Big Bang Re-Created and We Didn't Destroy Ourselves...Yet!~

[CORed]

Here's a high speed photograph of the collision:

POW!

Holy Higgs Boson, batman!

 

[Cuddles]

These beams are at 1.75 trillion eV (10^12 eV, or TeV) per nucleon, times 208 nucleons, times two beams, so 7x10^14 eV per head-on collision. That's about 0.1 millijoules.

(ETA: The press release image may or may not be a real head-on collision. It'll take some data analysis before we even know.)

Worth remembering is that this press release was only about the very first lead ion collisions, using a low energy, low current beam. Eventually it will get up to almost 4 megajoules per beam. Which sounds like quite a lot until you consider that the proton collisions will store 362MJ in the beams (I think that is total, rather than per beam).

So is that temperature/energy near any point that we are looking for? Or is this just the opening slavo?

It's significantly higher than has been done with ions before, but is nowhere near the planned operating energy yet.

 

[Foster Zygote]

You're right, nothing practical has ever come out of the CERN research organization. NOTHING PRACTICAL AT ALL

It's as useless as putting thermometers in the dark region just beyond the light spectrum split by a prism or passing an electric current through a sealed tube of gas. Nothing could ever come of it.

Oops, just got an email alert, gotta go.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Whenever anyone points to practical results from CERN research they point to by-products of the research like this. Any large project will produce similar results. I have never seen benefits to society due to the results of experiments themselves. At least after WW2.

You're going to have to run much faster than that to keep up with those goalposts you just hurled waaaaay over there...

 

[Dorian Gray]

No experiment from a collider will ever cause the world to end. Because this is how the world ends - not with a bang, but with a whimper.

And Foster, you're onto something. It's also just as useless as trying to discover the new world.

 

[The_Animus]

You're right, nothing practical has ever come out of the CERN research organization. NOTHING PRACTICAL AT ALL

Yes, collisions of particles at ultra high speeds resulted in the internet. Brilliant.

 

[Mikemcc]

Yes, collisions of particles at ultra high speeds resulted in the internet. Brilliant.

No, supporting studies and development of the engineering required resulted in the world-wide web. The internet was a development of ArpaNet, entirely different. It's also pushing development of cloud computing and even higher speed trunk communications. It's also helped development of control systems over the years.

Then we have the offshoots from the early particle accelerators, leading to synchrotrons providing real engineering research that has lead to such things as thin-film magnetics (hard disk drives), better pharmacology, materials science, and on and on...

Then there's neutron sources like ISIS with more developments, now fourth generation X-ray sources, and fusion research such as JET, ITER, Polywell reactors, high power laser research, super-conductor theories,...

Just a quick thought there, if I really wanted to comprehensively argue the point I'm sure I could find a LOT more detail!

 

[The_Animus]

No, supporting studies and development of the engineering required resulted in the world-wide web. The internet was a development of ArpaNet, entirely different. It's also pushing development of cloud computing and even higher speed trunk communications. It's also helped development of control systems over the years.

Then we have the offshoots from the early particle accelerators, leading to synchrotrons providing real engineering research that has lead to such things as thin-film magnetics (hard disk drives), better pharmacology, materials science, and on and on...

Then there's neutron sources like ISIS with more developments, now fourth generation X-ray sources, and fusion research such as JET, ITER, Polywell reactors, high power laser research, super-conductor theories,...

Just a quick thought there, if I really wanted to comprehensively argue the point I'm sure I could find a LOT more detail!

Completely and utterly beside the point. I said that the collisions themselves and the resulting data will likely not provide much in the way of real world value, or if it does it will not be for a very very long time. Innovations that came about from the development of the systems necessary to create the collisions is an entirely different matter.

 

[Mikemcc]

Completely and utterly beside the point. I said that the collisions themselves and the resulting data will likely not provide much in the way of real world value, or if it does it will not be for a very very long time. Innovations that came about from the development of the systems necessary to create the collisions is an entirely different matter.

What, that's delusdional claptrap. Even if I was to follow that same stupid line of reasoning it would still mean that I could claim that our better understanding of the various nuclear forces and sub-atomic particles have led to the point where we are on the threshold of fusion power, whether it be from massive reactors like ITER / DEMO or small devices like polywells, MRI scanners and a whole host of imaging techniques.

Just because you are small minded does not mean that the rest of the world has to be! on top of that, it's shifted the goalposts from what you actually stated, which was:

Interesting, though for some reason I doubt this will provide much in the form of real world practical value.

You never stipulated that you meant out of the collisions themselves. Even then that's rubbish, because fusion reactors require neutral particle beams to provide heating of the plasma.

 

[John Jones]

ahh, I thought they were talking about a fireball that was subatomic in size.

To be honest, I stopped paying any attention to physicists since they flipped-flopped on the whole sun going round the earth thingy.

LOL! Which physicists did that, and how old do you claim to be?

 

[Elind]

Interesting, though for some reason I doubt this will provide much in the form of real world practical value.

And this poses the question of why you are bothering to post in this section.

 

[ben m]

I actually agree with The Animus's statement. No, we're almost certainly not going to come up with a profitable application for Higgs bosons, neutrinos, or top quarks.

(We may come up with profitable technologies as an offshoot, because that's what happens when you put a bunch of scientists together and ask them to do something that's pushing the limits of existing technologies.)

So why are we looking for the Higgs boson? So we can tell ourselves, kids, grandkids (and so on) "Yes, we understand how Nature works". The same way we can tell them, "We know what the Moon is made of and how it formed" and "we know what the first tetrapods looked like" and "we know what Joyce was doing with colors in Ulysses" and "we know how Spaniards reacted to the execution of Charles I". We know these things because knowing things is an important aspect of human civilization.

Imagine the alternative world:

"Who built the pyramids of Egypt?"
"Nobody knows."
"Can't we go find out?"
"Yes, technically we could, but is that knowledge of any use?"

That's how I feel about the Higgs boson. Imagine this conversation taking place in the year 2100.

"Why do particles have masses?"
(A) "Nobody knows, and I guess no one ever quite bothered to find out."
OR
(B) "Well, in 2015 scientists discovered this condensate, called the Higgs field ... "

No, we're not doing it for the spinoffs. We're doing it so that the future sounds like B rather than like A.

 

[sol invictus]

Interesting, though for some reason I doubt this will provide much in the form of real world practical value.

Out of curiosity, what does "real world practical value" mean to you? Can you give an example of something that has it? What fraction of money/person-hours/energy is expended by our society "providing" things that have "real world practical value"?

Is business, in general, of "real world practical value"? Is farming? Is art? Is working in a restaurant?

You see, I think the notion of "practical value" is so vague as to be completely meaningless. I don't think people agree at all on our goals as a species (Increase our population? Decrease our population? Provide our population with more toys? Provide our population with fewer toys?). One person's "value" is the opposite of another's.

If anything, our history as a species shows that the creation of complex structures (of knowledge, of society, of esthetics) is our goal. As a species we seek to add to our knowledge. There is nothing more valuable.

 

[godofpie]

Bump. Another new development from CERN.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/...-in-a-Billion-Years-71269.html?wlc=1290124769
I guess I'm just easily impressed. Two breakthroughs in two weeks. Awesome.