It's time for an update on what's been going on with the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. I've spent most of the morning looking for a good update and I can't find one, so I guess I will go ahead and build one here.
Background:
Q: What is the Large Hadron Collider?
A: It's a particle accelerator. It's also a super ultra mega super duper (super, super, super) high speed camera.
Q: What's a particle accelerator?
A: Its a giant machine - its the largest machine ever built in fact. It takes two streams of protons and accelerates them in a huge ring of high power magnets until they are going almost the speed of light in opposite directions. Then it slams them together and takes pictures of what comes out of the collision.
The video below has rather a stupid title, so ignore that part of it. However, the video itself is actually quite a good explanation and description of what will go on at the LHC.
Q: What's it for?
A: It is for discovery. For discovering new particles which will help reveal new laws of physics which will help us understand the universe better so that we can eventually build cooler things than we can build currently.
Q: Like what kind of things?
A: Well, things that make things weightless for instance.
Q: Really?
A: Definitely. Maybe.
Q: uhm... what?
A: It's really for discovering new things. For testing theories about how the universe works. One of the many things scientists are working on there is trying to either prove or disprove a theory that explains why things have mass. There is a theory that says a certain sort of particle gives many of the other particles mass. If they can find this particle and begin to understand it, there is a possiblity that - down the road - they will be able to figure out how to negate its effect and thus make things weightless.
Q: Like in Star Trek and Star Wars? Antigravity?
A: Well, er... yeah... but really it's for proving and/or disproving scientific theories. We don't really know what will end up coming of it. In 1897 a particle called an electron was discovered. It had no practical uses when it was discovered, but it confirmed a number of theories. As you know though, down the road we learned how to do all kinds of cool things with this particle and it led to electronics. Electronics has radically changed our civilization in ways that no one could have predicted when it was discovered.
Q: OK. You said it's also a camera. Why did you put a stupidly large number of 'supers' in front of the word camera earlier?
A: Well, because it takes a stupidly large number of pictures in an incredibly short time; Over 40 million every second. And it isn't really a 'camera' in any actual technical sense, it is a collection of detectors, data collectors and high speed computers that collectively behave in a camera-ish-like-sorta way... ish.. ness... and stuff.
Q: Fine. I'll let you get away with that.
A: Whew.
Q: Wasn't there some fuss about this thing maybe sucking the planet into a black hole?
A: Yes. but the fears are groundless. There is a chance that scientists will be able to use the LHC to create microscopic black holes. But all the math says that they will evaporate in millionths of a second. There is nothing to worry about.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Yes. No rational scientist is the least bit worried about causing any harm with a black hole.
Q: Are you really sure? I mean really, really sure?
A: Yes. Really Really Yes. Really, really sure.
Q: I once read somewhere that a physicist working on the Manhattan Project - named Richard Feynman I think - thought that the first nuclear bomb might ignite the atmosphere and destroy the planet.
A: Surely, he must have been joking
.Q: Well, I guess so... It all worked out OK I suppose.
A: Well, there ya go. No worries.
Q: Didn't I read somewhere that this thing blew up when they tried to start it?
A: There was a failure in 2009 which caused it to shutdown. But it's back up and running now.
Q: What happened?
A: Well, the magnets in the LHC need to be super powerful. In order to be powerful enough they need to be what is called superconducting. Superconducting magnets don't heat up when you run lots of power through them. In order to be superconducting they need to be super cold - one degree colder than the coldest places in outer space. In order to get things this cold they had to build the world's largest refrigerator. Part of the refrigeration failed and one of the magnets got too warm. When that happened the electricity running through it vaporized a piece of it and caused an explosion. The explosion melted a number of other magnets and so they had to replace them. It took them about a year to fix it.
Q: Tell the truth, they made a black hole and it ate the magnets, didn't it?
A: No.
Q: Come on....
A: No, they have not even gotten the two beams up to full speed yet. There have been no actual collisions yet. No collisions, no possibility of black holes. It was just a refrigeration failure.
Q: Magnet munching black hole woulda been cooler.
A: I don't know, I think it would sort of suck.
Q: *groan*
A: *smirk*
Q: So who owns this big machine?
A: It is collectively owned and run by a group of European countries.
Q: You mean we don't own it? or run it?
A: Nope. It's Europe's baby, The US is on the sidelines on this one. We have scientists there helping of course, and we put up half a billion dollars (about 5% of the total cost) to help build it, but the Europeans are running things.
Q: So is the US falling behind in science?
A: Not really. As always if there is money to be made in the near term, the US will be found leading the way, as it does in robotics and biotech and nanotech and infotech and all the various interconnection of those things, etc. But the LHC does not generate money (it just consumes it) and if there is no money involved, US corporations are not interested. If US corporations are not interested, the US government doesn't care about it. So when it comes to discovery science, the US will probabably continue to be a bit player for the foreseeable future.
Q: Editorializing a bit?
A: A bit.
- To be continued...
-j
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