Re: Boot Note
"Readers should note, disappointingly perhaps, that dimensional portals which could be opened by the LHC would be so tiny ... "
So I need a really *small* crowbar then?
Boffins hope for dimensional portal event at LHC by 2013!
Top boffins at international science alliance CERN have decided to postpone a planned upgrade and keep the Large Hadron Collider - arse-kickingest particle-punisher and largest machine of any kind built by the human race - running at current power levels to the end of 2012. This decision has been made because scientists believe …
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 13:09 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
Oh yeah...
There was this guy Maxwell who lived in a cave...
He was a wizard who kept a pet daemon who blocked all of the fast moving particles from entering the cave in the summer and then kept the fast moving particles in during the winter so to keep the cave warm.
So you've got to wonder.... where did Maxwell get such a small daemon?
If he could open a portal way back when... what makes you think one of his little daemons wouldn't pop through now?
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Wednesday 2nd February 2011 10:37 GMT MinionZero
@Maxwell and Harry Potter
@Ian Michael Gumby: "You're mixing stories... Maxwell and Harry Potter don't mix."
Just as well I wasn't referring to Harry Potter then. :)
FYI, the demon working at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence, is Hellboy.
By the way, Hellboy likes cats (not to eat, but as pets). (I have no idea what he thinks about Penguins, but we don't have a cat icon).
Meanwhile, the pet daemon you refer to is Maxwell's demon, a thought experiment to discuss from a statistical point of view, the nature of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Incidentally, Hellboy is fireproof, which is an ideal quality to have if he wanted to work for Maxwell as his demon.
So there you go, there is some logic lurking behind my insanity. :)
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Thursday 3rd February 2011 09:47 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
@MinionZero
You are correct, I stand corrected.
You truly are a twisted nerd who needs to get a life.
But who am I to talk?
I'm the guy wearing the MIT Hillel's T-Shirt w Maxwell's Equation printed on the front with the added line '... and there was light'.
(Ok I haven't worn it for years and I wonder if they still print it.)
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 14:28 GMT tumbleworld
Delicate times
I believe CERN's finances exist in vast numbers. _Vast_.
They can afford to employ one measley portal scientist skilled in xenomartial guerilla warfare. I'd go so far as to say it's a duty. If he just so happens to be a slim, dark-haired chap with close-cropped hair, glasses and a goatee, so much the better. I think we'd all sleep better at night.
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 13:10 GMT Big_Boomer
We are all DOOOMED!!
When the LHC finally exposes the Higgs Boson Sparticle for all to see the universe will cease to exist. Since we live in a universe that is based on observer interactions, finding the final particle will complete the human experiment which will subsequently be turned off.
That isn't to say that it won't be run again to see if the results are the same, after all repeatability is a requirement of any good experiment.
Next time around I plan to be Giant Tortoise.
Sod the coat,.... where are my pills?
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 13:22 GMT envmod
you may laugh
at the idea of interdimensional beings squeezing their way into our plane through any tiny portals created by CERN, but I have yet to see definitive proof that this will absolutely not happen. I mean, these being might just be waiting on "the other side" for us to create a portal that they can then commandeer and control with their advanced 10th dimension portal stabiliser.
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 13:22 GMT oldredlion
a boffins promise is worth?
Portals... what a lot of nonsense. Science keeps promising but never delivers.
Michael Rudd (or maybe Judith Hahn) promised us jet packs back in the 70s... and where are they? Hmmm? no where, that's where.
Sticking wings onto a car is not a jet pack. I want my jet pack!
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 13:53 GMT Pete 2
The easiest business case in the world
Boffin: "We've got to keep the LHC running for another year - that way we'll open an interdimensional portal and we will be able to communicate with the future"
Bean counter: "How can you be sure"
Boffin; "Simple, I got am email from myself, dated 2013 telling me how to do it"
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 14:17 GMT amanfromMars 1
You cannot stop the Inevitable
"...that they would be unsuitable for any kind of interdimensional invasion and/or travel by humans, parallel-universe Nazis or Romans, dinosaurs, dark nega-deities from the Nth dimension etc." .... Lewis Page
Hmmm? Are you a betting man, Lewis? Do you wanna bet against some kind of interdimensional invasion and/or alien infestation and/or virulent infraction or virile program infection and lose some shekels?
Love the vocabulary in the report, by the way ....... very dynamically florid. And quite a transparent challenge for any non native speaker, although please do not ask ..."a native from where", in case the natives of where are asked to make perfect sense of the tale and fail miserably, which would then suggest that one is a plant from elsewhere. :-)
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 20:53 GMT Cameron Colley
RE: Largest machine ever created?
So, what is "... the international phone and data system ..."? Does it just include the bits hardwired together, or bits that are in communication, or bits that are usually in communication? Does Egypt's telecoms structure count? Do the various probes out there in the Solar System?
You may have a point but I think what you describe is a network of interconnected machines.
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 15:12 GMT Jeff Wojciechowski
Bye Bye Fermilab
For those of us stateside I would like to point out that I took a behind the scenes your of Fermilab in Batavia, IL yesterday and it was absolutely incredible!!! From the coax cables they used when wiring the place that they got with one end melted off from nuclear testing (if its free, who cares if you have to reterminate one end right?) to the amazing equipment to the openness of the place (you can go pretty much any place that doesn't require special training to access) it is an engineering marvel to behold that will be shutting down in September. Check their website for tour details. Thanks to Todd who showed me around yesterday!!
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Tuesday 1st February 2011 20:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hmmmm.....
I love the rather blithe "if we open this dimensional gate, something might come out"
What might come out? A burst of intense gamma radiation that will sterilize Switzerland? A mountain of previously lost but freshly laundered socks? 100,000 gallons of banana Slurpee?
I'm not so sure that we should be doing this without a plan to contain whatever might arrive from the other dimension.
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Wednesday 2nd February 2011 13:29 GMT Inachu
Ahhhhh!
So just maybe this CERN LHC was the reason the guy who went under his kitchen sink and somehow went into the future to meet his future self and took a video of it.
But in his video he did not explain how he got back. By going under the sink again?
This guy needs another interview and I suspect traveling waves from the LHC were the cause of his time travel if indeed was real.(which is highly suspect)
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Wednesday 2nd February 2011 13:29 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Rage!!
"Dr Bertolucci has previously briefed the Reg on the intriguing theory of supersymmetry, which suggests that space-time actually has up to ten dimensions rather than the humdrum four we can normally perceive."
El Reg should then pay attention to what was being said in that probably well-wined lecture.
Supersymmetry has nothing to do with "extra dimensions", hidden or not. You need group theory mainly and the iron will to eliminate infinities in your equations.
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Thursday 3rd February 2011 01:46 GMT Michael Dunn
Infinities
Yes, I've often wondered about this.
When I was a boy I read a couple of books with titles on the lines of "Relativity for T C Mits" (T C Mits being The Celebrated Man in the Street). These books laid out the development of Einstein's Special and General Theories. They introduced a modicum of tensor analysis geared to the understanding of a 14 year old.
One of the things I always found dubious was their glib references to massaging the equations so as to eliminate the infinities. Now to my immature mind at the time, this always smelt of cooking the books, and I naively thought that Scientists did not fudge facts to fit theories. If there were awkward infinities in the equations then surely these equations represented some phenomena which included infinite quantities.
Messing with the Maths to get rid of these infinities was surely moulding our understanding of the physical phenomena to fit some pre-conceived comfortable "comfort food" for the limited human understanding.
Now the subject has cropped up again. If the equations contain infinities, then it's because the phenomena described by the equations have infinite values somewhere hiding in them, or division by zero, which as any first year comp sci student will tell you, is forbidden by convention only, not necessarily by "truth".
Sorry, I'm a bear of very little brain.
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Friday 4th February 2011 14:05 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Because Nature doesn't work with equations but equations model it...
There do not seem to be "actual infinities" cropping up in real life, so the idea to smell the brimstone when your equation breaks down is a good one. E.g. in General Relativity, you have infinities at Black Hole centers. But this is most probably unphysical - in real life "in the small, and at extreme curvature", spacetime may undergo state transitions so that the equations of GR are no longer applicable at all and you have to switch to something else. Take a look at Chemistry where some equations are applicable "generally", but once things heat up and get too energetic, you better invent new math to describe what happens.
Wilzek on SUSY is here:
http://video.ias.edu/stream&ref=409
Very nice.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
