LHC : when is it being turned on.

Professor_Fink · 17-08-2008 2:57am

JIZZLORD wrote: »

4 things could happen
1. It'll work grand - most likely result, nobody will pass any notice
2. it'll blow up - Billions down the drain.
3. it'll blow the world up - it's not as if we'd notice
4. it'll blow Switzerland up - they're boring cheese eating clockmakers....

We've been over this and over this. Only the first one can possibly happen.

JIZZLORD · 17-08-2008 9:25am

Professor_Fink wrote: »

We've been over this and over this. Only the first one can possibly happen.

Of course number 1 is the only possible answer, i was taking the piss

thebman · 27-08-2008 9:05am

/revives thread with news article.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0826/1219679949884.html

Tony Broke · 04-09-2008 12:01am

It will be on below on Sept 10

http://webcast.cern.ch/live.py

I wonder if they have secretly ran it already?

If like most major investments, it would have been tried and re-tried before the public ever get to see it.

Anyway imo this Atom smasher will only prove there was no stupid Big Bang and the Universe may not be expanding.

Professor_Fink · 04-09-2008 12:20am

Tony Broke wrote: »

If like most major investments, it would have been tried and re-tried before the public ever get to see it.

The public doesn't get to see anything. It's a giant underground facility that outputs an enormous amount of data. You can't watch the beam or the collisions. The data would be completely incomprehensible anyway.

Tony Broke wrote: »

Anyway imo this Atom smasher will only prove there was no stupid Big Bang and the Universe may not be expanding.

It can't do that, and not least of all because the CMB is definitive proof of rapid expansion of the universe. But more mondanely because it doesn't do anything to probe whether or not there was a big bang.

meditraitor · 05-09-2008 11:54am

If it doesnt prove the existence of the Higgs Boson is the Standard Model for the bin or does it just need tweeking?

Dave! · 05-09-2008 11:58am

Was watching a show with Brian Cox yesterday and he (and the other scientists) said that if the Higgs boson isn't revealed in CERN then it doesn't exist, and they'll have to completely rethink alot of things, because they've been wrong!

meditraitor · 05-09-2008 12:07pm

Dave! wrote: »

Was watching a show with Brian Cox yesterday and he (and the other scientists) said that if the Higgs boson isn't revealed in CERN then it doesn't exist, and they'll have to completely rethink alot of things, because they've been wrong!

Good show, very insightfull. It looks like proving it doesnt exist will have much more ramifications for future physics than proving its existence.

Dave! · 05-09-2008 12:26pm

Yes indeed, that's what I was thinking too! It could be very interesting, as they could have been looking at things totally the wrong way all these years, so once they rethink it (ehh... might need a 21st century Einstein...) things could appear in a totally different light.

eZe^ · 05-09-2008 1:59pm

Are they sure that if they don't discover the Higgs Boson with this LHC it definitely doesn't exist. It's quite plausible that it just means that our current technology is still not sophisticated and powerful enough to discover it. To not discover something does not prove it doesn't exist.

Conor108 · 07-09-2008 4:46pm

So this wednesday is it chaps?

Professor_Fink · 07-09-2008 6:15pm

Conor108 wrote: »

So this wednesday is it chaps?

Yes

Professor_Fink · 07-09-2008 6:17pm

eZe^ wrote: »

Are they sure that if they don't discover the Higgs Boson with this LHC it definitely doesn't exist. It's quite plausible that it just means that our current technology is still not sophisticated and powerful enough to discover it. To not discover something does not prove it doesn't exist.

Actually we have a good idea of the energy range in which the Higgs boson should lie, and the LHC will pretty much cover that range. If the LHC doesn't find the Higgs, then it probably doesn't exist.

eZe^ · 07-09-2008 9:59pm

Okie dokie, being a relaxed empiricist, that is all I needed to hear.

THREE CHEERS FOR THE POTENTIAL COMPLETION OF THE STANDARD MODEL!!!

Hipp Hipp.....

Dave! · 07-09-2008 10:32pm

It's been nice knowing y'all!

Tony Broke · 08-09-2008 2:02pm

Professor_Fink wrote: »

Actually we have a good idea of the energy range in which the Higgs boson should lie, and the LHC will pretty much cover that range. If the LHC doesn't find the Higgs, then it probably doesn't exist.

I don't think we'll find the Higgs with the LHC either, still less all those wonderful complementary particles they need to tie supersymmetry together.

Anyway I suspect physics took a wrong turn about a generation ago and disappeared up its own M-brane.

No, I don't have any theory of my own.I'm not a physicist. But when theories multiply constants, particles, dimensions and universes like codfish eggs, you can be sure something's wrong somewhere.

I think we ought to go back to general relativity and first-generation quantum mechanics and start again from there. Yep, go back a century and start afresh.

The LHC will be a huge waste of money imo, and will be the last supercollider that will ever be built.

Wetbench4 · 08-09-2008 3:10pm

Have a look at this;
"German Astrophysicist Dr. Rainer Plaga who concludes in his August 10, 2008 paper “exclusion of dangerous mBHs thus remains not definite.” and “there is a definite risk from mBHs production at colliders. This final conclusion differs completely from the one drawn by G & M.”. Dr. Plaga proposes feasible risk mitigation measures including limiting collision energies until safety can be proven."
http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf

Now i'm a little worried.

ronbyrne2005 · 08-09-2008 4:04pm

Do the detectors on LHC not get affected by measurement problem?

Podge_irl · 08-09-2008 4:11pm

Tony Broke wrote: »

No, I don't have any theory of my own.I'm not a physicist. But when theories multiply constants, particles, dimensions and universes like codfish eggs, you can be sure something's wrong somewhere.

I think we ought to go back to general relativity and first-generation quantum mechanics and start again from there. Yep, go back a century and start afresh.

The LHC will be a huge waste of money imo, and will be the last supercollider that will ever be built.

What exactly is it you think theoretical physicists do while coming up with new theories? Starting "afresh" isn't going to change any of the findings that have been made over the past century.

missingtime · 08-09-2008 4:59pm

Bah...i would have paid attention in phys/chem had cool experiments like this been going on.
All we ever did was drop tennis balls from a window and then we had to share the tennis balls. And the window.

Professor_Fink · 08-09-2008 5:09pm

ronbyrne2005 wrote: »

Do the detectors on LHC not get affected by measurement problem?

I think maybe you misunderstand the 'measurement problem'. I'm not really sure whether you are refering to the problem of determining what constitutes a measurement in quantum mechanics (actually called 'the measurement probelm'), or whether you are refering to the uncertainty principal. In either case, no, it doesn't cause a substantial problem.

I guess you meant the latter. Basically the detectors let the particles spread out over quite large distances, so we aren't really in a regime where superposition of displacement is likely to be noticable.

Professor_Fink · 08-09-2008 5:16pm

Tony Broke wrote: »

No, I don't have any theory of my own.I'm not a physicist.

And yet you feel qualified to dismiss the work of thousands of physicists over decades?

Professor_Fink · 08-09-2008 5:19pm

Wetbench4 wrote: »

Have a look at this;
"German Astrophysicist Dr. Rainer Plaga who concludes in his August 10, 2008 paper “exclusion of dangerous mBHs thus remains not definite.” and “there is a definite risk from mBHs production at colliders. This final conclusion differs completely from the one drawn by G & M.”. Dr. Plaga proposes feasible risk mitigation measures including limiting collision energies until safety can be proven."
http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf

Now i'm a little worried.

This is the reason we have peer review. Simply slapping together a document and sticking it on the net does not endow it with credibility (or at least shouldn't).

Phototoxin · 08-09-2008 5:23pm

Well I thinking its interesting and Im glad that a lot of public interest is involved as it makes science more interesting. Not that your average irish muppet gives a toss anyway ... or our government for that matter.

ZorbaTehZ · 08-09-2008 6:38pm

To quote Prof. Brian Cox, "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world, is a twat".

eZe^ · 08-09-2008 6:45pm

I wonder what we'll do if the Higgs boson isn't found, does that mean we have to completely revolutionize the standard model, effectively coming up with a brand new theory explaining why photons are 'massless' and electrons have mass?

ronbyrne2005 · 08-09-2008 7:44pm

ZorbaTehZ wrote: »

To quote Prof. Brian Cox, "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world, is a twat".

That guy is a legend!

Morbert · 09-09-2008 3:48am

This obligatory video might have been posted before. But just in case...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

AtomicHorror · 09-09-2008 11:05am

As of tomorrow I'm going to start using a sock puppet account and claiming to be from the future.

Wetbench4 · 09-09-2008 12:15pm

Professor_Fink wrote: »

This is the reason we have peer review. Simply slapping together a document and sticking it on the net does not endow it with credibility (or at least shouldn't).

How can you say if this prof Plaga is credible or not when the whole point of the experiment is to find out what happens. I'm no physicist but even if a mini black hole is created, its still a black hole, the most powerful force known in the universe.

LHC : when is it being turned on.

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