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Large Hadron Collider Creates 'Mini Big Bang' with Lead Ions
Telegraph.co.uk ^ | November 8, 2010 | Staff

Posted on 11/08/2010 9:22:04 AM PST by lbryce

The latest experiment at CERN went ahead despite warnings by a group called Heavy Ion Alert that it could trigger a catastrophic chain reaction that might destroy the Earth.

The reaction created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun, which have not been reached since the first billionths of a second following the Big Bang.

This was expected to cause atomic particles such as protons and neutrons to melt, producing a "soup" of matter in a state previously unseen on Earth.

Scientists, including British particle physicists, will now study the particles in the hope of discovering what holds atoms together and gives them their mass.

The collisions were produced by firing lead ions – atoms with their electrons removed – at incredible speeds in opposite directions around the LHC's underground tunnel at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva.

The heavyweight particle collisions follow seven months of earlier experiments crashing protons – which are 200 times lighter than lead ions – at near-light speeds.

Dr David Evans, of Birmingham University, said on Sunday: "We are thrilled with the achievement. The collisions generated mini Big Bangs and the highest temperatures and densities ever achieved in an experiment.

"This process took place in a safe, controlled environment generating incredibly hot and dense subatomic fireballs with temperatures of over ten trillion degrees – a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun."

He added: "At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a Quark-Gluon Plasma.

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bigbang; cosmology; lhc
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To: Major Matt Mason

I believe they use magnetic field containment.


41 posted on 11/08/2010 10:58:42 AM PST by brivette
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To: Major Matt Mason

I believe they use magnetic field containment.


42 posted on 11/08/2010 10:58:47 AM PST by brivette
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To: Major Matt Mason

I believe they use magnetic field containment.


43 posted on 11/08/2010 10:58:57 AM PST by brivette
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To: Major Matt Mason

I believe they use magnetic field containment.


44 posted on 11/08/2010 10:59:07 AM PST by brivette
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To: ErnBatavia
I woke up this morning with a Large Hadron....

Make sure you call your doctor if it lasts longer than 4 hours.

45 posted on 11/08/2010 11:11:19 AM PST by balls
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To: lbryce; All

This is just more government funded junk science like global warming.

These idiots have no clue. Of course they come up with wild theories to get millions in government grants.


46 posted on 11/08/2010 11:36:31 AM PST by Democrat_media (Why is no government creating a product we can hold in our hands like a cell phone..?)
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To: Dogbert41
"Digital beds! Antproof casters! Watches that won't melt! A cure for the Shuffles!

Easy! Efficient! Affordable!

And all this by ...... Sixty-one!"

---Jonas Acme, fair-haired pharaoh of American Industry, explaing his theft of the fabled Zeppelin Tube ("Useless Tube or Tool of the Universe") from its pagan worshippers in SumaRatra.

47 posted on 11/08/2010 12:08:00 PM PST by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: mmercier; dis.kevin

They’re verrrrrrry long.


48 posted on 11/08/2010 12:10:21 PM PST by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: reagandemocrat
“The source advised that they had searched under the Aspelund, on top of the Leksvik and even down the back of the Smogen (the containment fields) but were unable to locate the missing black hole.”

What more do you want?

I wish they'd look beyond the Ikea store.

49 posted on 11/08/2010 12:13:01 PM PST by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: mmercier
And Gregory Benford's Cosm. It has this experiment as its premise.
50 posted on 11/08/2010 12:14:22 PM PST by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: balls
I woke up this morning with a Large Hadron....

Make sure you call your doctor if it lasts longer than 4 hours.

Coming from a screen name such as yours, I'll take that advice very seriously.

51 posted on 11/08/2010 12:14:50 PM PST by ErnBatavia (It's not the Obama Administration....it's the "Obama Regime".)
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To: lbryce
At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons

I had a bowl of Campbell's Creamy Quarks and Gluons for dinner last night.

52 posted on 11/08/2010 12:18:25 PM PST by GreenHornet
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To: brivette

Yes, magnetic containment to form the beams. But inertial containment for the actual collision reactions.

That is, the mass of the particles prevents them getting out of each other’s way for a femtosecond or so, then they all go blooey and the detectors pick up the fragments to see what happened.

The momenta of many of the charged fragments from this type of experiment make it impossible to contain them in the available magnetic field.


53 posted on 11/08/2010 12:23:12 PM PST by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: balls; ErnBatavia

And if it does, ErnBatavia recommends you take it to FermiLab.


54 posted on 11/08/2010 12:25:52 PM PST by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: Erasmus
One of the things I use to decide which books to read is thickness.

The 3/4” weenies get read and forgot in a day. “The Perfect Storm” is an example of a great book lacking breadth. I paid $35/hour for that DaVinci code ripoff of "Holy Blood Holy Grail" that I read in highschool.

One weenie I read in the 70’s still remains, and pertains to this topic.. “Mindbridge”, I believe was the tittle.

Lately, I am stuck in an Ayn reread spiral. Did pop in Ken Follets “Pillars of the Earth” (fabulous read). Digression is occasionally necessary to retain sanity.

55 posted on 11/08/2010 1:05:40 PM PST by mmercier (exordius terminus)
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To: mmercier

His novel Earth is great

His short story The Loom of Thessaly is a favorite of mine


56 posted on 11/08/2010 2:28:31 PM PST by Harold Shea (RVN `70 - `71)
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To: Major Matt Mason
Does this mean we've created a metal that withstands the heat of the sun, or greater? I would think these kinds of temperatures would have melted the entire collider.

The explosion is contained in a magnetic field, and never gets near the surface of the metal tube.

57 posted on 11/08/2010 4:11:03 PM PST by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: Major Matt Mason

Of course, I could be wrong.


58 posted on 11/08/2010 4:17:32 PM PST by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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