LHC is back online !

[digdug]

The LHC at the CERN is back online after 1 year and 2 months of repairs !

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressRel ... 6.09E.html

The world largest particle beam (7 TeV) is nearly ready to do some experiments !

http://twitter.com/cern

http://webcast.cern.ch/

and here the LHCb (beauty experiment)
http://ow.ly/EjUB

and the ALICE experiment
http://ow.ly/EiT3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlhV7LFjloQ


OK, now the question is: "Who wants a micro-blackhole on the desk instead of the classical USB plugged lava-lamp ?"

[bimbel]

To add this simply but beautyful collection (As always from TBP)

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/1 ... dy_to.html

[alterecco]

There are some awesome images there. thx bimbel and digdug

[digdug]

oh, and for the IT part of it... when ALICE will be online, It will generate 4TB of data PER SECOND.

[alterecco]

It's insane... their "Magnetic Tape Vault" setup looks like something out of HAL9000 :D

[digdug]

another year has passed, the LHC is doing well, running at 3.5TeV per beam (total of 7TeV, half of the total energy that the LHC was designed for)

Minor repairs have been done in these days.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulle ... 9839?ln=en

Even without them, the LHC peaked at 1.48x1032 cm-2 s-1 of luminosity, comfortably exceeding the target for 2010.

I also like that the LHC News bulletin has "tips", additional descriptions and explanations (to help you read the bulletin) for the people like me that are not high energy physics but likes to read about physics stuff.
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/News.htm

[Prophet]

This is a little late as I found the article on a blog site rather than the LHC's news page but...

The first black holes have been successfully produced and we're all still here!

On November 4th, the LHC began preparations for lead ion collisions and achieved the first collisions on the 7th.

Watch on YouTube

This is the really exciting part of the experiments and could yield important data pertaining to the higgs boson and possible other elementary particles. Obviously, it could be some time before any new discoveries make any form of public appearance but we're on our way! (and still alive )

[Arisaya]

Neat! so they did manage to make mini-blackholes?
*is not watching the movie right now because internet is sucking*

[Song]

Scientists at CERN have managed to contain atoms of antimatter.....briefly.

Not at LHC, but still really cool.


2 tenths of a second is a REALLY LONG TIME in comparison to what's happened before.


Bring on the doommongers worrying about terrorists using it!*







*(Yes, I'm aware this is impossible until someone comes up with both a better containment system, and a considerably better manufacturing process. That's the POINT.

[alterecco]

Scientists at CERN have managed to contain atoms of antimatter

Wait till Hollywood gets a hold of that news!!

<.< wait, didn't they already cover that?

[ThePrivateer]

So now we just need to wait a few decades and then we'll have starships equipped with antimatter cannons, right?

Right?

[Prophet]

The true beauty of that accomplishment is that it wasn't simply antimatter they contained but anti-hydrogen!

Yes, a full stable hydrogen atom.

So what?

Now they can run tests on it to understand why the balance of the universe was tipped into our favour. Why is there no anti-red giant stars, or anti-blackholes. Why does antimatter NOT exist naturally in equal abundance and dispersal as normal matter? Hopefully, we will find out soon.

Not at LHC, but still really cool.

Actually, CERN is part of the LHC. The LHC has a number of labs attached to it including ATLAS, ALICE, CERN and some other minor ones. Each lab runs different tests on the same data that the LHC collects.


For those doomsayers out there, the amount of antimatter needed to destroy the Vatican, a la Angels and Demons, does not exist, nor will the LHC ever be able to produce that amount. But we can still hope...

[Arisaya]

2-tenths of a second...
That is... a huge half-life compared to pretty much anything synthesized of any high coolness magnitude (sure, you can get long-lived radio-isotopes of lower elements, but they are comparatively easy to make, and thus have a low coolness magnitude by comparison, unless it was something like n-4 [theoretically stable, but also impossible to create under current nuclear models]), and this one is limited only by containment technologies.

Other really cool things would be things on the island of stability, n-4, anti-deuterium/anti-H-2, atoms past the 137-boundary (and if you could ionize them... think of what it could do to current atomic models! [current models say they are impossible in a non-ionized state as beyond 137 the outer most electron shell is too big for the electrons to move at sub-luminal speeds])

[schilcote]

CERN is part of the LHC.

I think you've got that backwards. CERN was where HTML was invented.

[Song]

Wolfy<--Whats the bet Hollywood has Anti-Uranium made onscreen within 5 years, so you can have an antimatter nuke? First it nukes....then it annihilates!