Large Hadron Collider goes offline to make room for its enhanced successor

The end has come for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but it’s not being turned off for fear of the world being sucked into some sort of cosmic anomaly - it’s getting a major upgrade. Physicists at CERN are still bidding goodbye to the LHC, per a Monday announcement from the lab, but this is very much a “the king is dead, …

[Anonymous Coward]

And sadly we're still not likely to see any new physics.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

You've got a Standard Model, what more do you want ?

[that one in the corner]

I'd like to see the Standard Model fitted with the Fairchild Truss Flange: that was able to prevent Gravity's attempts to topple the factory chimney, Big Tom, so should be sufficient to tame the G-beast and wrestle it into the fold, alongside the quantum ducks*

* You know, the ones that go "quark quark"

[Paul Herber]

I like my quantum ducks a l'orange to give them colour and flavour.

[that one in the corner]

Do you manage to get the fork into them?

I can never manage when they have non-integer Spin: I have to wait until the Gluons have cooled down and the meat is firmly stuck to the plate (after which, as Feynman showed, the plate only wobbles half as fast as it all spins and is therefore easier to hold down on the table).

[Paul Herber]

You use a skua to keep the duck on the table. That makes the plate tern in the opposite direction

[Rich 2]

Apart from confirming the Higgs (which was predicted anyway) has the LHC actually produced any significant results? I’m sure it’s produced lots of tiny results - narrowing down some constants and stuff like that - but anything ground-breaking?

[FIA]

Apart from confirming the Higgs (which was predicted anyway)

I love the way that so nonchalantly dismisses what is probably many peoples entire careers.

[Paul Herber]

Welcome to academia/politics.

[Annihilator]

Pretty big misunderstanding of modern physics. There aren't really "Eureka" moments for physics now - it's far too complex now for a lone figure squirreling away. A lot of the LHC work has been in experimenting with supersymmetry and helping understand the parameters to how that might exist.

But you can google it if you like. Since the last upgrade alone, pentaquarks, tetraquarks, 79 new hadrons have been discovered, and the first quantum entanglement of quarks have been observed.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Consider it took 300 some years to get from Newton to Einstein and who knows how many centuries to get from Euclid to Gauss, Schweikart, et al, I'm not surprised.

Genius of that calibre (and the good fortune to be able to express it) doesn't come along all that often.

The rest of us plod along, trodding on the toes of giants.

[Spazturtle]

Those little results continue to challenge existing theories. If we find another particle above or at the same energy level as the Higgs boson then that will finally break the standard model.

We know that the standard model, general relativity, and quantum physics must be wrong since they are incompatible and don't explain the whole universe, yet we have not been able to disprove them yet.

[Paul Crawford]

High-Luminosity LHC, or HiLumi LHC

They missed the opportunity for Intense Luminosity Nature Interaction or 'ILumiNatI'

[An_Old_Dog]

Most-Important Tidbit

The article left out the most-important part: the revised collider will be repainted in bright-red, and will have a new chromium-plated logo designed, cast, plated, and affixed to the side of the machine.

[that one in the corner]

Re: Most-Important Tidbit

I hold out hope that the engineers* will quietly attach a smoke stack, ball regulator and a steam release valve onto ATLAS.

If only to see the look on Brian Cox's face when he fronts the live re-opening on TV, the curtains are drawn back and he gets to see all the latest additions for the first time.

* aka postgrads, fresh postdocs and other navvies

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Most-Important Tidbit

And a red go-faster line painted on the SPS.

[Paul Herber]

Re: Most-Important Tidbit

"red go-faster"

These two are mutually exclusive and will self-annihilate and take out the universe (again).

[Sproggit]

Re: Most-Important Tidbit

My vote would go to an upgrade to Linac4 - the Linear Accelerator that generates the negative hydrogen ions and injects them in to the PSB (Proton Synchotrom Booster), before they get to the PS (Proton Synchrotron) and SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron).

My proposal for Linac4 would be to give it decals so that it looked like the manual ball release for a very large pinball machine.

Obviously I'd also need to ask for additional budget for the PA system so that I could play "Pinball Wizard" by The Who each time a new set of samples were energized for testing...

[Paul Herber]

Enhanced eh? Maybe it is about to be renamed The Large Hardon Colluder!

[Doctor Syntax]

The Larger Hadron Collider?

[Jedit]

It's not the size of your hadron that matters, mate, it's how you collide it.

[Boris the Cockroach]

And the

magicians of the high energy magic department continued to probe the universe whether it liked it or not.

Pretty sure thats a pTerry quote... but cant remember from where

[Scotthva5]

Re: And the

As long as they don't accidentally split the thaum and release all that high energy magic...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

So no risk that ...

The LHC could accidentally flip us into a nightmare alternate universe?

(Again)

[RM Myers]

Re: So no risk that ...

With luck, maybe it will accidentally flip us into a none nightmare alternative universe!

[Paul Herber]

Re: So no risk that ...

A universe where there is no colour orange.

[lglethal]

Re: So no risk that ...

What did the Dutch ever do to you?

[Paul Herber]

Re: So no risk that ...

How low can you get?

<icon = Amstel Bier>

[that one in the corner]

Re: So no risk that ...

"WILLIAMANMARY for some reason was known as The Orange in their own country of Holland, and were popular as King of England because the people naturally believed it was descended from Nell Glyn. It was on the whole a good King and one of their first Acts was the Toleration Act, which said they would tolerate anything, though afterwards it went back on this and decided that they could not tolerate the Scots."

[SnailFerrous]

Re: So no risk that ...

Whst is this colour "orange" of which you speak?

[Paul Herber]

Re: So no risk that ...

Naranga.

[Col_Panek]

Re: So no risk that ...

The face of the Genius who thinks dark blue is the best color for a shallow pool, thus turning it into an Iranian flag bright green.

[Anonymous Coward]

Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows

To infinity and beyond!

[Neil Barnes]

the new one will be just as safe

But I wanted an earth-shattering kaboom!

/marvin

[Annihilator]

Re: the new one will be just as safe

Ooh this makes me very angry

[alain williams]

Chance of humanity ending

That will not be as a result of the LHC or even the HiLumi LHC but climate change. Something that most of our politicians are trying to pretend does not exist.

Trouble is that there are not many votes in "we need to spend a lot of money now to avoid disaster in 50 years time." Although given the heat last week 50 years might be too large an estimate. The other excuse is: why should we bother when bigger emitters are not doing anything ?

[bernmeister]

Re: Chance of humanity ending

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) uses roughly 0.65 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity annually, which accounts for about half of CERN's total yearly consumption. This is equivalent to the power needed to supply roughly 115,000 to 150,000 homes for an entire year" (Google).. So CERN total consumption is equivelent to powering 300,000 homes a year. That quite a lot.

[Sproggit]

Re: Chance of humanity ending

This is an apples-to-pears comparison, but for context - and courtesy of Wikipedia - the US Department of Defense apparently used 30 Terawatts as far back as 2006:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_States_military

The DoD also uses over 4.6 billion [US] gallons of fuel per year, or approximately 12.6 million US gallons *per day*.

Asked to predict which of these two entities (US DoD or CERN) is more likely to bring about the end of the world thanks to a calamitous miscalculation, um....

[Fruit and Nutcase]

No mention of AI

Though, were they to use AI, that may be the nearest thing to a black hole at the LHC with it's ability to gobble up tokens

[Fred Daggy]

Re: No mention of AI

They have students. Thousands and thousands of low paid, success starved, not yet quite cynical enough (but getting there) post-grad students.

They are cheaper and more expendable, and (another STP), haven't have education wasted on them yet.

Why would you waste money on AI?

[Jedit]

"If such phenomena were dangerous or destructive..."

Has someone pointed out to them that 99.9% of the universe is empty? You can't go around saying these ten billion billion experiments a second aren't destructive and dangerous when there's huge bloomin' holes all over the place and nobody was around to say how they got there!

[M7S]

Thinking deeply about this

Whilst someone/something has clearly come up with a design, are they worthy enough to properly compute its operational parameters?

We have to hope they’re realistic about what it can achieve. “Down to earth” if you want to explain it to a politician.

[Col_Panek]

Re: Thinking deeply about this

You explain things to a politician by showing how much money it nets him.

[MarkTheMorose]

Someone has to ask...

...can it run Crysis?