Posted on 03/31/2010 12:41:00 AM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Scientists celebrated at the world's biggest atom smasher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva on Tuesday as they started colliding particles at record energy levels mimicking conditions close to the Big Bang, opening a new era in the quest for the secrets of the universe.
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said it had unleashed the unprecedented bursts of energy on the third attempt, as beams of protons thrust around the 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) accelerator collided at close to the speed of light.
"This is physics in the making, the beginning of a new era, we have collisions at 7 TeV (teralectronvolts)," said Paola Catapano, a CERN scientist and spokeswoman, referring to the record energy levels achieved.
This, the third attempt, triggered collisions among the 20 billion protons in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at 1.06 pm (1106 GMT), creating powerful but microscopic bursts of energy that mimic conditions close to the Big Bang that created the universe.
"We're within a billionth of a second of the Big Bang," CERN spokesman James Gillies told AFP. The new stage, dubbed "First Physics", marks only the beginning of an initial 18- to 24-month series of billions of such collisions.
The LHC, which is located in a tunnel under the Franco-Swiss border, ground to halt with a major breakdown within days of its launch in 2008. But the huge scientific experiment then passed several groundbreaking milestones since it was restarted from repairs last November.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailygalaxy.com ...
Not if you go back to the future.
Heh... unfortunately, most science looks to today - little to the future. After all, they do have to attempt to prove their theories with the science of today. Forget about the future - that is for your grandchildren...
Hawking left the Lucasian seat on October last year (just a pedantic FYI).
A great man with physical problems. He has contributed much to science. Hopefully, he will continue while he can...
Thanks for the information.
I agree
Perhaps someone can explain this to this ignorant layman . . .
at the speed of light . . . mass would be in the direction of infinite, right????
So, why wouldn’t the earth start trying to keep that ‘toward infinite’ speck of mass as it’s new center of rotation?
I assume the answer would relate somewhat to the briefness of the flash . . .
however,
it seems to this ignorant layman that even a super brief flash of super massive anything would have some repercussions to the earth’s rotation or wobble or some such????
http://www.physorg.com/news88249076.html
IIRC, it's that you can't know BOTH, the location, and the momentum/energy.
Ah yes... Isn’t it interesting that today, there are limitations. Tomorrow, who knows? Speed may very well be restricted as stated by Scientists today - but how about tomorrow? Seems that most of the known facts keep changing - and that is what makes this so much fun...
The mass of a proton at 7 TeV is about 7,460 times the mass of the proton at rest. My guess is that the mass of particles being brought up to speed is on the order of grams per day, maybe pounds. I don't know how much "rest mass" is involved in each collision, but this "supermassive" event is probably like banging a pair of 1 pound weights together, at most. Hardly enough to affect the earth's rotation.
LHC machine outreach FAQ has the "energy to mass" calculation.
Ha...there you go, assuming that today’s science is correct. What if much of what you are saying is eventually proven wrong? That is what makes Science so much fun...
Yep. On October 13, 1947 a lot of people believed that there was a sound "barrier"......
The mass of a proton at 7 TeV is about 7,460 times the mass of the proton at rest. My guess is that the mass of particles being brought up to speed is on the order of grams per day, maybe pounds. I don't know how much "rest mass" is involved in each collision, but this "supermassive" event is probably like banging a pair of 1 pound weights together, at most. Hardly enough to affect the earth's rotation.
LHC machine outreach FAQ has the "energy to mass" calculation.
At 7 Tev, mass of 1 proton = Energy/c^2 = 1.2477^-23 Kg
The article notes 20 billion protons, which is unfortunately ambiguous, because a billion US is a thousand million, or 10^9, and in the UK is a million million, or 10^12. Erring on the "heavy" side, use the UK version of billion, each packet has 20*10^12 protons. The number of protons, times the mass of each proton, gives a packet with a mass of about 25*10^-11 Kg, or 25*10^-8 gram.
That's a quarter of a microgram, a quarter of a millionth of a gram, AT SPEED. Rest mass is 1/7,460th of that.
Nevermind that no way do all of the protons collide, only a minute fraction of the 20 billion are involved in collisions, most fly by in near-hit incidents. And too, perhaps the "billion" in the article means 10^9, which results in reducing the mass of the collision by a factor of 1,000.
Even at speed, the mass of material involved in collisions is minute. 0.000 000 250 grams
As always it’s good to watch the live webcams:
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
Well, that would change everything, of course! It could even change human nature!
But seriously, the observations of rest mass and increasing mass due to obtaining relativistic velocity are nearly perfectly reliable observations. Just like the bill for electricity from running the LHC is going to be "correct" with sufficient precision - they know how much energy is being pumped in, etc.
lol....true
Problem with that is what constitutes a “particle” is a lot stranger than you think. That line of thinking just doesn’t work that way near such boundary conditions.
What, there was a Large Hadron Collider at the beginning of the universe, and it caused a universal explosion, and now we are trying to replicate it?
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