TheeGoatPig
There is no R in my name
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Science Prepares To "Fire Up" the Large Hadron Collider: Investigating the "Big Bang"
- Thread starter trysail
- Start date
That was excellent!
3113
Hello Summer!
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So you say. But remember, time-wise, one can fall into a black hole indefinitely. Maybe we're falling into it now and just don't know itSonofagun...we made it.
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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Scientists Search for Missing Mass, `God Particle'
By Warren Giles
Sept. 10 -- The world's biggest magnetic loop powered up today outside Geneva in a quest to understand the beginning of time and find the missing mass created by the so- called Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research aim to find some of the 96 percent of the universe's missing building materials. They have created conditions as close as possible to the event known as Big Bang, including temperatures colder than outer space, in which particles traveling in opposite directions at near light-speed have been set on a collision course.
Physicists say they hope to prove within two years the existence of a particle that creates dark matter, part of the mass that went missing at the beginning of time.
The work behind the 27-kilometer long (16 mile) magnetic loop buried 100 meters (328 feet) under ground may prove the existence of the Higgs boson particle, which theory says gives other particles properties like mass. Its importance has earned it the nickname the God particle.
As the first beams of protons begin to lap at 11,000 revolutions a second, the resulting collisions may help explain the building materials of about a fifth of the missing universe. They may also reveal what so-called dark energy is and why the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing, as predicted by theory.
Beams were injected into the loop, known as the Large Hadron Collider [ or Large Hardon Collider, as it is fondly called by certain depraved denizens of Lit ], stage by stage around its circumference today. The LHC has two parallel tubes carrying the bundles of particles in opposite directions. At minus 271 degrees Celsius (minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit), the LHC is also the world's biggest fridge.
One of the four experiments round the loop ``have seen some beautiful tracks coming off'' the first beams, said Lyn Evans, project leader of the LHC, speaking on a Web cast from the control center at CERN, the French acronym by which the center is known.
In generating an environment that resembles conditions one thousandth of a millionth of a second after the start of time and the creation of all the universe's building material, CERN will be inundated with data from the observations.
Within a year, the particle accelerator's four experiments, one of which involves equipment weighing 7,000 metric tons or the equivalent of a five-story subterranean Eiffel Tower, will have spewed enough data to fill a pile of compact discs 12 miles high.
While the spin-offs for technologies used in the 6 billion Swiss franc ($5.3 billion) experiments may not be immediately obvious, applications from other particle physics research include three-dimensional hospital scanners and non-invasive surgery, which will improve as a result of CERN's work.
The CERN complex, funded by governments including the U.S., and spread over the Swiss and French border, is where one alumni, Tim Berners-Lee, invented the first World Wide Web browser in 1989 to help physicists all over the globe better swap notes.
By Warren Giles
Sept. 10 -- The world's biggest magnetic loop powered up today outside Geneva in a quest to understand the beginning of time and find the missing mass created by the so- called Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research aim to find some of the 96 percent of the universe's missing building materials. They have created conditions as close as possible to the event known as Big Bang, including temperatures colder than outer space, in which particles traveling in opposite directions at near light-speed have been set on a collision course.
Physicists say they hope to prove within two years the existence of a particle that creates dark matter, part of the mass that went missing at the beginning of time.
The work behind the 27-kilometer long (16 mile) magnetic loop buried 100 meters (328 feet) under ground may prove the existence of the Higgs boson particle, which theory says gives other particles properties like mass. Its importance has earned it the nickname the God particle.
As the first beams of protons begin to lap at 11,000 revolutions a second, the resulting collisions may help explain the building materials of about a fifth of the missing universe. They may also reveal what so-called dark energy is and why the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing, as predicted by theory.
Beams were injected into the loop, known as the Large Hadron Collider [ or Large Hardon Collider, as it is fondly called by certain depraved denizens of Lit
], stage by stage around its circumference today. The LHC has two parallel tubes carrying the bundles of particles in opposite directions. At minus 271 degrees Celsius (minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit), the LHC is also the world's biggest fridge. One of the four experiments round the loop ``have seen some beautiful tracks coming off'' the first beams, said Lyn Evans, project leader of the LHC, speaking on a Web cast from the control center at CERN, the French acronym by which the center is known.
In generating an environment that resembles conditions one thousandth of a millionth of a second after the start of time and the creation of all the universe's building material, CERN will be inundated with data from the observations.
Within a year, the particle accelerator's four experiments, one of which involves equipment weighing 7,000 metric tons or the equivalent of a five-story subterranean Eiffel Tower, will have spewed enough data to fill a pile of compact discs 12 miles high.
While the spin-offs for technologies used in the 6 billion Swiss franc ($5.3 billion) experiments may not be immediately obvious, applications from other particle physics research include three-dimensional hospital scanners and non-invasive surgery, which will improve as a result of CERN's work.
The CERN complex, funded by governments including the U.S., and spread over the Swiss and French border, is where one alumni, Tim Berners-Lee, invented the first World Wide Web browser in 1989 to help physicists all over the globe better swap notes.
shereads
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So you say. But remember, time-wise, one can fall into a black hole indefinitely. Maybe we're falling into it now and just don't know it
I thought it was just the extended primary season.
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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(Fair Use Excerpt)
GENEVA, September 10 (RIA Novosti) - Scientists successfully fired the first beam of protons round a vast underground tunnel below the Swiss-French border on Wednesday, in a test run of a multi-billion dollar experiment to shed light on the origins of the universe. (Video)
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC, also known to the filthy-minded and depraved denizens of the AH as the "Large Hardon Collider") is based 100 meters below ground, with a circumference of 27 km, and is operated from the control room of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). (Image gallery)
During the test, a beam of protons completed a clockwise lap of the accelerator ring, in extreme vacuum cooled by liquid helium to minus 271 degrees C.
Lyn Evans, LHC project leader, called the test-run conducted at 9:30 a.m. (07:30 GMT) a "fantastic moment" hailing a new era in scientists' understanding of the universe.
Later, sub-atomic particles will be sent round the accelerator ring in opposite directions at almost the speed of light, guided by a powerful magnetic field produced by superconductor magnets, and will collide in front of huge particle detectors.
Many scientists hope the experiment will reveal the Higgs boson, nicknamed the "God particle", a concept hypothesized in the 1960s to explain how particles acquire mass.
British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking earlier told the BBC he had bet colleagues 100 dollars that the elusive particle will not be found.
"I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of 100 dollars that we won't find the Higgs," he said.
Discovering the particle could explain how, in the split-second after the Big Bang, matter appeared from nothingness.
The international LHC project has involved more than 2,000 physicists from hundreds of universities and laboratories in 34 countries since 1984. Over 700 Russian physicists from 12 research institutes have taken part.
Prof Frank Wilczek of MIT has called the experiment "our civilization's answer to the Pyramids of Egypt."
Ahead of the test, LHC Russian coordinator Viktor Savrin said unless the Higgs boson is found, no larger device would ever be built.
"I do not think it is realistic to build a larger accelerator on a similar scheme, nobody is likely to venture to do that," Savrin said.
GENEVA, September 10 (RIA Novosti) - Scientists successfully fired the first beam of protons round a vast underground tunnel below the Swiss-French border on Wednesday, in a test run of a multi-billion dollar experiment to shed light on the origins of the universe. (Video)
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC, also known to the filthy-minded and depraved denizens of the AH as the "Large Hardon Collider") is based 100 meters below ground, with a circumference of 27 km, and is operated from the control room of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). (Image gallery)
During the test, a beam of protons completed a clockwise lap of the accelerator ring, in extreme vacuum cooled by liquid helium to minus 271 degrees C.
Lyn Evans, LHC project leader, called the test-run conducted at 9:30 a.m. (07:30 GMT) a "fantastic moment" hailing a new era in scientists' understanding of the universe.
Later, sub-atomic particles will be sent round the accelerator ring in opposite directions at almost the speed of light, guided by a powerful magnetic field produced by superconductor magnets, and will collide in front of huge particle detectors.
Many scientists hope the experiment will reveal the Higgs boson, nicknamed the "God particle", a concept hypothesized in the 1960s to explain how particles acquire mass.
British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking earlier told the BBC he had bet colleagues 100 dollars that the elusive particle will not be found.
"I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of 100 dollars that we won't find the Higgs," he said.
Discovering the particle could explain how, in the split-second after the Big Bang, matter appeared from nothingness.
The international LHC project has involved more than 2,000 physicists from hundreds of universities and laboratories in 34 countries since 1984. Over 700 Russian physicists from 12 research institutes have taken part.
Prof Frank Wilczek of MIT has called the experiment "our civilization's answer to the Pyramids of Egypt."
Ahead of the test, LHC Russian coordinator Viktor Savrin said unless the Higgs boson is found, no larger device would ever be built.
"I do not think it is realistic to build a larger accelerator on a similar scheme, nobody is likely to venture to do that," Savrin said.
Last edited:
Safe_Bet
No she's not back I'm Amy
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I know it's perverse, but I really hope Hawkins wins his bet. There would just be something ironically funny about a $5.3 billion dollar fuck-up. Money that could have / should have been used directly for research into other areas that would have been much more beneficial to mankind.
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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Well, maybe— just maybe— if Hawking is right, for the first time in recorded history, the Congress of the United States did something right (cancelling the Superconducting Super Collider [ Waxahachie, TX ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider ). Only time will tell.
Of course they did still manage to piss away $2 billion before they made up their frickin' minds. If only they'd stop spending like drunken sailors on the other $2.7 trillion of annual spending ( by the way, that's $2,700,000,000,000 for the numerically challenged ) with all its hare-brained boondoggles (though I'm not holding my breath): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Budget
gauchecritic
When there are grey skies
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That's 2.7 billon in real numbers.
I think this is to do with the experiment in some way but can someone explain how they actually know that most of the matter in the universe is undetected? Like ninety odd percent?
If my extremely vague understanding is correct: maths say there is more matter than can be detected.
Maths also says the big bang doesn't account for the mass of the universe.
Could it be that they have the maths wrong?
gauchecritic
When there are grey skies
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Yes, proximity and location. If the walls suddenly turn into the floor without any apparent reason then something went wrong. (or possibly went right)
epiphany65
Literotica Guru
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That's 2.7 billon in real numbers.
I think this is to do with the experiment in some way but can someone explain how they actually know that most of the matter in the universe is undetected? Like ninety odd percent?
If my extremely vague understanding is correct: maths say there is more matter than can be detected.
Maths also says the big bang doesn't account for the mass of the universe.
Could it be that they have the maths wrong?
Apparently the calculations have been verified by observations that back it all up. This article explains that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
gauchecritic
When there are grey skies
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Thankyou for that. But it still says 'phlogisten' to me.
epiphany65
Literotica Guru
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I have to plead ignorance here. The word is not mentioned in the article or dictionary.com. Did you mean phlogiston? Even then, I'm still in the dark. Sorry...
shereads
Sloganless
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I'll bet the Swiss make great donuts. Chocolate-glazed ones.
gauchecritic
When there are grey skies
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However it's spelled yes.
Apparently early experimenters wondered what actually burned when something burned.
I'm not sure if this is a correct example but it's how I remember it.
Allowing for water loss (which can be collected) the weight of a completely burned matchstick is exactly that of an unburned matchstick. So what is it that burns? Early scientists came up with 'phlogisten' (or phlogiston) which had to contain mass (to be able to burn) but which must also be completely weightless.
They didn't have energy conversion or sublimation in those days so they surmised something.
That's sounds a hell of a lot like dark matter to me.
epiphany65
Literotica Guru
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Last edited:
gauchecritic
When there are grey skies
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trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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Thu Aug 6, 4:13 pm ET
GENEVA (Reuters) – The giant particle collider built to probe the origins of the universe will restart in November at a lower energy level following its shutdown days after its inauguration last year, CERN said on Thursday.
The announcement by the European Organization for Nuclear Research represented the latest in a series of delays to restart the Large Hadron Collider -- the biggest and most complex machine ever made. CERN had previously set an autumn date.
The more than 10 billion Swiss franc ($9.4 billion) machine over-heated and needed to be switched off just nine days after its inauguration in September 2008. Its experiments are meant to reproduce conditions just after the "Big Bang" that scientists believe created the universe.
In a statement, CERN said it planned to restart the Large Hadron Collider with 3.5 Tera-electron volts (TeV) per beam -- less energy than on its initial go -- "because it allows the LHC operators to gain experience of running the machine safely while opening up a new discovery region for the experiments."
It will continue at the lower energy "until a significant data sample has been collected and the operations team has gained experience in running the machine," CERN said. "Thereafter, with the benefit of that experience, the energy will be taken toward 5 TeV per beam."
CERN Director General Rolf Heuer sought to reassure the public and the backers of the machine, whose 27-km (17-mile) collider tunnel lies underground just outside Geneva, that all will run smoothly when it starts up again.
"The LHC is a much better understood machine than it was a year ago," he said. "We can look forward with confidence and excitement to a good run through the winter and into next year."
The experiments would take place at just above absolute zero to recreate the conditions believed to have been present at the beginning of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.
GENEVA (Reuters) – The giant particle collider built to probe the origins of the universe will restart in November at a lower energy level following its shutdown days after its inauguration last year, CERN said on Thursday.
The announcement by the European Organization for Nuclear Research represented the latest in a series of delays to restart the Large Hadron Collider -- the biggest and most complex machine ever made. CERN had previously set an autumn date.
The more than 10 billion Swiss franc ($9.4 billion) machine over-heated and needed to be switched off just nine days after its inauguration in September 2008. Its experiments are meant to reproduce conditions just after the "Big Bang" that scientists believe created the universe.
In a statement, CERN said it planned to restart the Large Hadron Collider with 3.5 Tera-electron volts (TeV) per beam -- less energy than on its initial go -- "because it allows the LHC operators to gain experience of running the machine safely while opening up a new discovery region for the experiments."
It will continue at the lower energy "until a significant data sample has been collected and the operations team has gained experience in running the machine," CERN said. "Thereafter, with the benefit of that experience, the energy will be taken toward 5 TeV per beam."
CERN Director General Rolf Heuer sought to reassure the public and the backers of the machine, whose 27-km (17-mile) collider tunnel lies underground just outside Geneva, that all will run smoothly when it starts up again.
"The LHC is a much better understood machine than it was a year ago," he said. "We can look forward with confidence and excitement to a good run through the winter and into next year."
The experiments would take place at just above absolute zero to recreate the conditions believed to have been present at the beginning of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.
voluptuary_manque
Literotica Guru
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The largest and most complex machine ever built, huh? "Murphy" will have a field day!
Handley_Page
Draco interdum Vincit
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He already did.
Last year something went horribly wrong with a freezer and the beam melted something and it all came to a grinding (and very expensive) halt.
They said at the time it would be October 09 before they got it back up again.
Incidentally, I though Phlogiston was the old word for Oxygen.
Last year something went horribly wrong with a freezer and the beam melted something and it all came to a grinding (and very expensive) halt.
They said at the time it would be October 09 before they got it back up again.
Incidentally, I though Phlogiston was the old word for Oxygen.
TE999
How 'bout a kiss, baby
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JackLuis
Literotica Guru
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Kind of like giving a sixteen year old the keys to a Corvette and let'em loose in Nevada.
The guys must of said, "Hell Maurice, lets see how high she can go," only to find out that controlling close to light speed particles aint easy.
Now they want to practice a little? "Okay. just don't end the world and you'll do fine," say I.
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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Aug 9--GENEVA – When launched to great fanfare nearly a year ago, some feared the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole that would suck in the world. It turns out the Hadron may be the black hole.
The world's largest scientific machine has cost $10 billion, has worked only nine days and has yet to smash an atom. The unique equipment in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel with cathedral-sized detectors deep beneath the Swiss-French border has been assembled by specialists in many countries, with 8,970 physicists eagerly awaiting the startup.
But despite the expense, thousands of physicists around the world, many of whom hope to conduct experiments here, insist that it will work and that it is crucial to mankind's understanding of the universe.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, said Friday it would restart the collider in November at half power under pressure from scientists eager to conduct experiments to unlock secrets of the universe.
But spokesman James Gillies told The Associated Press they would have to shut down yet again next year to finish repairs so that the Large Hadron Collider can operate at full energy of 7 trillion electron volts — seven times higher than any other machine in the world.
CERN has been working since late last year to repair the damage caused by a faulty electrical joint. The breakdown occurred nine days after the spectacular start up of the $10 billion machine last Sept. 10 when beams of subatomic particles were sent around the accelerator in opposite directions.
Fifty-three massive electrical magnets had to be cleaned and repaired after the failure. Tons of supercold liquid helium spilled out of the system, and a sooty residue had to be cleared from the tubes that are meant to be pristine, holding a vacuum in which subatomic particles can whiz around the tunnel at near the speed of light at temperatures colder than outer space.
Michio Kaku, a physics professor at City University of New York who is an outspoken critic of waste in big science projects, defends the CERN collider as a crucial investment.
"The Europeans and the Americans are not throwing $10 billion down this gigantic tube for nothing," Kaku said. "We're exploring the very forefront of physics and cosmology with the Large Hadron Collider because we want to have a window on creation, we want to recreate a tiny piece of Genesis to unlock some of the greatest secrets of the universe."
He said the biggest cause of the "bad accident" last year was "probably due to human error caused by rushing the project."
"But I view it as a temporary black eye. We'll get it up and running," Kaku said.
CERN expects repairs and additional safety systems to cost about 40 million Swiss francs ($37 million) over the course of several years, covered by the 20-nation organization's budget.
The collider emerged as the world's largest after the U.S. canceled the Superconducting Super Collider being built in Texas in 1993. Congress pulled the plug after costs soared, and questions were raised about the value of the science it could produce.
Gillies says all 20 of CERN's member nations have remained supportive and that four other countries — Cyprus, Israel, Serbia and Turkey — have asked to join. A fifth country — Slovenia — has expressed interest.
Japan, India, Russia and the U.S. are observer countries that have made sizable contributions to the CERN project.
CERN is now aiming to restart the machine in November with beams of subatomic particles initially running at 3.5 trillion electron volts, or TeV. That's only half the level the machine was designed for, but it's still 3 1/2 times higher than the second most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago. During last year's brief startup phase, the CERN collider only operated at half the Fermilab level.
Even as the machine is being calibrated this winter, scientists will be able to conduct experiments, collecting data on the collisions of protons and lead ions in the accelerator.
They hope the higher energy will enable them to see particles so far undetected, such as the elusive Higgs boson, which in theory gives mass to other particles — and objects and creatures — in the universe.
Physicists have used smaller, room-temperature colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles. And they still have other questions about antimatter, dark matter and particle mass they want to answer with CERN's new collider.
They hope the fragments that come off the collisions will show on a tiny scale what happened one-trillionth of a second after the so-called Big Bang, which many scientists theorize was the massive explosion that formed the universe. The theory holds that the universe was rapidly cooling at that stage and matter was changing quickly.
Some skeptics have expressed fears the high-energy collision of protons could imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
CERN and leading physicists dismiss the fears and maintain the project is safe.
The collider's teething problems are typical of complicated accelerators, but it has been especially frustrating to physicists from around the world, who already have been waiting for years to conduct their experiments on the machine.
"But the LHC is an example of an enormously complicated machine that is pushing the edge of accelerator technology, and it is not surprising that it has had some unanticipated problems," Neal Lane, former President Bill Clinton's science adviser and former director of the National Science Foundation.
If the collider can be started soon, it will produce valuable results, said Lane, now a a physicist and public policy professor at Rice University.
But, he added, "If there are many more surprises, further delays, failure to meet design specifications over the next few years, then the field of experimental particle physics, worldwide, could be set back for a decade or more. The stakes are very high!"
Gillies told the AP that CERN management decided at the beginning of the year that it would not try to repair all parts of the collider this year.
"Otherwise, we would never have had a beam before halfway through next year," he said.
Gillies said CERN experts have examined every one of the 1,600 superconducting magnets and each of the 10,000 electrical splices as well as copper protection to carry away any spillover current to prevent damage to the magnets if they heat up as happened Sept. 19.
They decided some of the splices need to be repaired before the collider goes to full power, but that they can operate safely up to 5 TeV without further repairs now.
That has been set as the highest energy for the collider before its next shutdown for maintenance, probably in November 2010. Then the further repairs will be made so that the energy level can be ramped up.
Rolf Heuer, who has taken over as CERN's director-general since the failure, said the collider has been studied very carefully and is much better understood than a year ago.
"We can look forward with confidence and excitement to a good run through the winter and into next year," Heuer said.
The world's largest scientific machine has cost $10 billion, has worked only nine days and has yet to smash an atom. The unique equipment in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel with cathedral-sized detectors deep beneath the Swiss-French border has been assembled by specialists in many countries, with 8,970 physicists eagerly awaiting the startup.
But despite the expense, thousands of physicists around the world, many of whom hope to conduct experiments here, insist that it will work and that it is crucial to mankind's understanding of the universe.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, said Friday it would restart the collider in November at half power under pressure from scientists eager to conduct experiments to unlock secrets of the universe.
But spokesman James Gillies told The Associated Press they would have to shut down yet again next year to finish repairs so that the Large Hadron Collider can operate at full energy of 7 trillion electron volts — seven times higher than any other machine in the world.
CERN has been working since late last year to repair the damage caused by a faulty electrical joint. The breakdown occurred nine days after the spectacular start up of the $10 billion machine last Sept. 10 when beams of subatomic particles were sent around the accelerator in opposite directions.
Fifty-three massive electrical magnets had to be cleaned and repaired after the failure. Tons of supercold liquid helium spilled out of the system, and a sooty residue had to be cleared from the tubes that are meant to be pristine, holding a vacuum in which subatomic particles can whiz around the tunnel at near the speed of light at temperatures colder than outer space.
Michio Kaku, a physics professor at City University of New York who is an outspoken critic of waste in big science projects, defends the CERN collider as a crucial investment.
"The Europeans and the Americans are not throwing $10 billion down this gigantic tube for nothing," Kaku said. "We're exploring the very forefront of physics and cosmology with the Large Hadron Collider because we want to have a window on creation, we want to recreate a tiny piece of Genesis to unlock some of the greatest secrets of the universe."
He said the biggest cause of the "bad accident" last year was "probably due to human error caused by rushing the project."
"But I view it as a temporary black eye. We'll get it up and running," Kaku said.
CERN expects repairs and additional safety systems to cost about 40 million Swiss francs ($37 million) over the course of several years, covered by the 20-nation organization's budget.
The collider emerged as the world's largest after the U.S. canceled the Superconducting Super Collider being built in Texas in 1993. Congress pulled the plug after costs soared, and questions were raised about the value of the science it could produce.
Gillies says all 20 of CERN's member nations have remained supportive and that four other countries — Cyprus, Israel, Serbia and Turkey — have asked to join. A fifth country — Slovenia — has expressed interest.
Japan, India, Russia and the U.S. are observer countries that have made sizable contributions to the CERN project.
CERN is now aiming to restart the machine in November with beams of subatomic particles initially running at 3.5 trillion electron volts, or TeV. That's only half the level the machine was designed for, but it's still 3 1/2 times higher than the second most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago. During last year's brief startup phase, the CERN collider only operated at half the Fermilab level.
Even as the machine is being calibrated this winter, scientists will be able to conduct experiments, collecting data on the collisions of protons and lead ions in the accelerator.
They hope the higher energy will enable them to see particles so far undetected, such as the elusive Higgs boson, which in theory gives mass to other particles — and objects and creatures — in the universe.
Physicists have used smaller, room-temperature colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles. And they still have other questions about antimatter, dark matter and particle mass they want to answer with CERN's new collider.
They hope the fragments that come off the collisions will show on a tiny scale what happened one-trillionth of a second after the so-called Big Bang, which many scientists theorize was the massive explosion that formed the universe. The theory holds that the universe was rapidly cooling at that stage and matter was changing quickly.
Some skeptics have expressed fears the high-energy collision of protons could imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
CERN and leading physicists dismiss the fears and maintain the project is safe.
The collider's teething problems are typical of complicated accelerators, but it has been especially frustrating to physicists from around the world, who already have been waiting for years to conduct their experiments on the machine.
"But the LHC is an example of an enormously complicated machine that is pushing the edge of accelerator technology, and it is not surprising that it has had some unanticipated problems," Neal Lane, former President Bill Clinton's science adviser and former director of the National Science Foundation.
If the collider can be started soon, it will produce valuable results, said Lane, now a a physicist and public policy professor at Rice University.
But, he added, "If there are many more surprises, further delays, failure to meet design specifications over the next few years, then the field of experimental particle physics, worldwide, could be set back for a decade or more. The stakes are very high!"
Gillies told the AP that CERN management decided at the beginning of the year that it would not try to repair all parts of the collider this year.
"Otherwise, we would never have had a beam before halfway through next year," he said.
Gillies said CERN experts have examined every one of the 1,600 superconducting magnets and each of the 10,000 electrical splices as well as copper protection to carry away any spillover current to prevent damage to the magnets if they heat up as happened Sept. 19.
They decided some of the splices need to be repaired before the collider goes to full power, but that they can operate safely up to 5 TeV without further repairs now.
That has been set as the highest energy for the collider before its next shutdown for maintenance, probably in November 2010. Then the further repairs will be made so that the energy level can be ramped up.
Rolf Heuer, who has taken over as CERN's director-general since the failure, said the collider has been studied very carefully and is much better understood than a year ago.
"We can look forward with confidence and excitement to a good run through the winter and into next year," Heuer said.
