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Will the LHC ever actually work?

Will the LHC ever fully work?

  • Yes! Oh ye of little faith!

    Votes: 80 66.1%

  • Yes, as long as all the baguettes and birds are removed from Europe

    Votes: 19 15.7%

  • No, we have spent £2.6billion on the world's largest underground fridge

    Votes: 3 2.5%

  • No the universe is conspiring to stop it happening

    Votes: 9 7.4%

  • something else.............

    Votes: 10 8.3%
  • Total voters
    121

andyandy

anthropomorphic ape
andyandy
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
8,377
After yet another delay (something about a bird and a baguette...) surely it's worth asking if the LHC will ever actually be fully functional? Are there just too many things to go wrong? Have we exceeded our capabilities? Is it being sabotaged by ET to prevent us from ripping a fabric in spacetime?

what do you reckon? :)
 
Well, ET is not very good at saving the universe is he? A bird dropping a baguette? He's going to have to do better than that.
 
In the early days of rocketry (Atlas, Vanguard, Jupiter, like that) there were the same sorts of silly things happening which you see here; fauna getting in the works, water where you didn't expect to find it, mildew causing problems in relays, etc. Partially they are the effect of random happenings, and partially they are caused by lack of experience with the equipment, facilities and the environment. As time goes on the personnel will learn how to deal with the them, and they'll become less of a problem. It's an aspect of "working the kinks out", a typical engineering maturity problem.
 
One of the more interesting problems while they were doing development on the Superconducting Supercollider was how to deal with fire ants that would most definitely invade the system at various points.

Of course, now it would be Venezuelan crazy ants, which appear to have an affinity for electronic equipment.

So nobody forsaw a bird getting inside and contaminating the environment. Actually, it seems pretty reasonable to me.

Nets. Lotsa nets.

Beanbag
 
At the Martin Lockheed site near Denver Colorado there is a vetical test facility, a place where full missile stages can be erected vertically and stress tested. The building is an 8 stories tall warehouse with 6 test cells. Each of the cells has a roof over the missile to keep the birds that live in the building from crapping on the rockets. Also on top is a nice selection of poisoned bird seed for their pleasure. Only the best!
 
Naive LHC scientists will go ahead and perform an experiment that malfunctions and "rips a hole in fabric of the universe" that in turn "changes all life as we know it." The last few surviving future scientists use similar equipment to send specially-trained wildlife back to our time to infiltrate the LHC site and sabotage the experiments. The sabotage itself causes the malfunction that "rips a hole in fabric of the universe" ...
 
It is somewhat amazing to me that no one thought about the possibility of wildlife intrusion! I hope they are also prepared for the likely arrival of small rodents, bats, and snakes...

Why don't they include hiring--or at least, meeting with and getting info from--someone with prior experience with large installations, like a dam/powerhouse or such?

Just my thoughts, MK
 
I wonder what preparations have been taken against deliberate sabotage by humans.
 
It is somewhat amazing to me that no one thought about the possibility of wildlife intrusion! I hope they are also prepared for the likely arrival of small rodents, bats, and snakes...
Click to expand...
And kobolds. Everyone forget about the kobolds.

I wonder what preparations have been taken against deliberate sabotage by humans.
Click to expand...
We're talking Switzerlanders.
SwissGuard.jpg

(C) Desk Picture

Bring it.
 
Nets? You want to hang nets in the LHC? That'll slow down the photons - they'll never make it past 30mph.

Nah. What's really happening is that in its first moment of existence the LHC effectively said "Let there be light" - thereby creating a universe with a God in it. God in his new-found universe (previously ours) decides to teach these jumped-up godless scientists a lesson by interfering with their brand new LHC. Simple.
 
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