LHC II

[maxwells_daemon]

We only got our first physics data from the LHC on Tuesday, and they are already planning its successor!

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Heh - we were planning Herschel's successor well before it launched!

[e-pepys.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, there is a real LHC upgrade programme. And the International Linear Collider as the next generation machine, but that would need a straight bit of track.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

It's all very exciting. And you haven't managed to destroy the world yet!

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

(And I just read the article. Yeah. But the physics data is (are?) still exciting.)

[e-pepys.livejournal.com]

Yes. On the first day we got twice as much data as all our December test run. We are furiously analysing...

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Brilliant!

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I can just imagine Kzin pining away at home while you work long hours in the lab.

"Myeh?"

[e-pepys.livejournal.com]

But you forget that he is the cleverest cat in the whole wide world. When I get home he is intent on discussing the finer points of the phenomenology of minimum bias events, while all I want to do is slump down in front of an episode of True Blood.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what "myeh?" means, obviously! :)

[colinbj.livejournal.com]

emily_shore wrote: "And you haven't managed to destroy the world yet!"

That's just an observer effect. We're in one of those 1-in-10^100 (and becoming steadily sparser) probability worlds where, by incredible coincidence, not one collision has produced a black hole yet.

They should build the LHC successor on the M25. If that one does produce a world-destroyer, at least we'll have the long awaited fitting conclusion to Good Omens.

[e-pepys.livejournal.com]

That's just an observer effect. We're in one of those 1-in-10^100 (and becoming steadily sparser) probability worlds

If those were the probabilities, then we'd almost certainly be alive in a world where the black hole was crunching its way though continental Europe right now. I think we'd have noticed: www.cern.ch (and my computer jobs at CERN) are still there.

[zengineer.livejournal.com]

To manage a 7TEv collision a 100 tonne tube train only needs to be going 5x10^-6 m/s so it should also be easy to get your collision energy up.

[e-pepys.livejournal.com]

We need to arrange for the train to push a bunch of protons. Oh but...

[manylelephants.livejournal.com]

Do you really want CERN shut down for another 18 months due to tube workers' strikes?