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The large hadron collider?

dave1978

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Astronut

Astronut

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I'm just gobsmacked by the scale of the experiment and the engineering involved in building the LHC - it's real cutting edge exciting stuff.

Whatever they discover (or not) it will enable the theorists to get one or two steps closer to binding quantum physics and relativistic physics together to reach the holy grail of a unified theory for everything.

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acey

acey

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The LHC wishlist is every particle they've been looking for in the last 25 years (since I was a PhD physicist myself!). Higgs, SUSY particles etc, along with the remote possibility of mini black holes, strangelets etc. The latter has always been the nightmare scenario as it would destroy the planet - it's not considered a threat but you never know...

If they find the Higgs then Peter Higgs will presumably get a Nobel Prize, if they make a black hole then Hawking will get one, and if they find supersymmetric particles there are quite a few people who'd be owed one. And if they don't find any of those things then they'll all have to start lobbying for an even bigger machine.

What's the use of it? As Benjamin Franklin once said, "What's the use of a newborn baby?"

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narrowbandpaul

narrowbandpaul

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acey, i am a physicist in training myself...I've never heard of strangelets...can u explain?

I am not entirely sure that a bigger machine is practical, since acceleraing charge round a loop causes a loss of energy (EM) getting so large that you then cant sustain the velocity. A different kind of accelerator is required.

I havent done any in depth particle physics, but would like a detailed description of the higgs boson if thats possible

Cheers

Paul

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Jeff RV

Jeff RV

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The LHC wishlist is every particle they've been looking for in the last 25 years (since I was a PhD physicist myself!). Higgs, SUSY particles etc, along with the remote possibility of mini black holes, strangelets etc. The latter has always been the nightmare scenario as it would destroy the planet - it's not considered a threat but you never know...

If they find the Higgs then Peter Higgs will presumably get a Nobel Prize, if they make a black hole then Hawking will get one, and if they find supersymmetric particles there are quite a few people who'd be owed one. And if they don't find any of those things then they'll all have to start lobbying for an even bigger machine.

What's the use of it? As Benjamin Franklin once said, "What's the use of a newborn baby?"

I see your point!!

Apart from proving it exist, How are they going to use this info and put to good use?

An awful lot of money for maybe nothing :clouds2:

explanations welcome.

Jeff.

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axolotl

axolotl

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I'm not a physicist but it is possible that nothing of any practical use will emerge from the LHC. As with much of astronomy, this may simply prove to be curiosity-driven research. IMO nothing wrong with this - scientific exploration of this sort, together with the arts (which also cost money and have no practical use), is one of the happier features that distinguish humans from other animals.

However, as the quote from Franklin implies, it is always difficult to see what a line of investigation might ultimately yield, sometimes the most abstract seeming research leads to discoveries of huge practical or commercial importance. To give an example from the science of Genetics, the technique commonly called DNA fingerprinting - one of the greatest of all advances in forensic science - arose from a study of the evolution of globin genes (ie genes responsible for oxygen-carrying proteins such as haemoglobin), starting with those of the seal. Perhaps discoveries from the LHC will have implications years down the line that, at the moment, we simply cannot foresee. Whatever happens it will be interesting (as long as the world doesn't end, but I've already bet someone a pint of beer that it wont and as I see it I'm in a win-win situation, either way I don't have to pay out :clouds2: ).

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themos

themos

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The use of a newborn baby depends on the circumstances. People who have enough children don't see the point of another one, cannot afford another one or are not physically able to have another one.

Equally well, one might say, let the next generation discover what lies beyond 1 TeV.

I'm just playing devil's advocate, you realize. The question whether to spend money on this or that is ultimately political and, it follows, endlessly arguable.

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Jeff RV

Jeff RV

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I'm not a physicist but it is possible that nothing of any practical use will emerge from the LHC. As with much of astronomy, this may simply prove to be curiosity-driven research. IMO nothing wrong with this - scientific exploration of this sort, together with the arts (which also cost money and have no practical use), is one of the happier features that distinguish humans from other animals.

However, as the quote from Franklin implies, it is always difficult to see what a line of investigation might ultimately yield, sometimes the most abstract seeming research leads to discoveries of huge practical or commercial importance. To give an example from the science of Genetics, the technique commonly called DNA fingerprinting - one of the greatest of all advances in forensic science - arose from a study of the evolution of globin genes (ie genes responsible for oxygen-carrying proteins such as haemoglobin), starting with those of the seal. Perhaps discoveries from the LHC will have implications years down the line that, at the moment, we simply cannot foresee. Whatever happens it will be interesting (as long as the world doesn't end, but I've already bet someone a pint of beer that it wont and as I see it I'm in a win-win situation, either way I don't have to pay out :) ).

A spin off will no doubt come of it in the future i dare say, Extra high speed Internet? :clouds2:

Jeff.

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davekermito

davekermito

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OT - I've had an interesting debate on a different message board about the point of the LHC and the costs involved. It's interesting to see how media sensationalism has clouded the judgement of so many.

As ever Hawking came to the rescue...

"Both the LHC, and the space program, are vital if the human race is not to stultify, and eventually die out. Together they cost less than one tenth of a percent of world GDP. If the human race cannot afford that, it doesn't deserve the epithet, human,"

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acey

acey

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acey, i am a physicist in training myself...I've never heard of strangelets...can u explain?

There's a nice article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet

I havent done any in depth particle physics, but would like a detailed description of the higgs boson if thats possible

Back in the days of Margaret Thatcher, William Waldegrave asked if anyone could do that, leading to the following explanation:

Imagine a roomful of people. You can walk through them fairly easily, but if you happen to be a celebrity then everyone will cluster round you and make it harder to move. The Higgs field is the roomful of people, and the celebrity is a particle that acquires mass (i.e. inertia) through interacting with the field.

This idea actually goes back to J.J. Thompson, discoverer of the electron. For him, the roomful of people was the ether, and the electrical interaction of the electron with the ether was what gave the particle mass. A lot of work was done in the late 19th and early 20th cent on this idea that all mass was really electromagnetic in origin, but it fell away when the ether was disproved. It resurfaced in a different way in quantum field theory.

To think of what the Higgs field is, start with the familiar gravitational and electromagnetic fields. An electromagnetic wave is transverse, like a wave on a vibrating string: the quantum excitation of this kind of wave is said to have spin 1 (never mind why). It means that a radio aerial can be a long straight line: EM waves make electrons dance up and down. Gravity waves act differently, in two orthogonal directions: think of the way the water round the Earth is stretched and squeezed into an ellipsoid by the Moon. Gravity waves act like tidal forces, stretching in one direction and squeezing in another. The quantum excitation of this kind of field (the graviton) would have spin 2. To detect gravity waves, you can't use a one-dimensional aerial, you need a 2-dimensional detector (an L-shaped rod, which would get longer along one axis and shorter on the other if a big enough wave went by).

The Higgs field is "scalar", meaning its particle has spin zero. An everyday example of this kind of field is temperature: at every point the value of temperature is a number, with no direction. By interacting with certain particles, the Higgs alters their mass.

That's the best I can do for now. Long time since I studied this stuff!

Andrew

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GazOC

GazOC

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OT - I've had an interesting debate on a different message board about the point of the LHC and the costs involved. It's interesting to see how media sensationalism has clouded the judgement of so many.

I'm currently in one on the off-topic section of a boxing forum trying to convince people we arn't going to get sucked in to black hole in a couple of days!! Even the people who favour the experiment seem to think they are just going to switch it on, take a picture and the job is done!!!

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lunator

lunator

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OT - I've had an interesting debate on a different message board about the point of the LHC and the costs involved. It's interesting to see how media sensationalism has clouded the judgement of so many.

I'm currently in one on the off-topic section of a boxing forum trying to convince people we arn't going to get sucked in to black hole in a couple of days!! Even the people who favour the experiment seem to think they are just going to switch it on, take a picture and the job is done!!!

Gaz

I've got my digital compact camera ready if they need it :clouds2:

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