Posted on 08/05/2009 1:16:17 AM PDT by neverdem
The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections.
Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies.
Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean.
After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy “switch-on” ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all.
But soon?
This week, scientists and engineers at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, are to announce how and when their machine will start running this winter.
That will be a Champagne moment. But scientists say it could be years, if ever, before the collider runs at full strength, stretching out the time it should take to achieve the collider’s main goals, like producing a particle known as the Higgs boson thought to be responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass, or identifying the dark matter that astronomers say makes up 25 percent of the cosmos.
The energy shortfall could also limit the collider’s ability to test more exotic ideas, like the existence of extra dimensions beyond the three of space and one of time that characterize life.
“The fact is, it’s likely to take a while to get the results we really want,” said Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist who is an architect of the extra-dimension theory.
The collider was built to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts and smash them together in search of particles and forces that reigned earlier than the first trillionth of a second of time, but the machine could run as low as four trillion...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I guess this means that Black Hole they are going to create that will end the world won’t happen until 2012, just as predicted.
bump
yitbos
Darn the thing worked last September when they switched it on. We got sucked into an alternate Universe where a man with no positive record and history won the Presidential election based on two books he published about himself.
Perhaps if we make them reverse the polarity and engage the dilithium crystal power core, and eject the warp engine we might just return to our own reality...
Sadly it would be a reality where instead of a socialist without a record for President, we’d have a backstabbing former Senator from Arizona whose last real achievement was his service during the Vietnam War and marrying rich.
I wonder if there is a reality where Fred Thompson won the Primary and the General Election. I’d like to end up there. Flip the switch.
Probably built with Lucas electrical parts, no wonder.
If they had built the one in Texas, it would be up and running by now.
Or, it could mean that these “scientists” are in the same league as the ‘global warming’ “scientists”, and have just bilked 9 billion dollars out of stupid and gullible politicians to build a life sized version of their fantasy, while collecting paychecks and pensions, and watching star trek re-runs in the facilities conference room on taxpayer supplied wide screen plasma tv’s, not to enjoy the program, but to see what information they missed when building this collider.
‘After 15 years and $9 billion,’
Oops, sorry, I thought it was about the big dig.
“Perhaps if we make them reverse the polarity and engage the dilithium crystal power core, and eject the warp engine we might just return to our own reality...”
HA-HA-HA-ha-ha-ha-tee-hee-hee-hee-ohhhhhhhh!!!
*snicker*
But of course that will happen when the US, Russian and other armies of the world are massed outside of Jerusalem on the plains of Megiddo...
The "big dig" is already proof black holes that go on for infinity exist, I just don't understand why they had to spend another 9 billion for another one in Europe.
When this was first being bantered about our U.S. scientists claimed not going ahead with this would place the U.S. far behind in the race for the study of physics.
It was deemed too expensive for pure science.
and then the E.U. picked up the idea to have it done in Europe.
Guess they used Euro unionists to built this p.o.s. , Great job there euroweenies.
15 years and 9 billion bucks and the best they can come up with is, ‘The magnets aren’t comfortable’?????
I am sooo over journalists today, the correct headline should have been “Scientists Struggle with collider”.
LOL! Gold Medal Post Award!
Some scientists were hoping that the answer to this question would finally open the secrets of the universe to human eyes.
So I said, “Supercollider? I hardly know her!”
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