Large Hadron Collider Dismissed

Looks like catastrophic destruction of the earth this coming spring is back on, the legal challenge to stop the Large Hadron Collider from operating has been dismissed. In a surprise move, Judge Helen Gillmore concluded the court, which was located in Hawaii, U.S., had no jurisdiction over the collider, which is in Europe. The lawsuit was brought by a Walter Wagner, who is reported to be a "radiation safety officer" and Louis Sancho, a science writer and professor. Mr. Sancho was pleased that even though the lawsuit was dismissed it brought attention to the safety of the large hadron collider. He also credits their actions with the execution of the safety report conducted by scientists. One has to wonder why the suit wasn't brought forward in Europe. I am not a legal expert but maybe its a lot harder to file suit in Europe.

Large Hadron Collider on 60 Minutes

I'm always afraid I'll miss something interesting on 60 minutes and this week I was right. They talked about the Large Hardon Collider. In case you missed it too, I've posted it right here.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Large Hadron Collider Operation Delayed Until Next Year

This morning the NY Times reported that the Large Hadron Collider will remain shut down until next year. In fact scientists say the collider won't begin operation until April, because of the need to repair electrical and other problems. One reason this takes so long is that the huge magnets, which are kept at near absolute zero temperatures, have to be slowly warmed up to make the repairs, and then cooled back down again. So I guess we'll have to wait to find out if there is a Higgs particle.

Read the details here

Collider down for Two Months

CNN is reporting this morning that the Large Hadron Collider will be out of commission for at least two months. Engineers at CERN say that the damage from the two incidents described in the previous post is worse than they thought, and the device will have to be warmed up from its cold operating temperatures to repair it.

Hopefully they will wait until after Christmas to operate the machine again. It would be sad if an earth destroying black hole were to eat the earth on December 23d as we did our last minute shopping.

Quantum Doomsday Delayed

Problems at the Large Hadron Collider have delayed the first test actually involving the collision of particles until mid-October. It seems that a little transformer (30 ton) failed and in an unrelated incident, a bit of helium was spilled. Actual experiments are even further off, these initial tests will be low energy compared to what the collider will use when actually doing experiments. So please ignore any doomsday predictions for the month of October.

Kaku artile on Large Hadron Collider on Forbes

Michio Kaku has also posted an article about the large hadron collider on Forbes.com. Amazing that the hype about the large hadron collider reached a level where Forbes would include commentary on it.

Brian Greene and Michio Kaku on the Large Hadron Collider

In Yesterdays New York Times Brian Greene wrote a nice editorial outlining some of the more exciting things the Large Hadron Collider might discover. The list includes:

• The Higgs Boson
• Supersymmetry
• Transdimensional particles-that is particles that carry energy away into "extra" spatial dimensions
• and last but not least-Micro-Black holes

Read the details here.

My favorite physics writer, Michio Kaku has also chimed in, with a short post about the Large Hadron Collider on the Wall Street Journal.

LA Times Report on Large Hadron Collider Startup

Here is a video on the startup of the Large Hadron Collider from the LA Times.

Large Hadron Collider Update: We are still here

Well the first big day has come and gone. The Large Hadron Collider went into operation, and alas, we are all still alive.
But lets not get too optimistic-remember this was just a test run. The proton beam just went around in circles and there were no collisions. Things haven't gotten hairy yet, but they will soon when the scientists actually start colliding protons together. But my prediction is that we don't disappear into a black hole sink then either.

The phenomenon-if you can call it that-of people thinking the end of the world is around the corner is an old one. It may be old but it has a lot of life, and in our modern world this idea, which had previously been tied up solely with religion, has taken on scientific tones. What I find interesting among some is the notion that we aren't "supposed" to be exploring nature and we are messing around with God's creation by doing so, and we're going to be punished. I've had several friends that held fast to that very belief. So somehow by investigating the nature of matter and physics God is going to get upset and punish us. Interestingly, he is going to punish the entire earth because of the activities of a few scientists, a tiny minority of the population.

These sorts of views are explored in this interesting NY Times article.

More On the Large Hadron Collider

The Telegraph has an interesting article or two about the Large Hadron Collider coming online soon. My favorite is the link that says scientists are receiving death threats over the upcoming "end of world" experiment. Unfortunately the link isn't working or I'd post it here.

Some interesting highlights. In regards to my previous post, physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed from the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton says he would be "a years salary" that the LHC will find the Higgs. He also thinks there is a good chance the collider will find particles of dark matter.

In contrast Nobel prize winning physicist Martin Veltman says he won't be surprised if they don't find the Higgs. Maybe Cahills alternative idea will gain some life after all. Being ever the pessimist, Veltman also says he doubts supersymmetry will be found.

Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith, Director-General of CERN 1994-1999 says that there is a 95% probability of finding the Higgs and a 60% probability of detecting supersymmetry.

Well no matter what the experts say, experiment will decide everything. You can read the detailed comments over here.

Collider Countown: Two More Days

September 10, 2008: the day when humanity will end when a black hole eats the earth, is soon approaching. According to the New York Times the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will fire up for operation at 3:30 AM Eastern Time. That's 1:30 AM where I live, so I will be fast asleep, unless the black holes that get produced cause some sort of disturbance before we get swallowed up.

Incidentally, at one time or another I mentioned that a physicist named Kevin Cahill proposed a particle theory which gave masses to particles without the Higgs. If the Higgs isn't found by the Large Hadron Collider Cahill's theory might come to the forefront. It had been looked at many years ago by Lee Smolin, but it never really caught on. Here is a sample paper of a toy model. Want to take up the mantle and apply the method to the standard model?

Soluble Gauge Theory - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Soluble Gauge Theory

Large Hadron Collider as a Time Machine?

Time travel is one of the most radical ideas of science. What's fascinating about it is that it may be allowed by relativity. Now then, as if worrrying about the Large Hadron Collider destroying the world with an earth-eating black hole or ball of strangelets were not enough. I. V. Volovich and I. Ya. Aref'eva are proposing the device can function as a time machine. In a paper posted last year, the pair proposed that the LHC would be capable of producing wormholes, which can function as time machines-at least in principle. The researchers state:

"Causality is one of fundamental physical principles. We suggest in this note that there is a
possibility to test causality in experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This
is related with a possibility of wormhole production in proton-proton collisions at the LHC.
The wormholes contain small spacetime regions with closed timelike curves (CTC) which
violate the standard causality condition."

Well this is unlikely, but certainly fascinating. This idea was also proposed in another very interesting paper which discusses how to detect the presence of such time machines here.

Large Hadron Collider Rap

As if the lawsuit to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from going into operation was not enough, science writer Kate McAlpine has produced a rap video about the device. Personally I think its pretty corny. The video has been viewed 723,000 times on YouTube.

Large Hadron Collider Lawsuit

From the ridiculous news files. On September 2, there will be a hearing in Hawaii for a civil suit to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from starting operation. I am not a legal expert but I don't understand how you can file a law suit in Hawaii to stop the operation of a scientific enterprise operating in Europe. This sounds pretty far fetched to me.

The people filing the suit are Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho. Apparently these guys are worried about the possibility of the collider producing deadly mini-black holes, that will swallow the earth in a cataclysmic fury. Wagner has put together this website with an exciting video:

Stop the LHC until we know its safe

Wagner says that this device, which may also produce anti-matter and all-consuming stranglets, will be operated "all in the same of science supporting theories with no practical benefit".

If mini-black holes don't cause you to loose some sleep tonight, maybe strangelets will. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find much information about Luis Sancho, apparently he is some kind of Spanish science fiction writer.

Will they find the Higgs?

The standard model of particle physics has one major problem. The particles are all massless. This uncomfortable situation was remedied using a clever trick by Peter Higgs way back in 1964. The mathematical details can be found in Quantum Field Theory Demystified. We won't review that here, we'll just note that Higgs postulated the existence of a field, now aptly named the Higgs field, which fills all of space-time. Particles interact with this ever present vacuum field, and just like anything else, different particles interact with different strengths. The strength of the interaction determines the mass of the particle. If there were no Higgs field all particles would travel at the speed of light.

I saw a talk once, I don't remember who gave it, where the guy likened the Higgs field to water in a swimming pool. Imagine being underwater and moving your arm up and down. So by analogy you can kind of think of the resistance of the water to the interaction of a particle with the Higgs field. Like all fields, the Higgs field has a particle associated with it. Its called the Higgs boson, and would be the only known fundamental particle with zero spin.

One of the first items of business for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is going to be finding the Higgs. But what if they don't find it? Surprisingly there are some other ideas that explore the acquisition of mass by particles in the standard model. So either way, whatever comes of the search for the Higgs at the LHC is going to lead to some interesting physics down the road.

Here is a link to a paper exploring one of these ideas, for the more mathematically inclined.

Soluble Theory of a noncompact Group

Large Hadron Collider to Begin Operation

The Large Hadron Collider, the long awaited upgrade to the particle accelerator operated by CERN will begin operation on September 10th. Built out of a 17 mile long ring, the hopes of particle physicists throughout the world hinge on its successful operation. For the first time in years scientists will get a chance to see some new data in particle physics, a field which has pretty much languished in the murky world of theory since the discovery of the top quark way back in 1995.

The next few years should prove to be exciting. In addition to "wrapping up" the standard model by finding the higgs boson, a hypothetical particle believed to give particles their mass, the accelerator may be able to test many radical ideas like the existence of "extra" dimensions. Or who knows, maybe it won't find the higgs. Now that would be an exciting result. Scientists would have to go back to the drawing board to explain where mass comes from.

No matter what happens, one thing is for sure. The long-awaited LHC is going to usher in an exciting new era in physical science.

Read more here