CERN's visitor center in Geneva will remain open during LS1.
Image: Flickr/Ricardo Hurtubia
-
Gravity's Engines
We’ve long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they...
Read More »
With the discovery of the Higgs boson or something very like it under its belt, the world’s most powerful particle collider is ready to take a well-earned rest. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will shut down on 11 February ahead of around two years of upgrade work.
The break, known as LS1 for ‘long stop one’, is needed to correct several flaws in the original design of the collider, which is located underground at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland. The fixes will allow the collider to almost double the energy at which it smashes protons together.
But there will be no long holiday for the thousands of physicists who depend on the LHC for their data. A bruising schedule of maintenance, upgrades and forward planning will keep the scientists who work on the collider’s detectors busy (see ‘Down time?’). Meanwhile, graduate students and postdocs will be poring over the past three years’ worth of data, refining their measurements of the Higgs-like particle discovered last summer and searching for any unusual signals. “It’s absolutely not time off,” says Dave Charlton, the deputy spokesman for ATLAS, the largest detector at the LHC.
Image: Courtesy of Nature magazine
The LHC’s spectacular run got off to a shaky start in 2008. Shortly after operators fired it up, a single bad electrical connection caused coolant to vaporize, triggering an explosion that damaged an entire sector of the machine (see Nature 455, 436–437; 2008). Repairs took more than a year, and a subsequent review revealed potentially dangerous flaws in the original design, according to Steve Myers, CERN’s director for accelerators. The worst lay in a system of copper bars designed to draw current away from delicate superconducting cables in the event of an emergency shutdown or failure. The way in which the bars had been installed made them vulnerable to failure, Myers says.
To protect the machine from further disaster, the accelerator team made the decision to run the collider at half power until all 10,000 copper connections could be repaired and additional safety measures put in place. These repairs will begin almost immediately after the LHC switches off and will involve hundreds of people working double shifts, Myers says. The goal is to restart the collider at its full design energy of 14 teraelectronvolts by December 2014, but the complex schedule will be extraordinarily tight. “There’s no margin,” he says.
Cathedrals of science
Meanwhile, crews responsible for the underground detectors will take advantage of their first full access to the machines in more than three years. “The experiments at the LHC are a lot like satellites”, says Paolo Guibellino, the spokesman for ALICE, a detector that collects data on collisions of heavy ions such as lead and gold.
The innards of the instruments — the largest of which is 46 meters long and 25 meters wide, half the size of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris — have been largely inaccessible since the LHC began running in 2009. Now, hard-hat-wearing scientists responsible for the machinery will pull them open to conduct repairs and upgrades. ALICE, for example, will get a new set of instruments designed to track electrons and photons flying from collisions.
See what we're tweeting about
9 Comments
Add Comment"... the Higgs boson, a long-predicted particle and part of the proposed mechanism that endows other particles with mass."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis innocuous statement, while technically correct, IMO perpetuates a misconception about the Higgs mechanism that is widely held by the general public (myself included). I've recently found a very enlightening discussion in a simple CERN bulletin, which happens to be exactly one year old today: "SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE: EXPLAINING THE HIGGS,"
http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2012/06/News%20Articles/1420890?ln=en
It very clearly explains:
"... But don't make the mistake of thinking the Higgs field is responsible for all mass. Interaction with the field actually contributes less than 1 kg to the mass of an average person. Your remaining mass comes from the energy of the various forces holding your bodies together - mainly the strong force binding quarks inside nucleons, with a tiny contribution from the electromagnetic force that reigns over the atomic scale."
Similarly, the Wikipedia entry, "Higgs Field - Scientific Impact (of discovery),"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_field#Scientific_impact
under the heading "Finding how certain particles acquire mass" states (sans references):
"Electroweak symmetry breaking (due to a Higgs field or otherwise) is believed proven responsible for the masses of fundamental particles such as elementary fermions (including electrons and quarks) and the massive W and Z gauge bosons. Finding how this happens is pivotal to particle physics. But it is not responsible for all the mass we see around us. For example, about 99% of the mass of baryons (composite particles such as the proton and neutron) is due instead to the kinetic energy of quarks and to the energies of (massless) gluons of the strong interaction inside the baryons."
"The Standard Model shows how the energy of the Higgs field and vacuum can manifest, in the right conditions, as the property we call 'mass'. But the Higgs field is not actually "creating" mass miraculously out of nothing (which would violate the law of conservation of energy). In Higgs-based theories, mass is a manifestation of potential energy transferred to the particle during interactions ("coupling") with the Higgs field, which had contained that mass in the form of energy."
(continued)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBased on these references, it's apparent that the Higgs mechanism is actually thought to only have caused fundamental particles to acquire their inherent rest mass (when emitted) - the vast majority of the atomic mass in the universe is produced by gluons' mediation of the strong interaction to confine the kinetic energy of quarks within proton and neutron composite particles, and in turn their confinement within atomic nuclei.
So while it's technically correct to say that the "Higgs boson... endows other particles with mass," it's be more correct and less misleading to stipulate that it 'endows other fundamental particles with their inherent rest mass' since by far most atomic mass is particle binding energy.
Wasn't there a report a few years ago that they were afraid that when the LHC was started that it might blow the roof off the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe LHC which crashes particles together is an idea that will look ridiculous 50 years from now, why not create a machine that will unlock all the parts of particles without damaging them in the order they where assembled after the big bang? Design a machine that will create gravity strong enough to unlock all the pieces while observing them which could lead to time travel, gravity, singularity and advance science by 1000's of years in as little as 10 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe final design could be debated and tested but might look something like this: A Disk shaped exterior 1 miles in diameter with a hole in the center 1/4 mile in diameter. The center hole 1/4 mile deep and the entire Disk setting of a stand just off the ground. The PDA (particle disassemble) would use a Tesla coil mounted on the top of the Disk that covers the entire top of the Disk surface. The Tesla coil would circle down the center of the hole in the same way a Black Hole swallows particle. The Tesla coil would come back up to the starting point so the particles would follow a predictable repeating cycle. The object is not to Crash the particles, this only distorts and changes the particle into another form hiding it's secrets, rather disassemble the particle just like a Black hole would do. When particles go down a Black hole they are not destroyed, it is disassemble into pieces by gravity. The CT (Certainty Theory by Ronald Nussbeck) predicts that as particles are disassembled into pieces by a Black Hole they remain bound to it's antiparticle, no matter the distance from each other and will only reconnect with it's opposite in the order it was disassemble when gravity wanes. The CT says a Particle when disassembled by a Black Hole into pieces will reassemble in the reverse order it was disassembled and return to it's original form as it was before it entered the Black Hole.
More if you wish to know.
I suggest that particles accelerated to relativistic velocity approaching the event horizon of a black hole are disintegrated much like particle collider experiments: they collide at high velocities and are disintegrated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, while binding energy released during the disintegration of small amounts of composite particles in particle colliders is allowed to dissipate, the enormous energies released by black holes imparts the topological spacetime distortions external to the black hole and is retained within it, while residual fundamental particles that require spatial occupancy are expelled via the relativistic polar jets.
IMO, there's no possibility of reassembly, regardless of how aesthetically displeasing that might be. IMO, there is no conservation of abstract information required in the physical universe, as demonstrated by the release and dissipation of binding force energy in particle collider experiments - otherwise, the disintegrated particles should reassemble rather than dissipate...
Nothing in the Universe can be destroyed or created, not even by a Black Hole. I don't really believe you said that, you are completely wrong. Matter can only change form with the final stage of transformation into waves! You are a low information person, the great minds know nothing!!! can be destroyed in our Universe, this to be a fact, math proves it. You can create the heat of the Sun in a lab and subject particles to it and only convert them, conversely you can subject them to -256 degrees, absolute zero and only change them from one form to another. Low information individuals should not make statements that are utterly wrong on these posts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan't believe I said what? I said nothing about black holes being destroyed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're referring to the law of conservation of energy, which states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. For an isolated system, this law means that energy can change its location within the system, and that it can change form within the system, for instance chemical energy can become kinetic energy, but that energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
To be sure, I am not a physicist "poet", but neither am I a "low information person" - merely a retired information systems analyst. As such, I may have a more grounded view of information than 'theoretical physicist poets'...
I repeat, in the scenario I suggest, particles are disintegrated and transformed in particle collider experiments - their binding energy and all information regarding their configuration is dispersed and lost in the open environment.
I was wrong to convict you for your position that Black Holes destroy matter completely but I am right that you are wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSubatomic particles can and will separate from their orbits around the nuclei, every particle has an opposite Proton/antiproton ect. that holds it into place while in orbit. The information contained within a particle cannot be destroy by the LHC or a Black hole.
The Universe is a closed system, nothing new can be created and nothing can be destroyed, Steven Hawkins spent 7 years trying to prove black holes destroyed information (same as you thought) but found not even a black hole can destroy information.
The point I was trying to make is that a Black Hole does nothing more than disassembles particles and converts information into waves then sends these waves down a long tube (Tail). "Everything" that enters the Accretion Disk is trapped and nothing can escape and finally reaches the end of the Tube (tail). Gravity cannot contain the pressure of the waves at the bottom and it reverses in a giant explosion or what we call the Big Bang.
New Universe's are born this way, the same laws of physics are transferred from parent to child, this has been going on for eons. The equation that lead to the search for the Higgs and CERN's recent data collection all points to our Universe being Finite, this means there was a beginning and there will be an end. What likely happens is that all Black Hole tails collect under the weight of gravity below our visible Universe into a giant Tail, hence a birthing chamber. At the so called Big Bang our Universe was created so precise that a deviation of 1/trillionth of 1% would have left it life less and dark. We enjoy life because information cannot be destroyed even when our parent Universe died as Higgs will become a theorem and not a theory. CERN will release the Higgs equation next week,the Universe is finite, this will prove my CT Certainty Theory does not violate any laws of physics.
Using gravity to unlock particles and subatomic particle information is like unlocking a Vault with the Universes secrets all in tack verses taking a 40 ton wrecking ball and swinging it at 4% the speed of light and smashing the Vault into pieces and then looking around at what's left. The technology exists to build a Disk with an event horizon that could reach 80% speed of light without magnets, we just needed to sit back and think about it for a moment. Being intelligent means you can look at things in more than one way and if you have made a mistake you can correct the mistake.
OK, well I don't agree with any of your ideas, but thanks for explaining. Sorry that I don't have the energy to argue against them, so we'll have to just agree to disagree...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this