

LHC produces first collisions - andres
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/science/24collide.html?hp

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raphar
For the ones that are relieved to know that the LHC didn't cause the
armagedon, I must tell you that we are in the parallel universe that survived.
At most one of our parallel universe was obliterated.

Don't beleive the _no parallel universes were damaged during the LHC's
collisions_ sticker you can see at CERN laboratories.

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labria
Hilarious, thank you!

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Luyt
You must be a registered member of nytimes.com to view this article.

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rms
That goes away if you clear your cookies

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noelchurchill
I understand that the LHC will help answer some physics questions, but is all
this expense and effort going to contribute to any practical technology gains?
Will it help us find new energy sources? What will we actually get out of it??

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kirubakaran
We are where we are now by trying to "answer some physics questions". Imagine
if humans had not done a single thing that didn't seem to them to have a
practical application at that point.

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noelchurchill
Yep that's great I'm all for that. Just wondering if there are any practical
applications that they hope to one day achieve, or is it more like sending a
satellite into space without any idea what's out there, just hoping to find
some cool stuff.

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fallintothis

      Physicists hope that the LHC will help answer the most fundamental questions in
      physics, questions concerning the basic laws governing the interactions and
      forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time,
      especially regarding the intersection of quantum mechanics and general
      relativity, where current theories and knowledge are unclear or break down
      altogether.
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHC#Purpose>

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Xichekolas
... or at the very least discover that what we call 'elementary objects'
aren't really that elementary. It's turtles all the way down. :)

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guelo
Gah! They're going to run it for a year at 3.5TEV and then shut it down, why?
if they've fixed the magnet problem from last year why can't they go full
force now?

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jacquesm
The LHC is a complicated one-off piece of machinery. If you build something
this complicated and this powerful then it is prudent to ramp up the power bit
by bit and check it out after the runs to see if there are unexpected issues
before going full power. At successively higher power levels you can expect
small but hopefully not fatal problems to come up.

By your reasoning they should have just flipped the switch to 'full on' at the
first run, and that would have probably caused a lot more damage than it did
at the time.

Think of it as a brand new engine design, before putting your pedal to the
metal you'd run it at low revs for a while and check out the vibration modes,
the wear patterns and so on before taking it all the way to the redline.

Failing to do so will most likely result in catastrophic failure. Don't forget
that there is only one LHC and if you mess it up too much you may not get
another one for several decades, if ever.

They're prudent, they did this before (in the smaller ring and in a bunch of
other accelerators all over the globe) and I hope they will maintain that
attitude all the way to the finish line.

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kylec
It's the end of the world as we know it

and I feel fine

