the lhc explained

[Waves]

very cool video. this guy makes science sound cool!

[Smaerd]

I need a friend like that.

[CBCOOLEST]

Superb video. Thanks a lot!

[Dozer McDozer]

science is overrated

[WildWill]

Originally Posted by Dozer McDozer

science is overrated

So is ignorance and sarcasm.



Seriously the thing goes on line next Wednesday, I dunno about you guys, but I'm actually a bit anxious to find out the results (and to see if perhaps the world really will explode a bit).

[Prophet Saddam]

Large Hadron Rap:

[Dozer McDozer]

^its the truth(so is what you said about ignorance and sarcasm i guess), everything has to be tangible to people nowadays

damn next wednesday huh

"If you want to see fear in a quantum physicists eyes, just mention the measurement problem. The measurement problem is this, an atom only appears in a particular place if you measure it. In other words, an atom is spread out all over the place until a conscious observer decides to look at it."

oh damn the mc said it will create matter? we aren't going to blow up but shit, this is bigger than any of us fucking realize

[Prophet Saddam]

i'm waiting, but i don't think much of anything is going to happen.

[adventure]

I love Ted

[Prophet Saddam]

I was just going to say the same thing. They really have some amazing videos.

TED: Ideas worth spreading

[420smokeman]

it starts sept 10th, thats my bday to

[msicidron]

your birthday present this year will be getting stretched into infinity

[©antSEEme]

HELL YEAH, BABY!!!

i dint watch the video yet, because i dont have 16 minutes cause i gotta leave, but i will later, although i dont have to. i read about it in natty g. in fact, i was just reading about it on the loo, and i have it here with me.

natty g - march 2008 issue. and i quote:

"the purpose of the lhc is simple but ambitious: to crack the code of the physical world; to figure out what the universe is made of."

heres how it works, simplified and broken down into 4 steps:

1- trillions of protons rush towards collisions at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light

2- quarks and gluons inside the protons collide, exploding with enough energy to create the ilusive Higgs particle

3- the Higgs particle (the God particle), probably 100 to 200 times the mass of a proton, is unstable: it will last less than a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second before decaying into a spray of other particles

4- evidence for the Higgs will be found in the telltale spirals and streaks left in the lhc detectors by the particles created as it disinegrates.


why is there anything after the big bang? this, in therory, could solve it. theroetically, the big bang yeilded = amounts of matter and anti-matter which should have canceled each other out, so to speak, at that same instant. but, as we know, our universe is full of matter.




sorry, science gets me hard.

[verklingen]

that video ruled

[Waves]

Hawking bets CERN mega-machine won't find 'God's Particle' (Update)

Renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet 100 dollars (70 euros) that a mega-experiment this week will not find an elusive particle seen as a holy grail of cosmic science, he said Tuesday.

In the most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be switched on Wednesday, accelerating sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light before smashing them together.

"The LHC will increase the energy at which we can study particle interactions by a factor of four. According to present thinking, this should be enough to discover the Higgs particle," Hawking told BBC radio.

"I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of 100 dollars that we won't find the Higgs," added Hawking, whose books including "A Brief History of Time" have sought to popularise study of stellar physics.

On Wednesday the first protons will be injected into a 27-kilometre (16.9-mile) ring-shaped tunnel, straddling the Swiss-French border at the headquarters of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with this idea: there must exist a background field that would act rather like treacle.

Some scientists were however more optimistic.

Hubert Reeves, the French astrophysician, told the Swiss daily Le Matin that the invention could bring "unexpected results" that would change the world of particle physics forever.

"This machine will probably bring unexpected results that could turn particle physics on its head," Reeves said.

"It's a really impressive tool. It can go as deep underground as the length of a cathedral," he said.

Particles passing through it would acquire mass by being dragged through a mediator, which theoreticians dubbed the Higgs Boson.

The standard quip about the Higgs is that it is the "God Particle" -- it is everywhere but remains frustratingly elusive.

While questioning the likelihood of finding Higgs Bosons, Hawking said the experiment could discover superpartners, particles that would be "supersymmetric partners" to particles already known about.

"Their existence would be a key confirmation of string theory, and they could make up the mysterious dark matter that holds galaxies together," he told the BBC.

"Whatever the LHC finds, or fails to find, the results will tell us a lot about the structure of the universe," he added.

Hawking, the 66-year-old Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, was diagnosed with the muscle-wasting motor neuron disease at the age of 22.

He is in a wheelchair and speaks with the aid of a computer and voice synthesiser.

Things are getting interesting folks!

[verklingen]

that's what's so fucking great about science: experiments which defy your speculations are just as meaningful or even more so then those which affirm them. every trial is another piece of the puzzle. w00t!

[BearsysRevenge]

T Minus 24 hours!

[CBCOOLEST]

Mates here is the live broadcast =>
LHC First Beam - 10th September 2008 - 9am CEST (GMT+2)
1. Live webcast
2. CERNFirstBeamDay < EVOPublic < TWiki
Have fun watching it

[JcP]

if this is your gateway into understanding the universe, more power to you.

I think it'll be fascinating to compare the terminology of science like this to that of ancient religions and see how they are both expressing the same basic truth: duality working as singularity (yin/yang, matter/antimatter, light/no-light, God/Devil, etc etc. etc)...assuming you can call renegade comets and exploding galaxies on a cosmic scale, murder and rape on a human scale, cancer and autism on a cellular scale, etc. "working."

I find the language of science overwhelming, but I see plain as day the underlying spiritual truth to all of this and I am totally jazzed about what they are going to find!

And my money is with Mr. Hawking. Unless, of course, the particles aren't the whole story. My bet is their findings point to the particles, but it's "inconclusive." That would certainly fit with the pattern of God (using the term as loosely as possible here) being there for those who want to see it, but not for those don't....oddly enough, like the quantuum physics problem of waves/particles.

Anyway, totally not a scientist, but I dig the symmetry.