Proton Beams Are on Track at Collider

[HAL 9000 96]

Got some Coumadin in yer cabinet??

We all know we don't need any of that now...

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

Got some Coumadin in yer cabinet??

We all know we don't need any of that now...

Be of good cheer, it's Christmas it's the time for factors.

[scandal 951]

Got some Coumadin in yer cabinet??

We all know we don't need any of that now...

Be of good cheer, it's Christmas it's the time for factors.

Guys this is the proton collider thread. Why dontcha take this elsewhere?

[HAL 9000 96]

Ron needs to take some.

His proton beams need to collide and create all kinds of cool energy states.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Ron needs to take some.

His proton beams need to collide and create all kinds of cool energy states.

Hilarious.

[scandal 951]

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/41218

Higgs could reveal itself in dark-matter collisions

Dec 10, 2009

For particle physicists analysing the first data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, it is the €4.3bn question: is there a particle known as the Higgs, which endows all others with mass? But now a study suggests there might be a far cheaper method of finding the answer – and gargantuan particle accelerators don’t get a look in.

According to Marco Taoso of CERN and colleagues, the famed Higgs could be leaving its imprint in the light produced in collisions of dark-matter, the substance believed by most scientists to make up the vast majority of the universe’s mass. In fact, the researchers think we could be seeing the Higgs’s tell-tale spectral signatures in this way within a year – so sooner, potentially, than the LHC unscrambles data on the elusive particle.

Look to the skies instead

The LHC was built to search for a wealth of new physics, but its foremost target has always been the Higgs. The only fundamental particle in the Standard Model yet to be discovered, the Higgs – or more precisely its associated field – is supposed to “stick” to other particles and thus give them the property of mass. Many particle physicists have been hoping that the LHC’s expected collision energies of 14::TeV will be powerful enough to finally unearth the Higgs, and in doing so wrap up the Standard Model.

However, Taoso’s group, which includes members at Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University in Illinois, US, thinks experiments searching for traces of dark matter might get there first. Dark-matter is thought to make up more than 80% of the matter in the universe but it does not interact via electromagnetism so its presence has only be inferred from its gravitational effects on normal matter.

Most models of the universe suggest dark matter was more prevalent in the distant past, and this has led physicists to assume that dark-matter particles have been annihilating one another through collisions. Although dark-matter itself doesn’t interact with light (hence being “dark”), such an annihilation could generate a photon and another particle, possibly the Higgs.

The researchers claim that detecting this Higgs would be a matter of spotting the partner photon with an energy reflecting the Higgs’s mass. If their calculations are correct, gamma-ray telescopes like Fermi might see the first evidence within a year.

Likely to trigger debate

“It is certainly possible to imagine that the Higgs could be produced in dark-matter annihilation,” says Andy Parker, an experimental high-energy physicist at Cambridge University. “In fact, there must be a whole range of hypothetical processes which would produce features like lines or shoulders in the gamma-ray spectrum, using Higgs or other particles to provide the fixed mass required for a spectral line,"

The idea, however, is likely to come under scrutiny from some members of the dark-matter research community. Taoso's group have only considered one of several competing theories of dark matter that requires a particle with a distict antiparticle – the "heavy neutrino". There are, however, other theories which – according to the Standard Model – would not produce the Higgs.

For some, this issue makes the research a little too speculative. “While it is an interesting idea, I would be very surprised if the Higgs boson were actually seen in this way,” says David Miller, a theoretical physicist at the University of Glasgow.

Indeed, even if Fermi did find evidence for the Higgs, Taoso’s group admits that particle colliders would be required to “decisively” identify the particle associated with the spectral line. But with the LHC only just beginning to churn out high-energy data, particle physicists may be surprised to find that the first hints of the Higgs come not from below ground, but far above.

[scandal 951]

http://blogs.physicstoday.org/newspicks/20...powerful-c.html

LHC now world's most powerful collider

By Physics Today on December 9, 2009 12:14 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Physics Today: The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider has posted on its web site evidence of a record beating series of proton collisions at 2.36 TeV (1.18 TeV per beam). The previous record holder was Fermilab's Tevatron (at 1.96 TeV collisions).

The collider became the world's most powerful accelerator on 29 November. Since then CERN staff have been increasing the beam intensity, which in turn increases the number of potential collisions that can occur.

The speed at which the LHC is becoming operational has only been surpassed by the speed at which the first LHC paper using collision data was prepared and submitted by the ALICE collaboration. The paper was accepted by the European Physical Journal C on December 1.

The LHC is scheduled to shutdown on 18 December for a two-week winter break. Early next year the beams will be increased in energy, first to 2 TeV and then up to 3.5 TeV, roughly half of the final operational energies the machine is expected to run at later in its lifetime.

One unknown side effect to the delays the LHC has faced this year is how expensive running the LHC during the winter will be to CERN. In past years high energy experiments were shut down for winter, partly to conduct maintenance but also because electricity rates are 45% higher than in the summer.

[mawilson 2,133]

We're all gonna die.

You didn't have a flash forward?

[NickD 203]

If the Collider could be brought up to speed, we would have to be concerned that colliding protons could generate enough antimatter to blow up the Vatican. But it is harmless if contained in an electromagnetic field powered by a rather small battery that will go dead at midnight. The culprits are the Illuminati that want revenge from being suppressed for the last 400 years even though hundreds of scientists have somehow managed to survive and even prove that the earth does rotate around the sun.

But no fear, Professor Langdon reading symbols will stop them and somehow the Church and scientists will get along. We can learn a lot about science from watching movies.

Is there really such a thing as antimatter? Or is it just a proton with a bad headache? This stuff is way to deep for me, but we sure have a lot to learn. It's positively incredible with the high degree of science and precise amount of engineering how the universe and all that is in it was formed or created. But maybe just an accident. Certainly gives someone something to wonder about.

[Nagishkaw 510]

Got some Coumadin in yer cabinet??

We all know we don't need any of that now...

Yes.

[scandal 951]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...story?track=rss

Opinion

What will the Large Hadron Collider reveal?

The Large Hadron Collider could open new frontiers in our understanding of space and time and the laws of nature.

By Steve Giddings

January 5, 2010

With its successful test run at the end of 2009, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva seized the world record for the highest-energy particle collisions created by mankind. We can now reflect on the next questions: What will it discover, and why should we care?

Despite all we have learned in physics -- from properties of faraway galaxies to the deep internal structure of the protons and neutrons that make up an atomic nucleus -- we still face vexing mysteries. The collider is poised to begin to unravel them. By colliding protons at ultra-high energies and allowing scientists to observe the outcome in its mammoth detectors, the LHC could open new frontiers in understanding space and time, the microstructure of matter and the laws of nature.

We know, for example, that all the types of matter we see, that constitute our ordinary existence, are a mere fraction -- 20% -- of the matter in the universe. The remaining 80% apparently is mysterious "dark matter"; though it is all around us, its existence is inferred only via its gravitational pull on visible matter. LHC collisions might produce dark-matter particles so we can study their properties directly and thereby unveil a totally new face of the universe.

The collider might also shed light on the more predominant "dark energy," which is causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. If the acceleration continues, the ultimate fate of the universe may be very, very cold, with all particles flying away from one another to infinite distances.

More widely anticipated is the discovery of the Higgs particle -- sometimes inaptly called the God particle -- whose existence is postulated to explain why some matter has mass. Were it not for the Higgs, or something like it, the electrons in our bodies would behave like light beams, shooting into space, and we would not exist.

If the Higgs is not discovered, its replacement may involve something as profound as another layer of substructure to matter. It might be that the most elementary known particles, like the quarks that make up a proton, are made from tinier things. This would be revolutionary -- like discovering the substructure of the atom, but at a deeper level.

More profound still, the LHC may reveal extra dimensions of space, beyond the three that we see. The existence of a completely new type of dimension -- what is called "supersymmetry" -- means that all known particles have partner particles with related properties.Supersymmetry could be discovered by the LHC producing these "superpartners," which would make characteristic splashes in its detectors.Superpartners may also make up dark matter -- and two great discoveries would be made at once.

Or, the LHC may find evidence for extra dimensions of a more ordinary type, like those that we see -- still a major revolution. If these extra dimensions exist, they must be wound up into a small size, which would explain in part why we can't see or feel them directly. The LHC detectors might find evidence of particles related to the ones we know but shooting off into these dimensions.

Even more intriguing, if these extra dimensions are configured in certain ways, the LHC could produce microscopic black holes. As first realized by Stephen Hawking, basic principles of quantum physics tell us that such black holes evaporate in about a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second -- in a spectacular spray of particles that would be visible to LHC detectors.

This would let us directly probe the deep mystery of reconciling two conflicting pillars of 20th century physics: Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics. This conflict produces a paradox -- related to the riddle of what happens to stuff that falls into a black hole -- whose resolution may involve ideas more mind-bending than those of quantum mechanics or relativity.

Other possible discoveries include new forces of nature, similar to electric or magnetic forces. Any of these discoveries would represent a revolution in physics, though one that had been already considered. We may also discover something utterly new and unexpected -- perhaps the most exciting possibility of all. Even not discovering anything is important -- it would tell us where phenomena we know must exist are not to be found.

Such talk of new phenomena has worried some -- might ultra-high-energy particle collisions be dangerous? The simple answer is no. Though it will be very novel to produce these conditions in a laboratory, where they can be carefully studied, nature is performing similar experiments all the time, above our heads. Cosmic ray protons with energies over a million times those at the LHC regularly strike the protons in our atmosphere, and in other cosmic bodies, without calamity. Also, there are significant indications that nature performed such experiments early in the universe, near the Big Bang, without untoward consequences. Physicists have carefully investigated these concerns on multiple occasions.

All this may seem like impractical and esoteric knowledge. But modern society would be unrecognizable without discoveries in fundamental physics. Radio and TV, X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, PCs, iPhones, the GPS system, the Web and beyond -- much that we take for granted would not exist without this type of physics research and was not predicted when the first discoveries were made. Likewise, we cannot predict what future discoveries will lead to, whether new energy sources, means of space travel or communication, or amazing things entirely unimagined.

The cost of this research may appear high -- about $10 billion for the LHC -- but it amounts to less than a ten-thousandth of the gross domestic product of the U.S. or Europe over the approximately 10 years it has taken to build the collider. This is a tiny investment when one accounts for the continuing value of such research to society.

But beyond practical considerations, we should ponder what the value of the LHC could be to the human race. If it performs as anticipated, it will be the cutting edge for years to come in a quest that dates to the ancient Greeks and beyond -- to understand what our world is made of, how it came to be and what will become of it. This grand odyssey gives us a chance to rise above the mundane aspects of our lives, and our differences, conflicts and crises, and try to understand where we, as a species, fit in a wondrous universe that seems beyond comprehension, yet is remarkably comprehensible.

Steve Giddings is a physics professor at UC Santa Barbara and an expert in high-energy and gravitational physics. He coauthored the first papers predicting that black hole production could be an important effect at the LHC and describing certain extradimensional scenarios that the LHC might explore.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

[Niels Bohr 72]

Wow!

I thought there were only four fundamental forces of nature! {Weak inter-molecular, Strong inter-molecular, Gravity, and Electromatics forces}

The article suggest more?

[_Simpson_ 250]

but too bad we have to wait another two years to get some info

[scandal 951]

Wow!

I thought there were only four fundamental forces of nature! {Weak inter-molecular, Strong inter-molecular, Gravity, and Electromatics forces}

The article suggest more?

The strong and weak forces are intra-nuclear, not inter-molecular. Strong and weak forces drop off much more rapidly than the inverse square law and are effective only within the diameter of the nucleus itself at the range of proton-proton distances.

Molecules are bound together chemically, which is basically an ionic (electromagnetic) attraction.

Electromagnetic and gravitational forces both drop off as inverse square laws, giving them ranges that we can perceive on macroscopic scales. That's why we are much more familiar with them than we are with strong/weak forces.

I agree - the premise of additional fundamental forces as part of this new physics is indeed very exciting.

[Niels Bohr 72]

One thing that physicists were able to do was combine strong/weak intra forces with electromagnetic forces calling them quantum chromodynamics. Therefore, uniting them. But, for decades physicists cannot unite gravity.

Lisa Randall {world's renown physicist - and a faculty at Harvard} proposed a Braham theory that tried to explain the unification of gravity with the other forces.

If we get the Grand Unified Theory, we could time travel! Do whatever we want! I really like that!