http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR17.08E.html

Geneva, 5 December 2008. CERN1 today confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will restart in 2009. This news forms part of an updated report, published today, on the status of the LHC following a malfunction on 19 September.

"The top priority for CERN today is to provide collision data for the experiments as soon as reasonably possible," said CERN Director General Robert Aymar. "This will be in the summer of 2009."

The initial malfunction was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel. Proper safety procedures were in force, the safety systems performed as expected, and no one was put at risk.

Detailed studies of the malfunction have allowed the LHC's engineers to identify means of preventing a similar incident from reoccurring in the future, and to design new protection systems for the machine. A total of 53 magnet units have to be removed from the tunnel for cleaning or repair, of these, 28 have already been brought to the surface and the first two replacement units have been installed in the tunnel. The current schedule foresees the final magnet being reinstalled by the end of March 2009, with the LHC being cold and ready for powering tests by the end of June 2009.

"We have a lot of work to do over the coming months," said LHC project Leader Lyn Evans, "but we now have the roadmap, the time and the competence necessary to be ready for physics by summer. We are currently in a scheduled annual shutdown until May, so we're hopeful that not too much time will be lost."

Welcome to CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory

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Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Still worried that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole that will destroy the Earth when it's finally switched on this summer?

Um, well, you may have a point.

Three physicists have reexamined the math surrounding the creation of microscopic black holes in the Switzerland-based LHC, the world's largest particle collider, and determined that they won't simply evaporate in a millisecond as had previously been predicted.

Rather, Roberto Casadio of the University of Bologna in Italy and Sergio Fabi and Benjamin Harms of the University of Alabama say mini black holes could exist for much longer — perhaps even more than a second, a relative eternity in particle colliders, where most objects decay much faster.

Under such long-lived conditions, it becomes a race between how fast a black hole can decay — and how fast it can gobble up matter to grow bigger and prevent itself from decaying.

Casadio, Fabi and Harms think the black hole would lose out, and pass through the Earth or out of the atmosphere before it got to be a problem.


"We conclude that ... the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible. Nonetheless, it remains true that the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly >> 1 second) than is typically predicted by other models," the three state in a brief paper posted at the scientific discussion Web site http://ArXiv.org.

FoxNews.com can think of a few other things that didn't seem possible once — the theory of continental drift, the fact that rocks fall from the sky, the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun, the idea that scientists could be horribly wrong.

We're also wondering how often the LHC might create individual black holes, since longer-lived ones have a greater chance of merging with each other, and, um, well, see ya.

If the worst comes to pass, and there's now a slightly greater chance that it might, at least it might explain why we've never heard from extraterrestrial civilizations: Maybe they built Large Hadron Colliders of their own.

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR17.08E.html

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. . . 'FOLLOW UP OF THE INCIDENT OF 19 SEPTEMBER 2008 AT THE LHC' <--- pdf File Download: from 5 December 2008

The current schedule foresees the final magnet being reinstalled by the end of March 2009, with the LHC being cold and ready for powering tests by the end of June 2009

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

Someone should tell me if i am wrong with the following.LHC is supposed to be spilting atoms in to basic constituents isn't it,black holes are something else what i don't see is what the link is to black holes unless of course they mean to say that black holes are not made of matter in form of basic components of neutrons

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We choose to go to the moon and to do other things, we choose to go to the moon not because its easy but because its hard. kennedy

Someone should tell me if i am wrong with the following.LHC is supposed to be spilting atoms in to basic constituents isn't it,black holes are something else what i don't see is what the link is to black holes unless of course they mean to say that black holes are not made of matter in form of basic components of neutrons

CERN: ask an expert---->LHC and black holes?

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http://askanexpert.web.cern.ch/AskAnExpert/en/Accelerators/LHCblackholes-en.html#6

From Ask an Expert:

I remain skeptical. Is there anything else that could reassure me?
Yes. The most important thing perhaps is that, like you, we CERN’s scientists also have families, parents, children, and friends. There is no way that we'd put their lives at risk. And we are not talking about accepting "small chances", like 1 in 50 million or whatever. We are talking about wanting to be absolutely certain that absolutely nothing can happen.

I'm still very skeptical about the whole experiment. Scientists have bben proven wrong on many tasks.

Murphy's law:

"Anything that can go wrong, will",
"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong",
"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way".

CERN: ask an expert---->LHC and black holes?

... lives at risk. And we are not talking about accepting "small chances", like 1 in 50 million or whatever. We are talking about wanting to be absolutely certain that absolutely nothing can happen.

I'm still very skeptical about the whole experiment. Scientists have bben proven wrong on many tasks...

And that is the nature of Science. Part of the philosophy is deliberately to be proved wrong. The game is a search for an ever better evidence based understanding of Truth. A good description is that the horizon of ignorance is advanced ever further (away). (And so becomes ever larger as we better understand what it is that we don't know...)

:-p


More seriously, a simple example is that there are continuously more energetic naturally occurring particle collisions in our atmosphere since the earth's creation than the LHC will ever produce. And the earth is still here.

There is never an "absolute certainty". However, chances are that the earth will spontaneously combust from Global Warming very much sooner than Man can create a dangerously large superdense "black hole"...


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Things go wrong all the time:
You probably already know that the LHC had to stop because of a breakdown in one of the segments, a leak of helium through one of the tubes/pipes.
If you check some of the videos by surfing the net, you will find comments of engineers talking about the nitty-gritty of building such a complex machine: every day there are problems that have to be solved, most of them because of insignificant issues. Recently I watched a clip where an engineer had the problem of getting a huge piece of segment into the hangar/tunnel/allocation. What they did is to cut off a piece of the door at the top of the building!

• CERN- Interview with John Ellis - Theoretical physicist
  
• CERN- Interview with Álvaro de Rújula- Theoretical Physicist
  

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Hadron Collider relaunch delayed

Monday, 9 February 2009

The Large Hadron Collider could be switched back on in September - a year after it shut down due to a malfunction and several months later than expected.

Scientists had said they expected the £3.6bn ($5.4bn) machine to be repaired by November, but then pushed the date back to June, before the latest delay.

The LHC was built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.

The fault occurred just nine days after it was turned on last September.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) said: "The new schedule foresees first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October."

Repairs

An investigation into the LHC's problems concluded the initial malfunction was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets.

Cern said that as a result, 53 magnet units would have to be removed from the LHC's tunnel to be cleaned or repaired.

Cern had also said new protection systems would be added as part of £14m repairs.

It blamed the shutdown on the failure of a single, badly soldered electrical connection in one of its super-cooled magnet sections.

recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang. Good Luck Cern!



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7880223.stm

A few years ago we had a minor “mad-cow disease” scare in Canada when one cow in Alberta was discovered with the virus.

A day or so after it hit the news, I overheard an elderly lady in the supermarket proclaiming that she would never eat beef again because of it.

Being young and foolish, I pointed out the obvious to her: in the preceding 10 years precisely 0 people had contracted mad-cow disease in Canada. I went on to predict that, over the next ten years, precisely 0 people would contract mad-cow disease in Canada. While, in that same time, many thousands of people would die from driving around in cars so, I asked the lady, is it not much, much more dangerous driving to the grocery store than eating the beef?

She looked at me like I was a lunatic so I just moved on.

Because I hardly ever eat beef, the only way that I am liable to ever catch mad-cow disease is if some contaminated cow in Europe farts out a virus, it floats up into the high atmosphere, drifts half way around the globe, then descends to land on my salad as I munch here in Vancouver.

I am sure that those afraid of the LHC would agree that my being afraid of catching mad-cow that way is just silly. Yet it is many orders of magnitude more likely that this will happen than the LHC will create a black hole that will swallow the earth.

I don’t worry about farting cows in Europe contaminating my salad. And I don’t worry about LHC ending the world. Neither should you. There are enough real dangers in the world without inventing new ones.

The point is, people spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about things that will not happen simply because CNN or some other ‘news’ source says that it is possible.

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

Well put Kenzie.

The point is, people spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about things that will not happen simply because CNN or some other ‘news’ source says that it is possible.

Canadian News Network?

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me@rescam.org

is it not much, much more dangerous driving to the grocery store than eating the beef?


normancopeland wrote:

Have you not seen the bumpers on the new mustang.

is it not much, much more dangerous driving to the grocery store than eating the beef?


normancopeland wrote:

Have you not seen the bumpers on the new mustang.

No, I haven’t so I am not sure of your reference.

RE Mad Cow Disease: The most worst-case estimates that I can find for Canada are 10 cases over the coming decades of (locally acquired) BSE. Most realistic estimates are still around the 0 mark.

Traffic fatalities over the coming decades, in Canada, are estimated at approximately 2800 / year. So if we assume 3 decades as standard, that means while at most 10 people will die of BSE, 84 000 or so will die in car accidents.

My main point remains valid: that something we all consider innocuous (driving a car) is far more dangerous than something we have an irrational fear of (Mad-Cow Disease.) And both are many orders of magnitude more dangerous than the LHC.

I think that the real problem is that there is a disconnect between what a scientist may say and what the lay-person hears. Scientists are loathe to say that anything is truly impossible. That LHC could create a planet-swallowing black hole is possible. But it is mind-bogglingly improbable.

Another example, perhaps more easily understandable. It is now accepted among most physicists that proton decay is a real event. But, the half life of a proton is in the 1.0^500 year (or longer) range. So, since proton decay is possible, it follows that every proton in the atoms that make up Planet Earth might decide, for some unfathomable reason, to decay at precisely 3:00 PM PST tomorrow afternoon. Possible? Yup. But, just like the LHC planet-eating black hole, mind-bogglingly improbable.

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

Your basic knowledge is good enough for comment, but, its standard is not good enough for judgement, I disagree with any chemist that isotopes and neuclide half lifes have been guaranteed {perhaps I'll explain why at another opportunity}, they have been logged with standard temperature and modern common procedures used that have just scratched the surface of the true identities of the known 3100 nuclides arranging a 'very, very' new and from my opinion nieve periodic table of elements.

So, the truth is, exploring the territory of colliding particles which may 'and release' and perhaps valence with other atoms that have not been known is still a guess, its not right for anyone to say its impossible, possibly it is very possible, for some reason not probable though.

Truthfully is it possibly correct to say that farming standard's in Canada are better than in Europe? Perhaps they are, we in England had conceptions that we were the recipients of biological warfare and some chemicle agents were released on our farms {I.R.A predominantly and to a lesser degree islamic extremists, but, our intelligence agencies do not permit islamic extremists,to wonder about our countrysides unwatched}. From an educated opinion first I would reccommend that you promote vigilence against bio terrorism and it is really sensible to be focused on the outlets and possible illness's that may be a result of eating contaminated food i.e parkinson's disease, alzheimer's disease{a parent affliction of MSE}, and other auto immune system brakedown diseases that kill million's per year and affect 10's of millions.

Canada is not particulary involved with western world front line politics, but, mad cow disease is the result of a changing attitude to production {it may always of exhisted, but, killed under the disguise of cancer, bronchitus and T,B} and is directly a result of human ignorance and gross criminal treatment of living creatures sanctity. Its something to consider because the results I'm sure are far more serious than a passing side swipe at some silly animal with a common silly cold.



''Being young and foolish, I pointed out the obvious to her''...

Perhaps she was more educated than you reflecting modern concerns and your still going with the old guard attitude...

[with respect comrade]


[[[Just to add to conversation, England was swiftly awarded a 1 billion pound agriculture grant, from the french who were then sitting as the presidents of the europian union {for the sake of propaganda}]]]


[Thumbs up for the free rice campaign, I'm a vegan].

I sincerely apologize if I have somehow offended you. My reference to BSE was simply to illustrate my point that people often react irrationally to things that they don’t understand. And the greater the ignorance of a given subject, the greater the irrationality of the response. I was not my intent to drag this thread into a debate about the foolishness of modern agricultural practices (a subject upon which, I am sure, we would largely agree.)

I am not sure of the references that you made to the periodic table of elements or nuclides. Possibly you mentioned this in reference to my using the proton decay example of improbability. What you were talking about, nuclear decay and what I was talking about, proton decay, are two completely different concepts. Again my apologies, this time for the confusion. I sometimes have difficulty in communicating my thoughts clearly.

Finally, you are quite right: I am hardly qualified to offer judgement on any of these important issues. (Are you so qualified, I wonder?) I simply stated my opinion. It is based on the best objective information that I can find and my own (no doubt questionable) thought processes. That’s all, just my opinion.

How about a little side bet: if LHC manages to somehow blow up the world in the next year or two, I’ll send you a full case of good Canadian Whiskey. If it doesn’t, you send be a case of a nice California wine. (And, yes, if you think it through logically, there is no way that I can lose the bet. LOL)

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

The Tevatron is located at Fermilab near Chicago, never knew this.

Race for 'God particle' heats up

Why??

Cern is losing ground rapidly in the race to discover the elusive Higgs boson, its American rival claims.

Fermilab say the odds of their Tevatron accelerator finding it first are now 50-50 at worst, and up to 96% at best.

Cern's Lyn Evans admitted the accident which will halt the $7bn Large Hadron Collider until September may cost them one of the biggest prizes in physics.

The two rivals are trying to identify the "God Particle" - one of the fundamental particles of matter.

Finding the Higgs boson, whose existence has been predicted by theoretical physicists, might help to explain why matter has mass.

The chiefs of the world's most powerful atom smashers squared up at the the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago.

Grand prix

Identifying the "God Particle" has been a target for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) ever since the LHC was first conceived in the early 1980s.

At the launch of the LHC near Geneva in September, some scientists predicted the Higgs would be revealed as soon as summer 2009.

But just one week later, an accident occurred which will halt experiments at the accelerator for at least 12 months.

Fermilab has taken advantage, cranking up the intensity of research at their Tevatron accelerator in Illinois.

Director Pier Oddone presented the Tevatron's latest data at the AAAS meeting.

"We now have a very, very good chance that we will see hints of the Higgs before the LHC will," said his Fermilab colleague, Dr Dmitri Denisov.

"I think we have the next two years to find it, based on the start date Lyn Evans has told us.

"And by that time we expect to say something very strong.

"The probability of our discovering the Higgs is very good - 90% if it is in the high mass range.

"And the chances are even higher - 96% - if its mass is around 170GV.

"In that case we would be talking about seeing hints of the Higgs by this summer."

Treasure hunt

The smaller the mass of the particle, the more difficult and time consuming it will be for Fermilab to detect.

But even at the lowest end of the range, the chances are "50% or above", according to Mr Oddone.

"Tevatron is running extremely well. We are in the peak of our shape," added Dr Denisov.

"We are increasing data set very quickly. And they are feeling the heat.

"Instead of having their usual Christmas break - of two months - they are planning to run all the way through.

"It's a race. Whoever is first is first."

Fermilab estimates that the Tevatron has already picked out about eight collision events which may be hints of the Higgs.

But until the number crunching is done, it is not possible to distinguish these from "background noise".

Fired up

Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Dr Denisov was his counterpart Professor Lyn Evans, LHC project leader.

"The race is on," he told BBC News.

"The Tevatron is working better than I ever imagined it could. They are accumulating data like mad.

"The setback with the LHC has given them an extra time window. And they certainly will make the most of it.

"If they do find the Higgs, good luck to them. But I think it's unlikely they will find it before LHC comes on line. They may well be in a position to get a hint of the Higgs but I don't think they'll be in a position to discover it.

"And of course, if it's not in the mass range they think it is, they have no chance of discovering it at all. Pier Oddone put the odds at 50-50 but I think it's less than that.

"In one year, we will be competitive. After that, we will swamp them."

The competition was healthy for "both parties". Though missing out on the Higgs would be a "sour consolation".

"The trouble is, the LHC has been sold on being built for the Higgs," said Prof Evans.

"But don't forget, there is also a whole spectrum of physics to be investigated at the LHC which the Tevatron can never do."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7893689.stm

Enrico Fermi was a smart guy. Aftter taking part in the Manhattan project, he was one one the firsts to understand the importance of computers in scientific research and tried to convince his Italian colleagues on this point. Lately NASA has honored him by naming to him the latest gamma ray satellite. Bravo Enrico!
Tullio

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LHC News
The 39 damaged/broken diapoles in September 2008 have been replaced and they will be refilled with liquid helium shortly--->LHC News - April 16, 2009

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No LHC News here. Just a great movie and the science behind the story. Take a peep.

In Angels & Demons Tom Hanks plays Harvard academic Robert Langdon, who discovers evidence of the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood called the Illuminati - the most powerful underground organization in history.

When Langdon finds evidence that the Illuminati have stolen antimatter from a secret laboratory at CERN, which they plan to use as a devastating weapon to destroy the Vatican, he and CERN scientist Vittoria Vetra begin a race against time to recover the antimatter and prevent catastrophe.

But what is antimatter? Is is real? Is it dangerous? What is CERN?


The science behind the story.

http://angelsanddemons.cern.ch/