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

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

NewsHammer Exclusive After a brief and successful restart this November, the Large Hadron Collider is on standby until March for more fixes and re-commissioning to higher energies. It's an uncharacteristic and surprising move by CERN, four years behind schedule and billions over budget on the $10 Billion collider, but a welcome go-slow approach to machine safety.

In September 2008 days after start-up a $40 Million accident crippled the LHC for over a year. Until the surprise winter break, CERN's objectives were for 3.5 TeV beams by the end of 2009 instead of the 1.18 TeV beams achieved, though with a bonus of some test collisions at a record 2.36 TeV.

Data highlights of CMS collisions have just been released in an article on MIT News. The big surprises were high numbers of mesons produced, and those numbers increased faster with collision energies, not predicted by models based on lower energy collisions at other colliders. CMS will publish its formal paper in the Journal of High Energy Physics.

Why Stop There? 2.36 TeV instead of 7 TeV

The abrupt end to commissioning in December at higher energies also surprised CERNies on site besides fans of the LHC. It wasn't because of the usual winter shutdown over the holidays. Safety concerns won over speed. Going to higher TeV meant jumping over another threshold in magnet powering, above 2,000 Amps. With so many magnets damaged last time during the 2008 busbar accident, Steve Meyers, CERN's #1 collider guy, decided to go slow again. Anyway the leaky CMS experiment and the faulty nQPS, the new Quench Protection System for the thousands of magnets, were also having trouble big time.

2010-2011 LHC Run 18-24 Months at 3.5 TeV per Beam

After a rethink last week at Chamonix, the collider's favorite ski resort, CERN has decided on going slower still. After current repairs and retrofits that should be completed by mid-February, now pushed ahead to March (don't ask) the LHC will aim for 3.5 TeV beams and 7 TeV collisions or 7 Tera or 7 Trillion Electron Volts, over the next 18 to 24 months, shutting down for lengthy major safety retrofits for possibly a year. Then in 2013 commissioning to 7 TeV per beam and 14 TeV collisions. Alarmingly sensible. Collider safety taking precedence? Congratulations, CERN.

Though potentially more dangerous heavy lead ion collisions, are now off the back burner and might start this Fall.

Unforeseen Radiation and $235 Million to $Billions More In Upgrades

More surprises at Chamonix. The end of January 5 day event, largely a study of safety at 5 TeV per beam, current LHC status of safety upgrades, and future safety upgrades, was more of the usual data avalanche. Here comes the check for the big holiday blowout.

Including new amazing unforeseen radiation hazards that will develop as the collider runs (Session 6--Radiation to Electronics) to deficiencies in the pre-accelerators (Session 8) including Electron Cloud trouble, and aging equipment and a need for higher energy injection beams with more bunches per beam or Billions More Dollars in upgrades. Maybe 100 Million Swiss Francs in civil engineering to move huge power supplies away from radiation zones, unknown but substantial costs to shield and/or redesign and replace equipment prone to radiation damage. Maybe at a minimum 1.3 or 1.4 Billion SF to upgrade pre-accelerators, probably much more if aging systems need full replacement. And more major upgrades to ventilation equipment including more ventilation shafts that were alarmingly inadequate for the 6 ton spill of Helium in 2008.

Here's the schedule and presentation abstracts including links to CERN docs and slides, "LHC Performance Workshop - Chamonix 2010". A "Summary of the ....", the webcast of February 5 and now a 2 part video from CERN, covers the main points made at Chamonix. Here's the abstract of the video, including links to docs cited and slides shown.

An important but informal end comment from the DG, Dr Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the new Director General of CERN since January 2009, didn't make it to video.

After Steve Meyers overview of radiation hazards developing and damaging equipment, to answer the big unspoken question hanging in the air, Meyers said:

"I think a declaration 10 or 15 years ago that the underground service areas in the LHC were non-radiation areas."

After Meyer's conclusions, Dr Heuer, sitting in his seat up front summed up his thoughts this way to the CERN audience:

"Instead of making decisions every 3 months, I prefer to have enough time to think it over."

A radical change from last year's we're good to go to 5 TeV per beam and gradual installation of more safety systems over the next 5 years. The estimate back in July for safety after $40 M in repairs was a whopping $235 Million extra in "LHC Status by Steve Meyers..." CERN video, still ignored by the media for safety the collider should have had before the accident of 2008. No CERN press release, that must be it. The new faster CERN schedule on safety upgrades will still mean spending the $235 M, while $1 to $2 Billion more on other upgrades thanks to the Chamonix review is now being considered. Hard to recall the LHC is a new collider.

One thing CERN forgot was the $1 Gazillion for Computer Systems Security including SCADA and Ethernet-Connected Instrumentation Systems. Why wait for the Trojans to attack?

All Ahead Slow: New Physics In Sight

If the LHC Machine is being re-engineered for more safety, it's the same old anything goes as to what the LHC might produce in terms of New Physics. Exciting not to know where physics is going, but hardly something to brag about. An army of the best minds in HEP don't have a clue? We're going to the Moon, but we might wind up on Mars or Venus or maybe we don't have enough thrust to go anywhere?

We've all read about it over and over again. Wow, the LHC is on the brink of answering the biggest questions in the Universe. Great. Where can I buy one? Or more realistically the LHC is an experiment with the unknown, with unknown consequences, with little in the way of safety studies and risk assessments.

As with design and engineering before the accident, CERN is still relying on its own considerable expertise in what will happen at the LHC with its experiments. It's what CERN doesn't do with all that expertise that raises some red flags on safety like not studying all the risk scenarios and not performing slow and difficult computer modeling of collider objects the LHC might produce and what they would do at the LHC.

CERN isn't worried, so why should we be? Well, CERN wasn't worried before the big accident CERN still calls "the incident". Accidents preventable, incidents happen. Now poised to go to extremely high energy collisions of 7 TeV as early as this March and ultimately to 14 TeV, the LHC may create objects like micro black holes that might threaten the planet.

--Alan Gillis

This is Part 1 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 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected