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Smashes bunches of protons together in opposite "beams" (head-on) at near the speed of light. Also smashes lead ions, which are obviously made up of many protons and many neutrons.
Then they sit and watch what happens by tracing what particles go where. It's sort of like observing crash-testing cars at several thousand frames per second and exactly tracking the path of each and every small part that flies away, a huge undertaking if you've ever seen what car crashes look like. Shit flying everywhere.
Oh, also: what they're dying for is to see the ions and protons fall apart in a multitude of uber-tiny sub-particles, some of which have not been "seen" before, only theorized about. Another analogy: killing your own turrets over and over again to see the man in the turret tossed out in the explosion. You know he's in there and should be seen flying around, but you never saw him.
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On September 10 2008 21:12 alpskomleko wrote:
Another analogy: killing your own turrets over and over again to see the man in the turret tossed out in the explosion. You know he's in there and should be seen flying around, but you never saw him. Oooohhh now I finally understand it, why wasn't it explained in our language before?? lol <3
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Korea (South)11596 Posts
man i got class until 20 minutes after over . 
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On September 10 2008 21:47 KOFgokuon wrote:
good we're all alive
We may be right now...!!! I wonder if these scientists would tell us if something did occur that they couldn't stop. You know, the sorta thing like, 4 yrs from now in 2012 they're like,
"oh, you know when we used that Hadron collider thingermajig? Well, we forgot to mention we DID create a blackhole, we've been trying to stop it since we started this damn thing but thought we'd keep it under wraps...oops."
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They didn't even make any collisions yet.
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Today was just starting to circle the particles around.
Next month is when they are going to smash them into each other.
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yea but they will not use it's full capacity in years..
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iNfeRnaL
Germany1908 Posts
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On September 10 2008 22:12 iNfeRnaL wrote:
rofl... nerds
pew pew
death
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On September 10 2008 22:10 Piste wrote:
yea but they will not use it's full capacity in years..
Years is an overstatement, but they will definitely not go much above 5 TeV this year.
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On September 10 2008 22:27 ToT)SiLeNcE( wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2008 22:10 Piste wrote:
yea but they will not use it's full capacity in years.. Years is an overstatement, but they will definitely not go much above 5 TeV this year.
Are you sitting at CERN in this historical moment and posting on TL? That seems a bit odd 
Btw, I'd love if you could read what I posted above and pointed out if I got anything wrong. You seem to be qualified to correct what's been said and elaborate on these matters.
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On September 10 2008 22:45 alpskomleko wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2008 22:27 ToT)SiLeNcE( wrote:On September 10 2008 22:10 Piste wrote:
yea but they will not use it's full capacity in years.. Years is an overstatement, but they will definitely not go much above 5 TeV this year. Are you sitting at CERN in this historical moment and posting on TL? That seems a bit odd Btw, I'd love if you could read what I posted above and pointed out if I got anything wrong. You seem to be qualified to correct what's been said and elaborate on these matters.
Yes I am. I have to work, and if I have time between measuring I can read TL 
About what you said: It was very general and principally not wrong. Basically the LHC is a discovery machine. It is a proton+proton collider, that means that you can get to much higher energies than you could with electrons+positrons. Protons don't suffer from the synchroton radiation problem as much as electrons do. That's why you can get to higher momentum in the same tunnel as LEP was built in (LEP is an electron positron collider). The drawback is that protons are not elementary particles, but are instead made of 3 quarks (in fact it's even more complicated). The constituents share the momentum and the energy of the proton and it is the quarks that actually collide. But in these collisions you don't know the individual energy and momentum of the quarks. With hadron colliders you will also get a lot more mess in your detector because hadrons are more complicated than ie. electrons and positrons.
So what does it mean that the LHC is a "discovery machine"? The point is that the current model of the subatomic world, the Standard Model of Particle Physics has been confirmed to almost unbelievable precision. But it cannot explain a lot of things:
- Why are the masses of the particles the way they are? Why is there a span of almost 12 orders of magnitude in the masses? In fact if you don't have the Higgs mechanism the mathematics of Quantum Field Theory deal with massless particles which is obviously wrong! So that's why there should be the Higgs particle! This particle is very heavy and has never been observed. If the Standard Model prediction is correct than the Higgs particle will be found with the LHC because of the huge ring and the fact that it is a proton proton collider you can reach the energy needed in order to produce the higgs.
- We also don't have any idea what constitutes dark matter or dark energy in the universe. We know that it's there but we have no idea what it is. The current opinion is that none of the known particles can account for it.
- We have no idea what is happening in the first seconds of the universe. Our current theories break down. But just as electricity and magnetism had been unified by Maxwell, electromagnetism and the weak interaction have been unified. There is further indication for a possible unification of Electroweak and Strong forces! This can be achieved particularly by adding heavy particles (which have not been observed so far). One of these particles is also a very good candidate for dark matter! LHC probably can see these particles and discover their mass spectrum and so on.
The particles are produced from the protons' energy and produce lots of secondary particles which can be observed in the huge detectors.
Cheers
Bastian
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
i want a pink dragon, maybe one with two horns so i can tie pretty ribbons on them.
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man imagine all those ppl that died of sudden causes during the first second of that experiment. just before they died they must be like oh shit. worm hole
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I feel a little dissapointed that we're all still alive... I view it as a faliure in science =/
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It's not happening till october so I don't yet consider it a failure.
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Don't worry, they can make a dragon for you soon enough.
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World won't end until 2012! If a Black Hole really was made no way the public would be notified. Not until buildings started getting eaten ;O
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EPT
