'Anyone who thinks it will destroy the world is a t***' [A what? o_O]

Belfast Telegraph
Monday, 8 September 2008


Photo from Engadget article

CERN Rap video about the Collider

The scientists behind the world's biggest ever experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, have received death threats. Experts are attempting to recreate the forces which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang.

The $10bn machine at CERN near Geneva will be switched on this Wednesday. But sceptics fear it could cause the end of the world. Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University has responded angrily to doomsayers who have predicted an Armageddon.

"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a t***," he said.

Professor Cox added: "There's a kind of magic energy we've not been able to get to, and we know from previous experiments that's where things happen. Now for the first time, we'll be crossing that barrier."
Cern employees release LHC rap video on YouTube

The Large Hadron Collider: End of the world, or God's own particle?

A bewildered Cole Moreton goes in search of the science behind the spin...

Yes, but what is it? That has been many people's reaction to the furore over the Large Hadron Collider, due to be switched on this Wednesday. The biggest, most expensive experiment in history is attracting both scientific hyperbole and hysteria. Some say it will reveal the universe's secrets and lead to the elusive Theory of Everything. A few fear that unleashing unimaginable power beneath the Swiss countryside will result in the end of the world. But how? And what do all these words mean?

Large

Is an understatement. A giant circular tunnel, with several loops, stretches for 27km under the land between France and Switzerland. One of its experimental chambers is bigger than the nave of Westminster Abbey.

Hadron

The name for one of the types of particle that make up an atom. These tiny bits of energy will be propelled by giant magnets around the tunnel circuit at almost the speed of light.

Collide

Is what they will do when they meet other hadrons being beamed in the opposite direction, at the same great speed. The resulting explosion will create 100,000 times more heat than the sun, apparently. Thankfully, it will only happen for a moment, in an area a billion times smaller than a speck of dust.

Cern

Pronounced "sern". The French acronym for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, which built the £5bn collider. The money came from 20 countries, including Britain, which has played a leading role.

The Big Bang

Is what they are trying to recreate. Or rather what happened a trillionth of a second after the universe was created by an explosion, 13.7 billion years ago. For that tiny moment, it is believed everything was molten plasma. This cooled to create everything we see around us. The hope is that by remaking the moment, in miniature, the scientists will be able to see things that are invisible now.

The God Particle

Big name, very small thing; and the first great discovery they hope to make. It is believed we have only detected a quarter of the particles in everything. We don't, for example, know why things have mass. (To get a feeling for what that is, hit yourself over the head with an inflatable hammer, then a real one. The one that hurts has more mass.) In 1964 Professor Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University predicted an unseen particle that provided mass (its official name is a Higgs boson). The hope is it will be detected for the first time. Other possible revelations include so-called dark matter, which in theory "stretches through space like an invisible skeleton".

The Theory of Everything

The Holy Grail of science. A unifying theory providing one explanation for the forces at work in the natural world, from the nucleus of an atom to the movements of the planets. Sounds like alchemy to non-scientists, but some very respectable minds believe it is possible, and that the collider may show the way.

The End of the World

Some scientists, on the other hand, went to the European Court for Human Rights to try to stop the collider being turned on. They fear it may create a black hole – which would certainly violate our rights by sucking the planet into... well we don't really know. Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Cern says: "The chance we produce a black hole is minuscule." Which is not all that reassuring. But he adds: "Even if we do, it can't swallow up the Earth." It would be too small, and disappear in moments. In any case, they will only send the hadrons in one direction this week. The collisions start in October. Until then, at least, we're not all doomed.

Notice of this article appeared on my nifty whole-article Slashdot digest feed: alterslash.org

Large Hadron Collider nearly ready



There are 27 photos onsite for those of you who understand this sort of thing! ;)

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Telegraph.co.uk
31 Jul 2008

*Many people think stem cells are all derived from controversial sources, but this is not so

*See also Skin cells could help with treatment of Alzheimer's in the Guardian

Scientists have made a significant advance in a stem cell technique that could pave the way to finding treatments for dozens of genetic diseases.

The development could help them to find a way of tackling conditions such as Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.

For the first time a research team has managed to take human skin cells from a patient with a genetic condition and transform them into nerve cells.

It means they will now be able to create limitless numbers of the diseased cells to help them carry out research in the hope of finding a way to treat the illness.

The research has been carried out by an American team.

( >>Read on )

By Mike McKimm
BBC

It's a landscape no human has even seen. And those who live right beside it had no idea it even existed. Deep below the sea, off the north coast of Northern Ireland, a dramatic geological mystery has been discovered. Huge cliffs, vast basins and plateaus, a lake and even rivers have been found. But so far no-one is certain what caused them to end up like this deep under the sea. The discovery was made when the seabed was being surveyed to update old Admiralty charts, drawn up in the mid-1800s.

>>Read on

York University



Click on the image to view the full-screen version in a new window.

Artist Ron Dollekamp of Scarborough has created a stunning depiction of the natural universe which creatively mixes elements of space and time to describe the research undertaken by faculty and students associated with the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Graduate Program in Physics and Astronomy at York University.

The centrepiece of the painting is a fragment of the Earth upon which the Toronto skyline and Lake Ontario are seated. Further emphasizing the Canadian connection, the northern lights hang over the skyline, with the Big Dipper shining through. The Moon and several other planets form a pleasing arc around Toronto, and a blue nebula of interstellar space hangs nearby. The fragment of Earth is seen growing out of the Milky Way galaxy of which it is a constituent. Hurtling towards the galaxy are rays of light, our probe of the universe at large, and a cascade of fundamental particles of nature out of which all matter is composed. The immense scale of the universe is emphasized by the display of another more distant galaxy in the background. The painting not only rivets attention from afar, but many fine details attract closer scrutiny. Even the second "star" in the handle of the Big Dipper is accurately shown to be double.

Astronomy and Astrophysics are represented by the galaxies and their linkages to the particles out of which they formed and to the stars and planets which formed within them.

Atomic and Molecular Physics are represented not only by the stream of particles, which is a mixture of protons and electrons, but also by the northern lights, which are a manifestation of collisions between particles in the solar wind with atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere.

The essence of Particle Physics is covered by depicting the protons in a manner consistent with the quark model of the atomic nucleus; three "colours" of quarks are confined inside bubbles in such a way that their distinctiveness is most obvious in the centres, but fades away toward the boundaries, as quark confinement models demand.

The Earth's crust and molten core are shown below the city of Toronto, amplifying Earth Physics.

Crystals embedded in the Earth's crust signify Chemical and Condensed Matter Physics, and to a certain extent Optical Physics, as crystals form the heart of lasers.

More subtly, Chemical and Condensed Matter Physics are represented by the blue nebula above the galaxy, which arises from the scattering of starlight off particles of dust floating between the stars.

On a macroscopic scale, the northern lights signify research into both Atmospheric and Space Physics, as their emissions provide a valuable probe of the nature of the upper atmosphere and the interactions of charged particles with the Earth's magnetic field.

Microscopically, the northern lights provide a probe of the structure of atoms and molecules, which are a subject of Optical Physics. The swath of light rays hurtling into the galaxy further illustrates research in this field.

Another focus, Biological Physics, is amplified by the views of the landscape around Toronto and by the incoming streams of particles and light, which are tools used to probe how living things function.

Engineering is highlighted by views of the CN Tower and SkyDome.

Fluid Dynamics, a subject which is fundamental to research in many fields, is depicted by a flow of water out of Lake Ontario into the Milky Way. The connection to the Milky Way completes the cycle of galactic evolution, which is characterized by a continual exchange of matter between star systems and the interstellar medium. The conversion to steam emphasizes the inexorable march of the universe towards a maximal state of randomness.

Collider will reproduce conditions that existed an instant after the Big Bang

James Randerson, science correspondent
The Guardian
Tuesday April 8, 2008



Visitors stand in front of the ATLAS detector during the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) Open Day at the European Particle Physics laboratory (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/AP

It is one of the most puzzling missing pieces in physicists' understanding of the universe. But the British scientist behind the so-called "God particle" believes the hunt for his elusive prediction may soon be over.

Peter Higgs, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Edinburgh, said yesterday he was 90% confident that a €3bn (£2.37bn) atom-smashing machine nearing completion in Switzerland would prove him right by showing that the particle exists. Higgs, now 78, said he hoped this would happen before his 80th birthday on May 29 next year.

"If that mass prediction is right it will be in the data very quickly," he said, "but then there's a lot of analysis of the data to be done before you announce it and that's what takes the time."

If proved correct, Higgs said he would uncork a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Many physicists believe he would also be a shoo-in for a Nobel prize, along with two other physicists who made significant advances in the same field.

The big hope for finding the Higgs boson - the particle that confers mass on the rest of matter - is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, Europe's particle physics laboratory, near Geneva.

By crunching together particles at high speed and energy, the machine is designed to recreate conditions that have not existed since just after the Big Bang. "This is a Genesis machine," said theoretical physicist Professor Michio Kaku, of City University in New York. "This machine will help us to unlock the secret of the origin of the universe."

Finding the Higgs boson would add significant experimental backing to physicists' current theory for understanding how matter is put together, the so-called standard model. But Higgs said the LHC was about much more than just the God particle (not his phrase, and one which he says embarrasses him). "The Higgs boson discovery is only one part of the programme. There is vastly more for the machine to do," he said.

The collider consists of two concentric underground rings, 17 miles (27km) in circumference, that span the border between France and Switzerland.

Using powerful superconducting magnets, it will accelerate packets of particles to within a whisker of the speed of light. When these collide head-on they generate enough energy to rip matter apart. By collecting the sub-atomic shrapnel, the physicists can infer what that matter was composed of.

"That sub-atomic fireball will actually reproduce the conditions that would have existed about a millionth of a second after the Big Bang," said Dr David Evans, of the University of Birmingham, who is working on one of the colossal detector experiments.

Following two public open days at the weekend, engineers will seal off the particle accelerator and cool it to -271.3C (the low temperature is required for the powerful superconducting magnets to work). They hope to switch on the first beam in late June or early July and the first collisions should happen by the end of the year. It will probably be 12 months before the LHC is at full power.
Cosmic numbers

€3bn Cost of the Large Hadron Collider, based at Cern in Switzerland

27km Circumference of the atom smasher's two concentric underground rings

175m Distance underground of the deepest part of the collider

15yrs Time it took to construct the collider

Go >>here

'Lissajous (pronounced LEE-suh-zhoo) figures were discovered by the French physicist Jules Antoine Lissajous. He would use sounds of different frequencies to vibrate a mirror. A beam of light reflected from the mirror would trace patterns which depended on the frequencies of the sounds. Lissajous' setup was similar to the apparatus which is used today to project laser light shows.

Before the days of digital frequency meters and phase-locked loops, Lissajous figures were used to determine the frequencies of sounds or radio signals. A signal of known frequency was applied to the horizontal axis of an oscilloscope, and the signal to be measured was applied to the vertical axis. The resulting pattern was a function of the ratio of the two frequencies.

Lissajous figures often appeared as props in science fiction movies made during the 1950's. One of the best examples can be found in the opening sequence of The Outer Limits TV series. ("Do not attempt to adjust your picture--we are controlling the transmission.") The pattern of criss-cross lines is actually a Lissajous figure.

The Lissajous Lab provides you with a virtual oscilloscope which you can use to generate these patterns. (You will control the horizontal. You will control the vertical.) The applet also allows you to apply a signal to modulate the hue of the trace, so you can create colorful designs.'

--More info and instructions on site.