LHC being sabotoged from the future. John Conner off the hook.

[Tonitrus]

Large Hadron Collider 'Being Sabotaged from the Future'

Monday , October 19, 2009

NEWAU

Scientists claim the giant atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being jinxed from the future to save the world.

In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist Dr Holger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim nature is trying to prevent the LHC from finding the elusive Higgs boson. Called the "God particle," the theoretical boson could explain the origins of mass in the universe — if physicists can find the darn thing.

The scientists say their math proves nature will "ripple backward through time" to stop the LHC before it can create the God particle, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

"One could even almost say that we have a model for God," Dr Nielsen says in an unpublished essay. "He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them."

"While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus," Dannis Overbye wrote in the New York Times.

"In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus."

"It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck," Dr Nielsen told the New York Times.

European science agency CERN designed the world's biggest particle accelerator to shoot beams around a freezing 27km concrete ring underground near Geneva, smashing atoms together in search of the elusive "God particle" believed present at the Big Bang.

The multi-billion-dollar machine, built over almost 20 years, was set to launch in late 2008 but broke down after it overheated during a test run.

The relaunch was pushed back to late 2009 as more parts had to be replaced, and CERN was recently scandalised when a LHC scientist was found to have approached al-Qaeda for work.

The LHC - which features in sci-fi plots such as Dan Brown's Angels and Demons and the new TV show FlashForward - has been dubbed a "doomsday device" with claims it will open black holes.

Last year, Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University told the UK Telegraph that LHC scientists had received threatening emails and phone calls demanding that the experiment be halted.

But Prof Cox, ex-keyboardist for 1990's pop group D:REAM, dismissed the hysteria in rock-star style.

"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a tw—," he said.

The LHC is set to start up again next month.

And a good opportunity to rehash the link for the live webcam of the LHC....

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

[Strix]

I'll have to try this out on my boss.

"Um, boss, I can't make it to work today. All my efforts to do so are being sabotaged from the future, I am sure you understand the importance that I don't come for the safety of the world".

Or maybe it only works if they have invested billions in me? 

[Jos Theelen]

"Um, boss, I can't make it to work today. All my efforts to do so are being sabotaged from the future, I am sure you understand the importance that I don't come for the safety of the world".

If you don't come, then that's exactly the future I have in mind for you.

[The Brain]

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Fake.

[Razgovory]

I really don't understand this.

[Caliga]

I'll have to try this out on my boss.

"Um, boss, I can't make it to work today. All my efforts to do so are being sabotaged from the future, I am sure you understand the importance that I don't come for the safety of the world".

Or maybe it only works if they have invested billions in me? 

You're union.  He'd probably say "Sure, whatever.  Hey, it's not like I ever come to work myself."

[Faeelin]

Large Hadron Clider dropped by Bread from Passing Bird.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/6514155/Large-Hadron-Collider-broken-by-bread-dropped-by-passing-bird.html

From the distant future, Gandalf has sent for the eagles.

[Warspite]

Large Hadron Clider dropped by Bread from Passing Bird.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/6514155/Large-Hadron-Collider-broken-by-bread-dropped-by-passing-bird.html

Sounds like a half-baked theory to me.

[Razgovory]

Yeah, a bird.

[DontSayBanana]

There's a "Where Eagles Dare" joke to be made somewhere in all this, but damned if I can find it.

[Viking]

LHC "bird-bread" strike


On Tuesday 3 November, a bird carrying a baguette bread caused a short
circuit in an electrical outdoor installation that serves sectors 7-8 and
8-1 of the LHC. The knock-on effects included an interruption to the
operation of the LHC cryogenics system. The bird escaped unharmed but
lost its bread.

The standard failsafe systems came into operation and after the cause
was identified, re-cooling of the machine began and the sectors were
back at operating temperature last night. The incident was similar in
effect to a standard power cut, for which the machine protection systems
are very well prepared.

The LHC, starving french baguette birds since 2009.

[MadImmortalMan]

The Register's take is always great.

Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber

Bread on the busbars could have seen 'dump caverns' used

By Lewis Page • Get more from this author

Posted in Physics, 5th November 2009 13:23 GMT



A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week which saw significant overheating in sections of the mighty particle-punisher's subterranean 27-km supercooled magnetic doughnut.

According to scientists at the project, had the LHC been operational - it is scheduled to recommence beaming later this month - the snag would have caused it to fail safe and shut down automatically. This would put the mighty machine out of action for a few days while it was restarted, but there would be no repeat of the catastrophic damage suffered last September. On that occasion, an electrical connection in the circuit itself failed violently, causing a massive liquid-helium leak and knock-on damage along hundreds of metres of magnets.

Reg readers alerted us yesterday to the temperature rises in the LHC's Sector 81, which began in the early hours of Tuesday morning: most of the collider's operational data can be viewed on the web for all to see. Initial enquiries to CERN press staff led to assurances that the rises were the result of routine tests.

However Dr Mike Lamont, who works at the CERN control centre and describes himself as "LHC Machine Coordinator and General Dogsbody" later confirmed that there had indeed been a problem. Lamont, briefing reporters at the control room yesterday, told the Reg that machinery on the surface - the LHC accelerator circuit itself is buried deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border outside Geneva - had suffered a fault caused by "a bit of baguette on the busbars", thought perhaps to have been dropped by a bird.

As a result, temperatures in part of the LHC's circuit climbed to almost 8 Kelvin - significantly higher than the normal operating temperature of 1.9, and close to the temperature at which the LHC's niobium-titanium magnets are likely to "quench", or cease superconducting and become ordinary "warm" magnets - by no means up to the task imposed on them. Dr Tadeusz Kurtyka, a CERN engineer, told the Reg that this can happen unpredictably at temperatures above 9.6 K.

An uncontrolled quench would be bad news with the LHC in operation, possibly leading to serious damage of the sort which crippled the machine last September. At the moment there are no beams of hadrons barrelling around the huge magnetic doughnut at close to light speed, but when there are, each of the two beams has as much energy in it as an aircraft carrier underway. If the LHC suddenly lost its ability to keep the beam circling around its vacuum pipe, all that energy would have to go somewhere - with results on the same scale as being rammed by an aircraft carrier.

About to get hit by an aircraft carrier? You need a Dump

But there's no cause for concern, according to Lamont. The LHC's monitoring and safety systems have always been capable of coping with an incident of this sort, and have been hugely upgraded since last September.

Had this week's feathered baguette-packing saboteur struck in coming months, with a brace of beams roaring round the LHC's magnetic motorway, the climbing temperatures would have been noted and the beams diverted - rather in the fashion that a runaway truck or train can be - into "dump caverns" lying a little off the main track of the LHC. In these large artificial caves, each beam would power into a "dump core", a massive 7m-long graphite block encased in steel, water cooled and then further wrapped in 750 tonnes of concrete and iron shielding. The dump core would become extremely hot and quite radioactive, but it has massive shielding and scores of metres of solid granite lie between the cavern and the surface. Nobody up top, except the control room staff, would even notice.

This whole process would be over in a trice, well before the birdy bread-bomber's shenanigans could warm the main track up to anywhere near quench temperature. Should the magnets then quench, no carrier-wreck catastrophe would result.

According to Lamont, provided the underlying fault didn't take too long to rectify, the LHC could be up and beaming again "within, say, three days" following such an incident.

We asked if more such incidents would occur, once the Collider is up and running for real from later this month.

"It's inevitable," the particle-wrangling doc told the Reg. "This thing is so complicated and so big, it's bound to have problems sometimes."