LHC delivers doppelgänger piazza
 

[url=http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080910/ap_on_sc/big_bang]Massive particle collider passes first key tests[/url]
[quote]GENEVA – The world's largest particle collider passed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.

After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:26 a.m. (0826 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled clockwise along the full length of the 4 billion Swiss franc (US$3.8 billion) Large Hadron Collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history.[/quote]

Whenever I read about big particle colliders, I can't help but think back to that classic non-sequitur line from the 50s Sci-Fi classic [i]This Island Earth[/i], in which the 50s babe with the classic 50s biconic brassiere is showing the hunky male scientist around the secret nuclear lab, and he is startled by a cat jumping up onto of a huge slab of lead shielding. At which point she says brightly: [i]"Oh, that's our lab mascot, Neutron. We call him Neutron because he's he's always so positive!!!"[/i]

I just wish all the religious zealots and people who think science is evil would just shut up about the black hole thing. One particularly dumb comment was said by someone in response to an article about it who said, "If it's so safe, why would they build it so far underground?" which means that person has no idea why it is built underground in the first place. Ugh.

[quote=Jwb52z;141858]One particularly dumb comment was said by someone in response to an article about it who said, "If it's so safe, why would they build it so far underground?" which means that person has no idea why it is built underground in the first place.[/quote]Probably not, so if that question were being asked of a good teacher, such a teacher would try to find an explanation simple enough for the questioner's level.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;141868]Probably not, so if that question were being asked of a good teacher, such a teacher would try to find an explanation simple enough for the questioner's level.[/QUOTE]That's right and there is a rather simple explanation that most people wouldn't think to question unless they hate science as a whole. My only fear is that this experiment will show that they really should have built the 50 mile one here in Texas instead of the 17 mile one in Europe.

What they really should have done to help sell the Texas SSC was help justify the enormous cost [which admittedly is peanuts given the kind of money our govt is throwing at moribund investment banks, irresponsible homebuyers and neverending wars these days] by tying it to some kind of useful commercializable research. For instance something along the lines of

"Here's a couple hundred million $ in seed funding ... you physicists use it to go work with the materials industry to try to develop viable Hi-Tc superconducting magnets which could be used in place of your current liquid-Helium-cooled designs. Show us the magnets at a low enough cost and high enough power to also be commercially interesting, and we'll fund the full project, because even though the total upfront cost won't be lower, the operating cost will be much less and we will derive a broader economic benefit, as well."

But noooooooo ... they had to go spouting bogus claims about "helping to cure cancer" and such nonsense. Another huge opportunity to do both interesting and useful scientific/industry collaboration missed.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;142018]
But noooooooo ... they had to go spouting bogus claims about "helping to cure cancer" and such nonsense. Another huge opportunity to do both interesting and useful scientific/industry collaboration missed.[/QUOTE]
The science editor for the Washington Post gave a lecture to the physics dept at the U of MD in the mid-90s, and was involved in the debate about the SSC; he thought it would have gone better had the scientists not bothered mentioning the possibility of useful spinoffs, but instead just said "we want to discover the secrets of the universe; are you going to help us?"

LHC Webcam
 

Fascinating live-cam images of the Large Hadron Collider facility in Switzerland in operation:

[url]http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html[/url]

[spoiler]”Geneva, ve haff ein kleines Problem…”[/spoiler]

The LHC really seems to be getting a lot of attention

Hacking
[URL="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4744329.ece"]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4744329.ece[/URL]

and

Rapping
[URL="http://www.dbtechno.com/space/2008/09/12/large-hadron-collider-rap-song-a-youtube-hit/"]http://www.dbtechno.com/space/2008/09/12/large-hadron-collider-rap-song-a-youtube-hit/[/URL]


Regards
Patrick

No kidding!

From [I]Scientific American[/I]:

"How long would it take the LHC to defrost a pizza?"

(Assume that the beam energy would be spread evenly across the surface of the pizza.)

Answer: [spoiler]30 nanoseconds[/spoiler], for [I]DiGiorno's Microwave Rising Crust Four-Cheese Pizza[/I] (although the illustration clearly shows a pepperoni pizza).

[URL]http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-long-would-it-take-the-lhc-to-d-2008-09-10[/URL]

[QUOTE=cheesehead;142351]"How long would it take the LHC to defrost a pizza?"[/QUOTE]A more relevant question is how many pizzas can LHC defrost each second.

[spoiler]You didn't expect me to put an answer here did you? For a simple reciprocal? You work it out.[/spoiler]

[QUOTE=cheesehead;142351]

"How long would it take the LHC to defrost a pizza?"
[/QUOTE]

It doesn't say anything about the duration of the energy release, only the power. [spoiler]10 TW.[/spoiler] Does it lasts as long as their calculated defrost time?

Are we discussing one of the spinoffs advantageous to mankind here?

[quote=cheesehead;142351]

"How long would it take the LHC to defrost a pizza?"

[/quote]

But can it improve on this?
[U][COLOR=#810081][URL]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBLr_XrooLs[/URL][/COLOR][/U]

[quote=KriZp;142375]It doesn't say anything about the duration of the energy release, only the power. [spoiler]10 TW.[/spoiler] Does it lasts as long as their calculated defrost time?[/quote]The defrost time would be the total of however-many beam pulses it takes, I presume.

I frequently find it handy to recall that the speed of light is approximately one foot (~30 cm) per nanosecond. So, during the pizza-defrosting time of [spoiler]30 nanoseconds[/spoiler], the beam could travel a maximum of about [spoiler]30 feet (9 meters)[/spoiler] (measured in the presumably-at-rest pizza's reference frame). If one assumes that a beam pulse length would be [spoiler]equal to the circumference of the LHC ring, then even without looking it up, I confidently guess that's a lot longer than 30 feet (9 meters)[/spoiler]. Of course, a beam pulse [spoiler]doesn't [I]have[/I] to be that (LHC circumference) long, either.[/spoiler]

Edit: Wait! ... I just found some actual figures... will extend posting in a few minutes.

In a paper ([URL]http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/10603/33511/01591808.pdf[/URL]) from the Proceedings of [I]2005 Particle Accelerator Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee[/I], on page 4321 (believe it or not) we find:
[quote]The LHC ion beam is composed of bunches with rms [root-mean-square] duration of 250 ps [picoseconds], separated by 100 ns.[/quote]That means that the bunches (apparently the official terminology, instead of my "pulses") occupy only 0.25% of the length of the interval between bunches.

Thus, the pizza-defrost time of [spoiler]30 nanoseconds[/spoiler] would require [spoiler]30 ns / 0.25 ns per bunch = 120[/spoiler] bunches, taking an elapsed time of [spoiler]120 x 100 ns = 12 microseconds[/spoiler].
[quote=retina;142365]A more relevant question is how many pizzas can LHC defrost each second.[/quote]
Maximum throughput would be less than [spoiler]84,000[/spoiler] pizza-defrostings per second.

Note, however, that in order to move pizzas in and out of the LHC beam at rates approaching [spoiler]84,000[/spoiler] pizza-defrostings per second would require that each pizza move in excess of a speed of at least [spoiler](84,000[/spoiler] x pizza diameter) per second for some part or all of its travel, thus requiring that the appropriate relativistic corrections be applied to the not-at-rest-as-previously-presumed pizza's frame-of-reference. [I]These might extend the defrosting time as measured in the presumably-at-rest LHC staff's frame-of-reference, further reducing achievable throughput![/I]

OTOH, air friction might significantly contribute energy to each pizza, perhaps partially compensating for the relativistic differences in reference frames. Quantitative evaluation of this effect is beyond the scope of the current posting. :-(

[quote=davieddy;142378]Are we discussing one of the spinoffs advantageous to mankind here?[/quote]No. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to eat an LHC-cooked pizza after its bombardment by all those ions. (And ... [i]what if the pizza came out [u]with a black hole lodged in it[/u][/i]?)

Besides, DiGiorno's lawyers would probably say that using an LHC ion beam, instead of a microwave oven, voids the warranty.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;142447]No. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to eat an LHC-cooked pizza after its bombardment by all those ions. (And ... [i]what if the pizza came out [u]with a black hole lodged in it[/u][/i]?)

Besides, DiGiorno's lawyers would probably say that using an LHC ion beam, instead of a microwave oven, voids the warranty.[/QUOTE]What exactly would the ion beam do to the pizza that would make it not edible?

[quote=Jwb52z;142453]What exactly would the ion beam do to the pizza that would make it not edible?[/quote]Besides the imbedded-black-hole possibility?

The energetic particles (at those speeds and energies, the exact nature of the beam particles, whether ionized or not and so forth, really wouldn't matter) would, undoubtedly, disrupt quite a few molecular bonds (possibly changing an edible or benign molecule into something toxic), render some nuclei radioactive by changing their proton/neutron counts, and maybe even transmute some nuclei into toxic elements (even if nonradioactive).

Warning: Vegetarians may wish to skip the following paragraph.

[spoiler]It's one thing to irradiate ground beef with gamma rays of frequencies known not to make toxic changes to anything other than bacteria (i.e., bacterial DNA is disrupted, killing and preventing them from multiplying, but disrupted beef DNA wouldn't kill already-dead beef -- your digestive system's going to disrupt any eaten DNA anyway, but you don't want to ingest toxins excreted by still-living bacteria), but quite another thing to bombard with the much-higher energies of the LHC beam[/spoiler].

[quote=cheesehead;142447]... (And ... [I]what if the pizza came out [U]with a black hole lodged in it[/U][/I]?)
[/quote]
I always thought they were olives?

[QUOTE=cheesehead;142447](And ... [i]what if the pizza came out [u]with a black hole lodged in it[/u][/i]?)[/QUOTE]

Worst cavities ever.

Alex

[QUOTE=cheesehead;142447](And ... [i]what if the pizza came out [u]with a black hole lodged in it[/u][/i]?)
[/QUOTE]

Well if Swiss cheese has holes in it, why not their pizza?

As the LHC is now officially rated at 84K PDs (Pizza Defrostings) what would the PD rating have been if they built the unit in Texas?

[QUOTE=akruppa;142456]Worst cavities ever[/QUOTE]

You sound like my dentist.

[QUOTE=Patrick123;142466]What would the PD rating have been if they built the unit in Texas?[/QUOTE]

Above or below 40º C? Before, or after "Ike"?

It's difficult to keep workstations/servers on line when the power grid fails for weeks.

And here I thought, after reading the thread title, that the LHC had already violated causality to deliver pizza [i]from the future[/i]. Maybe that will only happen for energies of 1.21 gigawatts and up.

First law of TD still holds!
 

[quote=ewmayer;141741][URL="http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080910/ap_on_sc/big_bang"]Massive particle collider passes first key tests[/URL]


Whenever I read about big particle colliders, I can't help but think back to that classic non-sequitur line from the 50s Sci-Fi classic [I]This Island Earth[/I], in which the 50s babe with the classic 50s biconic brassiere is showing the hunky male scientist around the secret nuclear lab, and he is startled by a cat jumping up onto of a huge slab of lead shielding. At which point she says brightly: [I]"Oh, that's our lab mascot, [spoiler]Neutron[/spoiler]. We call him [spoiler]Neutron [/spoiler]because he's he's always so [spoiler]positive[/spoiler]!!!"[/I][/quote]

You've outdone yourself with this one. It reminded me of a Gal I picked up hitch-hiking from Kealekekua to Kailua-Kona one Sunday after church. I had removed the cigarette lighter which I never use anyway. She asked or rather claimed that it was very dangerous, to which I responded by sticking my finger into the hole. 'After that she said, "I couldn't do that, I'm a [spoiler]negative[/spoiler]". I wondered what I had gotten myself into. At least the Universe still has a balanced charge.

nelson

Pizza's off for 2 months.
Electrical fault apparently:(

... and now, NewScientist has three photos of the damage:

[URL]http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16254-damage-that-derailed-higgs-hunt[/URL]

[quote=davieddy;143273]Pizza's off for 2 months.
[/quote]

Yes indeed. This was optimistic:cry:

[QUOTE=Nelson;143084]You've outdone yourself with this one. It reminded me of a Gal I picked up hitch-hiking from Kealekekua to Kailua-Kona one Sunday after church. I had removed the cigarette lighter which I never use anyway. She asked or rather claimed that it was very dangerous, to which I responded by sticking my finger into the hole. 'After that she said, "I couldn't do that, I'm a [spoiler]negative[/spoiler]". I wondered what I had gotten myself into. At least the Universe still has a balanced charge.[/QUOTE]

On a lighter note, that lends new meaning to the phrase "picking up a smoking hot babe" ... but was she wearing a biconic brassiere, or perhaps one in the shape of some other (rotated) conic section, or none at all? But enough titillating hasion discussion - to recast your encounter in terms a 50s SciFi movie buff might appreciate:

"We call her a 'moron' because there's so much less to her than meets the eye..."

[QUOTE=ewmayer;153459]On a lighter note, that lends new meaning to the phrase "picking up a smoking hot babe" ... but was she wearing a biconic brassiere, or perhaps one in the shape of some other (rotated) conic section, or none at all? But enough titillating hasion discussion - to recast your encounter in terms a 50s SciFi movie buff might appreciate:

"We call her a 'moron' because there's so much less to her than meets the eye..."[/QUOTE]Perhaps this paper may be of interest?

[url]http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/kyushumfs/42/1/42_21/_article[/url]

Paul

[QUOTE=xilman;153480]Perhaps this paper may be of interest?

[url]http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/kyushumfs/42/1/42_21/_article[/url]

Paul[/QUOTE]

Written by a bosom buddy of yours, perhaps?

Thanks for keeping us abreast of your Japanese colleague's manifold talents. He is, as the latinate birdwatcher might say, a "primus inter [url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/29/bbc_related_link/]parus[/url] [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/249.shtml]major[/url]".

titillating?
 

The chemists from Iran recently shocked the (slavic) community with the synthesis of another important [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280775"]taboo[/URL]. Ask any Russian (Bulgarian, Polish... there must be someone at your workplace) to read this article's title for you.

[QUOTE=Batalov;153527]The chemists from Iran recently shocked the (slavic) community with the synthesis of another important [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280775"]taboo[/URL]. Ask any Russian (Bulgarian, Polish... there must be someone at your workplace) to read this article's title for you.[/QUOTE]Some years back, IUPAC had to change their nomenclature rules when chemists managed to synthesize an arsenic containing five-membered aromatic ring compound. The compound would have been called tetraphenylarsole under the old rules. So, I'm not surprised that another bunch of chemists are maintaining the old traditions.

The French had to come to terms with Lisp nomenclature many years ago.

Paul

[QUOTE=Batalov;153527]The chemists from Iran recently shocked the (slavic) community with the synthesis of another important [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280775"]taboo[/URL]. Ask any Russian (Bulgarian, Polish... there must be someone at your workplace) to read this article's title for you.[/QUOTE]

LOL - Back in college I used to get my hair cut at a salon owned by a Slavic lady with two grown sons who hung around the place sometimes, so that's a word I know well.

If I recall correctly, the French have a similar reaction to certain exotic alloys composed of Plutonium, Tantalum and Indium.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;153604]If I recall correctly, the French have a similar reaction to certain exotic alloys composed of Plutonium, Tantalum and Indium.[/QUOTE]I would not think so : in the south of France the word PuTaIn (whore) is almost used as a pause between words, and in the north at least the youth use it the same way. Not every country is as adverse to using expletives publicly as the USA.

Jacob

[QUOTE=Batalov;153527]The chemists from Iran recently shocked the (slavic) community with the synthesis of another important [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280775"]taboo[/URL]. Ask any Russian (Bulgarian, Polish... there must be someone at your workplace) to read this article's title for you.[/QUOTE]
Speaking of curiosities between languages, the slang for penis (in English) is a word that means "thick" in German.

[url]http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm[/url]

Alex

[QUOTE=MooooMoo;153709]Speaking of curiosities between languages, the slang for penis (in English) is a word that means "thick" in German.[/QUOTE]

I believe "dick" for penis is American slang - can one of our UK readers, ahem, con"firm" or deny?

Yes, we Americans, we were ever a hopeful lot. ;)

We really need a "slang words for penis in the US and UK" thread - for instance I believe e.g. wang, boner, dong, stiffie, trousersnake, shlong, wiener, are all US-only appellations, although I'm not 100% sure about "stiffie". (anyway, she`s married to Andre Agassi now, hence off-limits to us anonymous forum ruffians in this context).

[quote=akruppa;153733][URL]http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm[/URL]

Alex[/quote]

Enough to write a book about... which he did!

p.s. You too! Are all of our beloved long standing avatars getting benched in favor of grainy pictures of questionable behavior or actors? At least Chigurh is back...

[QUOTE=ewmayer;153735]I believe "dick" for penis is American slang - can one of our UK readers, ahem, con"firm" or deny?[/QUOTE]It's common in English too.

A Google search for the script of Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" will turn up a delightful song on the subject.


Paul

[QUOTE=xilman;153755]A Google search for the script of Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" will turn up a delightful song on the subject.[/QUOTE]

Ah yes, I see "trousersnake" is also mentioned in that lovely sing-a-long. so the "dick" and "trousersnake" have been shaken out of the, um, "Yanks only" list - but "boner" is still standing proudly. Perhaps because in England he has to compete with the lead singer of the band U2?

[quote=bsquared;153738]
grainy pictures of questionable behavior or actors? At least Chigurh is back...[/quote]
...he is also just an actor! :smile:
Speaking of questional behaviour - it was with us from the very start:

[QUOTE=akruppa;153733][url]http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm[/url][/QUOTE]

Nice.

If I happen to meet a Sexithiophene at the oddly-named-compounds disco, I hope we can share the rapture that is a hefty bout of Fukalite, perhaps followed by a nice bit of Cummingtonite. I just need to get the lovely Sexithi to lay off the Moronic Acid...

"Oh, do Sparassol your exaggerated tales of chemical conquest!", cried the prudish naysayers.

Another well-known genomic blooper was naming a [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-fuculokinase"]certain[/URL] [URL="http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/Q8ZMC5"]gene[/URL].

The [URL="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo0349227"]NanoPutians[/URL] facinating chemical story is also well known (in the silly molecules it is on page 2, undeservedly!); published in 2003, it has no rivals in deadpan serious chemical fun. Read the whole [URL="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jo0349227"]article[/URL], it is great.