LHC News

[kk434]

Re: No Higgs Boson will be found...

Large Hardon Collider has a lot of other uses then searching for the Higgs particle.

 

[EarthlingX]

Re: LHC Status

More music from CERN :
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28X9czEROPs[/youtube]

 

[kk434]

Re: LHC Status

Since I'm from Europe, LHC is one of my "pet projects", thier power is above anything on earth and if they find the Higgs boson it will revolutionize physics. There is even the possibility to find supersymetric particles and study the ellusive quark gluon plasma. Too bad they had the "quench" in the superconducting magnet couple years ago, it set them back a couple of years. But I'm patient, soon they will find a lot of new particles and revolutionize high energy physics.

 

[EarthlingX]

Re: LHC Status

http://www.reuters.com : Budget cuts force CERN to shut accelerators for year

GENEVA | Fri Sep 17, 2010 12:32pm EDT

The Linac 2 (Linear Accelerator 2) is pictured at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva October 16, 2008.
Credit: Reuters/Denis Balibouse

(Reuters) - Europe's particle research center CERN unveiled budget cuts Friday that will force it to temporarily close its accelerators for a year in 2012, but said its flagship "Big Bang" machine will mainly be unaffected.

 

[EarthlingX]

Re: LHC Status

www.universetoday.com : New Discovery at the Large Hadron Collider?

Sep 21st, 2010

by Nancy Atkinson


Image of a 7 TeV proton-proton collision in CMS producing more than 100 charged particles. Credit: CERN

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collison reported today they apparently have discovered a previously unobserved phenomenon in proton-proton collisions. One of the detectors shows that the colliding particles appear to be intimately linked in a way not seen before in proton collisions. The correlations were observed between particles produced in 7 TeV collisions. “The new feature has appeared in our analysis around the middle of July,” physicist Guido Tonelli told fellow CERN scientists at a seminar to present the findings from the collider’s CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector.

The scientists said the effect is subtle and they have performed several detailed crosschecks and studies to ensure that it is real. It bears some similarity to effects seen in the collisions of nuclei at the RHIC facility located at the US Brookhaven National Laboratory, which have been interpreted as being possibly due to the creation of hot dense matter formed in the collisions.

...

The scientists stressed that there are several potential explanations to be considered and the they presented their news to the physics community at CERN today in hopes of “fostering a broader discussion on the subject.”

...


Paper :
cms.web.cern.ch : Observation of Long-Range, Near-Side Angular Correlations in Proton-Proton Collisions at the LHC (pdf)

 

[Technetium]

Re: No Higgs Boson will be found...

Even if we don't find Higgs.
It doesn't mean we haven't gained anything...

Infact we gain something. Facts.
The fact that crashing Proton particles together doesn't create Higgs.
Therefore we learn something.
We learn that this didn't work so lets put that theory behind us and continue to discover other things..
Which could possibly lead to creating Higgs.

 

[centsworth_II]

Re: No Higgs Boson will be found...

Exciting new results from CMS

The LHC has already produced new and exiting results for at least one researcher. And as far as I know it has no direct connection to the Higgs search.

 

[captdude]

Scientists excited by Big Bang machine experiments

The following link will take you to the story. The main points of imformation from the article are posted below the link.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39309059/ns/technology_and_science-science

By Bradley S. Klapper, Frank Jordans
updated 9/22/2010
GENEVA — The $10 billion Big Bang machine under the Swiss-French border may be on the verge of its first scientific breakthroughs after appearing to produce a small amount of the matter that existed in the first moments of the universe, physicists said Wednesday.
"We are very excited," said Raju Venugopalan, a senior Brookhaven scientist who wasn't involved in CERN's experiments. He told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the data showed "for the first time" that protons have quantum properties that can be enhanced in collisions.
Venugopalan said CERN's results show how extremely "tiny and normally short-lived quantum fluctuations of protons are frozen in place." This is because of Einstein's special relativity and generates remarkable results, he said.

 

[MeteorWayne]

9/22/10 Various LHC discussions have been merged into the LHC News topic.

 

[EarthlingX]

user.web.cern.ch : Message from the Director General: A game-changing fill for the LHC

Rolf Heuer

24 September 2010

A long period of machine development paid dividends last night with a game-changing fill in the LHC. As I write this, the fill, which started colliding at 19:00 yesterday evening, has just wound down. Both ATLAS and CMS have posted integrated luminosities of over 680 inverse nanobarns, and the initial luminosity for the fill doubles the previous record at 2×10[super]31[/super]cm-2s-1.

But it’s not the records that are important this time – it’s normal that in the start-up phase of a new machine, records will fall like autumn leaves – what’s significant here is that the LHC’s performance this fill significantly exceeded some crucial design parameters, opening up the path to much better still to come.

Last night’s fill was the first with 56 bunches arranged in trains of eight bunches per train. The significance of bunch train running is that we can configure the orbits such that more bunches collide in the experiments, so even though the number of bunches may not be much higher, the collision rate is. For example, last night’s 56-bunch fill had 47 bunches colliding at ATLAS, CMS and LHCb, with 16 colliding in ALICE, whose needs are lower. This compares to a maximum of 36 colliding bunches out of 48 total before we introduced bunch trains.

A big jump in luminosity was clearly expected in moving to bunch trains and colliding more bunches. What came as a pleasant surprise is that it was accompanied by an exceptional beam lifetime of 40 hours, and less disruption to the beams caused by packing more protons into a smaller space (in technical terms, the beam-beam tune shift was much less destructive to the beams than anticipated). This result means that the LHC operators have more leeway in operational parameters in the quest for higher luminosity.

The plan for today and the weekend is to run for one more fill with 56 bunches in trains of eight before moving on to 104 bunches in 13 trains of eight, with 93 bunches colliding in ATLAS and CMS. Ultimately, the LHC will run with 2808 bunches in each beam, so there’s still a long way to go. We’ll get there slowly but surely by adding bunches to each train until the trains meet in a single machine-filling train. That will take time, but for the moment, last night’s fill puts us well on the way to achieving the main objective for 2010: a luminosity of 10[super]32[/super]cm-2s-1

 

[centsworth_II]

user.web.cern.ch : Message from the Director General: A game-changing fill for the LHC

From http://blogs.uslhc.us/a-great-fill:
"To put this in perspective: the much-heralded LHC results at the July ICHEP conference were based on about 250 inverse nanobarns of data.... Yesterday, in less than one day, the LHC delivered almost double that entire amount! The state of play will be changing quite rapidly on all LHC experiments. Stay tuned!"

 

[EarthlingX]

blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/ : Don’t cross the LHC stream!

September 21st, 2010 7:05 AM

by Phil Plait

There are a lot of questions in science that seem simple, but in fact lead to profound concepts. Why is the sky dark at night? Why does gravity pull me down? Why is the Sun hot?

And some questions seem silly and frivolous, but it turns out are really hard to answer, and in fact scientists might disagree on the answer. Case in point: what happens if you put your hand in the beam of the Large Hadron Collider?
...
So the folks at Sixty Symbols asked this of several scientists, and the first four minutes of this video are the result:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMqPT6oKJ8[/youtube]

sixtysymbols | September 16, 2010

...

It’s complicated! You have to think about the energy of the beam, of course, but also the energy of a given proton as it moves at 99.9999% the speed of light. But that number doesn’t mean anything if the proton doesn’t actually interact with the matter in your hand, so you have to consider the "cross-section" of the atoms in your hand. Think of it this way: if you shoot a gun at a target, you make a hole. But if you shoot a gun at a fishing net, it might pass right through. Most of the area of a fishing net is holes! The nuclei of atoms are very small compared to the atoms themselves, so in a sense most of you is empty space.

..

 

[EarthlingX]

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org : Cast your vote for top Particle Physics Photowalk photograph

September 27, 2010 | 11:24 am

On August 7, more than 200 photographers had the rare opportunity to go behind the scenes at five laboratories in Asia, Europe and North America, as part of the first Global Particle Physics Photowalk. Thousands of photographs were submitted to the laboratories for local and global competitions. The laboratories have made their choices, each nominating three photographs for global competition. Now it’s your turn – starting today, you may vote for up to three of your favorite photographs as part of the “people’s choice” global photowalk competition.

...



http://www.interactions.org : Vote For Your Three Favorite Photographs

The five participating Photowalk laboratories have made their selections, and now it's time to cast your vote! Each laboratory nominated three photographs for this global competition; the winners will be featured in the particle physics magazines symmetry and the CERN Courier and exhibited at the Photowalk laboratories.

To cast your vote, click on the button below your favorite three photographs. Click on any photo to see a larger version.

..

Mikey Enriquez, Hans-Peter Hildebrandt, Ken Duszynski

...

 

[EarthlingX]

Music for physicists :

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZP17RMvV-A[/youtube]

CERNTV | October 01, 2010

The fabulous Cernettes sing live at the European Researchers' Night in the Globe, at CERN.

 

[adrenalynn]

They don't draw much of a crowd. The geeks only love their collider.

They don't go out with other girls either - they only love their collider. :geek: :lol:

 

[EarthlingX]

My Sweetheart is a Nobel Prize

 

[EarthlingX]

More wild music in front of immense crowd from LHC :

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBtZoDS9XiA[/youtube]

CERNTV | October 03, 2010

YouTube rap superstar, AlpineKat lecturing in the Globe.

Even more fun :

arxiv.org : The ATLAS Trigger System Commissioning and Performance

A. Hamilton (the ATLAS Collaboration)
(Submitted on 30 Sep 2010)

Abstract: The ATLAS trigger has been used very successfully to collect collision data during 2009 and 2010 LHC running at centre of mass energies of 900 GeV, 2.36 TeV, and 7 TeV. This paper presents the ongoing work to commission the ATLAS trigger with proton collisions, including an overview of the performance of the trigger based on extensive online running. We describe how the trigger has evolved with increasing LHC luminosity and give a brief overview of plans for forthcoming LHC running.

 

[EarthlingX]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Az0j4FHyY[/youtube]

CERNTV | October 07, 2010

CERN connects to the Paris Observatory to interview George Smoot, Nobel for Physics 2006, then theoretical physicist Alvaro de Rujula explains the Universe expansion.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5IQc0p7Nyc[/youtube]

CERNTV| October 08, 2010

CERN connects to the South Pole to interview members of the IceCube experiment, then connects to NASA for news about the AMS detectors en route for space.

 

[EarthlingX]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U2GBaHvAbc[/youtube]

CERNTV | October 08, 2010

Connections to all experiments, after having spent the day hosting teen age students in their control rooms, to leanr the job pf physicist. Steve Goldfarg lauches the "CosmoBet" a worldwide bet on finding dark matter

 

[EarthlingX]

user.web.cern.ch : LHC protons 2010: mission accomplished

14 October 2010

by Rolf Heuer

When we started running the LHC at the end of March, we set ourselves the objective of reaching a luminosity of 10[super]32[/super] by the end of 2010 proton running. Last night, we achieved that goal. The beams that went in at around 2:00am, were colliding with a luminosity of 1.01 × 10[super]32[/super] by 3:38am in both ATLAS and CMS, and had delivered an integrated luminosity of over 2 inverse picobarns to ATLAS, CMS and LHCb by midday today. It’s a great achievement by all concerned to reach this important milestone with over two weeks to spare. The remainder of this year’s proton running will be devoted to maximising the LHC 2010 data set and preparing for 2011 proton running before we switch to lead ions in November.

The significance of this milestone can’t be underestimated, since it is a necessary step on the way to the larger goal of delivering an integrated luminosity of one inverse femtobarn to the experiments by the end of 2011. That’s the amount of data we need to ensure that if nature has put new physics in our path at the LHC’s current collision energy, we’ll have a good chance of seeing it.

At the moment, we’re running the LHC with 248 bunches per beam in a configuration that allows us to go much higher. As 2011 proton running gets underway early next year we’ll continue increasing the number of bunches, since a factor of two or so more luminosity is still needed if we’re to reach our one inverse femtobarn goal. That, however, is for next year. In the meantime, the objective we set ourselves for this year was realistic, but tough, and it’s very gratifying to see it achieved in such fine style.

 

[centsworth_II]

For those out there who still think the purpose of the LHC is to find the Higgs boson and that the experiment is a failure if it is not found.

I don't pretend to understand 'unitarity of WW scattering' or 'violation of conservation of probability' (infinities?). But the sense I get is that there is a breaking point, a built in put up or shut up moment for the standard model that will be reached when the LHC reaches its full potential. It's not about finding the Higgs, its about finding what's there. And what's there will be new and exciting, Higgs or no. Reading the below quote I get a concrete feeling that there is a definite boundary that will be crossed into new physics by the LHC. It's all very exciting whether the Higgs is found on the other side of that boundary or not.


http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2010/10/throughout-previous-decade-gia-dvali.html
"The reason why we are pretty sure that we are going to observe new phenomena in the LHC goes under the nickname unitarity of WW scattering.... the tree-level scattering amplitude of longitudinally polarized W bosons computed in the standard model without the Higgs particle grows as a square of the scattering energy, and at some point around 1 TeV it becomes inconsistent with unitarity, that is with conservation of probability. In the full standard model this problem is cured: the contribution from the Higgs exchange cancels the dangerously growing terms and the full amplitude is well behaving for arbitrary high energies. A slightly different mechanism is realized in technicolor theories, where the consistent UV behavior of the amplitude is ensured by the exchange of spin-1 resonances.

In spite of 40 years of intensive research we are only aware of these 2 ways of unitarizing the WW amplitude. Thus the LHC should see either the Higgs or new spin-1 resonances. Time will tell which of the 2 possibilities is realized in nature.

A paper last week by Dvali and co. suggests that there may be a 3rd possibility...."

 

[darkmatter4brains]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101020/sc_ ... ience_cern

 

[centsworth_II]

LHC researchers 'set to create a mini-Big Bang'

 

[centsworth_II]

First lead-lead collisions!
From the picture gallery link:
"As expected such collisions produce an unprecedented number of particles, reaching 2500-3000 charged particles per collision."

 

[EarthlingX]

press.web.cern.ch : CERN completes transition to lead-ion running at the LHC

Geneva, 8 November 2010.


An event recorded by the ALICE experiment from the first lead-ion collisions, at a centre-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon pair.

Four days is all it took for the LHC operations team at CERN1 to complete the transition from protons to lead ions in the LHC. After extracting the final proton beam of 2010 on 4 November, commissioning the lead-ion beam was underway by early afternoon. First collisions were recorded at 00:30 CET on 7 November, and stable running conditions marked the start of physics with heavy ions at 11:20 CET today.

...