I found this neato realtime countdown to LHC's activation:

 

http://www.lhcountdown.com/

 

31 days, 7 hours to go!

 

For those living in a cave: LHC is the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. It's hoped it will spot the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle responsible for mass and predicted by the standard model. Observing the Higgs particle would be a major breakthrough in physics. It's also hoped that LHC will observe so-called "sparticles" which would provide proof of an idea called supersymmetry.

We're all gonna die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/me runs frantically

Apparently a time-traveling wormhole (since the LHC will let you do that), has already eaten up the bandwidth on that website's server.

cooldown...

 

http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

We're all gonna die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/me runs frantically

 

Rofl. Take deep breaths, because the atmosphere catches fire in 31 days!!!!

Here is just a question I know the LHC becomes operational very soon but is there any ideas when we might see some results from this. I mean are we going to see things a month after it starts or in a few decades.

Collisions won't start for several weeks after it fires up, and you'll probably see the first experiments being completed several months after that, and it'll take another few months to analyze the data, and another few to get the paper through review... so I'd wait a year or two before expecting anything major.

 

Of course, if they see anything really spectacular they may announce it rather quickly.

Edited July 9, 200817 yr by Cap'n Refsmmat

Collisions won't start for several weeks after it fires up

 

Techically, it's "firing up" (i.e. cooling down) in a few days. If I understand it correctly they need to bring certain parts of it down to ~5K, at which point it will be ready to use.

 

This countdown, I believe, is when it's first ready to use, i.e. after the hot parts of it have been cooled to sufficiently cold temperatures.

ZOMG ISN'T THIS THING GONNA LYK MAKE SUPERMASSIVE SUPERDANGEROUS SUPERBLACKHOLSE

 

[/troll]

 

(Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system... I saw an article in the newspaper whose gist could be summed up by the above statement. I do despise the sensationalism of the media.)

I think it must all be a scam anyway. You can't have a large hadron colider because there are no large hadrons- they are all tiny.

I think it must all be a scam anyway. You can't have a large hadron colider because there are no large hadrons- they are all tiny.

 

It's just like the heavy ion scam at RHIC.

Amazing.

Let's meet a black hole! hahahaahha

And the best part is that this article, printed in the Science section of the local paper, insisted on calling the thing the 'atom-smasher'. In the headline, in the caption, and everywhere it was referenced in the article it was given this ridiculous nickname. I think the only place where "Large Hadron Collider" was printed in the article was within the quotes of the interviewed scientists.

Some headlines from a Google News search:

 

The end of the world as we know it?

Massive bosons blew my unit

Launch Of Atom Smasher Sparks Apocalyptic Fears

Questions, Quirky Quarks Quase Earth-Quashing Quakes of Fears Over LHC Atom-smasher

 

And my personal fave, from the Christian Science Monitor:

Could the Large Hadron Collider destory Earth? (sic)

Could the Large Hadron Collider destory Earth? (sic)

yes, the LHC is actually a story snatcher. It removes printed works and erases the memories of storytellers. It's the largest attempt at de-storification the world has ever seen. Ray Bradbury's predictions are coming true!

It's pretty stupid how all the reporting on it is for a doomsday scenario that won't even happen, when the real story should be the potential scientific benfits. But those don't play in Peoria... baseless doomsday scenarios do!

I WANT ONE!

 

[/jealousy]

Techically, it's "firing up" (i.e. cooling down) in a few days. If I understand it correctly they need to bring certain parts of it down to ~5K, at which point it will be ready to use.

 

I believe they mainly need to cool the magnets, though I'm probably wrong.

and you need to pump all the air out of the system. so much so that the pressure will be lower than the outside of the ISS.

I am worried because some of the software used for it is written in java.

"Blue screen of death" anyone?

I am worried because some of the software used for it is written in java.

 

At least it's not operating on Vista.

 

Edited July 13, 200817 yr by Gilded

Just imagine how much that would suck if it yielded nothing useful.

Often, in science, we learn the most when things don't happen as we expected.

Just imagine how much that would suck if it yielded nothing useful.

 

If it doesn't it would likely indicate theory surrounding the Higgs Boson is incorrect