Subscription Center
Sep 10, 2008 12:05 PM | 52
The particle-smashing Large Hadron Collider(LHC) is up and running, and we're still here.
"We've got a beam on the LHC," project leader Lyn Evans told his colleagues to applause after the machine finished coaxing a beam of protons around the 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel at 10:28 a.m. CEST (4:28 a.m. ET).
“There it is! There it is!” shouted the announcer from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, according to a live blog of the event on Symmetry Breaking. “Congratulations! This is astonishingly fast.” The test took about an hour to complete after CERN injected the proton beam into the LHC.
Over the coming months and years, scientists will run a series of experiments in the $9 billion LHC designed to tease out tightly held secrets of the universe. Deep under the Swiss-French border, they'll be investigating why particles have mass and looking for particles of dark matter.
If scientists successfully send a beam around the LHC in the other direction, they'll be able to create high-energy collisions nearly the speed of light -- conditions simulating the moment after the big bang.
In a few years, they plan to start firing a beam of lead ions around the machine as well to investigate the ultradense state of matter known as the quark-gluon plasma. (We've got an in-depth report on the LHC here.)
Doomsday forecasters, worried that the LHC will create mini black holes that would suck up Earth when collisions begin in a few weeks, had sought a restraining order to prevent CERN from activating the machine.
Tags:
dark matter,
CERN,
LHC,
quark-gluon plasma
More News Blog:
Next: How long would it take the LHC to defrost a pizza?
Previous: New U.S. storage depot for the highly enriched uranium in nuclear weapons
See what we're tweeting about
David_Bressan A round-up of recent landslide incidents, 2 children tragically killed by a mudslide whilst collecting fossils http://t.co/XKHaoyWJvO David_Bressan 24 May 1794: Birthday of William Whewell, historian & philosopher of science, mineralogist - guess after who is named "Whewellit"
notscientific Charles Darwin was not only a great scientist, he was also an excellent writer http://t.co/gSmzLiKXBS
Deadline: Jun 30 2013
Reward: $1,000,000 USD
This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires written documentation and&
Deadline: Jun 29 2013
Reward: $7,000 USD
The Seeker for this Challenge desires proposals for chemical methods that could rapidly degrade a dilute aqueous solution
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
52 Comments
Add CommentWell , duh. Will the doom sayers please sit down.... Alas, probably not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey haven't smashed any particles, yet... I think it's absolutely hysterical that these reports are applauding the machine for turning on, taking the opportunity to declare it totally safe, and yet the actual events the doomsdayers warn could cause big problems have come to fruition, yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoom/naysayers would rather that we never started messing around with fire. Best to just sit on the cold hard ground and ponder than dare. Then again, doom/naysayers would probably warn of the dangers of pondering as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe serious doomsayers are very annoying to those of us who prefer to doomsay for amusement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMark my words that aren't mine, if we turn it on, the Universe "will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable."
FUD! All of you FUD it up!
Maybe they should wait until 12/21/2012 to turn it on just to increase the suspense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat will all those Chicken Littles do when the LHC doesn't destroy the planet? Think of all the teasing they face.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other hand, if the LHC does destroy the planet, no one will be around to tell me "I told you so!"
I've said this before in other commentaries, if the scientists have miscalculated and the LHC does destroy the planet, they will be the first to know. There is consolation in that. :-))
The sheer arrogance of the scientific community suggesting it is looking for the 'God particle' astounds me quite frankly. The secular scientific community would undoubtedly tell us there is no chance there's a God, but on the off chance there is one? They're going to figure out how He works so we can do things our way! And then there's the question of just how small of a "Big Bang" does it take to unleash cosmic forces we know nothing about and potentially have no way to quash or reverse whatsoever? Playing with fire?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis reminds me of "psychic" Sean David Morton and his prediction that California will be destroyed. In the year 1992. No wait, '96. No, '98. And now he says that aliens (that abducted him) have been preventing these bad things from happening. The point being that crazies are, in fact, crazy and should not stand in the way of scientific investigation. Let those at CERN do what they do best and let the crazies rant on. And enjoy the inevitable Sci-Fi miniseries that results from their hypotheses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love that it scares the timid, and could, even though it's nearly infinitely improbable, kill us all in an exciting way no one would have considered before this. Broad strokes. Good times.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@revelations: Some perspective... the interactions that are going to be observed in the LHC are no different (& actually weaker) than those that occur everyday, trillions of times, against our own atmosphere. Planetary bodies that don't have an atmosphere or a weak magnetic field have it happen much more often under greater energy levels. What I don't see are moons and planets vanishing from black holes in our own solar system, or anywhere else. And why this bit about the "God particle"? The same comments could've (& probably were) made when man predicted & thus attempted to observe atoms, protons, neutrons, and electrons. Math predicts that more elementary particles exist & I find it hard to believe that God would damn us for observing & understanding the nature of the universe around us. How, exactly, does understanding elementary particles lead to understanding how God works?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToday was not what 'doomsayers' are worried about. They didn't smash any particles. One of the fears (healthy) is that it could create mini black holes that would accrete matter at very tiny amounts, but grow exponentially. That's Otto Rossler's big worry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut beyond that, there is an overwhelming amount of uncertainty as to the unknown causes and effects that this will have. Go to the CERN 'safety' page under the mini black hole problem. It is a litany of contradictions. First they say, there will be no mini black holes, then they say, there is a theory that there will be mini black holes, then, if there are mini black holes, they will be positive or neutral, then, maybe this will happen, then, maybe that will happen.
They have no real certainty about the outcomes of what they're doing and they're toying around with things that may produce effects that no one ever thought of or could have thought of.
Hurry, hurry, we must run and tell the king.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I close my eyes and throw a ball in the air, I don't know where it will land. I'm pretty sure though, based on theory and experience, that it won't turn into a cherry cheesecake and recite lines of Shakespeare. Scientists didn't just sink $9 billion of funding into a big machine without any understanding of what it will do. There's some mystery about exactly what will happen, but it's bounded by what we've learned from decades of smashing stuff together and doing tricky sums.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am glad that you decided to jump on the fact that some refer to the missing particle as the "God Particle", even though you obviously haven't read anything about it, because that is just a nickname that somebody happened to use at one point. The particle's name is the Higgs Boson, you can't blame scientists for the fact that the media jumped all over such a catchy nickname.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@LCRacerX: Some perspective... The Higgs boson or BEH Mechanism, popularised as the "God Particle", is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics; and is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed. An experimental observation of it would help to explain how otherwise massless elementary particles cause matter to have mass. More specifically, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons. Elementary particle masses, and the differences between electromagnetism (caused by the photon) and the weak force (caused by the W and Z bosons), are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter; thus, if it exists, the Higgs boson is an integral and pervasive component of the material world. Playing God?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, now we know there is no vengeful God, With the current success of this technology, a vengeful God would have struck us down for dabbling into God's domain. As we proceed further into this new realm, at some point we will be able to determine whether there is a forgiving God. At some point a forgiving God will contact us and say we've gone too far. So after all said and done, can this be considered empirical proof whether God exists or doesn't exist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishello, isn't anyone paying attention. protons zooming around in a circle is no big deal. it's when you smash them together that something happens. hence, the name "atom smasher."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthat has yet to happen. it's hilarious that these so-called enlightened scientific minds are chastising religious people when they have no clue what they're talking about.
when the manhattan project detonated its first fission bomb, they weren't sure they might not set up a chain reaction that would destroy the world. they did it anyway because it was entirely kept secret. wouldn't you have wanted to have some say back then. it's no different now. yes the probability is small, but it's not zero.
the only people here that seem out of touch with reality are the CERN folks. they seem to be on the secular humanist equivalent of a crusade. just listen to their interviews where they talk about "opening a gateway" or looking for the "God particle." sounds religious to me. just a different "flavor," to use one of their terms.
If the particles travel around the 27km tube at 17 times a second,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjust below the speed of light.
how fast would they have to travel to catch them selves up ?
If the particles travel round the 27km tube at 17 times a second, just below the speed of sound.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow fast would they have to travel to catch them selves up ?
We all know that "god particle" is just the short verson of "that god damn particle that we haven't quite nailed down yet." Well, god damn it maybe the LHC will help us finally find the god damn thing!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo yeah, the Doom crowd said that we'd all die when the thing was turned on... it's on, we're not gone. So now they'll say we'll all die when they do the first low power collision... when that doesn't happen, they'll say we'll all die when the first full power collision is done... and blah, blah, bitty blah. Yaaaaaawn. It's all so tiresome.
Honestly, EVERYTHING sounds religious to some people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa 1/1*10^100 chance of creating a stable black hole does not sound very dangerous to me in reality NOTHING is impossible. it is possible for all of the oxygen in the room to settle in one side leaving you to suffocate, or for you to instantaneously move to a random point in space.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistheir are much more likely things for you to worry about, you are 3 times more likely to get in a serious car accident on your way to buy a lottery ticket than actually winning the lottery
In response to the st "How, exactly, does understanding elementary particles lead to understanding how God works?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think that by naming a subatomic particle the "god particle" that they think its going to be a religious epiphany for the scientific community. I think its bad choice of words. they're talking about a particle that creates a field around objebects of greater mass, and giving mass its physical "dimensions"
bad choice of words? maybe its like in the U.S. State of Washington, where our non religious government has instituted something called a "Sin Tax" on tobacco and Alcohol. - its not that your sinning, its just bad choice of words lol.
Open Letter to SCIAM,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are scientists, engineers and researchers who spend a lot of time and effort examining safety concerns and risk assessment. Please do not denigrate the often difficult and thankless work that they perform by suggesting that issues of safety are the realm of "doomsayers".
The greater the ambitions of a project, the greater the safety concerns become. One only has to look at the American Space program to see the rigors of testing and risk assessment that go into well planned projects, and this to insure the safety of only a few astronauts at a time. Even with these levels of concern, problems arise and tragedy can occur. As the larger (in number) public, we should be given far greater degrees of certainty and safety when so many lives could be affected.
Please support responsible and ethical science through your reporting.
As for what the doomsday crowd will do after they're proven incorrect, you just have to look at their past history. Literally the exact same apocalyptic predictions (strangelets, micro black holes, etc.) were raised about the RHIC, by the very same folks. They'll just say we got lucky, and wait until the next big science project is unveiled so they can spur panic in the uniformed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe worst part about these doomsdayers is there insistence that CERN is just basing this on "theory." It is not. There is real world, empirical evidence that nothing horrible will happen. They're not doing anything that hasn't been done before, they're just setting it up so that it can be observed and we can learn from it.
There's nothing wrong with making sure everything is safe. But that has been done already in multiple, exhaustive studies. The folks leading the crusade against the LHC (and before that the RHIC) do not have the necessary expertise in particle physics, and have had their theories rejected from publication by a concensus of physics professionals. Frankly, it's shameful that they're trying to prey on people's fears in order to advance their own careers and half baked theories. It's awful that this great experiment is greeted by many with dread instead of awe and hope.
The fact that the LHC is complete proves nothing. According to their website, it will be months before record setting beams will be in operation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have two questions:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) How can the detector detect neutral particles that are so small that pass right through the very matter of the detector itself?
2) How can we expect to detect Dark Matter particles when we are only smashing protons? (Dark matter might not be a constituent of any of the proton's subatomic particles).
we are doom!!! oh no!! what we are going to do?!! this can't be happening!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgo to church everybody confess what you did and prey prey prey
I just have to laugh at the dodos who worry about the evolution of mini black holes. Hey, we have proof that no one ever survived doing it before...Wherever there has been intelligent life, it has been snuffed out by the errant production of mini black holes. Pure logic here since have not found life at all in the universe other than our own...proof that we are alone. Or proof that other life forms destroyed themselves in making mini black holes. Right! As soon as the LHC finally fires opposing protons at one another and a mini black hole forms, we will all know about it because that big robot from mars named Gort or whatever he was called will send out a warning that we are venturing too close to understanding things and we had better back off. huh duh!...People are so very stupid ,really. Ignorance is inexcusable and stupidity is ingrained. The combination is exactly why we will never survive polluting our nests. That is a lot bigger a concern than mini black holes which will evaporate in a pico second or so. The very same morons who push Creationalist crap are also the ones who want to stop humans from exploring the Big Bang...it replaces their myths with fact and science which is very threatening indeed to such small brained primates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just have to laugh at the dodos who worry about the evolution of mini black holes. Hey, we have proof that no one ever survived doing it before...Wherever there has been intelligent life, it has been snuffed out by the errant production of mini black holes. Pure logic here since have not found life at all in the universe other than our own...proof that we are alone. Or proof that other life forms destroyed themselves in making mini black holes. Right! As soon as the LHC finally fires opposing protons at one another and a mini black hole forms, we will all know about it because that big robot from mars named Gort or whatever he was called will send out a warning that we are venturing too close to understanding things and we had better back off. huh duh!...People are so very stupid ,really. Ignorance is inexcusable and stupidity is ingrained. The combination is exactly why we will never survive polluting our nests. That is a lot bigger a concern than mini black holes which will evaporate in a pico second or so. The very same morons who push Creationalist crap are also the ones who want to stop humans from exploring the Big Bang...it replaces their myths with fact and science which is very threatening indeed to such small brained primates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts amazing how far developed our thinking capacity has become; where we reach an extent to recreate a new universe that is to replace the very one we know and sustains us. This is to me what I am a calling "Reverse Matter/life development" "A restart point" coz if the universe came to be as a result of a big bang then to recreate another big bang would be to destroy 'the current' and build 'the new' in which we will be not. I Believe that even the scientists involved in the experiment are aware of the fact that the experiment has to an extent an uncontrollable natural factor since what we are dealing will yield a totally new truth which is obviously a consequence not calculated... God Matter! I thought these guys disapproved the existence God...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt’s amazing how far developed our thinking capacity has become; where we reach an extent to recreate a new universe that is to replace the very one we know and sustains us. This is to me what I am a calling "Reverse Matter/life development" "A restart point" coz if the universe came to be as a result of a big bang then to recreate another big bang would be to destroy 'the current' and build 'the new' in which we will be not. I Believe that even the scientists involved in the experiment are aware of the fact that the experiment has to an extent an uncontrollable natural factor since what we are dealing will yield a totally new truth which is obviously a consequence not calculated... God Matter! I thought these guys disapproved the existence God...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishonestly, what do you expert an experiment of this magnitude to infuse in people, we are just concerned since we are exploring and venturing into an extreme realm of science, even if you confute our concerns in mockery, not even you understand totally how nature works since in your theories not everything is explicable... some of your said truths are so funny like evolution itself, can you even explain 'the why' to man. everything is as we know it to be and our knowledge over these things is insufficent, in your seeming intelligence thats where your ignorance lies. the knowledge that we have about the universe is very little since its size is incalculable therefore we understand only a minute fraction of it. so dont bost about your petty little knowledge...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this... God Gave you this power to think, whatever you do with it is your own indaba, this is a lot of power so use it wisely in order not to destroy yourself and others
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi dont see whats wrong with the idea of messing around with science its what we put here for , so go ahead all you crazy scients and see what you can do with this machine you 've built
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi think everyone's getting worked up over nothing , they've switched it on and were all still here , so to all you crazy scientists reading this CRACK ON YOU CRAZY F%^&*#S
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...matter came to be as a result of the big bang, but how did certain matter come to have life and intelligence and other matter just to exist there is a certain order about this that defies the nature of nature and supports higher intelligence existing creating this order, if this will not destroy us it will build but will not draw us near to the true state of things coz life is an ongoing process which is as dynamic as we seem to be, 100 years ago man thought that an atom was the smallest particle and today he discovers its not, man will never exhaust the universe, I love God for everything is new everyday!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat IS it with all the "God" crap? "God matter?" What? None of this has even the slightest thing to do with gods. WE did this! We make knowledge and understanding... the only thing god makes is people more ignorant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, and I'm sure there have been plenty of "indaba" going on regarding the safety of this thing. No worries people, just bask in the pursuit of knowledge... Or wallow in ignorance... your "indaba," totally.
Heh, he said "indaba." Cool.
I am amazed at the religious right, condemning the scientific community for needing to broaden the horizons of knowlege. As they tip toe around the impossibilty of evolution, and deny the existance of the remains of the dinosaurs, protest the exploration of our own genes and cells, yet,...to say that the world was not the center of the universe at one time, would have made one a heretic, or to say the world wasn't flat, would have been to disagree with the religious establishment . Had the church had it's way, Copernicus, Da Vinci and most of the venerable names in current school text books would have been silenced and/or burned at the stake. Searching for The 'god' particle,....isn't going to condemn our immortal souls to damnnation, to the contrary, it will probably shed enlightenment on our institutions of learning, stimulate our economy, help develop our scientific advancements and clean energy technology, and make life in general a little more complex and interesting and hopefully silence the hysterical voices of "the fanatical zelots of religious influence". I'm just waiting for a particle beam to zap me from Florida to Las Vegas so I don't have to wait in long lines at the airport, beam me up scotty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am amazed at the religious right, condemning the scientific community for needing to broaden the horizons of knowlege. As they tip toe around the impossibilty of evolution, and deny the existance of the remains of the dinosaurs, protest the exploration of our own genes and cells, yet,...to say that the world was not the center of the universe at one time, would have made one a heretic, or to say the world wasn't flat, would have been to disagree with the religious establishment . Had the church had it's way, Copernicus, Da Vinci and most of the venerable names in current school text books would have been silenced and/or burned at the stake. Searching for The 'god' particle,....isn't going to condemn our immortal souls to damnnation, to the contrary, it will probably shed enlightenment on our institutions of learning, stimulate our economy, help develop our scientific advancements and clean energy technology, and make life in general a little more complex and interesting and hopefully silence the hysterical voices of "the fanatical zelots of religious influence". I'm just waiting for a particle beam to zap me from Florida to Las Vegas so I don't have to wait in long lines at the airport, beam me up scotty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGod is not the centre of this discussion neither is the idea of a God Crap, otherwise you will end up just over expressing your so ignorant state of mind... The concern is the negatives that may possibly be conceived from the experiment, it was discovered that oil can be refined and be used as fuel to drive machines ‘a good thing’ for is progress... but then later we discover that the same 'good thing' happens to be choking our environment and now we are desperately trying to repair the damages done. We have heard the positives and wow that’s amazing credit to all, but have the negatives been cogitated, praise on praise on in ignorance and then later turn into a strangelet… huuu! I just want to hear the Yan no matter how microscopic it may be “for now”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislol Maybe! We can blame it on Clinton! Or maybe the French!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBaby Bush Perhaps!
Perhaps, they will Prove "your God exsists"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere has been more wars fought in His Name and more people slaughtered because of the "the light and the way" What If....Adom on the eve did create light? or something like that...
this isn't a political, or religious conversation...Please refrain from the sword and the staff!
Thanks
Turning Bacteria into Plastic Factories
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy don't they jump on this story! Seems like more playing with fire to me!
Wow! These are historic days! Every physicist and scientist has been waiting for this day for 30 years. The SSC Superconducting Super Collider was supposed to come alive 20 years ago in Texas. The project was cancelled in 1993 when US Congress realized they could better(?) spend the money elsewhere. A full 23 km of tunnels had already been bored! It is obvious US science is on the decline. Thankfully others are building the LHC (and the VLT telescope and...). Meanwhile the US yearly deficits keeps on piling onto the accumulated debt, with crippling consequences to come.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheck those links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
your not going to blow up the earth your going to slow its rotation and were going to be messed up!!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyour going to stop earths rotation or somthing of that nature. besides what are you going to do with your higgs anyway?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi dont beleave in god or your little god particle. i do think we are going to need one soon! a god that is but the sad thing is hes not there to help us. once they take that thing to far theres no turning back!!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdo you even understand what the damn thing is
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthreres more than likely one under the pyrimids already and thats what killed whoever built them!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisif you smashed them before and now you smash more at atime youll just have the same reaction but bigger mayby uncontrolable. just what do we have to gain. if you download all the old info into a biggg computer and run sims you should get all your answers without blowing us up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisso have they started smashing particles yet? somebody anybody please inform me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this