Tenn. neutron accelerator sets record

NF Reporter · 08-31-2007, 01:19 AM

AP - The $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source facility, though still powering up, has established a new mark as the world's most powerful accelerator-based source of neutrons for scientific research.

Full Story...

waltky · 03-31-2008, 03:10 AM

Granny says won't make much difference - Uncle Ferd already strange...

Particle smasher will destroy Earth?
30 Mar 2008, Experts have claimed that the fears expressed by campaigners in the US about the world's most powerful particle smasher posing a threat to the planet, do not hold any ground.

Quote:

According to a report in New Scientist, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is nearing completion at CERN, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland. The collider will simulate conditions less than a billionth of a second after the big bang, by smashing protons together at enormous energies. Physicists hope to resolve long-standing questions, such as why particles have mass and whether space has hidden extra dimensions.

But, Luis Sancho and Walter Wagner, residents of Hawaii, filed a lawsuit against CERN and US contributors to the project demanding that they do not operate the LHC until they prove it is safe. They fear that the LHC could create particles that gobble up the Earth, such as "killer strangelets" Strangelets are hypothetical blobs of matter containing "strange" quarks, as well as the usual "up" and "down" types that make up ordinary matter.

If a strangelet were stable and negatively charged, it might begin eating the nuclei of ordinary matter, converting them into strange matter. Eventually, the menacing chain reaction could assimilate our entire planet and everyone on it. They claim that the LHC could also spawn dangerous particles or mini black holes that will destroy the entire Earth.

But, a 2003 safety review for the LHC found "no basis for any conceivable threat". It acknowledged that there's a small chance the accelerator could create short-lived, mini black holes or exotic "magnetic monopoles" that destroy protons in ordinary atoms. But it concluded that neither scenario could lead to disaster. According to James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, the lawsuit's claims are "complete nonsense".

"Much higher energy collisions than those at the LHC frequently occur in nature, because cosmic ray particles zip around our galaxy at close to the speed of light. The moon has undergone such collisions for 5 billion years without being devoured by a ravenous black hole or killer strangelet," he said. "The LHC will start up this year, and it will produce all sorts of exciting new physics and knowledge about the universe," said Gillies, adding that, "A year from now, the world will still be here."

Source

waltky · 06-29-2008, 12:17 AM

Ya never know, ya just don't never know...

Scientists: Nothing to fear from atom-smasher
Jun 28, `08 - The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

Quote:

But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump? Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC. "Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.

David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets. "If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said. The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.

The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings. Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass.

More My Way News - Scientists: Nothing to fear from atom-smasher

waltky · 09-08-2008, 02:01 AM

Granny says Sept. 10 gonna be the end o' the world...

World's Biggest Atom Smasher to Start-up
07 September 2008 - After more than 30 years of planning, 14 years of building and $10 billion later, the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest atom smasher, is due to start up on September 10. Scientists predict collisions of sub-atomic particles produced by the LHC will allow them to get closer than ever before to answering questions about the origins of the universe.

Quote:

LHC Project Leader, Lyn Evans, has been coddling this colossal machine from the start. "It has been 14 years. I think this is really a very long time for any scientific project and, quite frankly, I'm glad to see the end," said Evans. The end is actually the beginning. But, as Evans explains, the start of this grand voyage into the unknown will not begin by pulling a switch to get the machine working for the first time. "There is not a big red button as many people think, that the thing switches on and results come spewing out," added Evans. "It is a complex operation and we start by trying to get a beam just to go around the ring once. And, if we can achieve that on the first day, I will be extremely happy."

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is the world's most powerful particle accelerator. The giant machine could revolutionize our understanding of the universe by recreating the conditions which were present less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. The gigantic ring-shaped device is housed in a 27-kilometer tunnel, which straddles the Swiss-French border near Geneva. The collider has massive detectors that fill cathedral-sized rooms at intervals along the ring. Some 6,000 super-conducting magnets guide the beams. Evans says 50,000 tons of equipment will have to be cooled down to temperatures that are colder than that of outer space.

He says protons are fed directly into the LHC ring via two injection lines, one for each beam. He says the first attempt to circulate two proton beams all the way around the ring will occur on September 10. "When these beams collide, then, of course when two particles collide, then they produce energy, which can convert itself into mass and if you got high energy than you can produce heavy objects," said Evans. It will take a couple of months to bring collisions up to the desired energy. When the LHC gets up to speed, the accelerated protons will travel with nearly the speed of light. The machine will produce about 800 million proton-proton collisions every second.

More VOA News - World's Biggest Atom Smasher to Start-up