Riverwind (imported) wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2010 9:59 am in a word "No"

You see its a nice to know but not necessary, its like buying a steak at the store, I can see it and it looks good, I know it came from a steer but I don't need to know how it got from the steer to the butchers display.

It has no effect on me one way or the other.

River

If you watch TV, use a computer, or use many other modern devices, science and such research does affect you. Quantum theory helps explain how transistors and other such devices work. Without it, they probably wouldn't have been invented.

I was disappointed when the USA stopped construction of the collider they were building in Texas some years back.

This is probably the most complex piece of equipment man has ever constructed. It's going to run at half power for two years before being shut down for repairs or upgrade. Even at half power, it will be the most powerful collider in existence.

I would have been surprised had they got it right the first time. Remember the Hubble? They had to repair it out of the box to get it working. Look at all it's told us about the Universe.

I'm for pure science, knowing that pure science always leads to practical scientific advances.

Silly me. But the first thing that came to mind is "Where is the money coming from to keep working on something that isn't needed"?

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, is the world's largest particle physics laboratory. That means CERN studies the tiniest particles in the universe. CERN uses some of the world's most advanced equipment to do this, including the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). By studying the fundamental forms of energy and matter, CERN hopes to learn more abo*ut how the universe works.

While CERN is mainly concerned with the fundamental particles of the universe and the laws of nature, it has also spawned other notable advances in science. For example, in 1989, a scientist named Tim Berners-Lee proposed the creation of a distributed information system. That system evolved into what we call the World Wide Web. In fact, the world's first Web page was for CERN [source: CERN].

Still, most of the work done at CERN is meant to do one thing: increase human knowledge of the universe. Many scientists conduct experiments simply to learn more about how the laws of nature work with no thought to applicability. Scientists sometimes call this pure research. That's because the scientists have no motive beyond increasing knowledge itself.

Today, 20 European member states run CERN. These countries share the responsibility of funding CERN as well as the privilege of guiding activities at CERN facilities. Other countries also partner with CERN, using the laboratories for experiments and research.

Many scientists are excited over the prospect of CERN's research, particularly as the Large Hadron Collider prepares to come online. The LHC might shed light on some mysteries that have puzzled physicists going all the way back to Einstein and beyond. But according to some people, it might also bring about the end of the Earth.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/cern.htm

I agree with ramses.

Besides that, how do they know that it was a bird that dropped it? It could have been a bat or perhaps a large BUG.

Of course, if it HAD been a bug, there would have been a lot of jokes about "getting the BUGS out" of the design.

OR, it could have fell from Harry Potter's broomstick or from Herminia's ...ah well... NEVERMIND....

You totally missed my point,

Its nice to know but I am never going to loose sleep over it if I never find out.

Yes, hell yes I use the internet, pc's, tv, cell phones, etc, but that does not mean I want to know the inter workings of them, I just want to know that when I give them power, they go on.

Maybe if I was 20 this would be meaningful but in my 60's, I am just glad to be alive another day.

Do I enjoy learning about this stuff, not really because if have other interests and at my age (which is much less then MactheWolf's), that is more information than I want.

So back to my answer to the question of don't I care or want to know,

NO

River

>>Reprinted from MSNBC

>>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35949801/ns ... e-science/

World’s biggest particle collider hits a new high

Large Hadron Collider reaches target energy of 3.5 TeV per beam

By Alexander G. Higgins

The Associated Press

updated 12:46 p.m. ET March 19, 2010

GENEVA - Operators of the world's largest atom smasher on Friday ramped up their massive machine to three times the energy ever previously achieved, in the run-up to experiments probing the secrets of the universe.

ramses (imported) wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:30 pm The European Organization for Nuclear Research,

better known by the French acronym CERN, said beams of protons circulated at 3.5 trillion electron volts in both directions around the 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel hous

ramses (imported) wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:30 pm ing the Large Hadron Collider

under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

The next major development is expected in a few days when CERN starts colliding the beams in a new round of research to examine the tiniest particles and forces within the atom, in hopes of finding out more about how matter is made up.

The collider in December had already eclipsed the record of the next most powerful machine, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago, which has been running just shy of a trillion electron volts, or TeV.

The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of dark energy and matter. Scientists hope also to approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the big bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

CERN has reported a series of successes since the collider was restarted last year after 14 months of repairs and improvements. The repairs were required after a spectacular failure occurred during the initial startup phase in September 2008.

CERN improved the machine during a 2½-month winter shutdown to be able to operate at the higher energy.

"Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC's overall design, and the improvements we've made since the breakdown in September 2008," said Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators and technology.

CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer revealed that there had been a snag in reaching 3.5 TeV Friday. He said it increased the ramp time to 75 minutes from the expected 15 minutes. Heuer said the problem was in a phenomenon linked to the machine protection systems, but he did not elaborate.

Those protection systems must enable the scientists if they see a problem to switch off the magnets and extract the stored energy in about 10 seconds. At the same time the systems have to be tuned to avoid triggering a beam dump when not technically necessary.

Heuer said he expected the problem to be corrected.

When the collisions start at the new, higher energy, CERN plans to run the collider continuously for 18 to 24 months, much longer than previously.

This is because the machine operates at near absolute zero degrees, colder than the chilliest temperatures in outer space. Shutting off the LHC can require months to bring the equipment up to room temperature for any checks, repairs or improvements, CERN said.

After two years of running the LHC will be shut down for about a year. During that time, specialists will install improvements and make other changes to enable the collider to operate at its design energy of 7 TeV in each direction to produce collisions of 14 TeV.

The Large Hadron Collider was built to examine a wide range of suspected phenomena — including dark matter and "big-bang soup" as well as the interactions of antimatter and matter. The collider's prime quest is the search for the Higgs boson, which scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe. The Higgs boson, also known as "the God Particle," is the only fundamental particle predicted by physics' standard model that has not yet been detected.

The LHC was launched with great fanfare on Sept. 10, 2008, but it was sidetracked nine days later when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated and set off a chain of damage to the massive superconducting magnets and other parts of the collider some 300 feet (100 meters) below the ground.

CERN had to undertake a $40 million program of repairs and improvements before it was ready to retry the machine at the end of November. Then the collider performed almost flawlessly, giving scientists valuable data in the four-week run before Christmas.

CERN specialists have checked out and improved electrical connections and other parts throughout the machine.

Before the end-of-year break, the LHC collided two beams of circulating particles at 1.18 trillion electron volts, or TeV, about 20 percent higher than the previous record set at Fermilab. During that December run, each of the LHC's four major experiments, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb recorded more than a million particle collisions for scientists around the world to analyze.

This report was supplemented by msnbc.com.

© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35949801/ns ... e-science/

I wonder what the electric bill is going to be for that 2 second test?

River

TheOtherSide (imported) wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:07 am Yeah, I know the first shutdown was due to a pretty damn massive... let's call it a 'glitch'. I've heard bits an pieces of what happened.

As to the bird/baguette... That's been reported various places from The Guardian, to Popular Science, to Gizmodo, and even... this page from CERN (http://user.web.cern.ch/user/news/2009/091106b.html).

See? It's photos like this (http://api.ning.com/files/8fil5gmLgTbnv ... AtCERN.jpg) that I swear prove that the universe, or the future is doing everything it can to keep that thing from ever fully going online. Clearly, this is why Half-Life 2 Episode 3 has yet to be released. They don't want us knowing that Gordon winds up being sent back to now, to prevent the Combine from taking over the planet by sabotaging the LHC.

ho ho ho if you think that picture's worrying, how about this (http://rickatnight11.com/wp-content/upl ... 9/gman.jpg)?