God Particle Is 'Found'

The particle accelerator: It is within these tubes that physicists are hunting for the 'God' particle

God Particle Is 'Found': Scientists At Cern Expected To Announce On Wednesday Higgs Boson Particle Has Been Discovered -- Daily Mail

* Scientists 'will say they are 99.99% certain' the particle has been found
* Leading physicists have been invited to event - sparking speculation that Higgs Boson particle has been found
* 'God Particle' gives particles that make up atoms their mass

Scientists at Cern will announce that the elusive Higgs boson 'God Particle' has been found at a press conference next week, it is believed.

Five leading theoretical physicists have been invited to the event on Wednesday - sparking speculation that the particle has been discovered.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are expected to say they are 99.99 per cent certain it has been found - which is known as 'four sigma' level.

Read more ....

My Comment: I guess we will have to wait till Wednesday to find out.

Double-Checking CERN's Revolutionary Faster-Than-Light Claim

MINOS Experiment Far Detector NuMI/Fermilab

Fermilab Will Double-Check CERN's Revolutionary Faster-Than-Light Claim -- Popular Science

So far, the only thing moving faster than light is speculation. But in the wake of last week’s baffling neutrino news out of CERN, physicists are crunching numbers to test whether these ghostly particles really can move faster than photons. Physicists at Fermilab are re-examining some old data to help answer the question.

Read more ....

Budget Cuts Force CERN To Shut Accelerators For Year

The Linac 2 (Linear Accelerator 2) is pictured at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva October 16, 2008. Credit: Reuters/Denis Balibouse

From Reuters:

(Reuters) - Europe's particle research center CERN unveiled budget cuts Friday that will force it to temporarily close its accelerators for a year in 2012, but said its flagship "Big Bang" machine will mainly be unaffected.

Announcing the trimmed-down budget, in which governments will provide 135 million Swiss francs ($133.4 million) less over a five-year period to 2015, CERN said its high-profile drive to study the origins of the cosmos would continue as planned.

Read more ....

Big Bang Collider Restarts At Cern In Bid To Discover Origins Of The Universe

Technicians install electric cables at the heart of the ATLAS detector, part of the Large Hadron Collider, which was restarted last night

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have restarted the world largest atom smasher over-night, in a fresh bid to uncover the secrets of the universe.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, sent low energy beams of protons in both directions around the 17-mile particle accelerator under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

Read more ....

Big Particle Collider To Restart In September

CERN Large Hadron Collider: Photo from Curious Cat

From Yahoo News/AP:

GENEVA – Additional safety features being added to the world's largest atom smasher will postpone its startup until the end of September, a year after the $10 billion machine was sidelined by a simple electrical fault, the operator said Tuesday.

The cost of the repairs and added safety features has yet to be determined, but it will be covered by the regular budget of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, spokeswoman Christine Sutton said.

Read more ....

The Great Fear Of The Unknown

Part of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is seen in its tunnel at the CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland. By Martial Trezzini, AP

From USA Today:

So much for the end of the world.

Fears that the atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider would create black holes — gravitational sinkholes from which not even light can escape — and end life as we know it have joined UFOs and Bigfoot on the roster of pseudoscientific scares.

Before it was launched on Oct. 10, bloggers, late-night comedians, worried parents around the world and at least two lawsuits greeted the mere start-up of the collider with dismay. But Earth clearly survived the collider's first nine days of operations before a technical glitch shut it down.

Experts at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN — an acronym kept from an earlier name), which created the $6 billion grand experiment in particle physics, are resigned to the scares kicking up again when the collider starts back up next year and begins smashing protons.

"It's only natural. We are curious about the unknown, and that's why we explore mysteries like the conditions of the early universe," says CERN spokesman James Gillies. "At the same time, we fear the unknown, and particle physics can be one of those things that is hard for people to understand."

Read more ....

E-Science: Massive Experiments, Global Networks

Supercomputers: European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists work in the control center of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. The massive amount of information collected by the collider will be shared across an international computer network.
(Fabrice Coffrini/AP/File). (Photo from Christian Science Monitor).

From Christian Science Monitor:

Worldwide computer grids mean even small-timers can contribute to ‘big science.’

Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina is not the first name that pops up in conversations about centers of polar science.

Tucked at the tip of a branch of Albemarle Sound, along the state’s northeast coast, the well-regarded, historically African-American university focuses largely on undergraduate education. But it’s also taking part in cutting-edge Arctic and Antarctic science as a key player in PolarGrid – a powerful, sophisticated computer network researchers use to analyze images of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and model their behavior.

It’s part of the burgeoning world of e-Science – a realm where the questions are big, cutting across once-disparate disciplines. And the answers often demand enormous amounts of number crunching through networks of interconnected computing centers at universities and laboratories around the world – a process known as grid computing.

Read more ....

One Bad Weld Shuts Down A Billion Dollar Science project

A welder begins works on the interconnections of magnets in the Large Hadron Collider
(Photo courtesy The Telegraph)

Large Hadron Collider Broke Down Because Of Bad Soldering On A Single Connection -- Daily Telegraph

The £4.4 billion Large Hadron Collider was put out of action for months because one electrical connection out of 10,000 was badly soldered, the experiment's chief scientist said.

"It is very probable that there was a connection that wasn't good," said Lyn Evans, project leader of the 17-mile LHC, buried deep under Swiss soil at CERN, the European Nuclear Research Organisation.

The LHC, which aims to shed light on how the universe began by replicating conditions just after the Big Bang, has to operate at extremely cold temperatures.

It was switched on to great fanfare on Sep 10, but had to be turned back off nine days later because the cooling mechanism broke.

It takes weeks to rechill the machine to "superconducting" temperatures - allowing it to fire protons around a 17 mile loop of tunnels, causing them to crash into one another at close to light speed and break into even tinier particles

Mr Evans said he did not think a single fault in 10,000 connections was bad, but "it cost dearly".

Read more ....

My Comment: Only one? I worked as a welder a number of years ago. To be right 9,999 out of 10,000 .... Hmmmmm .... I am very skeptical.

Bad Connection Caused Atom Smasher Shutdown

A scientist works in the CERN LHC computing grid centre in Geneva, October 3, 2008. This centre is one of the 140 data processing centres, located in 33 countries, taking part in the grid processing project. More than 15 million Gigabytes of data produced from the hundreds of millions of subatomic collisions in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) should be collected every year. (Valentin Flauraud/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/AP:

GENEVA - A bad electrical connection likely caused the malfunction that sidelined the world's largest atom smasher days after it was launched with great fanfare, a senior scientist said Monday.

The fault was probably a poor soldering job on one of the particle collider's 10,000 connections, said Lyn Evans, project leader of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Nuclear Research Organization.

Only one fault in 10,000 isn't bad, "but it cost dearly," Evans said. It will take at least two months for the repair, meaning the collider cannot be restarted until spring, after its mandatory shutdown due to high electricity costs during the winter.

Evans said he still hasn't been able to examine the damage because the collider is too cold to be opened. The machine operates at extremely cold temperatures to take advantage of superconductivity — the ability of some metals to conduct electricity without any resistance near absolute zero degrees.

Read more ....

World’s Biggest Computing Grid Launched

Cern computer grid (Photo from Wikimedia)

From The Science Blog:

The world’s largest computing grid is ready to tackle mankind’s biggest data challenge from the earth’s most powerful accelerator. Today, three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid combines the power of more than 140 computer centers from 33 countries to analyze and manage more than 15 million gigabytes of LHC data every year.

The United States is a vital partner in the development and operation of the WLCG. Fifteen universities and three U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories from 11 states contribute their power to the project.

“The U.S. has been an essential partner in the development of the vast distributed computing system that will allow 7,000 scientists around the world to analyze LHC data, complementing its crucial contributions to the construction of the LHC,” said Glen Crawford of the High Energy Physics program in DOE’s Office of Science. DOE and the National Science Foundation support contributions to the LHC and to the computing and networking infrastructures that are an integral part of the project.

Read more ....

Why Will It Take So Long to Fix the Large Hadron Collider?

CERN Lab

From Live Science:

After all the hooplah over firing up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the party turned out to be short-lived. On Sept. 20, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland announced that a large helium leak, likely due to a faulty electrical connection, would require at least a two-month delay for repairs. A week later, scientists said they would not restart the machine until next spring.

This lengthy shutdown is necessary because scientists need to warm up the faulty area of the machine from its standard operating temperature of minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit — that’s a few degrees colder than outer space and only 3 degrees above absolute zero, the temperature where all molecules stop moving. It will take weeks to warm this errant area back up to room temperature so engineers can venture in and fix it. Then, assuming they can quickly detect and remedy the problem, scientists would need to lower the temperature again before turning the LHC back on.

Read more ....

A Trip Inside The "Big Bang Machine"

Steve Kroft descends into the Large Hadron Collider some call it the "big bang machine" - that took billions of dollars and 9,000 physicists to build in the hope it will provide valuable insights.

From CBS 60 Minutes:

(CBS) As a rule, physics rarely makes news, but it did this past week after equipment malfunctions delayed for several months the start up of one of the biggest science experiments in history. We are talking about the Large Hadron Collider, a massive, multibillion dollar project designed to unlock the secrets of the universe.

For several years now, thousands of the world's most accomplished scientists have been gathering in Europe, not to explore the heavens but the frontiers of inner space. They are hoping to discover subatomic particles so tiny that they have never been detected. They think these particles will help explain why the universe has organized itself into so many different things - planets and stars, tables and chairs, flesh and blood.

To do it, they have constructed one of largest, most sophisticated machines ever built to replicate what the universe was like a few nanoseconds after it was created. And as Steve Kroft reports, it is all going to happen 300 feet underground on the border between Switzerland and France.

Read more ....

CERN Rivals See Melting Magnets As Par For Course

A Sept. 10, 2008 file photo shows European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists working at computers in the Cern's control center during the switch on operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest atom-smasher in a mission to answer some of the most perplexing questions in the cosmos controol, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008, in Geneva, Switzerland. The daring success of the world's largest atom smasher on its opening day was more surprising to scientists than the troubles it subsequently developed. The meltdown of a connection between superconducting magnets nine days later at CERN was more expected. (AP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini, Pool, File)

From Yahoo News/AP:

GENEVA - The daring success of the world's largest atom smasher on its opening day was more surprising to many scientists than the troubles it subsequently developed.

A problem with a magnet connection will delay the start of experiments for half a year, partly because the $3.8 billion accelerator is so complicated to repair. Physicists — some of whom waited two decades to use the new equipment — will now have to wait three more weeks for the damaged section to be warmed up to room temperature.

They can then get inside to see what went wrong.

Yet such glitches are not uncommon. Michael Harrison, who worked on Fermilab's Tevatron collider and designed and built the United States' other superconducting collider at Brookhaven on Long Island, said both machines had similar startup problems.

Read more ....

Why The Large Hadron Collider Is Already On The Fritz

From Time Magazine - Science:

Anyone who has struggled to change a fuse in their home should pity the scientists at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. Last Friday, just nine days after celebrating the successful test run of the largest particle accelerator ever constructed, a tiny electrical connection between two magnets overheated and caused a minor meltdown.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) broke.

Although a final evaluation is yet to be completed, scientists believe the fault caused the machine to lose the near absolute-zero temperature it must maintain to operate. For now, however, repair work can't begin because the machine is still too cold; it will take about a month to warm up the area to a temperature at which replacement parts can be inserted. It will take another month to cool it back down, and given that CERN has pledged not to run its giant machine — which requires as much power as the entire city of Geneva — during winter months when Europe's energy needs are highest, Friday's breakdown could delay the actual smashing of atoms until early next year.

Read more ....

CERN'S Large Hadron Collider Shut Down Till Spring 2009 -- News Updates

A technician walks under the core magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) in the French village of Cessy, near Geneva, in this March 22, 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

More Delays For LHC: Particle Collider's Tune-Up
To Last Until 2009 -- Scientific American

The world's largest physics experiment is on hold until spring while scientists and engineers try to figure out what caused a helium leak into the tunnel deep beneath the Large Hadron Collider, its operator says.

Making the tunnel warm enough for humans, then giving them the time to inspect the magnets blamed for the Sept. 19 leak, will take three to four weeks, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) says in a statement. CERN believes a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that will guide protons in planned collision studies is behind the leak.

After the magnets are inspected and fixed, the collider must then undergo a scheduled winter maintenance, CERN says.

CERN Director General Robert Aymar admits that the delay "is undoubtedly a psychological blow."

“Nevertheless … I have no doubt that we will overcome this setback with the same degree of rigor and application,” Aymar says.

When we spoke to Judy Jackson of Fermilab yesterday, she told us that "there inevitably are going to be setbacks along the way — it's part of the process" of starting up a particle accelerator. You can read more about what she and theoretical physicist Sean Carroll had to say about the unexpected delays here.

More News On CERN's Atom Smasher

Large Hadron Collider shuts down early for the winter -- Science News
"Big Bang" collider to restart in spring 2009 -- Reuters
Collider halted until next year -- BBC News
Repairs and onset of winter mean Europe's atom smasher on ice until spring -- CNews Science
Atom smasher will have to wait until spring -- CNN Science
Supercollider shut down until spring -- MSNBC
CERN says collider will have to wait until spring -- International Herald Tribune
Damage to atom smasher forces 2-month halt -- LA Times
'Big Bang Machine' to Be Shut Down Until Spring -- FOX News
Collider halted till next year over magnets problem -- Independent
Faulty Transformer Sidelines Atom Smasher -- CBS News
Atom-smasher shut down for two months after malfunction -- China View
Atom-smasher findings out soon -- News 24
Melted wire may shut down collider until '09 -- San Francisco Chronicle
LHC meltdown before first collision -- Nature News
The Large Hadron Collider News -- Nature News

CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Broke Down Last Week -- An Investigation By AP Broke The Story For The Public To Know

Transformer Glitch Shuts Down Biggest Atom Smasher -- AP

GENEVA (AP) — The world's largest particle collider malfunctioned within hours of its launch to great fanfare, but its operator didn't report the problem for a week.

In a statement Thursday, the European Organization for Nuclear Research reported for the first time that a 30-ton transformer that cools part of the collider broke, forcing physicists to stop using the atom smasher just a day after starting it up last week.

The faulty transformer has been replaced and the ring in the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border has been cooled back down to near zero on the Kelvin scale — minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit — the most efficient operating temperature, said a statement by CERN, as the organization is known.

When the transformer malfunctioned, operating temperatures rose from below 2 Kelvin to 4.5 Kelvin — extraordinarily cold by most standards, but warmer than the normal operating temperature.

Read more ....

Excellent commentary from Greg Laden's Blog.

CERN: Damage To New Collider Forces 2-Month Halt

In this file photo dated May 31, 2007, part of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is seen in its tunnel at the CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland. The world's largest atom smasher, which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month, has been damaged worse than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008. (AP Photo/Keystone, Martial Trezzini, File)

From Yahoo News/AP:

GENEVA - The world's largest atom smasher — which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month — has been damaged worse than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday.

Experts have gone into 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border to examine the damage that halted operations about 36 hours after its Sept. 10 startup, said James Gillies, spokesman for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out," Gillies told The Associated Press.

Gillies said the sector that was damaged will have to be warmed up well above the absolute zero temperature used for operations so that repairs can be made — a time-consuming process.

Read more ....

More News On CERN

Atom-smasher out of action for two months: CERN -- AFP
CERN: Damage to new collider forces 2-month halt -- San Francisco Chronicle
Fault shuts Large Hadron Collider for two months -- The Guardian
Hadron Collider forced to halt -- BBC
CERN delays atom-smashing over magnet fault -- Times Online

Large Hadron Collider To Reach Full Capacity By Yearend
-- RIA Novosti

GENEVA, September 10 (RIA Novosti) - Scientists are planning to run the world's largest particle collider at full capacity by the end of 2008, a Russian physicist told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

During the first full tests conducted Wednesday, beams of sub-atomic particles were for the first time sent round the accelerator ring in opposite directions at almost the speed of light, but the powerful superconductor magnets in the collider operated at minimum capacity.

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is an extremely complex system," said Vladimir Karzhavin of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. "That is why its initial launch is a very complicated and sensitive process."

The physicist, who heads of a team of Russian scientists from the institute who participate in the LHC project, said collisions initially would be rare and involve low-energy protons, but over time the frequency and energy output would gradually increase.

Read more ....

The God Particle Will Be Found

An engineer leans on a magnet in the 27km-long tunnel that will house the Large Hadron Collider (Image: Cern/Maximilien Brice).

Higgs: Particle Will Be Found -- News 24

London - The British scientist who gave his name to the so-called "God Particle" said he believes it will be found by the world's biggest atom-smasher, which was finally fired up on Wednesday.

"I think it's pretty likely," said Professor Peter Higgs a few hours after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was switched at the home of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) below the Franco-Swiss border.

"The way I put it is that if there isn't anything there, then it means I and a lot of other people no longer understand all the things we understand about these weak and electromagnetic interactions," added the 79-year-old.

Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964 Higgs, came up with this idea: there must exist a background field that would act rather like treacle.

Read more ....

The Large Hadron Collider -- Complete News Coverage From Nature News

From Nature News:

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's most powerful particle accelerator. As the first proton beams zip around the LHC's massive 27-kilometre ring on 10 September 2008, it marks a new era of physics that could pin down the identity of the dark matter that shapes galaxies; find the Higgs boson, believed to confer mass on the other particles of the quantum bestiary; and recreate conditions that existed a split-second after the Big Bang. In this online Special, Nature asks how it works, what it will find, and why we should be excited.

Read more ....