Happy end of the world everyone!
The LHC will destroy the planet some time today

Take this opportunity to say something profound
Perhaps if u really hate or love another member, let them know here.
Any murders you committed, confess now and be with JEBUS!

(actually i bet everyone here a billion dollars that the LHC does not end the world, and if i'm wrong, tough **it :p)

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

I think I read an article saying that it's not actually going to perform the experiments for another month. They're just testing the beam and the electromagnets now.

[quote=Poley aka JamesBond aka the dude who works at CERN with the LHC]hate to dampen everything but there won't be any intentional collisions on the 10th, probably won't be any until the end of the month.

The 10th is just when we will get full circulation of the beam around the whole ring (hopefully) and start ramping up to 5 TeV per beam energy. ( we'll hit 7 TeV after the winter shut down).

The beams will need a lot of work to get them contained and under control, just one of the beams if "dumped" can start melting nearly a ton of solid copper in a few seconds, just to give you an idea of it's strength. So we really don't want the beam out of control going through parts of our very very precious detectors.

The actual beam dump was (last I heard) a big chunk of graphite which will reach temperatures upto around 2200 C during operation and still remain far far too hot for people to go into it's room during the life of the experiment. (long shut downs not included, I guess) They also do a lot of de-focusing of the beams before they dump them to spread the energy out over the surface a bit, otherwise I think they would just go straight through.

LHCb (special b-physics experiment) actually has put parts of it's inner most detector on a retracter (sp?) so during the first few weeks it's not so close to the beam, because otherwise there is a very good chance it'll get burnt to bits they even built a second one because they are so sure it will be

So don't worry about the world ending on the 10th, it'll more likely happen near the end of September, beginning of October when we actually start colliding the beams

and tbh, all this talk of black holes, just ignore it folks, it's exceptionally unlikely to happen and even if it does they won't live long enough to worry about. The press have just blown it all out of proportion.

When we start getting collisions I'll give you all an update with hopefully some pretty pictures from the event display of ATLAS

and if your really lucky a screenshot of the oh-so exciting silicon tracker DAQ+DCS screen which I'll be looking after...yawn....

[edit] that article sucked btw and Professor Otto Rossler (one of the folks who are arguing for the experiment not to run) is a god damn biochemist (no offence to biochemists) so what the **** does he know about high energy particle physics??? probably diddley squat!! [/edit][/quote]
.

Ah, it wasn't an article, it was one of James' posts.

secretly i know this, but lets all jump on the paranoid and arrogant bandwagon :p

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

i wonder if i could find a hot chick dumb enough to fall for the end of the world BS so i can get some end of the world head

Probably won't.

yeah the flaw in the plan is dumb hot chicks don't pay attention to anything remotely related to science...

Or you?

what what in the butt?

I love you ruthven

Ya know, I met one of the people working at CERN this last summer... It'd be awesome if I randomly met James (though I'm sure there are tons of physicists working at CERN)

btw folks, 1 beam has gone all the way round the ring, they are currently trying for the other.

they might if they are feeling lucky run both around together but no "proper" news on that yet other than rumours.

here's the update page if people are interested on the beams progress

http://hcc.web.cern.ch/hcc/beam/by_beam.php

I promised pictures too and here they are

This is what the beam does to ATLAS when it goes through,







most, if not all, you are seeing there is what's called "beam halo". As the proton beam goes around the ring a halo of other particles starts to form around them, that is what you are mostly seeing, the beam halo interacting with the detector.

there might just be what looks like a cosmic muon in the first and second picture (which are different views of the same time), but can't be 100% sure with all the other crap going on.

Ever heard "Not if you were the last man on earth!"?

Probably will now

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

James what is a cosmic muon? i thought there was only one muon in the lepton family( and its antiparticle), which decays from a ... pion?... into the muon... then 2.2 x10-6 seconds or something, it decays into an electron and a anti/neutrino maybe ( antimuon => positron ?)

Just testing my geeky know how

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Those textures are horrible.

Did not realize that, but how can we trust someone who's ONE OF THEM? He's in on it!

blame the guy in the middle of the attached photo he's the guy that does the colour scheme for Atlantis (ATLAS event display) amongst other things.

as for ruth's question, what I mean by a cosmic muon is just a muon that has come from space, either from the sun, another sun, interactions in our atmosphere, etc... just something not from our planet. They are very highly energetic and pass through the 100m or so of ground above atlas and punch through the detector and keep going.

They are useful because you can align the different bits of the detector from them as they travel in a straight line right through. You check the alignment of the different parts of the detector through the projected path of the muon and make sure the bits line up, adjusting in x, y and z the position of the cells as needed. Eventually all the little bits of info go into a general alignment algorithm that fine tunes all the bits based on what data has been collected.

Also muons can come from many different sources, not just pions

Awesome google logo btw

another fancy image



also if you want to check out the images yourself, there is a flash movie up to now, go here.

http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/OPERATIONS/prodSys/atlasoracleadmin/10Sep2008/beam/index.php

Are we dead yet?

So, ATLAS uses KDE, eh?

Did anyone else see the article about the people who bet the world would end because it had 1,000,000/1 odds? I mean... they actually paid some guy money, hoping the world would end so they would be rich...

KDE, GNOME, depends on the user.

the main OS is scientific linux which is based off a version of Red Hat Enterprise.

This is so exciting.

Stupid Internet fads.

Are we dead yet?

Yes.

I don't feel dead.

/stabz

Better?

Am I dead yet?

Bring out yer deaaaaad!

Are we dead yet? [/SIZE]

just because you hear it all the time....

I don't get that, actually. They instead toy with my brain and stab me in the back.

Jesus christ Jep.

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Why aren't we dead yet?

we shifted into a different, alternative reality

It's quantum immortality for everyone!

Maybe thats why I don't feel dead.

And pregnant.