Waiting For Tom Hanks

NewsHammer Exclusive No question the Large Hadron Collider scored a brilliant success with its first collisions at 7 TeV. Considering the extreme complexity of the detectors/ reactors this was a breathless performance. Soon after the 1 PM Geneva start, all four massive experiments were delivering data during the 3 hour window.

The first particle tracks and jets that were recorded surprised and delighted the physicists at CERN. At 7 TeV something new was going on that hadn't been seen before at any other collider, the signals of a New Physics. Though if you managed to sit through CERN's live webcast all day March 30, (video highlights: LHC First Physics) at least an interminable 27 km long, you still wouldn't have found out what that New Physics was or what CERN physicists were thinking. The only relevant comment I heard was that some muons were produced, and as they are decay products from heavier particles, some massive particles should have been produced, what CERN hopes for including the massive Higgs.


Great To Be Alive

With everyone so dazed and happy for the collider, by the time the CERN Press Conference started even the mostly 20-something journalists forgot to ask any new or relevant questions. It was one of those great cathartic moments where you're thrilled to have survived the biggest physics experiment ever when it's a hundred meters under your feet.

Confusing anyway to get focused on results with a loud echo for the first half-hour and more loud simultaneous French translation overlapping. Good thing CERN A/V wasn't running any important experiments. On camera four spokespersons and "two people waiting in Japan" weren't deterred. Another spokesperson for CERN PR coordinating the spokespersons and reporters while walking around the wireless mic kept tripping over the "two people" on the live video feed. "Two people waiting in Japan" who maybe had a comment? What were "two people" doing in Japan? What "two people"? The not just any "two people" turned out to be Sergio Bertolucci, CERN's Director of Research and Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer, but anyway they were happy enough splitting a bottle of 1991 red collider wine, the year CERN started thinking about the LHC.

The only memorable quote of the day came from Dr Bertolucci:

"The most exciting thing is we are just mapping the unknown. And so the most striking things will be the unexpected things we might find there."

Fabiola? Wrong Control Room

Though we've heard variations on this theme from just about everyone. For the "unexpected things" well they're unexpected but at least we should be told just how much time we have before they arrive. CERN knows more or less but CERN won't say in so many words. Not even what the March 30 departure point was or where's the blasted finish line. Is today a sprint or the stage one of the marathon? What stages exactly? 7 TeV doesn't really cover it but it sounds great, another collider record. Get the camera Fabiola!

Listening very closely that day some of us were sort of warned. Piecing it together from the friendly banter the LHC was still taking its first "baby" steps. Mama and Papa CERN were very proud. If there was a buzz word through that exhausting day, it was "baby" and double that for "new babies" from our excited Italian hostess, who was doing nearly all the talking for everybody in her webcast from control room to control room while two guys were chatting in a loud French voiceover, like at the back of a church. They had some interesting things to say if you could hear them. Thanks CERN A/V, a division of CERN PR, leaving us hankering for Tom Hanks in the final analysis.

Instead of a nice clean start, say 2 minutes of CERN's objectives for the day or a Press Release on that: how many bunches of protons, how many protons per bunch for this first 7 TeV experiment -- a lot of happy and excited people at CERN were telling us over and over again how happy they were for and hours and hours. Sure we're glad they're all happy. But being so very happy about all the ''new babies" the collider was having, our hostess and her physicists forgot what millions of people out there wanted to know. Was she going to bring them coffee?

Even 40 Live Status LHC Pages were no help with how many bunches were loaded into the collider that day: The CERN variation on Russian Roulette.

Bits of what we needed to know did come out in gurgles. ATLAS was having fewer "babies", only about 30 per second, while CMS was having 100 "babies" per second, and LHCb went from 50 to 60 "new babies", but we never did find out if ALICE got knocked-up down the rabbit hole until we saw the "baby" scan and hers were certainly hairier than any other "new babies", so Wow.


ALICE Hairy Baby Scan

The "babies" were collision events of course, 2 protons making one collision "baby", but the mother of all colliders obviously wasn't making "babies" the way she should. Where were all the other "babies"? Once upon a time CERN was forecasting 1 million collisions per second per experiment. Later on at the mighty ATLAS we got the new ultimate forecast: 40 million "babies" per second in each detector or times 4 making 160 million per second overall.


Squeezing More Babies

Evidently for now something was wrong. Not enough squeezing going on, or a low proton count. Both as it turned out, but you had to beam down via the Internet and watch the naked collider in action. The first clue was March 29, NewsHammer "CERN Fires The Collider" when only 2 bunches per beam made it into the collider round. Then bright and early March 30 there were 2 aborted ramps to get stable beams and with millions of people getting bored CERN tried square one. With the "baby" machine feeling testy, the absolute minimum 1 bunch per beam was knocked in instead of 2 or the nominal 2808 bunches per beam we were told to expect for years and years.


10 Billion Protons Instead of 561,600 Billion Protons

Then how many protons? The maximum per bunch is 100 billion according to CERN. Nobody said how many protons before, during or since March 30, but one of the two French guys in the background voiceover did mention "5 milliards de protons" or 5 billion, or 1/20 the nominal number of protons per bunch. So at most there were 10 billion protons that could have collided, or in overall terms the very rock bottom minimum or the lowest possible luminosity next to zero. The maximum intensity would have been 2 x 2808 x 100 billion for a very large number of protons circulating eventually or 561,600 billion. Versus 10 billion protons March 30, meaning the LHC achieved 1/56,160 of its potential in protons. Far less than that when it comes to LHC luminosity or the ultimate shootout at CERN's OK Corral.

During the webcast we did catch 2 other related facts. At 10 billion protons in the collider, maximum collisions in any one detector would be 11,000 per second where at CMS with the most "babies" there were 100 per second. ATLAS was aiming for 40 million collisions per second in any detector, but not today.


CMS On Top

CMS with the best score achieved 100/40,000,000 or 1/400,000 of what it can do at 7 TeV. Or at the per second OK Corral Rehearsal 200 bullets smashed into each other vs 80 million that will smash one of these days.

If all goes well late next year we might see maximum luminosity at 7 TeV or 400,000 times more collisions per second. In 2013 the ultimate proton fireball at 14 TeV will be over (no typo) 100 billion times the core temperature of our sun or ~ 10^16 °C.

Step 4: "Don't panic." Good advice from an LHC operating manual.

Hot enough for ya? will be something to brag about if there's anyone left at CERN.


ATLAS Trying For Better Days

So the big event March 30 was a very small physics experiment, though with some risk to the LHC machine. Because of the way CERN handled it and the media reported it, there's a general sigh of relief. We're still here, the LHC is safe. Nothing more to worry about after the Barnum and Bailey Collider Test.

Nothing wrong with going for the smallest possible test at 7 TeV. The smart and prudent way to go, except when you don't disclose the facts clearly and let people imagine they're getting the full Big Bang for their buck. Echoes of "There's one born every minute."


LHCb: What You Say?

Belatedly offering soundbites to the media on increasing collisions to 300 per second and a stab at luminosity, again after the brouhaha of March 30, is more you-knew-all-along sleight of hand through the back door for millions of empty chairs who won't complain. Making lame excuses before the collisions like the LHC would be colliding beams together over the Atlantic, in case of PR failure, was rather embarrassing, though a genuine attempt at some false modesty.

Canceling the Tom Hanks Show at the collider was the biggest CERN event. It finally dawned on CERN that the most important physics experiment since Trinity should be treated seriously. The live interactive video/data player for the webcast was first rate and another positive step. But being hustled into CERN's Big Top for a handful of firecrackers like this is it, The Greatest Show on Earth, is another sad comment on how easy it is to fool people.

You can make allowances for any live event, that the excitement overtakes the action and the facts. But CERN has had years to get the facts across and a week since March 30 for revisiting unfortunate false impressions. The postmortem CERN Press Release "Yes we did it" makes no corrections.

Of course there are no bragging rights if CERN simply stated in advance and during the March 30 demonstration that the 7 TeV test collisions were slated for about 1/400,000 of design efficiency. Then of course nothing of LHC safety would be proved either, except that the LHC is apparently safe to operate at an extremely tiny fraction of its potential. Now that the public is satisfied with safety CERN can go to the LHC maximum. Not right away, as the machine is unreliable. Failures since start-up including this week are common. Luminosity consequently has to be coaxed up in stages or there will be no more "babies"and no more collider.

Go slow is commendable to save the collider from another accident. But why not tell us? It was no secret inside CERN, just outside.

The biggest safety issue has always been the LHC's New Physics. Now apparent safety (of small numbers) of 7 TeV collisions will be taken as a proof of safety for what is to come.

Actual physics results even from March 30 may never be fully known. Dangerous sorts of Collider Objects might have been produced and might have gone undetected during the 3 hour run of March 30 of about 1/2 million proton collisions recorded. What will happen in 2011 in a proton fireball of 40 million collisions per second? When the truth is known, you can fly.


CERN's Smoking Gun

CERN had already predetermined that First Physics at 7 TeV would be 1 proton bunch per beam, 1 x 1 for the first three days of collisions, then a week of tests on multi-bunches, then a jump to 4 x 4 or 4 bunches per beam colliding for another 2 days. Then a bigger jump to 12 x 12 collisions for 2 more days. Then who knows? Though CERN hasn't been able to achieve these results due to ongoing machine failures.

Down the road: "BEAM PARAMETERS AND MACHINE PERFORMANCE TO BE REACHED IN 2010"*.

What we can expect now is less machine risk as proton bunches are gradually maximized in stages. It will take until the end of this year to reach about 800 bunches per beam out of 2808, another lucky fact blown out of CERN's windy webcast. Luminosity will still continue climbing next year to the maximum.

The obscure but essential CERN document (above) "Pilot physics run at 3.5 TeV"* should have been released to the public before March 30 or summed up in a CERN Press Release. Just a reminder to CERN that Press Releases are for the Press and provide the Press with tools, not more hot air to analyze. This short document would have made CERN's intentions clear on going slow (adding the rationale: the minimizing of machine failures and damage) and that would have pre-empted all the phony suspense of March 30. We could have got some more sleep instead.

The Future At 7 TeV

So we're not much further ahead in knowing what to expect from the LHC. The preliminary data and continuing collisions will give physicists some ideas, but data analysis isn't that easy. It could take months to see some New Physics papers on what happened.

Even so physicists will be reluctant to draw conclusions from a few collision events, which is why they want to see 40 million per second.

The funny thing is, because of the enormous amount of data these collisions produce, CERN's entire computing power can only record 2,000 events per second. So CERN will filter all data, discarding nearly all of it, hoping their filters will capture only the significant events, whatever they are.

For now and since CERN decided to blast us with Collider PR 10 years ago, we're in another prolonged state of suspense. When is the axe going to fall? Certainly it looks like there is a better chance for safety in terms of shutting down before hazardous events arrive, if data analysis can determine the next threshold where New Physics might spin out of control. Though there are no guarantees that we'll have any bumpy warnings. Just ask ALICE when she's 10 feet tall.


LHC News: Doomsday Postponed

As to the future, the only real news out of the Press Conference was delivered by Steve Meyers, Director of Accelerators and Technology who talked about some long term goals and difficulties, announcing the next planned shutdown in Autumn 2011. After a year of upgrades to safety systems for another $235 Million (not mentioned) the LHC should be ready to start 14 TeV collisions in 2012, though giant bending magnets will still be difficult to retrain, some 1/3 of about 1,800 (not mentioned) needing 25 to 30 ramps and quenches. The much fabled LHC might have to settle for 13 TeV.

*Note to CERN Techies: Put dates on all your documents. If Plan "A" is PR Mystification, your Plan "B" Common Timeline Confusion will mystify everyone else at CERN who needs to sift through a mountain of links to a mountain chain of documents that might save your life.

This is Part 7 of a series on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high energies starting March 30, 2010. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected

NewsHammer Part 3: Higgs Discovered At The Large Hadron Collider / More Delays

NewsHammer Part 4: Scrubbing CMS Data At The LHC

NewsHammer Part 5: LHC Lords Of The Ring

NewsHammer Part 6: CERN Fires The Collider


--Alan Gillis

Nice Collider. What's it do?

NewsHammer Exclusive The big question today for tomorrow at the Large Hadron Collider is what happened to Tom Hanks? He's the guy CERN asked to push The Button at the last Collider Party back in 2008, the media splash before the 2008 accident. Tom said he wouldn't miss it and since then has been doing some serious hanging around.

Last year Tom rolled back in with his Angels and Demons tour at the LHC, trading a honey wagon full of A&D T-shirts for a million dollars of free publicity. The cover story for the secret button rehearsal probably, as there are a lot of buttons at the LHC including "retry" "ignore error" "clear error" and "kill"on the BadAstronomy Tour.

Though the big deal, rumor has it, was Ron Howard bringing along his lucky Happy Days lunch pail to sneak through CERN security, both in and out, in case of an A&D 2 where a mad scientist at CERN takes home some serious micro black holes, you guessed it, and drops off his less suspicious by several orders of magnitude Hannah Montana lunch pail at the Vatican.

Did CERN run out of anti-matter already? A lot of people will be disappointed, at least if Tom doesn't show up tomorrow. Who else would you trust to push The Button? I'd go with Kevin Spacey for an ambiguous real life touch, the slightly nervous button, the wisp of a smile, the you asked for it Boom so here it is.

Or Jim Carrey for some real collider frenzy.

In any case, don't worry about tomorrow. CERN isn't, CERN has it all figured out. If CERN loses we all lose. End of story. If CERN wins, CERN will be back to try it again at full power later this year, full luminosity as it's called but never explained by CERN on 20 websites promoting the LHC. Call it maximized beams at 2808 proton bunches per beam, the maximum bunches, the max protons, but all that still at tomorrow's half-power 3.5 Trillion Electron Volts times two for 7 TeV collisions. If maximized tomorrow (no way) that's about the momentary focused power of 1400 Nuclear Power Plants.

A la carte: Two Proton Potatoes Per Beam

Last December's record 2.36 TeV collisions were also not maximized, a paltry million collisions recorded by CMS. What we'll get tomorrow in terms of luminosity could be small potatoes again. CERN could inject as little as 2 proton bunches per beam out of 2808 as in a test today, March 29, 2010 at 20:40:17 (above image) with bragging rights as all flags turned green. Wow, Stable Beams, 4 bunches through the LHC, Beam 1 about 3000 GeV or 3 TeV and Beam 2 at about 2400 GeV or 2.4 TeV. So tomorrow looks suspiciously like a repeat of today except there will be collisions of a minor order while CERN claims success and safety with as little as 4 bunches. Might be more, though will CERN tell us how many?

Recall last time when CERN did not even accelerate protons in September 2008, using just their injection energy of 0.45 TeV per beam, not even colliding beams, yet claiming a great success on the non-accelerating non-colliding LHC and safety of course. Doomsday a bust. Collider a bust days later without beams.

Well impossible anyway with no collisions for one thing, and no danger at low power collisions when the Tevatron has been safely colliding (not official however) at 2.1 TeV, not the 1.96 TeV reported by CERN when CERN claimed its 2.36 TeV record this December finally. Go figure.

March 30, 20110: The Day Something Or Nothing Happened

So what will happen tomorrow? According to CERN's crystal ball, we will have safe collisions at 7 TeV. Take it away Tom Hanks: Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today. If maximum collision energies were tried at 7 TeV or about 75 times the power of the Tevatron, this could fry the collider and 200 journalists there for the worst thing of all, a PR disaster. If safe at low luminosity CERN won' t advertise that fact as it didn't in December at 2.36 TeV or more recently this month when CERN claimed 3.5 TeV test beams.


We could be left to assume (wrongly) that the collisions of tomorrow will be maximum luminosity at 7 TeV. Only a handful of science journalists with some physics will know what luminosity is, some won't ask and none will tell us, as they never have bothered before. It's not their responsibility to question the value of this experiment, just report what CERN says. In the end with 10,000 physicists, CERN must know what it is doing. Though it may be one of those quantum counter-intuitive problems. You think CERN knows but CERN doesn't. Or the answer is under CERN's nose, 27 km of collider built by CERN to find out what CERN doesn't know.

What happens tomorrow? If things go wrong, it will be all over eBAY at least:

CERN And Toyota Deals

Used collider with some front-end damage, about $8 Billion to fix. Original Toyota Accelerator Warranty transferable. New owner can sue.

The Giddings and Mangano Cosmic Ray Argument is finally being put to some good use. Micro Black Holes safe, Toyota Microchips not so safe. The mania for microchips has gone so far that the latest generation of micro-microchips relies only on a hundred electrons to push gateway data, too small to fight Cosmic Ray battles launched from Space. And by the way, what happens to all the non-radiation-hardened microprocessors and other electronics and equipment CERN forgot to shield or redesign at the LHC when the extreme ionizing including nuclear energies produced by the LHC blast the collider day after day? Your mounting radiation hazards suddenly discovered at the LHC after 10 or 15 years. In comparison Toyota Cosmic Ray bombardment is insignificant except for Toyotas.

What happens tomorrow? CERN tells us via the CERN cypher. Closer, closer and when CERN copy becomes a blur, read between the lines. The four major experiments will have webcasts, meaning from their control rooms, as the underground LHC is off limits during hazardous beam events, including the standard radiation events they produce like heavy X-rays for one type of trouble right around the 27 km ring, a consequence just of forced magnetic bending of proton beams.

Webcasts from CMS, ATLAS, LHCb, and ALICE, plus from computer central, the LHC CCC, CERN's main control room. Or in other words there will be collisions in all four main detectors/ reactors. So why not say so? Is it a secret? A surprise? Will Tom Hanks mysteriously transport from Arcturus, the movie, through the LHC Stargate from Lost to push The Button after all?

Why bother with this media event? Isn't this a science experiment? Even if there is no accident, no apparent trouble, we will see no results. It will take weeks to analyze computer data. That's all we have. No one can eyeball these experiments that will generate the momentary heat of our Sun magnified X times. No X value from CERN. The low power RHIC collider at Brookhaven produced 4 Trillion C or 7 Trillion F temperatures in a flash of fusing gold ions at a minuscule 0.2 TeV, or way hotter than the core temperature of our Sun or any star.

No CERN talking heads at the scheduled Press Conference tomorrow will know what happened, not even the CERN computer systems will be able to report on the production of new Collider Objects, like Black Holes or Strangelets, not in real time. If they are produced and if they are detected they might destroy Geneva before we get the computer data.

Why bother convincing us again and again it won't happen? Didn't we buy this collider? Didn't we pay $10 Billion? Why try to re-sell us on it? Do we have buyers' remorse? Do we need Collider Therapy? Just having some fun are we? Collider Roulette? Then what's wrong with the LHC? Why the endless sales pitch in the media from CERN? Every week The CERN News: Why We Fight The Collider War. Are we losing? What's wrong now?


Hey ALICE Call LHC CCC

Plenty if you look at the data to date. The CERN screenshots on this page from LHC systems performance since March 21, 2010 tell the story. Click to read.


Cryogenics Twilight Zone

LHC Cooldown Status since January, tells us of recurring cryo glitches in the same Twilight Zones, Sector 1-2 and Sector 2-3, or along 1/4 of the LHC ring of 27 km of wonky machine. Anybody notice? Nothing to worry about, but click on the screenshots to read the graphs and the comments from CERN Control Center on daily machine failures including unscheduled or real Emergency Beam Dumps.

Can't say I like the look of these dozens of monitors, at least the public ones on the Internet, that CERN uses too, that don't tell us or CERN of overall machine status. Unless they were on fire, they quietly say nothing you want to know Now. CERN had the same problem with access points where personnel didn't know if there were or weren't any hazards going in (kid you not) not even a Green-Yellow-Red flag system in place before the 2008 accident. Same thing with all these screens. How safe are we? Condition Red? Yellow? Green? How about a bright Status Bar on every screen? Flashing Idiot Lights? Automatic Woopee Cushions for all that collider control room fatigue.

How many bunches per beam? Actual luminosity per beam vs maximum? Actual TeV per beam though we have that in fine print. Graph the beams properly. Relying instead on a Fast Beam Current Transformer to graph Intensity on a shifting scale with tiny numbers? Re-jiggle that in your head? Ever heard of human error? Collisions when, where? See LHC3? What is happening NOW? Is this a $3.99 Collider at Target?

For some Keys to reading CERN codes on these screenshots of LHC1 pages see LHC Portal. Then CERN's own modest attempts. For ATLAS decoded and CMS decoded on SymmetryBreaking. For 20 pages of LHC Live Status starting with LHC1. And 19 multi-screen live views starting with LHCDataWide.

Watch Fire The Collider March 30, 2010 Live From The LHC

CERN webcasts from 08:30 to 18:15 CEST or Geneva Time or 6 hours earlier in New York or starting at 2:30 AM. Go to this CERN page for Twitters and Links to Schedules and Live Webcasts.

If we all make it through tomorrow, CERN has a series of cliffhangers lined up that will spook us maybe for years to come, all the way up to maximum-maximum 1150 TeV lead ion collisions maybe in 2013, after the LHC shuts down again for a year to fix problems not fixed yet for safe 14 TeV proton collisions and the 1150 TeV lead collisions. In September 2008 the LHC was on a roll and almost ready to go all the way CERN kept insisting, at least to 10 TeV until the $40 Million 2008 accident. Now a year and a half later it's another $235 Million to go all the way or maybe not, maybe if there's more money.

Get Stallone. CERN Wants Another Cliffhanger

Altogether we're another 3 years away from the original Stage 1 of the LHC experiment which is currently 4 years behind schedule.

Stage 2 is radiation hardening of equipment (neglected for 10 to 15 years) and moving vulnerable power supplies for more civil engineering for lots more money CERN wants (well over $100 Million) to bring the collider back to a Safe Long Term Stage 1. Stage 3 is to upgrade luminosity massively for way more power with 3 new and/or improved pre-accelerators for something over $1 Billion more. At least some old LEP equipment needs to be scrapped in any case, the LINAC and PS and the 6 year old SPS doesn't make the grade either if you replace the LINAC and PS. At least CERN isn't in a big hurry now. Buys us a little more time to freak out before 14 Terra Firma.

Upgrade The New LHC

The new improved Super LHC? Yeah and what's this one supposed to do?

What bank would give you a dollar if you told the manager a story like that?

This is Part 6 of a series on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high unknown energies starting March 30, 2010. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected

NewsHammer Part 3: Higgs Discovered At The Large Hadron Collider / More Delays

NewsHammer Part 4: Scrubbing CMS Data At The LHC

NewsHammer Part 5: LHC Lords Of The Ring

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive As we're about to push the button for the biggest science experiment conducted by the biggest machine ever built, perhaps we should look at the Large Hadron Collider's significance. Later this month the LHC will be powering collisions at energies never before attempted, three times the record it set this past December.

The LHC adventure is all about one giant organization, CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, straddling Switzerland and France and the whole field of particle physics. Whatever the LHC does, CERN is behind it. So it seems are all the physicists. No major critics have surfaced from the inner and outer circles of CERN, and that's about 10,000 particle physicists involved with the LHC or half the world's supply of all physicists. The very few dissenters beyond the fringe not duly cowered have been dismissed as "nuts" and "twats". We haven't seen this kind of power and doctrinal solidarity in Europe since the Church of Rome before the Reformation. A rare unanimity in ordinary terms as well, especially when no physicist knows what the LHC will do.

The public who pays for the LHC has only been peripherally involved through media campaigns launched by CERN to enhance public support. The CERN guided tour of the LHC routinely makes the rounds of newspapers and television, the Collider Wheel of Fortune. The rest is feel-good opinion pieces from physicists congratulating CERN and some favorable quotes or sound-bites from physicists mixed in with snippets of LHC news updates on its progress to start-up again. It finally did again this February 27 after a lot of collider nuts and bolts were fixed again, and now the media blitz restarts today on an exciting new LHC record, from more rehash and rewrites of a new CERN Press Release.

Beam me up Scotty and fire proton torpedoes

Today test beams were circulated at 3.5 TeV each, the maximum for this year's proton run. But it was a test and maximized beams are far from a reality. The LHC can produce 2808 bunches of protons in each beam and CERN isn't saying how many they did manage or for how long. Beams for 5 minutes? If they were at least an hour and at full power CERN would have bragged about it. Another glitch admitted today by CERN's Director General, that machine protection systems interfered with the ramp up of energies, shows not all is according to CERN's book of numbers. Beams are back to 0.45 TeV again, the injection energy. But the obvious conclusion is CERN means to go to 7 TeV collisions as soon as it can. The first little Big Bang could happen in a few days.

LHC1 Live Status data (no archive) since Feb 27th (Key To Codes) have shown quite a different view of LHC readiness, not one problem but many glitches in electrical and helium cooling systems requiring fixes. The brief beams of today look like a lucky break, timed nicely for CERN Council in session. Polite applause. More Christians to the lions in another context. Or in our mythology of today: Launching Mt Doom in Geneva.

Usually though for months and months and years and years there's been little enough hard news, more boring loose nuts and bolts and more delays. Today's Media Success looks like another one from September 2008, the Big Bang Day Collider Inauguration. Days later CERN presented the bill, a $40 Million accident.

Now some real buzz again, or more boom and doom from the LHC. Never mind the worn out media hype promising exciting New Physics, largely an exercise in public relations to justify a $10 Billion machine that costs another $1 Billion a year to operate and still hasn't done anything much in 10 years except get built very slowly. Forget that small elite army of physicists waiting for more bread and butter data coming on line for their life's work and a real shot at Nobel glory. The LHC Machine's well-oiled destiny is upon us.

This big deal or what historians might call a Social Contract has arrived also thanks to many governments colluding on our behalf. It is such a big deal it could affect all of us. The LHC's frightening power may or may not destroy itself, Geneva and the world, but why worry if the Dr Strangeloves aren't? New States of Matter from a grab-bag of collider objects produced, from micro black holes to strangelets or maybe the totally unexpected can't happen can it? However remote the odds and CERN insists they are ZERO, even for what CERN cannot imagine in physics, the actual risk and consequences are unknown. Right I-1+B-1+M-1, HAL, Hadron Accelerator Large? Anyone for Kubrick's Tycho Magnetic Anomaly and a voyage To Jupiter and Beyond?

Flashback To Another Collider

The last time anything like this happened in science, (alternate Youtube video link to: The Trinity Test 1945) the US at war and in secret, launched the Manhattan Project and that changed everything for us. Though then there was a moral authority and purpose behind that nuclear experiment. Most people in the worn-torn world of the 1940s would have supported the Bomb openly had they known of it, to stop the criminally insane and their WWII destroying civilization. A long generation later it seems we're being asked to entrust our future to a group of physicists again and oddly this time by them. Actually a small group of physicists (not 10,000) pushed Einstein to write a letter and raise the A Bomb question to FDR. Don't think they actually wanted one of those. They wanted to stop one they thought the Nazis might be building.

Unlike last time, today it isn't at all clear for what benefit and to what end CERN's experiment with history is designed for. CERN doesn't know either which makes it respectable pure research, or a LEP, oops leap into the unknown. At a time when there is no urgency, no threat, no world war, a group of physicists want a big change in their world (our world too) a little Big Bang, as though a new unknown nuclear physics is a private club matter well within the control of their one-of-a-kind ingeniously complex and unreliable always stuttering collider down the hall.



Oppenheimer Remembers

Just pure research let's say (alternate Youtube link to: in alamogordo, new mexico, on july 16, 1945) and more knowledge as physicists see it, or let's face it more like an ultimate knowledge of the Universe. Here we enter the waters of religion. If the LHC could be described to an outside observer, it might appear nothing like a research lab. What's that dancing girl doing here at CERN?



Shiva's Chariot Of Fire/ Six Bachelors And Their Bride

With all the cloistered excitement in and around Geneva and underground, the sheer size and spectacle of it all looks like the start of a new religious experiment or at least the completion of its temple, praised and guarded by an officious and privileged class in their superfluous white ceremonial labcoats: chalk dust a blackboard hazard of the past. If they looked like Orcs we'd stand a chance.



Another Experiment Gone Wrong

Perhaps not such a new experiment if there ever was a Tower of Babel. Now something like the Tower's purpose to reach Heaven has been engineered underground out of the building blocks of modern civilization and science including the equivalent momentary power of 14 TeV or 14 Tera or trillion electron volts or translated into real world terms, the energy of 3,400 nuclear power plants CERN estimates privately, converging on a tiny experimental space.

The giant now horizontal tower 17 miles around, the LHC Ring of Power dwarfing the people who built it, and applauded on all sides, is now ready for our ultimate experiment into the mysteries of matter and energy. The question is should it still go ahead? Or are questions of history, religion and art just more bunk to be totally erased by the progress of science?

At this point only governments could stop the LHC but like the rest of us they too are dazzled by the Machine they built and the $10 Billion poured into it.

For those eager to go ahead, even though they could claim it was a collective decision whatever the outcome, it will be remembered that the few who think they know physics are the force behind this gamble with the unknown. These are as it happens the same physicists who also say they don't know what will happen and need the LHC experiment to rescue them and their physics from a maze of theories and speculations that continues to spiral out of control. Purely mental wandering that craves a solution, but strangely along the same lines of any obsession, even a pathologically dangerous one. Call it Collider Fever. Or Big Bang Envy. Any sex therapists wanna tackle this?

That only leaves the LHC to destroy itself when the experiment like the Tower of Babel is crushed by its own weight. It is history in the making? Or history repeating itself? With far more than masonry and mortar in its grasp, there's a String theory of chances on the way. 7 TeV collisions soon, this Fall heavy lead ion collisions that will make these protons look like pop guns, and if the LHC goes to full power in about three years at 14 TeV, it could also be the end of science and the quest for power through knowledge. It might also be the end of history.

An 11th Hour Appeal Launched In Europe

Two days ago all CERN Council members and the Science Ministers of 20 CERN Member States were petitioned by a group of LHC critics. A letter outlining the New Physics hazards of the LHC experiment not fully addressed by CERN and its lack of studies on Risk Assessment was presented for consideration, including supporting papers from the science and academic community. CERN has not replied. Updates on the petition at LHC Kritik.

I'd also like to signal a few Comments that I posted on various website articles recently. Thanks especially to Fermilab/SLAC, Symmetry and SymmetryBreaking for publishing my critical overview of the Media and CERN in "Demystifying the LHC shutdown". Thanks to New Scientist for publishing Professor Eric E Johnson's article "CERN on trial: could a lawsuit shut the LHC down?" and my Comment on the comments posted that were first analyzed by Empirical Observer, the pro and con LHC arguments that you see all the time, that don't pass the test of logic. And a Comment from me on the always invoked Cosmic Ray Argument used by CERN to make all risks disappear, in this case by a French guy who works for CERN ATLAS, thanks to my favorite French newspaper Le Figaro "Le LHC va s’arrêter pendant un an".

At CERN's many info websites you can't post a Comment on anything. Can't even "Ask a physicist" about anything. Send an email and if you're lucky or if you're a little old lady worried about LHC Tsunamis CERN PR will answer.



Dance on fire until The End

Sooner or later, right Morrison? Thanks Jim. The End comes first.

This is Part 5 of a series on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high unknown energies this March. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected

NewsHammer Part 3: Higgs Discovered At The Large Hadron Collider / More Delays

NewsHammer Part 4: Scrubbing CMS Data At The LHC


--Alan Gillis

The Compact Muon Solenoid

NewsHammer Exclusive Not just any magnet, but the biggest solenoid ever built, with about as much steel as the Eiffel Tower. A machine within a machine, 1 of 4 giant experiments within the immense LHC collider complex. The Compact Muon Solenoid or CMS is also like the other experiments, a reactor and a complex of detectors. The M in CMS refers to 3 Muon detector systems, but it has others as well designed to track the particle zoo release from collisions.

Each experiment has its particular focus, but essentially they work the same way. When particle beams are accelerated around the LHC ring to near light speed, the two beams traveling in opposite directions are squeezed together and forced to collide in each detector. In the CMS it's done by a extreme 3.8 Tesla magnetic field. Whatever event is produced is not only monitored and analyzed, but the collision products are contained within the magnetic bottle. So far at low energies up to 2.36 TeV last December in the CMS, there was the usual shower of new particles and some unexpected extras.

Shiny New CMS Goes For A Test Drive

The collider buzz wasn't about results. CERN was all excited about the spectacular performance of what could have been a giant red Ferrari parked outside the Globe. It got its own CERN paper written by pages and pages of physicists who work on CMS, and wow were they ever excited. They were so excited by the fabulous specs, the sheer power of the CMS million liter 2.36 TeV with 10,000 valves, the amazing bells and whistles on the biggest dashboard you ever saw, the va-va-va-vrooom as it turned all the corners impeccably, they forgot to analyze the data.

They got some down on a million souvenir DVDs for later but some obvious extra mesons couldn't be ignored blasting out of the extreme exhaust. No sweat, just a bit of smoke. Only 10% to 14% more charged hadrons than expected. Specifically more Kaons and Pions, these quark re-arangements of basic quarks and antiquarks that should more or less decay into muons.

Since 2.36 TeV was in Terra Incognita, it might be just one of those things. Not exactly a problem when the two predictive models based on lower power collisions didn't exactly agree either, or not a problem anyway, just more mesons rising a bit steeply at new higher energies and maybe a trend at still higher energies where they could well be a problem when the LHC collides heavy lead ions maybe this Fall. Paraphrased directly from the BBC report.

Never mind, the big question is why? Why more mesons? Are these new new mesons produced from fusion energy? From smashing protons into quarks that recombined? Or is something else going on? Come on BBC. Ask the right questions. I know, they're usually better with farm animals and foreign potentates.

But is CERN any better with protons? We think we understand why physicists were too excited to analyze the CMS data scientifically. Often there's so much data you have to toss out most of it to make any sense of what is left. There are various sophisticated computer programs for that developed out of the bad old days of nuclear physics when physicists were designing A-Bombs at Los Alamos. Code name: Monte Carlo.


Original GEANT-Zéro Monte Carlo Generator

CERN had its old GEANT program and they're still using GEANT-4 that spews out particles in Fortran. GEANT-Zéro really should be in a museum instead of this abandoned ?LEP Hangar? but CERN is very attached to the good old days of particle physics, when Nuclear sounded important. Here a technician wearing a lab coat and latex gloves drops the particles into a mechano-'opper (out of frame, left). The center dial is spun randomly and then physicists go for coffee. When they come back the first batch of Monte Carlo'd particles is ready. If there are still too many mesons or other troublesome particles, the new smaller sample is re-Monte Carlo'd.

If there are still problems with data or the usual disagreements in interpretation of data, there is the Roulette Option for testing algorithms and a weekend bus trip by Car is arranged to a nearby casino like Chamonix. Now of course they are called Collider Conferences and unfortunately some real work must be done. Presentations. Taking notes on the back of envelopes. The piercing question. Gone are the days of gleaming prop planes chartered to Monaco with physicists waving their perpetual sandwiches, talking and too busy to eat.

Still we can't be sure exactly what happened to the CMS data. It seems to have gone through both systems and came out without a scratch. Blasted mesons! Troublesome little things getting in the way of serious data like pixel performance. Is that the only answer?

Of course there should be New Physics but this is just too soon for that. A few small collisions at low power for CMS calibration. But CERN should remember that New Physics comes mostly from physicists and not the collider. Unexpected results may have unexpected causes. Studies should be done. Trying to elbow the mesons out of the collider and worry about them later when there are more of them interfering with data, sounds rather medieval. Especially when it is possible that some Kaons might form Strangelets and then you'd have a real 5-star collider emergency. More on Strangelets later.

But a second event at the CMS should have alerted 2,500 physicists about the extra muons.

The Strange Case Of The Misbehaving Magnet

The other totally unexpected main event at CMS this past December hasn't been advertised at all by CERN.

Seems the CMS actually does increase beam power when its On. CERN discovered the effect over the entire 27 km length of beams. From this Steve Meyer's Powerpoint slide shown (below) at the December 18, 2009 CERN meeting, we see the ideal "Santa Klaus" proton beam whipping around very near the speed of light.

CMS Off, Santa Ho Ho Ho

CMS On, What Happened Santa?

Beam energy changes? And that's at the usual operating power of 3.8 Tesla in the CMS, ring magnets much weaker to handle low energy 1.18 TeV beams at that time. Earth's field is an extremely low 0.000032 Tesla in comparison.

What about collisions in the CMS detector/reactor? Will they too be more powerful? Will the extreme magnetic field of CMS sustain a fusion reaction between beams or sustain collider objects produced? Need some physics papers on this, but like a lot of other risk scenarios, lower power colliders are taken as proof of safety. But no collider before the LHC is remotely equivalent.

You would think there would be a big buzz at Chamonix, the CERN conference last month, but I couldn't find anything on the CMS boosting beam energy in the many reports presented on the LHC. One of those things no physicist will forget to talk about, at least over coffee. A first in collider physics. Being studied now certainly by CERN, but CERN's not waiting for studies. The unstoppable LHC is being powered up again for new beams. Will CERN be more cautious about running experiments? Yes, there's already been an encouraging change to the beam schedule. The first run will be back to 0.45 TeV injection beams instead of a jump to 3.5 TeV. Though CERN has been powering the ring magnets to handle these higher energies. The LHC could still jump through the 3.5 TeV hoop in a day.

But CERN has more to worry about.

After all there was another unexplained event in the same Myers' presentation, P24 screenshot of "Food for thought – V blow up of beam 2" or the LHC's first beam explosion December 11, 2009. More on that later.

Two Added Trajectory Energies To Destroy The LHC?

Higher than expected energies as in Part 2 might be higher still with another Trajectory Energy added to the mix.

You have the 3.8 Tesla CMS magnetic bottle to contain the fusion reaction as in other ordinary fusion reactors, but at the LHC beams are forcibly circulated through it. Part of the effect? Beams push their way through the extremely high CMS magnetic field. In a similar way, Richard Shurtleff's added Trajectory Energy for beams through gravity could also be applied to beams through extremely high magnetic fields, I would say.

Proofs Available From CMS?

The CMS apparent boost to beam energy, looks like a proof of this new added Trajectory Energy through magnetic fields.

The 'discarded' extra unexpected muons produced also in CMS suggest collision energies were higher than 2.36 TeV and so produced more muons. This could be a proof of Shurtleff's original Trajectory Energy through gravity and would include the other Trajectory Energy I'm proposing through magnetic fields at CMS.

Both energies might be magnified at higher and higher TeV.

On Trajectory Energy added by gravity interactions, Shurtleff thinks that at higher and higher TeV energies, ultimately energies of LHC 14 TeV collisions could double to 28 TeV. And that's without considering the other Trajectory Energy.

To paraphrase Holmes, when you eliminate the impossible, you are left with the probable and the unknown.

It's up to CERN to find out what they are dealing with. They have the physicists and about half the world's supply of them. Powering up the collider blithely to 3.5 TeV and for 7 TeV collisions could have other unexpected results like destruction of the LHC.

The Elusive Obvious Effect When Gravity Is Considered Weak

If you force particles through a vacuum pipe at maximum speed near light speed and that's always your constant, with enough RF or microwave energy applied for 3.5 TeV, you have a 3.5 TeV beam. Do the same thing against gravity and you have 3.5 TeV plus you've added extra energy to overcome the gravity or G.

But here's the thinking: Gravity is weak and so can be disregarded. Usually left out of equations. Maybe not so weak. Maybe it's a force acting on several dimensions, and only appears to be weak. Physicists are still trying to understand Quantum gravity. LHC beams also work on a Quantum scale. What will happen?

Force your beam against an extreme magnetic field M, and you have 3.5 TeV plus G and plus M or 2 added Trajectory Energies in addition to 3.5 TeV. Anyone care for a game of Quantum magnetism?

Say if you had water instead of a vacuum in your beam pipe, you would have to overcome the drag by water with more energy W to achieve the same near light speed and energy or particle density of your beam. Here W=G+M. Giddings and Mangano are you listening?

Considering CERN has invested in 9,300 superconducting magnets all supercooled at super expense, you think electro-magnetism and extreme fields would be well understood at the LHC. The CMS would be no surprise?

Anybody studying the effects of extreme magnetic fields on collisions and their products? Seems magnetic effects like gravity are ignored as unimportant as other small colliders haven't encountered problems. It's Collider Weather. What can you do about it anyway?

Could be a similar effect with the other main detectors like ATLAS that also has a similar tremendous but toroidal magnetic field. Also a solenoid, tricky combo. Can somebody check? Hey Steve!

Back To Observed Effects At CMS And The LHC

CERN should be able to measure the boost noted in December in beam energies achieved by CMS when beams were at 1.18 TeV. OK, so try again then to duplicate and study this before going to higher energies. Why not announce the need to run the LHC again at 1.18 TeV to double check findings? No, nothing. Is CERN still in a hurry to get glamorous 7 TeV collisions? Leaving upstart colliders, like RHIC getting the glory for Quark Soup, in the dust.

That's it. Can't think of everything and so we find out by experiment: Saves time to go ahead beams blazing, if the experiment doesn't destroy the LHC.

Still it's been the case at the LHC until the accident of 2008, that machine effects don't matter. Physicists tell engineers what they want and that's what they'll get. Not in 2008. And then a hundred committees try to coordinate everything. Fiddly stuff gets scrutinized under a microscope and the big stuff like untested unmonitored busbars or mounting radiation hazards falls through the cracks with a boom.

This was a disregard of known hazards at other colliders. Complicated by obsession and ambition. If CERN had been paying serious attention to all these articles in The Science of Conundrums about known hazards, and shortfalls at the LHC due to extreme complexity of the project and the resulting 27 km machine, CERN might have reconsidered their hurry-up mission for New Physics. In the end the LHC experiment was obviously dependent on billions of dollars of hardware working and working safely. It didn't. Now add unknown beams and collisions?

Into The Unknown

We now come into the realm of the unknown being explored with unknown energies, by a machine maybe or maybe not in control of the unknown. It won't be the control room operators in CCC who will exercise the control, not when events will occur literally a few meters short of light speed. The machine will be in charge.

Of course there will be unknown effects and unknown interactions. Physicists have been surprised many times by their own research. But here the scale of research at the giant LHC into New States of Matter called a much friendlier New Physics, is of a vastly different order.

Although physicists and engineers can anticipate what might happen based on what they know, the machine is a machine, sometimes reliable, sometimes not. What they don't know, what the machine isn't built for, is what they can't handle. Here's the big thrill element. Can we beat the odds, can we go where no collider has gone before?

Who Decides?

Should we take a chance? Point that 27 km collider at Geneva? Half power or full power? It's not really CERN's decision. It's not even CERN's collider or CERN's money. Paid for by taxpayers. Owned by taxpayers. There are 2 million of them a stone's throw from ATLAS. No one in Geneva was asked if they wanted this collider in their backyard. Why not put the question to these good people? Let them decide. Isn't that fair?

Talk to the people about Spooky Quantum Effects that will come as a complete surprise. Probability zero of course. Tell them CERN has decided on the unknown, that all LHC risks are ZERO. What a relief. Thanks CERN PR.

LHC ReReStart In Progress

Watch any of 20 LHC Live Status Pages from this link.

The LHC is being prepared for injection energies of 0.45 TeV per beam. Once beams are injected into the 27 km ring, then they can be ramped up to higher energies quickly, as high as 3.5 TeV per beam this year and collisions could follow soon at a maximum of 7 TeV in any of the detectors.

Another little glitch on LHC1 (click above) "problem on the PCs of the triplet--access needed--No beam before 8 h tomorrow"

There really isn't any word from CERN on a schedule, not on their websites or even from CERN on Twitter. You can see why. But still what is CERN going to do? Jump quickly, go slow, play bunker ping-pong? Spooky.

From The CERN X Files

Finally this update from CERN physicist Lucio Rossi, confirming several crucial LHC machine safety issues in the fault-prone superconducting magnet systems that failed in 2008. His review of the 2008 accident is discussed in Nature News, Feb 23, 2010, "Did design flaws doom the LHC?":

Catastrophic failure that caused accelerator shutdown was not a freak accident, says project physicist.

Rossi's paper appears in IOP, "Superconductivity: its role, its success and its setbacks in the Large Hadron Collider of CERN".

Rossi concludes in part:

"The incident also revealed a lack of adequate risk analysis (maximum MCI) [Maximum Credible Incident] and of understanding all consequences, as well as an incomplete global magnet circuit protection analysis and an inadequate detection of a dangerous situation. . . ."

You'll find a less academic account of busbar bugaboos in my "LHC Beams Back To Life".

Finally, if CERN were infallible they wouldn't need a $10 Billion collider to find out what they don't know. I don't remember Einstein ordering a collider. His research budget was a few logs on the fire, the "lazy dog" according to Hermann Minkowski, one of Einstein's professors.

This is Part 4 of a series on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high unknown energies this March. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected

NewsHammer Part3: Higgs Discovered At The Large Hadron Collider / More Delays

--Alan Gillis

Hawking Partly Wrong

NewsHammer Exclusive Peter Higgs with CERN's Tejinder Virdee and get-this: Under the hood of the giant solenoid CMS 12,500 tonne detector behind them you've got a radiator leaking water like a '72 Chevy. The new and mighty CMS, our favorite experiment, one of 4 beautiful cathedral-size detectors or reactors, but CERN won't call them that, has 272 zones of corrosion. Plus unlike any Chevy anywhere it even leaks its coolant directly into the engine. But that was December, a cold month, about 25 gallons or a 100 liters of water with the CMS plugged in, CMS On, spilling inside. See the candid report in the CMS Times, "CMS Winter Shutdown Adventure".

Don't worry, none of the 1,000,000 signal channels were affected. CERN didn't really say one way or the other, but not saying exactly anything at CERN always means there are no safety issues. Damage of course was minor. I suppose we are being asked to theorize a quick wipedown by CERN technicians insured a total recovery of all systems, even unaffected systems that might have been at risk. Though how did the technicians get inside? It took them 10.5 days to break in, a bit late for a quick wipedown. Though with a lot of official CERN hot air always present at the LHC, it could have been easily diverted directly into CMS. The blow-dry operation would be the intervention of choice for the "incident", as CERN hot air is considered very hot in comparison to other smaller collider PR.

CMS is maybe still down for 272 corrosion repairs due to other leaks, spotted once technicians got inside for the quick wipedown. A second burst pipe and flooding of the CMS Control Room two years running has been fixed again. 4,000 fault-prone connectors mistakenly installed in a new giant safety system, to replace an old system that failed in 2008, the nQPS or new Quench Protection System, have been replaced. That's why in part, the collider hasn't been going anywhere over the very long and bumpy "Technical Stop" since December in case you were wondering what happened to $10 Billion and 10,000 physicists trying to hitch a ride on the LHC Eurostar.

That's the latest from CERN, a fast train as an equivalent to an LHC beam. Not the power of 1700 Nuclear Power Plants, as discussed in "Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected". By the way, the Two Mosquitoes Line, a long-running embarrassment bewildering even for collider kids, was shutdown and deleted from all CERN websites in a surprising retreat from CERN hot air physics. Looks like the CERN-EuroDisney merger is at a "Technical Stop".


Leaky CMS/ First Quantum Bench Test

Results not in.

Anyway, why leaks, especially water leaks in a new CMS that cost a fortune to build? The CMS gets very hot when it powers down. At its ordinary field strength of 3.8 Tesla it operates at about 18,000 Amps. It's supposed to power down gradually, but sometimes it can crash, like when there's a power failure. Then it can get hot enough to smoke.

During a crashdown test a couple of years ago, you could see a cloud of steam rising in a series of CERN photos which used to be available from CMS. That in itself could have damaged water lines and caused the later big spill and corrosion.

Other though unplanned "incidents" might have contributed:

Monday [August 3, 2009] at 2:19 PM, when a power cut on the CERN general network caused a slow discharge that turned into a fast dump a few seconds later. Investigations are ongoing to understand the switching from the preferred slow discharge to the faster dump which, while being a throughly tested part of the CMS operations, raises the temperature of the coil to 70K, thus requiring three days to cool down again to 4K before current can be injected again.

"5am 9 Nov [2009]: “Glitch” in CMS solenoid cryogenics system caused magnet to ramp down to 2.3T."

"[as of December 7, 2009] CERN power outage Tuesday night . . . trip of tracker cooling plant. . . . 3 or 4 cases . . . CMS solenoid magnet cryo dry compressors stopped. Field dropped from 3.8 T to 3.5 T. . . . slow current dump of CMS solenoid. Went down to 2.7 T. . . . Down most of today due to another power glitch"

Mounting Radiation Hazards In Cooling Water

Not that everything has been going smoothly. A lot of water is used as coolant at the LHC, including for some Septum Magnets that suffered heavy radiation damage and had to be replaced in 2004, "SEPTUM MAGNET MNP-23 FOR THE CERN PS EXPERIMENTAL AREA
AND ITS FAST INTERLOCK SYSTEM". With the recent revelations about mounting radiation hazards during collider operations, ignored for 10-15 years in ring tunnels according to Steve Meyers Head of Accelerators, in "Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday", it looks like some people in CERN Maintenance were well aware of the potential problems. Doesn't anybody at CERN read CERN docs?

That also means mounting radiation hazards in many LHC cooling water systems, including the colossal CMS solenoid surprisingly also partly cooled by water, and leaking too. Hope there's a new study and some action on this, before radioactive waste water finds itself in nearby Lake Geneva.

The LHC Collimator System where relatively exposed beams are focused is also cooled by water in part, though like in the CMS system it's hard to imagine an idea like this being approved by a CERN Committee of Experts. Here's the full January report from Chamonix, "Summary of the Collimation Upgrade Plans" and the smoking gun slide on P38.

Perhaps it's time for a little more foresight.

LHC On Target Again For Re-ReStart

Late January, February, Mid-February, March, February 20th (Official), February 25 (Rumor), After Monday but no firm date (Official, sometime after Monday February 22)

Jump to 3.5 TeV, no back to injection energy 0.45 TeV. Slow ramp? Not perfectly clear yet. A good idea I'd say. One of those 3.5 TeV beams will be very hard to handle if the collider has another bad day.

Next in NewsHammer, more on CMS in The Strange Case Of The Misbehaving Magnet At The LHC

--Alan Gillis

This is Part 3 of a series on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high unknown energies this March. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected

While Waiting for the LHC: A Shopping List

NewsHammer Exclusive Recently a CERN outsider though with five star Associate status, black hole and gravity theorist Professor Steve Giddings of UC Santa Barbara, wrote a feel good opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, reminding us again of "What will the Large Hadron Collider reveal?"

Well, just about anything HEP (High Energy Physics, preferred over dangerous sounding nuclear physics) physicists have been dreaming of since Einstein. No closer either to something definite after years of focusing theories into experiments and design of the LHC before construction started in 2000. From anyone else pushing a $10 Billion science lab, you would expect clearly defined objectives. Not from CERN or Giddings.

Fusion and New Non-Elemental States of Matter

Physicists know that much but they don't want us to worry. Call it a safety argument for funding experimental research only PhDs really understand. Though they don't know either where their research into manipulation of matter and energy is going. Physicists have so many competing theories of New Physics entangled in mind-boggling complexity all we can be sure of is they have trouble sleeping at night. What they're sure of in Classical and Quantum physics they've been trying to reconcile since the 1920s into a Theory of Everything, also gives them no rest. New Physics at the LHC might supply some New Matter glue for ToE at last. That's why physicists are beaming now in the press and at the LHC.

To be fair the reason for not spelling things out, besides the complexities and no one really knows what to expect, is the extremely high energy LHC. Unlike the early days of particle physics and low energy colliders that have been atom-smashing, the LHC is designed for a new high energy frontier, the smashing and fusion of ions or hadrons.

The mother of all colliders will create new heavy matter states (not elements as in other fusion experiments) and perhaps several different types that don't exist now, but might have existed in the very early Universe. Or other objects that may never have existed, like Strangelets that might transform matter into Strange matter. Or nothing. All theoretical objects expected like the Higgs boson, might be mathematical fiction. Though Standard Model diehards will blame the LHC, knowing all along the LHC was doomed to produce nothing without way higher Planck scale energies. So, give us a biggger collider.


LHC Energies Much Higher Than Expected?

Extra g-force. It's not an idle joke. Is Newton on the collider check list? CERN might never need a biggger collider. Collision energies may be much higher in gravity than CERN thinks. At 2 TeV collisions it hasn't been noticed, but what happens at 14 TeV? Collision force could double due to added Trajectory Energy for a fantastic 28 TeV, says Richard Shurtleff in his 2009 paper, "Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays from Galactic Supernovae".

Physicist LW Jones in his paper of 2004 ,"LHC studies relevant to PeV - EeV cosmic ray physics" correlates 14 TeV collisions at the LHC with much higher energies in space:

"At the CERN LHC collider, where p-p collision energies will be equivalent to 100 PeV cosmic ray interactions, the ambiguity of interaction models needed for the interpretation of V.H.E. cosmic ray data is recognized . . . ".

It also works both ways. Reinterpreting LHC energies may be required. As both scales are describing the same energy, the difference between them is LHC beam energies are working harder against Earth's gravity. Shurtleff also supports the idea of much higher cosmic ray equivalent energy interactions at the LHC. A factor of 10^5 times more than 14 TeV or 140 PeV.

The PeV scale is astronomical. That's the quadrillion scale, add 3 more zeros to trillion, the Tera or TeV scale at the LHC. So will the LHC achieve a potentially ambiguous 14 TeV in Earth's gravity? The point in both papers is gravity is a major factor in LHC beams. Could gravity add a Trajectory Energy as Shurtleff suggests, perhaps doubling LHC collision energies from 14 TeV to 28 TeV that could destroy the collider? We'll find out. It's an experiment.

Even so, will CERN need extremely high Planck scale energies to make collider objects, without extra dimensions? Not now!

1/3 Planck Energy Required For Relativistic Micro Black Holes

There's an important new article in AAAS Science, "Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes". A new computer simulation of just two particles colliding, confirms conclusively for the first time that a micro black hole will form and at a total energy well below what has been expected, at only one-third of Planck energy.

Researchers Matthew Choptuik of UBC and Frans Pretorius of Princeton used hundreds of computers for the simulation which also confirms Einstein's prediction on how black holes can form from his theory of General Relativity.

Their paper will appear in Physical Review Letters. It's a fantastic discovery that is being singled out for attention by no less an authority than Joseph Lykken of Fermilab:

"I would have been surprised if it had come out the other way. But it is important to have the people who know how black holes form look at this in detail."

Can the LHC achieve collisions at 1/3 Planck Energy? No.

Planck scale energies are unreachable at any collider. Energies of 1.22 × 10^28 eV (electron Volts) are the boundary between Classical and Quantum physics. One-third of 1.22 × 10^28 eV? No, not even remotely close to 14 TeV. Even lead ion collisions at a phenomenal 1150 TeV are still far too weak. With LW Jones' cosmic ray uplift applied to 1150 TeV we would have collisions at 8221 PeV. Again very far short of 1/3 Planck energy.

Particles like protons from space causing Planck scale energy collisions in our atmosphere haven't been observed either, not even at 1/3 Planck energies, though Very High Energy events in the Quintillian Exa scale have been detected or 3 zeros more than Peta, or EeV events of up to 41.1 EeV at the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina. Far far higher than LHC maximum energies.

Can the LHC still produce mBH? Maybe.

If theoretical extra dimensions exist as in Superstring theory, the LHC will be ready to make a grab bag of collider objects starting at 8 TeV collision energies. Physicists are eager to find out. If staggering cosmic energies are out of reach, the amount of energy available at the LHC is already fantastic without any reconsideration of gravity effects. Even physicists at CERN will tell you.

A Closer Look at a 7 TeV Proton Beam at the LHC

In case you're still wondering how to relate to all the energy in one 7 TeV beam, Rutger Schmidt of CERN, during a Powerpoint presentation at a collider conference in 2004 on "Accidental beam losses and protection at the LHC" put it this way:


"Instantaneous beam power for one beam 3.9 TWatt [Trillion Watts]

. . .during 89 microseconds [89 millionths of a second]

. . .corresponds to the power of 1700 nuclear power plants"


This is not a typo. This is about all the nuclear power plants there are worldwide combined to equal the power of 1 beam at 7 TeV. There are 2 simultaneous beams circulating in opposite directions at the LHC. This is not sustained LHC energy, meaning that 1 beam if hitting a target would only blast it for 89 microseconds. That beam would then be consumed if the target was big enough like a mountain, but the LHC could make another one soon enough.

While the beam is traveling a few meters short of the speed of light, it doesn't need a lot of time to deliver the burst even though the beam itself is 27 km (17 miles) long with gaps among the 2808 proton bunches. If you were the target besides being dead, you would have been hit by 2808 × 1.1 × 10^11 protons. Each proton would if you could see it coming at you at near light speed, would not be the usual extremely small invisible ball it is when at rest, but compressed by a factor of ?? (100 times at a low 100 GeV in the 200 GeV collision below from RHIC) into a flattened disk of fire much brighter and hotter than our sun. The difference at LHC energies is hardly comparable. Collisions at 14 TeV are 70 times the energy of RHIC.

LHC protons with tremendous energy added to them and transformed into extra mass will also be far heavier. CERN's calculations for a 7 TeV proton gives it a new mass of 7460.52 times the ordinary rest mass.

You would be hit by 308,880,000,000,000 heavy proton disks in one beam or about 309 Trillion protons. For 2 beams colliding with each other at the LHC double that to 618 Trillion protons colliding at 14 TeV. Or Schmidt's energy of 1700 × 2 for 3400 nuclear power plants focused together for an instant in a TicTac space blowing up? Expanding? Feeding on all the protons? Stabilizing into something unknown? Decaying in a shower of particles?


So far in low power colliders the result is a shower of particles, as in the collisions above, pp from a test at 2.36 TeV at CMS at the LHC last December (higher up the page) to AuAu or gold ions colliding at about 1/14 of the CMS test energy or 200 GeV in the RHIC's PHENIX Detector above. Note the RHIC's clearer image of the fusion event and burst of particles.

No one knows what will happen at much higher collision energies at the LHC. CERN claims that even these extremely well-aligned and focused collisions between needle-like beams will only yield a modest 600 million head-on full-impact collisions per second. No way of knowing in fact how many of the super-heavy super-charged super-fast protons will actually collide or be captured in the much larger fireball of fusion energy. All 618 Trillion protons will arrive in the same TicTac fusion space within 89 microseconds, contained within an incredibly powerful magnetic field in any of the LHC's 4 giant detectors.

LHC Magnetic Fields Boosting Beam Energy

The effect of super high Tesla fields on beams surprised CERN during the recent December tests at the LHC. "?? CMS solenoid changes the beam energy??" from a screenshot slide in a CERN presentation, "Operating the LHC with Beam (on behalf of the LHC team) December 18, 2009". More on that later.

Add Trajectory Energy?

Or if Shurtleff is right on gravity, double that maximum collision energy CERN already expects to include Trajectory Energy, for 6800 nuclear power plants. CERN wouldn't complain. The LHC is supposed to recreate conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, but on a very very very small scale.

From the Known to the Unknown

Of course low power colliders like Fermilab's Tevatron with its proton-antiproton collisions and CERN's earlier LEP that collided electrons-positrons, produced useful results like new matter point-like particles from fusion energy released. Brookhaven's RHIC has been colliding a range of heavy ions especially Gold ions. Some theoretical particles of the Standard Model were confirmed by these colliders.

But these old colliders have done about all they can do in producing new particles. New States of Matter attempted are also beyond their reach. The gigantic 27 km LHC is the next logical step over small low power puny colliders.

In this brave new world of extremely high energies, the LHC should produce extended heavy objects for the first time. I wish Giddings had said that. Then we could have had our panic attack back in January.

--Alan Gillis

This is Part 2 of a report on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high unknown energies this March. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday