Large Hadron Collider hopefully won't doom Earth





PEOPLE who fear a powerful atom-smashing machine, due to start operations next week, will cause Earth to be gobbled up or reduced to grey goo can rest assured, according to a new study.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been shadowed by internet-fuelled concerns that it will release energies so powerful that it will create a rogue black hole that will engulf the planet, or a "strangelet" particle that would transform Earth into a lump of strange matter.

But the new report, written by the machine's maker, claims these fears are unfounded.

It said the LHC will replicate collisions that already occur naturally when Earth runs into the path of high-energy cosmic rays.

"Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth — and the planet still exists," it said.

The assessment was written by five physicists at LHC's operator, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.

CERN has asked them to take a fresh look at a safety assessment written by its scientists in 2003 which first gave the project the green light.

The LHC, installed in a circular 27km tunnel on the French-Swiss border, is to start unleashing a beam of protons early next Thursday in the first stage of its commissioning process.

Two parallel beams of particles, one going clockwise and the other anti-clockwise, will blast around the underground ring.

At four locations on the ring, superconducting magnets will bend the beams so that groups of protons smash into each other in a giant chamber which is swathed with detectors to record the resulting sub-atomic debris.

This invisible rubble could help resolve some of the biggest questions in physics, such as the nature of mass, the weakness of gravity and whether, as some theoreticians suggest, there exist dimensions beyond our own.

The new Safety Assessment Report said any black holes produced by the collider would be "microscopic" and decay almost immediately, as they would lack the energy to grow or even be sustained.

"Each collision of a pair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole produced would be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists," the report said.

As for the hypothesised "strangelets," the report referred to data from the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York to say that these would not be produced during collisions in the LHC.

The review is published in a journal of the Institute of Physics, London.

France has also asked a French watchdog agency, the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), to carry out a safety appraisal of the LHC.

On August 29, the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, France, tossed out a last-ditch legal bid to stop the LHC's switch-on.

The suit had been filed by a group of European citizens, led by a German biochemist, Otto Roessler, of the University of Tuebingen.

The LHC will begin operation on September 10th.

Links

LHC on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

News.com.au

Large Hadron Collider activated successfully but doom may still come in 6 to 8 weeks time

THE world's most powerful atom-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has started its mission to pierce the greatest secrets of the physical universe.

Shortly after 5.30pm AEST, the first proton beam was injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a massive project that took nearly 20 years to complete, costs $6.64 billion, and ranks as the most complex and one of the most costliest scientific experiment ever attempted.

In the LHC control room, relieved scientists cheered and clapped when the first particles completed a maiden, clockwise lap around the ring.

"After the beam is injected, it takes about five seconds for the acquisition of the data,'' said LHC project leader Lyn Evans.

Shortly afterwards, a telltale flash on control screens confirmed the injection.

The Hadron Collider has been dubbed a "doomsday device" by critics ... so people are holding parties to go out in style.

Lachlan Hibbert-Wells is hosting an "end of the world" party tonight to celebrate the activation.

"There's been suggestions of coming dressed in black to match the black hole that will be formed," Mr Hibbert-Wells told NEWS.com.au.

"I know some people are talking about making shirts with clever phrases on them, like 'Does my butt look big in the Higgs-Boson field?', or 'Hey baby, mind if I collapse my atoms into yours?'"

Mr Hibbert-Wells, a 23-year-old writer and self-confessed geek from Sydney, said his father had dubbed him the "Doomsday Corey", in reference to Corey Worthington's infamous MySpace party.

"I made a Facebook event and suggested that people invite friends, who can invite friends," Mr Hibbert-Wells said.

"I have no idea how many people are going to turn up tonight... I'm suspecting maybe in the hundreds. We're hoping for a quiet affair."

Numerous studies have verified the experiments will be safe, and tonight's experiment does not involve particle collisions.

Mr Hibbert-Wells, who organised the doomsday party with his friends David and Lucinda, said he didn't actually expect the world to end when the LHC beam is switched this evening.

"Tonight's just the turning on of the machine, the first (particle) collisions shouldn't happen for six to eight weeks," he said.

Once CERN has set a date for those collisions, Mr Hibbert-Wells said he might host another party.

"(Tonight's party) was sort of seen as a test event," he said.

But if the world were to end tonight, what would his final words be?

"My final words – because my girlfriend will be there tonight – would be to tell her I love her."

News.com.au

Atom smasher's computers hacked

HACKERS claim they have broken into the computer system of the Large Hadron Collider, the mega-machine designed to expose secrets of the cosmos.

A group calling itself the Greek Security Team left a rogue webpage mocking the technicians responsible for computer security at the giant atom smasher as "schoolkids", Britain's Times and Daily Telegraph reported.

The hackers vowed they had no intention of disrupting the experiment at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the Swiss-French border, they just wanted to highlight the flaws in the computer system's security.

"We're pulling your pants down because we don't want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes," they wrote, according to the Daily Telegraph.

The hackers claimed to have gained access to a website open to other scientists on Wednesday as the LHC passed its first test with flying colours, the reports said.

They appear to have tried to gain access to the computer system of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, one of the four detectors that will be analysing the progress of the experiment.

James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, told the Times: "We don't know who they were but there seems to be no harm done. It appears to be people who want to make a point that CERN was hackable."

Scientists hailed the success of the start of the experiment on Wednesday in the Large Hadron Collider, the 27km circular tunnel in which parallel beams of protons will be accelerated to nearly the speed of light.

Superconducting magnets will then steer the counter-rotating beams so that strings of protons smash together in four huge laboratories, fleetingly replicating the conditions that prevailed at the "Big Bang" that created the universe 13.7 billion years ago

News.com.au

All that money! I had to smile when one of the scientists involved in this huge project was asked of what practical use it would be for the future.

His reply was something like - `It won`t be, it`s just to give us knowledge of what happened in the past.`

An expensive way to learn something.