back to article Large Hadron Collider to fire up again next Thursday

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), most powerful particle-smasher ever assembled by the human race and possible portal to other dimensions, is to fire up its beams following the Xmas break in a week's time. Official spokesmen for international particle-punishing science alliance CERN have thus far remained cagey about the exact …

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  1. Chris Bradshaw
    Pint

    Hmmm

    'following the Xmas break in a week's time' - went a little heavy on the pre-Xmas partying there, Lewis?? ;-)

    1. Neoc

      Damn!

      Someone beat me to it!

    2. Bob Merkin
      Coat

      Normal verb tenses are inadequate

      No, don't you see? The disaster has already occurred! Will occur! Will have already occurred, but not yet!

      Some time next week they'll crank up the particle-punisher to such extreme levels that spacetime itself will be rent asunder. The distortion wave will travel in both directions through time, so we're already seeing it. Apparently one of the first effects is that December now occurs in February.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Thanks for the warning...

    I hope my tinfoil hat is back from the haberdasher's. Does hiding under a bed help? I'm just so far behind in my understanding of these invaders from another continuum, but if that's the common knowledge then it must be right.

    coat... I know, the extra long sleeves tie in the back

    1. Ian Stephenson
      Paris Hilton

      The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

      Only if it's a tinfoil bed.

      Now that gives me an idea....

  3. Disco-Legend-Zeke
    Boffin

    The Higgs Boson...

    ...is not likely to exist.

    There seems to be this notion that gravity is a force, and thus needs a boson of some sort to propigate.

    Gravity is NOT a force, it is a distortion in spacetime caused by matter. If we want a better understanding, we should be looking at the nature and constituancy of spacetime.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Awesome

      Ahh... armchair physics. Isn't it amazing how far it's advanced us? And so much easier to grasp than real physics and, you know, doing something yourself...

      1. Disco-Legend-Zeke
        Pint

        The Higgs Field...

        ...pervades the universe, and is more or less just a way of saying spacetime.

        http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/science/higgs-en.html

        At the Big Bang, there was not enough room for even photons to exist in the free state.

        "[Higgs, et al] suggested that all particles had no mass just after the Big Bang. As the Universe cooled and the temperature fell below a critical value, an invisible force field called the ‘Higgs field’ was formed"

        At the critical point, some photons escaped, and I postulate that photons created timespace.

        Timespace is moving in every direction at once at C, the so called speed of light. Photons merely attach themselves to time, much like a rider on a streetcar. This is why we say that photons do not experience time. (And why time slows as you move through space.)

        OK... if you are with me so far, let's jump back a bit, there is nothing in the Universe except photons. In the Big Firecracker, all the photons in the universe existed in what i call the "Packed" state, but immediately began to attempt to expand into normal photons. As the universe expanded, there was more freedom of movement, and the photons were able to interact with each other in patterns which were persistant. EVERYTHING is built from these dancing photons. In future lines of research, we should be able to determine these patterns. We might find, for example, that the difference between an up quark and a down quark is merely the polarization of one of it's constituant electrons.

        But wait, there's more! Let's go back to our single photon, it attaches to time space and moves at C. But now let's consider a proton, it has many many photons, each attempting to attach to timespace, but unable to move with it because it is bound to all the other photons in its "matter dance." So instead, timespace flows into it.

        So a very tiny portion of timespace is now attempting to attach to our proton and is slowed by it. Now scale this up a bit to the size of your hand. Now sufficient timespace is being attracted to be discernable. Move your hand to the left, and a portion of timespace moves left with it, wave it back and forth, and you can feel timespace resisting the changes. Now scale this up to planet Earth, and the amount of timespace flowing into to it becomes so great that your hand, along with the rest of your body, in attempting to attach to timespace is dragged toward the center.

        Ordinary photons passing near the edge of your fingernail appear to be bent because the matter in your fingernail is warping spacetime. Go ahead, read this text with a fingernail, pencil, or whatever matter is at hand, look closely at the edge, and you will see this for yourself!

        Source: Zeke's Yin-Yang Model of the Universe.

        Pint (yes it's 211) because the Universe made me do it.

        1. Keith Oldham

          Re : The Higgs Field..

          Look forward to reading the paper in a peer-reviewed journal.

          I'm afraid the Register doesn''t count

    2. Keith Oldham

      Re : The Higgs Boson...

      What's the Higgs Boson got to do with gravity (directly) ???

      The Higgs Boson is not the boson of gravity - the Higgs field ( and so by quantum mechanics has an equ. particle) is supposed to give particles mass

      Their mass distorts spacetime.

    3. Jimmahh
      Coat

      Fair enough

      Now pop off and do some experiments to prove/disprove your theory (one somewhat easier than the other in general)

      The other lot have got a bit of head start, but I'm sure you can catch up if you apply yourself =)

  4. Dave 32
    Coat

    Our new overlords

    I, for one, welcome our new sub-subatomic, ultra-briefly-existing phenomena overlor...Oh, darn, they're gone already.

    Dave

    P.S. Mine's the one with the pocket full of subatomic particles...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      You only think you saw them.

      ' P.S. Mine's the one with the pocket full of subatomic particles '

      Indeed, if you gather some, you might still have enough for a joint.

  5. Alien Doctor 1.1
    Coat

    If...

    the resonance cascade scenario happens I hope they have enough crowbars lying around.

    Mines the HEV mark 4 that can carry ten large and heavy weapons.

    1. Thomas 4
      Boffin

      I see you a HEV...

      ...and raise you two pocket sized LHCs in blue and orange flavours with a side order of cake.

      1. Ian Stephenson
        Flame

        The cake..

        ... is a lie!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Coat

        HEV?

        I want a serious FYT suit, not a dinky little HEV. And a quantum crowbar (dunno what it is but it's gotta be good). And some popcorn, for afterwards.

  6. Neil Paterson

    Proof...

    ...it leaks!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Coincident research

    Wonder if we can get a model of the NCC1701 to levitate in the path of the beam to prove or disprove the spoilsport professor's assertion that travel at relativistic speeds is impossible?

  8. dave 93
    Thumb Up

    Watch it happen in real time

    http://www.lhcportal.com/

    Dig around. It looks impressive, but it makes you feel stupid ;-)

  9. heyrick Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Howard the Duck

    That's all I need to say...

  10. Mr Young
    Coat

    I do like the look of this machine!

    And I'll be even more impressed when they analyse particles a plenty and some more. Actually - that might be boring - portal thingy accident would be a new one:-

    Ooooooops......it's a drooling psycho lizard alien thing - it just walked through the portal! aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh,...It's biting me! Switch it off! Now!

    My coat - who stole my tinfoil?

  11. Chris Hainey
    Coffee/keyboard

    2nd paragraph...

    Lewis, you owe me a keyboard

    2010 Proton billiards indeed.

  12. USA IT, where it all started
    Happy

    Big SI prefix, Tiny total energy

    “The LHC is designed to go still further to a blistering 14 TeV...”

    Big woop. My .40 cal S&W generates 4.23 Zetta Electron Volts (4.23 10^23, or 4.23 Giga-Terra EV) impacts (155grain, 1205ft/sec=500ft-lbs).

    Fact is, the LHC is a very cool, very sophisticated instrument, that may just give us some insight into the fundamental nature of the universe. But the energies it deals with are less than terrifying. So, fire it up!

    PS – before someone points out the energy density, I know. The LHC puts that tiny amount of energy into an Ultra Tiny spot, resulting in extremely high energy density. Still, if by some strange chance the kooks have it right and the LHC opens a portal, I, for one, welcome the marauding hoards of Xen. After all, who wouldn't want to play a live fire version of Half-Life?

    1. Colin_L
      Grenade

      errm, no.

      It's not the density. It is in fact the total energy. There's 7 TeV per proton and something like a quadrillion of them in the beam. (That's 10^11, right?)

      Fortunately they've already done some cute calculations here and your .40 S&W doesn't quite compare: http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/beam.htm

      Personally, I favor the .45 ACP anyway. ;)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Grenade

        We don't need no stinkin' title

        .45 ACP is old hat. Try the .45 GAP, you get more rounds for the same magazine space.

  13. GumboKing
    Paris Hilton

    Snicker, snicker

    Everytime I see an article about the LHC, I still see it as Large Hardon Collider.

    Paris, natch.

  14. Adrian Esdaile
    Happy

    You may fire when ready.

    Hopefully the chap running the LHC dresses in natty grey suits with little coloured badges, just like Grand Moff Tarkin.

    "You will now witness the power of this FULLY OPERATIONAL supercollider!"

  15. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Pint

    re: USA IT, where it all started

    "After all, who wouldn't want to play a live fire version of Half-Life?"

    Judging by some of the folks I've worked with over the years, getting a head crab on them and them to go around saying "uuuurghhhhhhhhhh" afterwards would be a distinct improvement.

    Still, I wonder how long it would take for earth to be destroyed after they've created a black hole/strangelet/lowered the vacuum energy level/ripped a hole in space time (delete as applicable/paranoia level allows)

    Beer... because I want to toast the end of the world

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    CLEOPATRA IS STILL DYING I

    The problem with the events that will take place at CERN is self-evident. CERN ignores 50 years of evolution of complexity and analysis of far from equilibrium systems as a quark-gluon soup is; the duality of arrows of time (energy and information) and Fractal Relativity, the theory of masses as accelerated vortices of space-time, according to Einstein’s principle of equivalence between gravitational entities and acceleration; so it cannot predict what will happen at the LHC, with its theories based in a single arrow of time (quantum entropy), a false theory of mass (Higgs) and a lineal, monist analysis of a quark-gluon soup either as a expansive plasma (a hot radiation) or a super-fluid liquid (a vortex of informatie mass); but not both at the same time, which is what Duality and Complexity does, since all processes of creation of physical form (big crunches) are accompanied with processes of expansion of energetic radiation (big-bangs)

    What will happen at CERN is a mystery for CERN’s physicists but easy to understand and predict using complexity and duality, the sciences founded at the death of Einstein in the Macy's congress to create a model of the Universe with information. Those sciences study systems far for equilibrium as those which take place in organic liquids, like the quark-gluon soup; whose far from equilibrium form was clearly shown at RHIC.

    The incapacity to describe what happened at RHIC, a perfect surprise, and what happened in December, with more ‘unexpected’ strange particles that predicted, shows that Physicists at CERN (13% more kaons and pions, the bricks of strange liquid) ignore far from equilibrium processes that create both a big-bang radiation and a big-crunch of masses.

    CERN did many more Kaons, the first bricks of strangelet liquid than predicted, because it was not an entropy-only, lineal, expanding plasma as CERN thought, but a dual system with an expansive big-bang of radiation and an inner region of big-crunch of quarks at minimal temperature. Wagner already predicted in 1999 that strangelet liquid would be easy to form, and abstract quantum entropy theorists said it wouldn't. 'It was a perfect surprise' announced RHIC - not for the Complexity theorists, who understand both, the laws of physics and biology at work in far from equilibrium liquids as quark-gluon soups are. That CERN and RHIC have not yet applied the laws of far from equilibrium systems to describe the quark-gluon soup shows how dogmatic those institutions are. For the reader, not versed in mathematical equations of far from equilibrium systems is easier to grasp what will happen in the quark gluon soup by comparing that soup with the organic soup that evolved life particles, which can be treated as a self-similar evolving liquid of particles of information, which is what masses are.

    In that regard, the scenario that CERN and RHIC scientists don’t understand but we do, has 3 phases in which physical vortices of mass, informative particles, quarks will evolve till creating a stable strangelet that will kill us:

    1) The first step on strangelet creation is the creation of the kaons, which are us ds particles/antiparticles systems. They are the aminoacids of the strangelet liquid. Because a particle is the arrow of information and life of a physical vortex of form, a mass, and its antiparticle is the anticlockwise, unwinding, expansive, energetic death of the particle, Kaons are not ‘2 particles’ in space, but 1 particle evolving ad devolving in time. Due to the perception of an entire life-death cycle of a particle, which is very fast, with ‘slow motion’ systems of perception, physicist often commit the error of ordering as spatial events, time events, and so they see 2 particles instead of seeing a particle evolving and dying. What this means is that kaons are unstable and won’t have enough time to fall to the Earth before they decay in antiparticles. And yet they live much longer than the abstract calculations of quantum theorists predicted.

    Physicists said: 'it was as if Cleopatra refused to die of an aspid bite and was still falling from her barge’. Those kaons are thus similar to the first aminoacids of the organic soup. But with more energy they will evolve into more complex particles, as all systems far from equilibrium and organic soups do. Oparin needed to give aminoacids more energy to form more complex shapes and then they became stable, lineal proteins and RNA

    (COnt)

  17. luis sancho

    CLEOPATRA IS STILL DYING (II)

    2) But a strange liquid requires a lot of usd quarks. It is also more stable than predicted? Yes indeed. And its stability also surprised physicists. It was the 2nd warning to mankind of the organic universe. At RHIC physicists made a strange liquid. It was not a gas, which was what the lineal equations of the 'ancient' physicists of the past millennium, using lineal equations have expected. Instead they found a cyclical, far from equilibrium system, a liquid mass-vortex superfluid of quarks and gluons, perfectly ordered. 'It should have behaved like a gas, hopefully with more energy it will behave rightly' said somewhat 'sanguine' reported scientific American, the ancient physicists, clueless of what was happening, unable to model it with their simplistic lineal equations, the kind of obsolete equations Higgs, Hawking and Ellis use NOT to understand mass. Yet the non-lineal liquid lived billions of time more than expected. This is due almost certainly because it was a perfect organic liquid, of gluons and kaons interacting, through Rossler and Lorenz attractors that formed among the gluons and quarks, shaping a series of biperpendicular 'vortices of quark mass' It is very likely that those vortices are the natural form of up and top quarks, which have 2/3rds of charges; and while we cannot see in detail inside the quark-gluon soup, Nature showed its resilience and we can expect further degrees of stability as 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional attractors form.

    Finally, within that liquid 3 quarks with 1/3rd of charge will form color-locked perpendicular 3-dimensional charges. Fortunately it seems that so far in December, most strange particles were unstable particle->antiparticle systems.

    3) Yet at 3.5 Tev this might change radically as we will be already in the range of energy in which relativistic mass increases the weigh of the proton quarks, transforming some of them into strange quarks, hence creating before collision within the proton, uds particles, called Hyperons. And in the point of collision 2 of those Hyperons can merge into a dual Dybarion, stable particle. Thus at 3.5 Tev, unlike in previous collisions in which the process of evolution of particles happened only in the colliding point, making the formation of stable Dybarions, the atoms of strange liquid, almost impossible, it might happen that CERN already produce enough stable dybarions to start the creation of strangelets in the center of the Earth. In millions of proton to proton collisions, usd hyperons might become entangled with a pair and form a dybarion and fall to the Earth. Those occurrences which CERN says it will treat as a mere background in his search for God's particle, the 10 billion $ hoax used to build the quark, might be undetected but as dybarions fall to the Earth; we are already within the range of a probable irreversible catastrophe.

    Indeed, c-speed is the limit of lineal acceleration, thus by the Principle of equivalence between forces and accelerations, in Newtonian simple terminology F= m (cyclical vortex of physical information) x a (lineal acceleration with c-limit), when c-limit is reached energy is curled into mass. So as CERN ramps up energies to 3.5 tev, more c-energy becomes a bidimensional vortex of mass, a quark, and more strange quarks will be formed before collision. Then in the point of collision dybarions might appear.

    All this process will be even more dangerous when CERN collides lead, because each lead has hundreds of quarks, so in the point of collision there will be already a tiny drop of strange liquid formed. And yet again, CERN and RHIC don’t understand that because they treat the quark-gluon liquid and plasma they formed as either liquid or plasma and argue about what they saw from a monist perspective. Instead we need to fully grasp the duality of big-crunch and big-bangs created by a far from equilibrium system, based in a feed-back cycle, e xi =k .Such dual system going out of equilibrium fluctuates between two limits of energy and form, infinite temperature (e) in the external, expansive big-bang zone; and 0 k perfect fluid order, in the zone of formation of strangelets.

    As any system far from equilibrium, the big-bang energy will expel the pions and electrons away, into radiation, cooling down the center to near 0k temperatures of super-fluidity, needed to form strangelets. So CERN will do an even more perfect liquid not a gas at higher temperatures, because the energy will be radiating outwards and in the center a super-vortex of strong forces at light speed will be formed, a microcosmic quark star that will finally reach enough mass to become stable and fall to the center of the earth. Now, this again is a simple calculus in fractal relativity: in essence, a bidimensional quark condensate is 100 times stronger than a super fluid vortex of atoms, but a million times faster, because a quark is bidmensional, so we need to do a cubic power law to consider how 3 color-locked quarks will rotate: 100 up to 3 times is one million times stronger; as information grows geometrically. Thus if a superfluid vortex of electroweak forces, or Einstein-Bose condensate, as those made at Haifa, runs at sound speed, a super fluid quark vortex will run: sound speed x 1 million = light speed. Thus a superfluid vortex of quarks, as those CERN will do will turn at light speed, and it will create a pulsar, a quark black hole that will crunch the earth, inside out once it falls to its center

    3) If we use instead of abstract numbers the organic paradigm the final phases are the assembly of the 'aminoacids' of the strangelet liquid: kaons (aminoacids) -> hyperons (RNA lineal strains) -> Dybarions (dual strains), which are stable and self-reproductive, feed-back particles, as all dual energy/information systems are(informative, cyclical women and lineal, energetic males, dual DNA, etc.). What this means is that dybarions are the responsible for an ice-9 reaction, as the usd/usd strains will break, attract new usd particles and start a replicant process, self-similar to that of DNA in life forms.

    Thus we shall all become dybarions, as dybarions will be certainly created in the organic quark-gluon soup and fall to the earth, eating up quarks once they get tree. While the remaining electronic and pion cover of the planet, us, will explode outwards in the big-bang of earth’s supernova. This is what physical, dual systems in far from equilibrium systems tell us it will happen: The center of the earth will become colder and rotate faster in a perfect order till reaching near light speed angular velocity and the external cover will radiate outwards at trillions of degrees into a supernova.

    1. Alien Doctor 1.1

      I see...

      Hubbard is still alive and writing Operating Thetan level texts.

    2. Ihre Papiere Bitte!!
      Coat

      Wow.

      That is either:

      A: incredbibly profound, well-researched and so deeply complex that I don't understand a word of it.

      B: copy & pasted from somewhere else

      C: AManFromMars' alter-ego.

      I can't decide - I gave up completely at quacky-glucose soup, which sounds like something I'd get at a Chinese takeaway...

      1. Gordon is not a Moron

        Ihre - it's definately not C

        there is 'proof' from the martian one that he and luis are not related

        http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2009/12/09/lhc_2_tev_collisions/

        bottom(ish) of page 2

    3. jonathan keith
      Alert

      Dude, you dropped your tinfoil balaclava

      No more anonymous coward, eh, Luis?

      I didn't read very much of your lengthy posts, but I did get the distinct impression that you're not a big fan of the LHC and the obviously intellectually-deficient fools who work there, right?

    4. Gordon is not a Moron

      Nurse!!!

      He's out of bed again!

      A\C 'cause I'm luis sancho

    5. Disco-Legend-Zeke
      Pint

      Where Can I Get...

      ...some of what he's having.

    6. Mr Young
      WTF?

      Ooh Dear Luis Sancho

      Have you ever tried relaxing? Maybe lie down and shut your eyes, have a sleep? Why not buy a lottery ticket like all the other monkeys? You've got more chance with that than man destroying the whole planet. Take a pill you goon

  18. Winkypop Silver badge
    Coat

    Maybe God will pop out

    <<<<POP>>>>

    God appears, stting on the kharzi reading a copy of the Torah.

    Oi, some privacy, pleaeeeeeese !!

  19. Mr Larrington
    FAIL

    Do wot?

    If Osama bin Laden had a nuclear device, he wouldn't be selling it to some berk with a hang-up about Big SCIENCE, he'd be arranging for someone to deliver it through President Obambi's sitting-room window.

  20. spiritual_watcher
    Stop

    STOP CERN AT ALL COSTS

    Whoever wrote this ugly article -- Lewis Page or someone else, you are a hypocrite. Rolf Heuer will be cursed by mankind in any case, because the LHC experiment is evil in the same way as atomic bombs. And you also deserve punishment from evil spirits. I clearly see that your karma is bad, because you ridicule honest men which are trying to do all the best to oppose evil deeds of crazy scientists of CERN, and you use insulting sarcasm when there's a serious real-world dangerous question with the highest possible stakes.

    1. jonathan keith
      Headmaster

      3/10. See me.

      A valiant try, but this was disappointingly deficient.

      FAR too little in the way of overused caps lock. At least ten words in your text should have been capitalised that weren't, although you did well with the title.

      Although you do score points for poor sentence construction, comprehension levels are still far too high throughout, although by the end you do begin to redeem yourself.

      "And you also deserve punishment from evil spirits" did win you a red tick in the paper's margin, though.

      I expect better next time.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Now step over here

      ..that's right...on the big 'X'....ok, now just stand there while I press this switch...

      ...and the gene pool is safe once again.

      Flames...because I'm going to hell. Apparently.

  21. Tony Barnes

    Cowards

    Turn it up to 11 and get some damn results

    Nice link re:- energy in the beam. Makes you think that they need to connect the dots on to how to make it into some sort of weapons.

    Perhaps a rail-gun style mod...??

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    LHC

    I can tell you that it is going to work because I come from the future as a result of the experiments there...

  23. Sam Therapy
    Coat

    Yes, it did fire up next week

    We were all killed then recreated and now live in an alternate bubble universe but it's impossible to tell from the original, in the same way that an mp3 is indistinguishable from the original recording... erm...

    Mine's the one with the SACD in the pocket.

  24. Gordon is not a Moron
    Grenade

    So Luis, serious question (honest)

    excatly when did the LHC stop being a 'quark cannon' and turn into an 'organic universe creating machine'? 'cause if that happened over the Christmas break then those boys have been damn busy.

  25. Ian Stephenson
    Go

    Doomsayers consider this...

    The age of the universe is currently estimated at 13.5 to 14 billion years old.

    Life on Earth began 3.8 billion years ago.

    From this I can see two possibilities.

    1) We are the first life form to reach this level of technology in the entire universe and are about to destroy it (and are probably the only intelligent life in a possibly infinite universe).

    -or-

    2) There have been other machines like the LHC created elsewhere in the universe sometime in the past 13.5 billion years + and the universe has managed to come through unscathed and will probably manage to survive this one too.

    I don't know about you but I'm not conceited enough to consider humanity to be the first at anything.

  26. Mos Eisley Spaceport
    FAIL

    @ luis sancho

    Hi,

    How's Exidor these days?

  27. Blue eyed boy
    Coat

    @Doomsayers consider this

    All other civilisations who came up with their own home-grown LHC's have already been (thereby and ipso facto) wiped out . WE ARE THE LAST NOT THE FIRST. Once ours has been up and running at full whack for the few femtoseconds it takes to do its thing,, that will be the end of life in the universe.

    Mine is the last one there. And yes I'll remember to switch off the lights.

  28. Sam Therapy
    Thumb Down

    @ spiritual_watcher

    FFS boil yer head.

  29. Physicist

    ALUMINUM - NOT TIN

    Hey Lewis Page:

    We replaced kitchen rolls of tin-foil (for covering turkeys while in the oven, covering casserole dishes, or just making hats, etc.) with aluminum back in the 1940s. Turns out tin is expensive, aluminum is cheap. I know, I know, it's still nice and shiny and looks like tin-foil, but Lewis, it's not - really. It's aluminum-foil. Most people alive today have never seen a roll of tin-foil. I did once, in 1970 - it looked just like aluminum foil, on a cardboard roll in a long rectangular box with a serrated cutting edge - but it was a museum piece, very rare.

    The rest of your idiotic rantings are just as up-to-date as your tin-foil rants.

    So, the question is, are you truly evil as suggested by others, or merely the world's biggest bozo?

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