View Single Post
Old 03-30-2010, 03:59 PM   #9 (permalink)
MSD
The sky calls to us ...
 
MSD's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: CT
I got the fundamental forces part wrong in the OP and rewrote it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BadNick View Post
Besides detractors who got tired of the Y2K panic and are looking for the next fantasy panic attack, I think a lot of people admire the science in something like this but might question the priorities as far as spending money/resources for this vs spending more for fighting hunger, disease, poverty, etc.

I hope the LHC will have enough practical spin-offs to justify all the effort. I like leading edge science so the LHC gives me a Large Hardon...relatively speaking.
This isn't about making money, nobody is going to commercialize the Higgs Boson or weaponize quantum electrodynamics, it's all about knowledge and understanding, humankind at its most pure of intentions.

The Grid, the processing supercomputer farms, and the detectors will contribute to advancement of technology in the way that the Hubble Telescope was the point at which CCD sensors could be made profitably en masse for nonmilitary use, but nobody expects to see a return on investment. We might see something come out of it, but don't hold your breath.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martian View Post
Note: This is not the LHC's full power. The LHC is capable of an energy of 7 TeV per particle, giving a full collision energy of 14 TeV. It's scheduled to reach that level some time in 2012, from what I last read.

And I enjoyed the retrocausality article. Thought it was hilarious.

That was a joke, right?
It's at max power for the first year and a half, after which it will be shut down and upgraded to the new full power. This is the part where it's its own prototype, we need to do stuff first before we go all the way. It's at full power until they upgrade.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru View Post
I have a question!

What does this all mean?

I mean, is this a secrets of the universe sort of thing with a wide variety of applications?

Will we see new cancer treatments, more efficient energy production, and 2.5 terahertz microprocessors in our cell phones?

Will I get to see Mars?
Look at my old post linked in the OP for the significance of this. We don't know what 96% of the universe is, we've unified three of the four fundamental forces and the best we've done so far is doing math while being all "What the fuck is the difference between W and Z bosons, which mediate the electroweak force, and the masless photon?" We have a pretty good idea of this mass-giving gauge boson and how it will behave, but it's come full circle to where we were as early cavemen, and our best method of observing the world is by swinging things around, smashing them into each other, and seeing what happens.

Basically, we don't know what causes mass to exist. We won't see a cure for cancer, and we will not produce any cancer because there are safety measure in place to prevent radiation from hurting people or someone being dumb like Anatoli Bugorski and sticking his head in the particle beam. Although if you managed to sneak in and get in the way of the beam, it's high enough energy that it would literally blow a smoking hole through you. They have a huge slab of carbon 8 or 12 feet deep to absorbed dumped beams.

Last edited by MSD; 03-31-2010 at 02:22 PM..
MSD is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360