A Detailed Profile of the Hadron Super Collider 191
davco9200 writes "The New York Times has up a lengthy profile of the Large Hadron Collider. The article covers the basics (size = 17 miles, cost = 8 billion, energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts) and history but also provides interesting interviews of the scientists who work with the facility every day. The piece also goes into some detail on the expected experiments. 'The physicists, wearing hardhats, kneepads and safety harnesses, are scrambling like Spiderman over this assembly, appropriately named Atlas, ducking under waterfalls of cables and tubes and crawling into hidden room-size cavities stuffed with electronics. They are getting ready to see the universe born again.' There are photos, video and a nifty interactive graphic."
Sexist/Agist (Score:0, Funny)
"the physics is complex, but the controls are so simple, even my grandmother could use it."
As a 48 yo grandmother, I am offended that technical incompetance is equated with being a grandparent. I don't think anyone would have said "so simple even my grandfather could implement."
I am incidentally, a C programmer of 20+ years.
Cool (Score:5, Funny)
They are getting ready to see the universe born again.
It's like having a Tivo with a 6,000 year replay capacity!
Compact?! (Score:5, Funny)
I'd hate to see the Large Muon Solenoid!
Thank goodness there's no typo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank goodness there's no typo (Score:5, Funny)
kneepads? oh yeah... (Score:1, Funny)
The kneepads are for when the Senators, Representatives, various goverment functionaries, and lobbyists [wisegeek.com] visit.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Funny)
- When youre creating a captive mini black hole on Earth I would have thought hard hats and steel toecapped boots would be a MINIMUM safety requirement.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Funny)
I don't get it. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:"Energy Consumption" - WTF? (Score:3, Funny)
Flying Cars (Score:3, Funny)
You're going to get a flying car, OK?
Well, maybe. See, the LHC is going to be able to smash things at the Weak Scale energy, which is where we need to look (at what comes out of smashed things) to pick among many theories of how the universe works. Depending on the results, dozens of models will be ruled out, and, if we're lucky, one will be left standing.
This model will likely contain a theory of quantum gravity. We have lots of ideas about how quantum physics and gravity might align, but we don't know which, if any, are right.
Now, to make your flying car is going to require some engineering work. That'll have to figure out how to cancel out gravity. Nobody knows if this is possible or if we can do it, but if we can and it is we're going to have to know how gravity works first.
So the LHC is the first step to getting you a flying car. I'm just not sure that we want people who judge 'basic science is worthless' to be making flight judgments in flying cars.
Does not compute (Score:4, Funny)
For the old school among us, that's 59,840 cubits, 370 metric tons of gold, and 1.18170471 x 10^-19 foot pounds, respectively.
Or about 3 Libraries of Congress accelerating at about 1.72 x 10^-183 m/s/s.