seouldavid Posted November 23, 2009 Share Posted November 23, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/science/24collide.html?ref=global-home According to this article, LHC appears to produce its first collisions Monday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Severian Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 Here is a link to the first events observed in ATLAS: http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/public/EVTDISPLAY/events.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toastywombel Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 Looks like so far the world has not been destroyed by black holes or strange matter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Severian Posted November 24, 2009 Share Posted November 24, 2009 The energy is still below the Tevatron energy, so we wouldn't have expected to yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bascule Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 A more realistic surprise is that it hasn't suffered a major malfunction yet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJBruce Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 It cool that it looks like they finally got the thing working. When do they expect reach tevatron energy level? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bascule Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainPanic Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 Happy nerds! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Severian Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 I like how the girl in the bottom right of that picture looks utterly bored while everyone else is jumping for joy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajb Posted November 25, 2009 Share Posted November 25, 2009 I like how the girl in the bottom right of that picture looks utterly bored while everyone else is jumping for joy. She is like "I spent 3 years at grad school for that?" There is also a girl at the back who cannot see as everyone in front of her is jumping for joy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainPanic Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 I like how the girl in the bottom right of that picture looks utterly bored while everyone else is jumping for joy. I think she's playing a computer game with the guy to the right of her. And she's just looking smug because she just beat him. They're not watching the collisions at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Severian Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 Latest news, from the horse's mouth: From: "Rolf Heuer" <rolf.heuer@cern.ch> Date: 30 November 2009 08:19:54 GMT+01:00 To: "cern-personnel (CERN Personnel - Members and Associate Members)" <cern-personnel@cern.ch> Subject: LHC sets new world record La version française vous sera envoyée durant la journée. LHC sets new world record Geneva, 30 November 2009. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has today become the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV in the early hours of the morning. This exceeds the previous world record of 0.98 TeV, which had been held by the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Tevatron collider since 2001. It marks another important milestone on the road to first physics at the LHC in 2010. “We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is going,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “It is fantastic. However, we are continuing to take it step by step, and there is still a lot to do before we start physics in 2010. I’m keeping my champagne on ice until then.” These developments come just 10 days after the LHC restart, demonstrating the excellent performance of the machine. First beams were injected into the LHC on Friday 20 November. Over the following days, the machine’s operators circulated beams around the ring alternately in one direction and then the other at the injection energy of 450 GeV, gradually increasing the beam lifetime to around 10 hours. On Monday 23 November, two beams circulated together for the first time, and the four big LHC detectors recorded their first collision data. Last night’s achievement brings further confirmation that the LHC is progressing smoothly towards the objective of first physics early in 2010.The world record energy was first broken yesterday evening, when beam 1 was accelerated from 450 GeV, reaching 1050 GeV (1.05 TeV) at 21:28, Sunday 29 November. Three hours later both LHC beams were successfully accelerated to 1.18 TeV, at 00:44, 30 November. “I was here 20 years ago when we switched on CERN’s last major particle accelerator, LEP,” said Research and Technology Director Steve Myers. “I thought that was a great machine to operate, but this is something else. What took us days or weeks with LEP, we’re doing in hours with the LHC. So far, it all augurs well for a great research programme.” Next on the schedule is a concentrated commissioning phase aimed at increasing the beam intensity before delivering good quantities of collision data to the experiments before Christmas. So far, all the LHC commissioning work has been carried out with a low intensity pilot beam. Higher intensity is needed to provide meaningful proton-proton collision rates. The current commissioning phase aims to make sure that these higher intensities can be safely handled and that stable conditions can be guaranteed for the experiments during collisions. This phase is estimated to take around a week, after which the LHC will be colliding beams for calibration purposes until the end of the year. First physics at the LHC is scheduled for the first quarter of 2010, at a collision energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJBruce Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 First physics at the LHC is scheduled for the first quarter of 2010, at a collision energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam). So how long after that do they expect to draw be able to draw any conclusions on things such as the existance of the Higgs Boson? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Severian Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 So how long after that do they expect to draw be able to draw any conclusions on things such as the existance of the Higgs Boson? The Higgs boson will take quite a while. Exactly how long depends on the mass, but we are talking years rather than months. This is because it is produced in a rare process. Quantum Mechanically there is a small probability of a Higgs boson being created in each collision, but the probability is so small that a huge number of collisions need to be generated before you can see a Higgs signal. Other things, like supersymmetry or extra dimensions should be faster though, of the order of a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ecoli Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 darn... I was hoping LHC failures would provide the needed proof for the anthropic selection that "proves" the many worlds interpretation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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