there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

ZorbaTehZ

Relatively main-stream TED talk given by Brian Cox on Cern. Worth checking out.

norrie rugger

Crazy Ivan wrote: »

or get sucked into another Universe (although... where the hell am I?). Believe me, there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

Ah but how do you know that we have not been sucked in to another universe, even as i type this??

Crazy Ivan

norrie rugger wrote: »

Ah but how do you know that we have not been sucked in to another universe, even as i type this??

Fair point! I can't not prove that we aren't there... no! :eek:

ZorbaTehZ

LHC Countdown. ~31 days left!

Trev M

Can someone in simple terms explain what actual practical benefits are likely to be yeilded in everyday life?

What breakthroughs are likely to occur, new technologies or advancements in energy or whatever?. I understand that we will have a "greater understanding of our universe" and thats great but will it feed/fuel the masses, will I finally get that hover board Ive always wanted, we will live like the jetsons, will we finally know who shot JFK? OK maybe not the last one.

Thanks
Trev

bogwalrus

Teleportation could be one. Not as cool as hover board but still cool. Just like in the copenhagen experiment. (sounds lik e a movie but its not)

A great understanding of the quantum world would mean an unforseable amount of benefits.

norrie rugger

bogwalrus wrote: »

Teleportation could be one. Not as cool as hover board but still cool. Just like in the copenhagen experiment. (sounds lik e a movie but its not)

A great understanding of the quantum world would mean an unforseable amount of benefits.

Basically, untill we look we will never know

And teleportation is way bloody cooler than a hover board

bogwalrus

norrie rugger wrote: »

Basically, untill we look we will never know

And teleportation is way bloody cooler than a hover board

is it really cooler though?

Flying around on a board and doing loads of stuff like in bak 2 de future. That seems more fun and cooler then walking into a fridge and appearing somewhere else.

Though if the actual teleporting was like going through what the movies like to see as a worm hole with the rollercoaster bends and stuff that could be just as cooler. It would have to be a great ride though and beat nemesis for excitement.

I think i see a market for teleportation. Competitors trying to make their teleportation device number 1.

-teleportation in "surround sound", hear all the sounds of the quantum world as your body seperates into infinity.

-teleportation in "3D", enjoy you trip to the other side while watching the world around you dissolve into another dimension...in 3D...=)

-teleporter with "pre massage feature"- make sure your relaxed before you smash up into trillions of pieces.

and so on.

Crazy Ivan

bogwalrus wrote:

-teleportation in "3D", enjoy you trip to the other side while watching the world around you dissolve into another dimension...in 3D...=)

Teleportation in 4D ftw!!

Trev M wrote:

Can someone in simple terms explain what actual practical benefits are likely to be yielded in everyday life?

We have to be careful in how we look at expectations of an experiment. I don't think it's fair to say that doing such an exploratory experiment is only worthwhile if we can predict the benefits. For instance, the Curies, in discovering radioactivity, didn't know that it could be used to treat cancer. This was found out much later. The same with Rongten: he discovered x-rays (OK... by accident, but still) without an anticipated use for them. More and more uses for discoveries can only be found after the discovery is made.

tdp-carol

bogwalrus wrote: »

Teleportation could be one. Not as cool as hover board but still cool. Just like in the copenhagen experiment. (sounds lik e a movie but its not)

A great understanding of the quantum world would mean an unforseable amount of benefits.

What's the Copenhagen experiment that you refer to? Was it something that that Niels Bohr was up to then?

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

Podge_irl

Mr Crystal wrote: »

Whats the worst possible result if this thing goes wrong?

The universe kerplodes

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

bogwalrus

tdp-carol wrote: »

What's the Copenhagen experiment that you refer to? Was it something that that Niels Bohr was up to then?

sure do a googleplex search and you will find some cool info on the copenhagen interpretation and related experiments and stuff associated with superposition and teleportation of particles (or ions). Dunno if they are the same thing when an ion....:)

Professor_Fink

bogwalrus wrote: »

... and stuff associated with superposition and teleportation of particles (or ions). Dunno if they are the same thing when an ion....:)

Actually, quantum teleportation doesn't actually teleport stuff (i.e. matter), but rather information. Teleportation experiments basically use measurements on non-local quantum states (known as entangled states) to transfer a quantum state from one physical system to another.

With that in mind, it doesn't matter what the system is. You can do teleportation with electron spins, photons, Josephson junction and a range of other systems.

bogwalrus

thanks for clearing those topics up a bit professor fink in all the threads. Always good to hear an expert explain this physics stuff. tnx:D

Professor_Fink

Happy to oblige!

ShoulderChip

so when is the big day? I am assuming it will be like a big rocket launch will it?
will there be loads of press coverage>?

MooseJam

26 days to go http://www.lhcountdown.com/

ShoulderChip

that says 6 days?

sink

Interesting special in the Guardian over the weekend.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/cern