How do they even create a 'beam of particles'?
First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
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Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The LHC just doubled it's power. While only operating at 50% it discovered several new particles including the Higgs Boson. Now that it's nearing 100% they're hoping to discover physics beyond the Standard Model. That could include things like additional spatial dimensions, Dark Matter, microscopic black holes and more. TLDR: Hopefully opening the door for some mind blowing discoveries.
Microscopic black holes scares me. I once heard (entirely anecdotal - I'd love it if someone more knowledgeable on the subject could comment) they had calculated the probability that the LHC would create a black hole that consumed the Earth. The result was more likely than SHA1-hash collision, and was deemed safe enough to try. Somewhere between humorous and scary. edit: did some Googling and found some documentation…
I can't see how this would be a problem even if a black hole was created.
A black hole is no different than any other massive object in that it doesn't exert any stronger pull than its mass allows for. In other words, if the Sun suddenly turned into a black hole right now, we would not get "sucked" into it. The Earth would continue orbiting at the same period and distance. Of course, it would suck (no pun intended) not to have sunlight but hey, maybe the energy emitted by the accretion disc would equal the energy output of the sun :P! Of course, an accretion disc would probably take a while to form, so we would probably be fucked anyway, but certainly not because we would be sucked into the black hole.
Similarly, if the LHC created a black hole through its collisions, I can't see how it would be that massive. If it's not very massive, then it's not a threat. In fact, there are theories that support the notion that it would evaporate rather quickly (via Hawking radiation). Of course, I don't have any numbers on this and only have a laymen's knowledge of the physics involved. Anyone care to comment with more info?
Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microscopic black holes scares me. I once heard (entirely anecdotal - I'd love it if someone more knowledgeable on the subject could comment) they had calculated the probability that the LHC would create a black hole that consumed the Earth. The result was more likely than SHA1-hash collision, and was deemed safe enough to try. Somewhere between humorous and scary. edit: did some Googling and found some documentation…
I can't see how this would be a problem even if a black hole was created. A black hole is no different than any other massive object in that it doesn't exert any stronger pull than its mass allows for. In other words, if the Sun suddenly turned into a black hole right now, we would not get "sucked" into it. The Earth would continue orbiting at the same period and distance. Of course, it would suck (no pun intended) n…
If it doesn't evaporate, it would (slowly at first) absorb the Earth. We might not get pulled in anytime soon, but it would sort of be a bummer for the future if the planet was destroyed in the next few thousand years.
(I don't think I have an interesting opinion when it comes to the question of whether such a hole would evaporate or not, but the question of why having a blackhole on the surface of the planet is bad is easier to think about)
Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#34This is awesome! I highly recommend 'Particle Fever', in case you haven't seen it yet. It cover's the LHC before the shutdown and restart, which included the Higgs boson discovery. Just fascinating look into what an international collaboration of human beings can accomplish. IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/ Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rikc7foqvRI Netflix: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70296323…
The recent reviews at the Netflix link are priceless :)
Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microscopic black holes scares me. I once heard (entirely anecdotal - I'd love it if someone more knowledgeable on the subject could comment) they had calculated the probability that the LHC would create a black hole that consumed the Earth. The result was more likely than SHA1-hash collision, and was deemed safe enough to try. Somewhere between humorous and scary. edit: did some Googling and found some documentation…
I can't see how this would be a problem even if a black hole was created. A black hole is no different than any other massive object in that it doesn't exert any stronger pull than its mass allows for. In other words, if the Sun suddenly turned into a black hole right now, we would not get "sucked" into it. The Earth would continue orbiting at the same period and distance. Of course, it would suck (no pun intended) n…
To maxerickson:
I know what you mean, but I still think you have to look at the numbers. It seems plausible to me that the black hole might be so small that it would take literally millions of years or more to consume enough mass to become a threat. And that might even depend a lot on chance since most particles would just drift by it without passing inside of its event horizon since the force of gravity has very little effect at those scales.
Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microscopic black holes scares me. I once heard (entirely anecdotal - I'd love it if someone more knowledgeable on the subject could comment) they had calculated the probability that the LHC would create a black hole that consumed the Earth. The result was more likely than SHA1-hash collision, and was deemed safe enough to try. Somewhere between humorous and scary. edit: did some Googling and found some documentation…
I can't see how this would be a problem even if a black hole was created. A black hole is no different than any other massive object in that it doesn't exert any stronger pull than its mass allows for. In other words, if the Sun suddenly turned into a black hole right now, we would not get "sucked" into it. The Earth would continue orbiting at the same period and distance. Of course, it would suck (no pun intended) n…
Here's a summary I posted a few days ago of an article I found explaining why it's absolutely impossible, not just unlikely, for the LHC to create a black hole that destroys the earth:
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/could-the-lhc-make-an-...
TL:DR: 1.) If these miniature black holes exist, the Earth has been getting hit by them for billions of years, and it’s still here. 2.) If you do create a miniature black hole, they will decay, via Hawking Radiation, on ridiculously small timescales. 3.) You can compute the rate at which a black hole eats matter, and it’s not even close to being as small as the lifetime of our planet
Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#37Here's the dashboard updated in real-time if this sort of thing fascinates you (as it fascinates me!) http://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.ph...
That's pretty cool. Is there anywhere that explains what it all means?
Yes and no.
Yes: there's a link called "Doc" on the bottom of the page. This is the one for LHC Page 1, which is the most important display: http://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/Doc/LHC1.p...
No: well, you may only understand it if you have some background knowledge in some particle physics terms.
Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#38And that's just one beam. There's a second beam, too - so they will crash into each other at 13 Tev.
Also, that's probably just a few bunches. (I'm guessing only one, but I may be wrong.) Every bunch contains ~10^11 protons.
When LHC is running in full, a total of 2808 bunches per beam are expected to be colliding there. That's a lot of energy.
Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The LHC just doubled it's power. While only operating at 50% it discovered several new particles including the Higgs Boson. Now that it's nearing 100% they're hoping to discover physics beyond the Standard Model. That could include things like additional spatial dimensions, Dark Matter, microscopic black holes and more. TLDR: Hopefully opening the door for some mind blowing discoveries.
To expand upon what you're saying for the grandparent, what you have is one beam of protons can reach the kinetic energy of 6.5 TeV. They will circulate a second beam at the same energy, and collide them head on. Thus, the "center-of-momentum" energy, that is, the energy involved in a collision of one proton from one beam hitting another from the other beam will be 13 TeV at max. Often times, physicists refer to this…
I learned more from this comment than from my entire high school physics class.
Re: First successful beam at record energy of 6.5 TeV
#40How do they even create a 'beam of particles'?
Start with Hydrogen. Knock off an electron to get a proton which can be manipulated by electric and magnetic fields. Send them into the linear accelerator which has a series of electric plates to speed the protons up and focussing magnets to get the protons to line up nicely. Particles that don't form part of the beam are lost at low energy. Then the beams enter the ring accelerators for the big kick.
The coordination of the control signals is quite fun: it is capable of synchronizing events tens of kilometers apart to nanosecond accuracy.