Has The Large Hadron Collider Destroyed The World Yet?

[Alias1407]

Well has it???

http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet. com/


Also look through the source code ;)

[jrusso2]

Looks like it mostly has destroyed itself after a massive repair it appears the problems are pretty extensive.

[Chronon]

It seems they might be up and running again soon.

* Sector 12 powering tests ongoing. Phase II is foreseen for the long w-e.
* After the repair of the weak cable insulation in sector 67, the sector was electrically and vacuum validated and the cool-down started on Thursday 3. This is the last sector to be cooled down.

[Mateo]

what a let down. if this is the best we can do, it's sad. takes decades to make the thing, then it breaks and it'll take years to repair it.

[Chronon]

Hey, things happen in real life and finely tuned instruments are often not the most robust. Where do you get the estimate of "years" from? The update on the website makes it sound like repairs are close to being finished, though admittedly I haven't kept up on this at all.

[Mateo]

Hey, things happen in real life and finely tuned instruments are often not the most robust. Where do you get the estimate of "years" from? The update on the website makes it sound like repairs are close to being finished, though admittedly I haven't kept up on this at all.

it's already been down for a year. it went up about a year ago, worked for like a week, then broke.

it's just frustrating living in an age when big scientific breakthroughs take so long to achieve.

[starcannon]

Nm
That latest news page is not very late.

[jrusso2]

http://animalnewyork.com/2009/08/broken-collider-wont-end-world-yet/

The Large Hadron Collider, the crazy complex $9 billion machine that doomsday prophesiers claim will create world-ending mini-black holes, doesn’t work. Although the particle accelerator was switched on last September in a grand display, it hasn’t collided any particles yet thanks to “thousands of bad electrical connections.” Scientists at CERN expect the machine will start running this winter, but warn “it could be years, if ever, before the collider runs at full strength,” pushing back their hopes of discovering the so-called “God particle.” |NYT|

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17566-large-hadron-collider-to-restart-at-half-its-designed-energy.html

[Chronon]

it's already been down for a year. it went up about a year ago, worked for like a week, then broke.

it's just frustrating living in an age when big scientific breakthroughs take so long to achieve.

I hear you. I think the scaling is not in the favor of high energy physics to get a lot of breakthroughs in the near future. There is no guarantee that anything interesting will happen at this energy scale. It more or less provides a lower bound on the energy that people think some interesting stuff may occur at. Of course, there's always the possibility of seeing something totally unexpected. High energy experiments have to keep using exponentially higher energies in order to look for new physics, so ultimately there's a limit to how high we can go with the limited resources on Earth.

I think nanotechnology shows a lot more promise and has much more modest energy requirements. I can see biophysics kind of merging with nanotechnology since life (or at least biological processes) can be thought of as essentially a form of organic nanotechnology.

[Chronon]

http://animalnewyork.com/2009/08/broken-collider-wont-end-world-yet/

The Large Hadron Collider, the crazy complex $9 billion machine that doomsday prophesiers claim will create world-ending mini-black holes, doesn’t work. Although the particle accelerator was switched on last September in a grand display, it hasn’t collided any particles yet thanks to “thousands of bad electrical connections.” Scientists at CERN expect the machine will start running this winter, but warn “it could be years, if ever, before the collider runs at full strength,” pushing back their hopes of discovering the so-called “God particle.” |NYT|

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17566-large-hadron-collider-to-restart-at-half-its-designed-energy.html

Thanks for the info. The second article says that it could start up this November at half power (about 7 TeV). That's still an unprobed energy range and a factor of two is really not that significant in high energy physics. I have doubts that new physics will be discovered at this energy scale anyway, factor of 2 or no.

[JDShu]

My roommate misread the word "Hadron" as something Freudian when he first saw me reading about it...

[cammin]

You guys don't remember it destroying the universe?

All that work fixing everything, and nobody's going to believe any of it.

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson from the last time something like this happened. (no use explaining, you don't remember that one either.)


Next time it happens, you're on your own.

[Frak]

if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
document.write("YUP.");
} else {
document.write("NOPE.");
}


BEST JAVASCRIPT EVA.

[MythAaron]

Isn't the web great? There is even a site that will tell you if the world is still here. :D

[matthew.ball]

it's just frustrating living in an age when big scientific breakthroughs take so long to achieve.
Sorry great Scientific guru, please lend me some of that wisdom.

In other news, the field of Science has become so behemoth you just aren't noticing the breakthroughs.

Just something from my university which has become news today:
http://photonics.anu.edu.au/qoptics/ALE/Research/fiao.html

I think that's kinda of cool and could be seen as a breakthrough?

[markbuntu]

Those whacky scientists, always reinventing the wheel. I have worked with quite a few scientific researchers as an engineer in high voltage/high energy experiments and they seem to be incapable of accepting tried and true best practices that aim to prevent things like short circuits and current overloads which can be very costly, time consuming and extremely dangerous at vey high voltages and currents like those at the hadron collider.

They always want to try their new stupid ideas that have little to do with forwarding the larger goal but put the entire experiment in great danger of catastophic failure.

Seems like they were at it again....lol!

[Mateo]

Sorry great Scientific guru, please lend me some of that wisdom.

In other news, the field of Science has become so behemoth you just aren't noticing the breakthroughs.

Just something from my university which has become news today:
http://photonics.anu.edu.au/qoptics/ALE/Research/fiao.html

I think that's kinda of cool and could be seen as a breakthrough?

boring, i want inventions that can live up to the invention of film, the light bulb, the car. Give me robots that do my housework or give me teleportation.

[BuffaloX]

The most annoying thing about modern science, is that you actually have to concentrate a lot, just to try to understand what they are talking about.

If you really want to understand modern science, you need to study.

Who needs that? :P

[MasterNetra]

Nope, and on a side note, the fact they can't get it a atom to travel faster then light means little, I mean come on your in a strong gravitational field! Doesn't matter if your suspending it magnetically, gravity is still exerting influence. It needs to be built way out into space. You would think a bunch of smart people would of considered that.

[subdivision]

The most annoying thing about modern science, is that you actually have to concentrate a lot, just to try to understand what they are talking about.

If you really want to understand modern science, you need to study.

Who needs that? :P

Who has the time? I'd rather just read the wikipedia page. ;)