Ding Dong the CERN LHC is DEAD... for now anyway.

Ding Dong The CERN LHC is DEAD!
Yippee!
Yahoo!

Till next year anyway...
Oh well, a little Joy is better than no Joy.

To those who may not have heard of it, the CERN LHC "is the world's most powerful particle accelerator. It is buried inside a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel below the earth. It fires beams of "hadrons" — such as protons or neutrons from the nucleus of an atom — through two tubes the size of fire hoses. The inside of the tubes are kept in a virtually complete vacuum, at a temperature colder than outer space."

The well-oiled people behind its creation think their mechanical monstrosity may reveal what happened at the moment of The Big Bang and answer some of their questions about the creation of the universe (or universes, as it may be).

"The project was conceived in 1984 by scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. The organization's 20 member nations along with observer countries like the United States, Japan, Canada, Russia and India have spent US$10 billion on it."
(From: ap.google.com/)

Not everyone is thrilled with their fiddling with physics, though. Some critics of the project have expressed serious concerns that the expensive experiment may just create a black hole... which might then destroy the entire planet.

CERN supporters have waved such criticism away, saying in effect, "That's so silly... the existence of black holes hasn't been proven... they are only a theory." To this I reply, "Well, in that case, the Big Bang is unproven and only a theory, too." So why try to recreate it?

The project has been cursed with one failure after another.

The most recent problem occurred last weekend, when a failure, known as a 'quench', resulted in about 100 of the LHC's 1200 super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees.

Firefighters were called out after a ton of liquid helium poured into the tunnel, which bridgles the French-Swiss border. (The helium is used to cool the magnets to a temperature colder than deep space - 1.9 kelvin (-456F) - making them "superconducting" magnets.

Cern claims to have systems in place to deal with failures like quenches before they damage equipment but, for some reason, in this instance, a quench in the machine got out of control.

"It does seem that all the systems that are supposed to protect the machine in cases like this worked as far as we can tell."

"But obviously something went wrong," said James Gillies, Cern's director of communications.

Is it just me, or do those two statements by Mr. Gillies contradict each other?

Sounds like he's saying:
"All the safety systems worked exactly as they were supposed to."
and
"But, something didn't work."

Hmmm.... Makes me feel better about the whole $10 billion spent and the 'theoretical' black hole thing...

How 'bout You?

Peace.
L.

Collider Halted Until Next Year
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News
(From: news.bbc.co.uk/)

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be shut off until spring 2009 while engineers probe a magnet failure.

The incident on 19 September caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak out into the experiment's 27km-long tunnel.

Officials said the time required to fully investigate the problem precluded a re-start before the lab's winter maintenance period.

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

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

"Coming immediately after the very successful start of LHC operation on 10 September, this is undoubtedly a psychological blow," said Robert Aymar, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), in a statement.

But he praised the skill and preparation of the teams involved in building the particle accelerator.

High priority

A spokesman for Cern told BBC News it was unclear at this stage when the collider could re-start operations after the lab's regular winter shut-down - which is partly done to save money on electricity during this period of peak demand.

A number of factors could affect when the lab re-opened, including prolonged cold weather.


The LHC has been in construction for some 13 years


What happened in the machine?

"It's usually around late March or early April that we start re-commissioning the whole accelerator chain. The LHC being at the end of that chain," said James Gillies, Cern's director of communications.

"It will take us a while to get beams injected into the LHC, but I think it's fair to say this will be the priority for next year's start-up."

The accelerator chain prepares the beams of protons to be fired through the machine to make possible the collisions that physicists will use to study the make-up of our Universe.

The problem occurred last weekend, when a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel, which straddles the French-Swiss border.

Helium spill

The machine has more than 1,200 "dipole" magnets arranged end-to-end in the 27km-long, ring-shaped tunnel that houses the LHC.

These magnets carry and steer beams of protons which will whizz around the machine at close to the speed of light.

At allotted points around the "ring", these beams cross paths, smashing together near four massive "detectors" that monitor the collisions for interesting events.

Cern said the most likely cause of the equipment failure was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets.

This connection melted during testing of the machine and caused a huge leak of super-cool helium.

This helium is used to chill the magnets to a temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F) - which is colder than deep space.

This makes the magnets "superconducting", allowing them to generate the large magnetic fields required to steer the beams while at the same time consuming relatively little power.

A quench occurs when part of a superconducting magnet heats up and causes superconducting properties to be lost.

Hot spot

Cern has procedures in place to deal with quenches before they damage equipment, but in this instance a hot spot in the machine got out of control.

"It does seem that all the systems that are supposed to protect the machine in cases like this worked as far as we can tell. But obviously something went wrong," said Mr Gillies.

"The engineers have decided that in order to find out what really happened, they are going to have to go into the machine."

One of the LHC's eight sectors will now have to be warmed up so an inspection can be carried out.

Mr Gillies told BBC News that this was likely to take a week, and that engineers would then have a much better idea of how to fix the fault.

Each particle accelerator is a unique machine, so Cern says that teething troubles were to be expected with such a complex machine at the cutting edge of technology.

"Events occur from time to time that temporarily stop operations, for shorter or longer periods, especially during the early phases," said Cern physicist Peter Limon.

CERN LHC Scientists: "Trust Us, We're Physicists."... Me: "Um, let me think... No."

Greetings from San Francisco!

The PRIDE Parade is going on as I write this.
This year's festivities are extra special, as our Higher Court recently fullfilled it's duty as Blind Protector of Equality and Justice and agreed that laws forbidding same-sex couples from getting married were UN-Constitutional.
Hallelujah!
I must admit that, at first, I was a bit worried which way the Justices would decide... After all, most of them had been appointed under Republican leadership.
But, in a ruling that both happily surprised me and restored my faith that "Equal Justice under the Law" wasn't dead - in spite of the Bush Administration's efforts - the Court adhered to the elevated ideal of Separation of Church and State and granted same sex couples the same rights and protections as hetero couples.
In the witty words of The Late Late Show's quite handsome, very funny and yet somehow creepy host, Craig Ferguson, "It's a Great Day in America, Everybody!".

Simply put: There is absolutely no place for Discrimination and Bigotry - regardless of whether it's from personal ignorance/fear or the bully pulpit - in our sentient and civilized society.

And, I have the greatest hope and unwavering faith that the good and fair people of California (who are registered to vote) will vote down the ignorant and cruel ballot initiative to re-write the State Constitution so that it makes gender-based bigotry the law.

And, in case anyone was wondering about any personal bias I might have...
Well, I'm not gay, straight or bi... I'm simply disinterested.

What I am interested in is standing up for Equality and Justice... for Everyone.

******************************************************
Back to the Blog...
This is an ongoing international story.
In case you've been living in a cave, on a desert island or have just been distracted by all the flashing pictures and loud noises emanating from your TV screen...

There's this big... I mean HUGE - in size, in scope and in $Billions of Dollars$ ($5.8 billion) - scientific experiment planned to begin in November.
It's called the Large Hadron Collider and it's expected to be the most powerful atom-smasher ever built.
It's in Switzerland... The country that brought the world yodeling, great timepieces, neutrality... oh, and LSD.

Basically, some myopic, self-inflated, Ivy-League-bred, particle-theory physicists - with their minds in the clouds and their heads up their asses have gone and constructed a machine that:
Good News: Will possibly help them better understand the nature of the universe and possibly help them prove or rule-out String Theory...
Bad News: It Possibly - although, according to them, 'highly unlikely' - might just produce a Black Hole or many Micro Black Holes...
Whereby these thoughtless theorists would immediately be given a better understanding of - No, not the genesis of the Earth, but destruction of it.

Like I said, there's Lots of Money being poured into this thing.
Worse than that, the U.S. Dept. of Energy is involved...
That's like having Enron decide the fate of our Energy Policy...
An Exceptionally Bad Idea.

Over the last year, I've seen a constant stream of stories being produced in which scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - laugh, pooh-pooh and wave off the idea that the LHC could bring about our planet's destruction. "Ha! Ha! Ha! C'est Ridiculous!" (insert haughty French accent), they chime, individually and en mass.

Particle Theory is Complex.

My Concerns and those of the LHC's critics are Simple.

What CERN scientists want to do with the LHC is all about Theory.
They want to test some theories. They want to prove or disprove some theories. They hope to prove or disprove the existence of various theoretical particles.
In other words, they Don't Know Exactly What Will Happen when they power the mechanical monster up.

They can claim it is safe, that it poses no threat to the Earth until we land a man on the Moon... er, Mars! They can pass out as many CERN-backed studies that support their claims as they want.
It all means Nothing.
When it comes to Protecting Our Planet and the Fragile Life and Ecosystems on Her...
Nothing should be taken for granted.
Claims of Safety that are based solely upon theory and assumption aren't good enough.

All their pronouncements of "Trust Us, We're Physicists. It's Completely Safe." and their ridiculing of their critics makes me think of another Amazing and Brilliant Mind: William Shakespeare...

"Methinks thou doth protest too much!"

Oh, in an interesting (?) sidenote... I just saw a picture of a fabulous statue at the CERN site. It was a gift from India. It's a gorgeous, golden figure of the Hindu God named "Shiva". Shiva has a few titles. The first one that comes to mind? "Lord Shiva, the DESTROYER." I'm not kidding.
Peace.
L.

(From: http://news.wired.com/.)

Jun 28, 3:08 PM EDT

Scientists: Nothing to fear from atom-smasher

By DOUGLAS BIRCH
Associated Press Writer

MEYRIN, Switzerland (AP) -- The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.

"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.

David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.

"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.

The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.

The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings.

Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass.

The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings.

The theory could resolve many of physics' unanswered questions, but requires about 10 dimensions - far more than the three spatial dimensions our senses experience.

The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near Chicago, has been debated for years. The physicist Martin Rees has estimated the chance of an accelerator producing a global catastrophe at one in 50 million - long odds, to be sure, but about the same as winning some lotteries.

By contrast, a CERN team this month issued a report concluding that there is "no conceivable danger" of a cataclysmic event. The report essentially confirmed the findings of a 2003 CERN safety report, and a panel of five prominent scientists not affiliated with CERN, including one Nobel laureate, endorsed its conclusions.

Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet."

One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed.

On Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department lawyers representing the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the case.

The two agencies have contributed $531 million to building the collider, and the NSF has agreed to pay $87 million of its annual operating costs. Hundreds of American scientists will participate in the research.

The lawyers called the plaintiffs' allegations "extraordinarily speculative," and said "there is no basis for any conceivable threat" from black holes or other objects the LHC might produce. A hearing on the motion is expected in late July or August.

In rebutting doomsday scenarios, CERN scientists point out that cosmic rays have been bombarding the earth, and triggering collisions similar to those planned for the collider, since the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

And so far, Earth has survived.

"The LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, what it has been doing for billions of years," said John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist at CERN.

Critics like Wagner have said the collisions caused by accelerators could be more hazardous than those of cosmic rays.

Both may produce micro black holes, subatomic versions of cosmic black holes - collapsed stars whose gravity fields are so powerful that they can suck in planets and other stars.

But micro black holes produced by cosmic ray collisions would likely be traveling so fast they would pass harmlessly through the earth.

Micro black holes produced by a collider, the skeptics theorize, would move more slowly and might be trapped inside the earth's gravitational field - and eventually threaten the planet.

Ellis said doomsayers assume that the collider will create micro black holes in the first place, which he called unlikely. And even if they appeared, he said, they would instantly evaporate, as predicted by the British physicist Stephen Hawking.

As for strangelets, CERN scientists point out that they have never been proven to exist. They said that even if these particles formed inside the Collider they would quickly break down.

When the LHC is finally at full power, two beams of protons will race around the huge ring 11,000 times a second in opposite directions. They will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space.

Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets - to guide the beams around the rings and prevent the packets of protons from cutting through the surrounding magnets like a blowtorch.

The paths of these beams will cross, and a few of the protons in them will collide, at a series of cylindrical detectors along the ring. The two largest detectors are essentially huge digital cameras, each weighing thousands of tons, capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.

Each year the detectors will generate 15 petabytes of data, the equivalent of a stack of CDs 12 miles tall. The data will require a high speed global network of computers for analysis.

Wagner and others filed a lawsuit to halt operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state in 1999. The courts dismissed the suit.

The leafy campus of CERN, a short drive from the shores of Lake Geneva, hardly seems like ground zero for doomsday. And locals don't seem overly concerned. Thousands attended an open house here this spring.

"There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans.

© 2008 The Associated Press.