Friday, November 7, 2008

LHC delay..

Its a pretty old news that LHC(Large Hadron Collider) has been delayed by approximately 6-8 months which is now scheduled to restart next year (probably in May or June). Its due to some superconducting magnet failure whose details CERN has already released here : http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR14.08E.html
One of our department Prof (in IIT Bombay) who specializes in experimental condensed matter physics( specially magnetism) was chatting with one of my friend here regarding this incident. He said that those magnets were sent by India to the CERN and it was the faulty welding between two such magnets which caused the incident.Well whatever it is what happened was really unfortunate.
Just like there were lots of rumours(e.g. Big-Bang,Black Hole etc etc) just before the start-up of LHC on 10th Sep 2008, similar is the case after it has stopped. One of my friend (non-HEP PhD student ;)) told me she heard somewhere that the whole system of the LHC was hacked by someone who were opposing such too costly as well as fatal(?) experiments.I have seen such incidents in many crappy hollywood movies where the whole US govt netwrok is hacked by some and bla bla...Anyway although sucn comments,views are irritating most of the times...they sound funny to me sometimes. I remember one incident when the whole media were shouting the possible collapse of the whole earth after the LHC gets turned on etc etc...one person from my village...(well its a village where people hardly know anything about particle physics, LHC, Black-Hole, Big-Bang etc)..called me up to say "Good-Bye"..because he was pretty confident that the very next day everything would be over..somehow which he did not bother about.I was laughing like hell at it..it was so funny..at the same time I wanted to kick the ass of those media who has put these stupid things, fears in the minds of common people.Then I assured him that nothing of this kind gonna happen..so theres no need to worry about. :P
Anyway hope LHC would start working soon and let us zoom closer and closer into the nature to reveal her secrets....

5 comments:

JTankers said...

That is unfortunate if anyone thought the world was going to end the next day.

However when some scientists do warn that a safety delay is very warranted and a threat possibly decades or centuries in the future has not been reasonably proven false.

The response by CERN has instead has been focused on preventing any possible delay.

The most appropriate course of action is to have independently and non-biased confirm or refute safety arguments and counter arguments (CERN's board and scientists commissioned by CERN does not constitute independent and non-biased).

Don't forget what US Federal Judge Helen Gillmor wrote:

"It is clear that Plaintiffs’ action reflects disagreement among scientists about the possible ramifications of the operation of the Large Hadron Collider. This extremely complex debate is of concern to more than just the physicists." [1]

LHCFacts.org

[1] ORDER GRANTING FEDERAL DEFENDANTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS, Chief United States District Judge Helen Gillmor (26 Sep 2008)http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/PDFs/080926_LHCDecision.pdf

JTankers said...

That is unfortunate if anyone thought the world was going to end the next day.

However some scientists do warn that a safety delay is warranted and a threat possibly decades or centuries in the future has not been reasonably proven false.

The response by CERN has instead has been focused on preventing any possible delay.

The most appropriate course of action is to have independent and non-biased review of safety arguments and counter arguments (CERN's board and scientists commissioned by CERN does not constitute independent and non-biased).

Don't forget what US Federal Judge Helen Gillmor wrote:

"It is clear that Plaintiffs’ action reflects disagreement among scientists about the possible ramifications of the operation of the Large Hadron Collider. This extremely complex debate is of concern to more than just the physicists." [1]

LHCFacts.org

[1] ORDER GRANTING FEDERAL DEFENDANTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS, Chief United States District Judge Helen Gillmor (26 Sep 2008)http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/PDFs/080926_LHCDecision.pdf

Quark said...

Well CERN's official releases are often non-technical and may seem biased. Its true that we cant prove the safety of LHC by some real life evidence since nothing of this sort happened before. I find it better to go through the technical details of it. I really appreciate the works of those people who took this as a real challenge theoretically argued how such dangerous events can be ruled out in the LHC. I have mentioned about one such work which has been published in Physical Review D in my next post related to LHC. I will keep referring to any good work done on it in future.

jtankers said...

Yes I also appreciate the work of Dr. Mangano and the LSAG.

What is still missing is acknowledgment of the risk mitigation measures recommended by Dr. Rainer Plaga and to agree to proceed slowly and fully examine results at each significant new energy level before significantly higher energies are achieved.

[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1415v2 On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders, Dr. Habil. Rainer Plaga (26 Sep 2008)

Quark said...

Thanks James..I did not know about this particular paper. Will go through it.