Hadron Collider physicist Adlene Hicheur charged with terrorism


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6871774.ece

The LHC cryogenics installations are the largest helium plants in the world. The LHC is now cold and ready to start.

Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber


A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week which saw significant overheating in sections of the mighty particle-punisher's subterranean 27-km supercooled magnetic doughnut.

Dr Mike Lamont, who works at the CERN control centre and describes himself as "LHC Machine Coordinator and General Dogsbody" later confirmed that there had indeed been a problem. Lamont, briefing reporters at the control room yesterday, told the Reg that machinery on the surface - the LHC accelerator circuit itself is buried deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border outside Geneva - had suffered a fault caused by "a bit of baguette on the busbars", thought perhaps to have been dropped by a bird.

As a result, temperatures in part of the LHC's circuit climbed to almost 8 Kelvin - significantly higher than the normal operating temperature of 1.9, and close to the temperature at which the LHC's niobium-titanium magnets are likely to "quench", or cease superconducting and become ordinary "warm" magnets - by no means up to the task imposed on them. Dr Tadeusz Kurtyka, a CERN engineer, told the Reg that this can happen unpredictably at temperatures above 9.6 K.



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Protons are back in the LHC!

Large Hadron Collider Less Than Two Weeks Away From First Experiments





CERN, the Swiss facility where the enormous underground experiment is located, has announced that test beams in the LHC have zoomed around most parts of the accelerator without incident:

Particles are smoothly making their way around the 27 km circumference of the LHC. Last weekend (7-8 November), the first bunches of injection energy protons completed their journey (anti-clockwise) through three octants of the LHC's circumference and were dumped in a collimator just before entering the CMS cavern. The particles produced by the impact of the protons on the tertiary collimators (used to stop the beam) left their tracks in the calorimeters and the muon chambers of the experiment.

If everything keeps moving smoothly, we could see some particle-on-particle smashage as early as two weeks from now. As long as the world doesn't end, we're going to get some long-awaited answers to our questions about our universe.



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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be started up tomorrow





Engineers at the Cern particle physics laboratory plan to begin injecting protons into the world’s most powerful atom-smasher at around 4pm GMT tomorrow afternoon, after the “big bang machine” was formally handed over to its operations team.

A first beam of particles should be circulating one way around the LHC’s 27km (17-mile) ring by Saturday, and the second beam travelling in the opposite direction should be captured soon afterwards.

The first low-energy collisions could follow within as little as a week, though Cern has yet to decide how to press on once the beam insertion is complete. Engineers also plan to crank its energy up to 1.2 teraelectronvolts (TeV) before Christmas, which would break the world record for a particle accelerator.


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The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed.

It was built at CERN, a multi-national center for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland. LEP was a circular collider with a circumference of

27 kilometers built in a tunnel straddling the border of Switzerland and France. It was used from 1989 until 2000. At the end of 2000, LEP was shut down and then dismantled in order to make room in the tunnel for the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

After a year's delay, scientists at the world's biggest accelerator have restarted an experiment to recreate "Big Bang" conditions that had sparked suggestions the earth would be sucked in by millions of black holes.

The experiment will be fully under way when the particle beams will be smashed at energy levels higher than those so far tested in such type of collisions. This will most likely happen in January, Gillies said.

The next important step in the ongoing experiment will be low-energy collisions, expected in about a week for now, CERN said.

The experiment can be followed step-by-step on twitter.com/cern.


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Thanks to Ralf Recker for the heads up!

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' either protons or lead ions will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.

Successful Test Run For Large Hadron Collider

The world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward by circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time and causing the first particle collisions in the 10 billion dollar machine after more than a year of repairs.

The true test of the Large Hadron Collider will come in the first two months of 2010, when scientists plan to start deliberately crashing protons into each other to see what they can discover about the makeup of the universe and its tiniest particles.

Fabiola Gianotti from the Atlas particle physics experiment said "So, it's a big emotion because it's at the same time for me the end of a phase and the beginning of another phase. It's the end of 20 years of efforts of the international scientific community to build a machine and detectors of unprecedented complexity and technological challenges and it's the beginning of I hope a fantastic era of physics, exploration, of discovery, which I hope will change really the physics text books."

Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were one-trillionth to two-trillionths of a second after the Big Bang.

This week at the LHC


November 27, 2009 | 8:42 am


It was standing room only in CERN’s main auditorium yesterday as the laboratory’s Director for Accelerators and representatives from each of the four large LHC experiments reported on the performance of their respective machines during the first few days of LHC operation.

The four large LHC experiments – ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHC – followed. One scientist from each experiment summarized the performance of their detector over the period from first circulating beams to first collisions, and presented the very first results with colliding beams.

You can watch the LHC Week 1 seminar online, or delve into the presentations for more details.


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LHC sets new world record


Geneva, 30 November 2009.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has today become the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV in the early hours of the morning. This exceeds the previous world record of 0.98 TeV, which had been held by the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Tevatron collider since 2001. It marks another important milestone on the road to first physics at the LHC in 2010.

These developments come just 10 days after the LHC restart, demonstrating the excellent performance of the machine. First beams were injected into the LHC on Friday 20 November. Over the following days, the machine’s operators circulated beams around the ring alternately in one direction and then the other at the injection energy of 450 GeV, gradually increasing the beam lifetime to around 10 hours. On Monday 23 November, two beams circulated together for the first time, and the four big LHC detectors recorded their first collision data.

Last night’s achievement brings further confirmation that the LHC is progressing smoothly towards the objective of first physics early in 2010. The world record energy was first broken yesterday evening, when beam 1 was accelerated from 450 GeV, reaching 1050 GeV (1.05 TeV) at 21:48, Sunday 29 November. Three hours later both LHC beams were successfully accelerated to 1.18 TeV, at 00:44, 30 November.


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Date- 30th Nov 09 Source- http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/Vide...

'Geneva, 30 November 2009. CERN1s Large Hadron Collider has today become the worlds highest energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV in the early hours of the morning.

How would the universe have turned out if the elemenatry particles had slightly different masses?

Four animations at an exhibition about the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, illustrate the course of our own universe and alternative scenarios.

Created by TRICKLABOR

Credits and production notes at http://www.tricklabor.com/en/portfoli...

The LHC team is planning to collide protons in the LHC for several hours tomorrow, and the next few days after. The goal is to provide the experiments with their first million collisions (a few weeks ago we had only a few hundred). We need millions of collisions just to start to calibrate the detector, and to re-discover some of the well known particles (that will be created in the collisions via E=mc^2) and prove our detectors are working correctly.

There are a few differences between the upcoming collisions and the first collisions a few weeks ago. First, there will be more protons in the LHC (probably about 4 billion protons in each “bunch” of protons, with 4 bunches simultaneously going in each direction around the LHC). Second, the LHC teams have been carefully studying the beams in the LHC in the last few weeks so the bunches of protons should be better packed together. This will decrease the number of protons straying away into the beam pipe, allowing the beams to stay in the machine for hours, and leading to more collisions.

CERN closes December 18 for a few weeks, and we won’t have beams back in the LHC until at least February. While we wait, we will analyze the data collected in the next few weeks. Then the LHC will ramp up the energy of the beams and we will have billions and billions of collisions through the rest of 2010.


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What price the secrets of the universe?

It may be costly to send protons whizzing round the Large Hadron Collider, but such research is a good investment.


Economies are underpinned by scientific research and scientists. Now is exactly the right time to invest more in curiosity-driven research, and although this might sound counterintuitive during the global recession, certainly there is historical precedence. Franklin Roosevelt instigated investment in basic research funding during the Great Depression, with a three-fold increase in the public science budget in the six years up to 1940, which resulted in unparalleled technological development as part of the New Deal. Japan emerged in the 1980s as a technological superpower, but the Japanese economy collapsed in 1990. Basic research was seen as a way out of the slump, and science was placed front and centre in Japanese policymaking. It is now in its third five-year plan, increasing funding to basic research each time.

And just in case anyone is tempted, don't trot out the old cliche about the only practical spin-offs from the very expensive Apollo missions being Velcro and Teflon. Forget the immeasurable inspirational effect that landing on the moon had, creating a generation of scientists and engineers: proper economic analysis indicated that for every dollar spent on Apollo, $14 were returned to the economy. The business gurus in Dragon's Den would be drooling at that kind of deal.

Next year, the scientists at the LHC will ignore the advice of the Ghostbusters, and will deliberately cross the streams of protons whizzing round the 27km tunnel at 99.99% the speed of light. When they start getting some results, they may yield an answer to one of the most fundamental questions in the universe. That should be enough to justify the phenomenal spend. Where's your sense of wonder? But if not, the data is unequivocal. The LHC emphatically exemplifies the solid notion that basic research results in economic growth.


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Images of today's collisions:

• http://ow.ly/Jjlh (ATLAS)
  


• http://ow.ly/Jjkz (CMS)
  


• http://ow.ly/JjmO (ALICE)
  


• http://ow.ly/Jjk5 (LHCb )
  

Vanity Fair Feature Article on the LHC

Vanity Fair LHC photos

Physicist and surfer Garrett Lisi presents a controversial new model of the universe that -- just maybe -- answers all the big questions. If nothing else, it's the most beautiful 8-dimensional model of elementary particles and forces you've ever seen.

This video tracks the path of protons as they are accelerated in the LHC:

The LHC might be on winter break, but accelerator physicists in the US are hard at work on upgrades for its magnets: http://ow.ly/N004

CERN is closing and turning off the heat for two weeks starting this Saturday. This is the typical annual closing – mostly done to save money. In France/Switzerland, electricity costs about three times as much in winter months compared to other months. Also, from what I hear, labor laws here might also make it hard to be open around this time of year.

Many people (including me) have or will be heading back home for the holidays. Once CERN opens again on Jan 4th, 2010, repairs will begin to take place of the next month and a half on various things. Our detector, CMS, should be ready by around Valentines Day, and then the LHC should start back up a week or so later!


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