5 Facts about the LHC (I bet you never knew!)

As today was declared a 'momentous day' in particle/quantum physics (almost-confirmed discovery of the Higgs boson), I did the following as part of a regular feature (The Five Freaky Facts) on tonight's show:

Facts - The Large Hadron Collider

5. It houses 9,300 magnets pre-cooled to -193.2C, using 10,080 tonnes of liquid nitrogen. They are then taken down to -271.3C with liquid helium.

4. It cost £2.6bn to build.

3. The collisions generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun.

2. 600 million collisions take place every second.

1. The most powerful supercomputer system in the world was built to analyse the data generated by the LHC. It’s called the Grid and is formed from tens of thousands of interconnected computers scattered around the world. The data recorded by each of the big experiments at the LHC will fill around 100,000 and more dual-layer DVDs every year.

: blink:

How many did you know already?!

Seanie.

I knew the thing about the fridge magnets :laugh: :dry:

Seriously....we live in an age of discovery, like no other before. our understanding of our universe and origins over the last few decades is enormous


signed
Amazed and agast

Co Laois

I hope to live for the day when i see the cover of the Irish Times "We are not alone"

The near certain discovery of the Higgs boson is a monumental achievement. No doubt the years of study of this newly found particle that will follow will prove fascinating. I don't want to downplay the importance of this fundamental scientific discovery, but it does raise some questions of a more general nature.

Will "new" physics emerge, or is this the end of the road for the standard model because achieving the energies needed to probe even deeper seems totally impractical? (I haven't a clue on this one.)

Is this the pinnacle of "big science"; can we justify such enormously expensive experiments? (I think that hugely expensive scientific projects can be justified solely on their potential to uncover new knowledge, even it has no foreseeable economic application, but that only a very few such experiments are justifiable at a time when we face so many other challenges. What should those experiments be? SETI?)

Is there too much hype around the "God particle", the "key to understanding the universe", etc.? (I think there has been too much hype for all sorts of reasons, e.g. to sell books, or an attempt to drum up public enthusiasm for science. Like politicians, scientist should be careful about the promises they make.)


I'm a chemist and have only a superficial knowledge of physics. I don't know the answers to these questions; any thoughts?

Mike

Hi Mike,

This is a fundamental discovery that opens up many potential distributive discoveries for the future.
Its not just another discovery like finding a new variable star where there are about 100k, or 400k minor planets known.
Even a SETI discovery of first CONTACT would be fundamental. SETI has had an evolution over the decades of announcing when they expect contact.
I remember NASA SETI back in the 1970s announcing 10-15 years for contact. I remember Frank Drake head of SETI Institute announcing
in the 1990s that first contact would be about 10 years with the new antennae system in operation. I remember Jil Tarter announcing
in 2002 that first contact in about 10 years. Here we are 2012 no contact. I agree there are politics and funding issues in science
like any other science/medical research.

Eamonn