Collider part: The Compact Muon Solenoid, which weighs over 12,500 tons, is one of two detectors scientists will use to measure results from the collision of protons inside the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. The collisions are expected to begin in September. (AFP/NEWSCOM)
Europe’s Large Hadron Collider tests the bounds of physics – and budgets
Scientists look for technologies to push particles faster, better, and cheaper.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ August 7, 2008 edition
Reporter Peter N. Spotts discusses the end of American leadership in high-energy physics.
Reporter Peter N. Spotts
If all goes well, this weekend a handful of protons will make their first, tentative entrance into the main rings of the world’s most powerful time machine.
It’s an important step toward the full-scale start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a mammoth particle accelerator spanning the French-Swiss border. That start is expected in early September.
Physicists will accelerate beams of protons in opposite directions – each along its own nearly 17-mile circular path – to nearly the speed of light. Then, they will steer the hair-thin beams of protons into head-on collisions.
From the subatomic mayhem that ensues, physicists say they anticipate discoveries that will fill out the picture they have drawn during the past century of matter and the basic forces of nature – the so-called standard model. They also expect to see evidence of new physics beyond the standard model, including insights into the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which make up the vast majority of the energy and matter in the universe.
Yet even as scientists and engineers put the LHC through its final tests, researchers worldwide are exploring ways to build more-powerful, less-expensive accelerators. Results from the LHC will play a key role in determining how much more powerful they need to be. But one thing is clear, several physicists say: Attempts to use today’s technologies for tomorrow’s collider frontiers are likely to face virtually insurmountable cost and technical barriers.
“As you go up to higher energies, these facilities become more and more expensive,” says Dennis Kovar, associate director for high-energy physics in the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. “If there are going to be next-generation colliders, one is going to have to have some breakthroughs in technology … to be able to do it at an affordable price.”
The estimated price tag for the LHC is $5 billion to $10 billion.
How colliders work
At the high-energy frontier, physicists have been working with two groups of crash dummies: protons and their antimatter counterparts, antiprotons; and electrons and their mirror opposites, positrons. Each group has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, explains Harry Weerts, director of high-energy physics at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.
With the LHC, for instance, protons are the collision particles of choice. They carry an electrical charge (positive), which allows scientists to use magnets to focus the protons into tight beams and steer them around their circular racetrack. In the LHC’s case, the collider boasts more than 1,600 superconducting steering and focusing magnets. And protons have a respectable amount of mass, so scientists can whisk them around a bent path without the particles losing much energy.
But protons also have a drawback: They are made up of other particles – three quarks – that are bound to each other with yet more particles, called gluons. When protons collide, “it’s like colliding a bag of billiard balls with another bag of billiard balls,” Dr. Weerts says. The bags slam together, but the meaningful collision action is taking place among the billiard balls, not the sacks holding them. Indeed, he says, in reality, the LHC is really a quark collider.
By whatever name, the upshot is: The collisions are a mess. Scientists must sift through a lot of collision debris to spot the signatures of the particles they are trying to find. That requires long periods of operation to amass enough statistics on the collisions to convince themselves and their colleagues they have a genuine “eureka!” result.
Faster particles, accelerating costs
The collision energy in a proton collider must be substantially higher than might otherwise be the case because the energy is parceled out to varying degrees among all the quarks and gluons in the mix, not just among two protons.
Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) are laying plans to upgrade the LHC’s power in about 10 years. Still, scientists say they are fast approaching the limits for affordable proton colliders, even when an international collaboration is sharing the cost. At some point on the climb up the collision-energy ladder, the protons’ heft won’t prevent them from losing increasing amounts of travel energy as they constantly shift directions in a circular ring, rendering them less practical. And the magnetic fields needed to keep a rein on the protons would grow so high that no known, or at least affordable, material could withstand the physical stresses the magnetic fields would set up.
This has prompted many physicists looking harder at electrons, and their heavier cousins, muons, to literally get more bang for the buck. Electrons have been getting a workout for years at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, Calif., and at the LHC’s predecessor at CERN, the Large Electron-Positron Collider.
Unlike protons, electrons are fundamental particles – they have no internal components. So every hit is clean; all of the energy of the collision goes into forming the heavier particles scientists are interested in. Scientists can accomplish the same physics with fewer collisions than a proton collider requires.
The proposed International Linear Collider (ILC), for instance, would smack electrons into an onrushing beam of positrons to create copious numbers of particles called the Higgs boson. It’s a particle thought to impart mass to other particles, and the LHC stands an excellent chance of finding it. But, researchers say, that’s like discovering the shoreline of a new continent. It’s an important advance, but takes repeat visits to truly explore.
The LHC uses a specific energy level to ensure its collisions are in the predicted range for detecting Higgs, as well as other phenomenon. The ILC initially would operate with a fraction of that energy, some 500 billion electron-volts instead the 14 trillion used by the LHC.
But electrons are not the perfect projectiles either. In effect, they chafe at flitting around in circles. They have so little mass that as they speed around an accelerator ring, they lose energy through a form of radiation known as synchrotron radiation. So accelerators that use electrons for high-energy physics experiments typically are straight-line, or linear, colliders. Here, too, the size of the accelerator has limits – largely economic. SLAC’s linear collider is two miles long. The ILC’s would initially span 22 miles. It would need to grow by another nine miles to achieve the highest collision energy physicists envision for it.
Ways to push particles even faster
To rein in the size of such machines, researchers are exploring several unconventional approaches to giving electrons and positrons a series of swift kicks.
Last year, for example, researchers using facilities at SLAC reported a significant proof-of-concept advance using an approach a Tour de France cyclist might appreciate.
The team sent two closely spaced pulses of electrons through a heated tube filled with lithium ions. The first pulse turned the gas into a plasma and set up a wake as it passed. Electrons from the second pulse that hit the wake got kicked to far larger energies. Over a length of just under three feet, the team accelerated a small fraction of electrons to energies they ordinarily would reach if they traveled the full length of SLAC’s two-mile tunnel.
The small number of affected electrons, and the one-instance nature of the experiment show this approach clearly is a work in progress, researchers say. Linear colliders require multiple shots of particles to build up enough collision statistics to yield a meaningful interpretation. Within two years, the research team expects to have a two-shot experiment ready to fire. If they can pull off a rapid-fire repeat, “then we’ve got something,” says Thomas Katsouleas, dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and a member of the team working on the approach.
Other teams are using lasers, instead of an initial pulse of electrons, to set up the wake in the plasma. In 2006, a group a the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oxford University reported kicking an electron beam to more than 1 billion electron volts over a distance of less than two inches.
But there may be hope yet for ensuring rings don’t fall out of fashion. Researchers also are exploring “muon colliders.” Muons are heavier cousins to electrons. With far more mass than an electron, muons can be used in circular accelerators, notes Harold Kirk, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. They are still fundamental particles and so would yield the same clean hits that electrons provide. But they decay into other particles in 2.2 millionths of a second, he adds.
That sets up a significant challenge, he says, “to get the muons created, captured, collected, and accelerated” all within a muon’s lifetime. Einstein’s theory of special relativity, however, comes to the rescue. Once the muons are accelerated to nearly the speed of light, 2.2 microseconds from the particles’ perspective stretches out to many milliseconds as seen by a technician monitoring the particles. And that’s plenty of time to get the collision work done, he adds.
Last year at CERN, a team Mr. Kirk led put a prototype muon factory through its paces and showed that it could generate copious number of muons. The process also generated another type of particle physicists are keenly interested in – neutrinos. Thus a muon collider could pull double duty as a tool for neutrino physics, in addition to it high-energy-physics duties, Kirk says.
The next step, he adds, is to collect and cool the diffuse cloud of muons so that they can be focused and sent as a beam through an accelerator. The team is working on a concept to achieve that goal in an experiment in Britain slated for sometime in the next two years.
For more LHC coverage, check out:
As a massive atom smasher powers up, ‘Big Science’ moves away from the US
Could the Large Hadron Collider destroy Earth?
–––
[Editor’s Note: As a commenter pointed out, the original version of this story had Einstein’s theory flipped around. The faster a muon travels, the longer it takes to decay from the technician’s point of view.]
( More stories )
Comments
3. John Moore | 08.07.08
“Once the muons are accelerated to nearly the speed of light, 2.2 microseconds as seen by a technician monitoring the particles stretches out to many milliseconds from the particles’ perspective.” Sorry - but isn’t this backwards? 2.2 microseconds from the particles’ perspective stretches out to many milliseconds as seen by a technician?
4. JTankers | 08.07.08
Collisions start October 21 and could end 5 to 50 years later if micro black holes are created and if Dr. Rossler’s theories are correct.
Got LHCFacts.org?
6. erasMus.Lim | 08.08.08
Very nice, comprehensive article.
Just as a sidenote “2.2 millionths of a second” doesn’t correspond to “2.2 microseconds”. It actually means 1/(2.2 million) seconds = 0.46 microseconds. Not very important, but just wanted to point it out, since it can be a distraction when reading such an otherwise wonderfully written article.
7. Doomsday | 08.08.08
This evil machine will be the end of mankind.
It is powerful enough to create black holes here on earth.
The only thing that can wipe man off of the planet is man himself.
We are about to see this.
8. Michael Noonan | 08.09.08
The trouble is that the mathematics and consequently the logic just break down when considering a black hole of any size. I will give an example:-
The force being considered is gravity and it can not be infinite and legitimate anywhere even at the event horizon (mathematicians avoid this by not looking at the event horizon) because the reduction through the inverse square of the distance still gives infinite at all distances (meaning the whole universe would collapse instantly). Newtonian gravity at least. Relatively is speculation by a few people none of whom who have reported back from a black hole and so there is just a bunch of numbers in contention.
Here goes … the speed of an event horizon being the dragging of space is at least light speed because even sound waves have been measured at near light speed around our own galaxy super massive black hole but then that plays nasty games with the forces. You see gravity does not start until things reach a certain size about one 500 th of a flea which is a lot of atoms. So objects can not exert gravity until they are atomically very large. Although as soon as an object has any mass at all even a neutrino it is subject to forces and that includes gravity.
So gravity is instantly applied as soon as a mass forms even if it is just a particle. Before any particle gets near the event horizon it is being subjected to both centripetal force and light speed gravity. So logically as matter approaches a black hole presumably to get torn apart and disappear it gets pulverized into particles which then get spun to near infinite mass at the pitifully small scale of 3 * 10^8 ms-1 better known as the Einstein constant or even better known as the speed of light. The particle accelerator turns the equivalent of a 300 gram spray can of hydrogen (protons) into something that packs a punch like a 200 tonne train traveling at 200 miles an hour.
So now it becomes apparent that black holes are actually creators of matter because the only matter that gets anywhere near the black hole is spun around and torn into particles which then accelerates to near infinite mass and gets ejected from the black hole. Matter can’t get in but energy can because it is dragged in by the black hole deforming space and pulling energy into itself.
So if the black holes can’t consume matter and spin energy into matter it must be the black holes that make matter. This is because if space is dragged in so is the energy in that space which will like any good particle accelerator spin the energy into particles therefore the only stuff a black hole can actually take in is energy through the event horizon but now it is the poles which now must take in radiation making it the Hawking infill.
The problem with this is if you reduce the energy of a system it freezes and although getting ever slightly larger becomes a giant frozen ice ball waiting to shatter into so many fragments with the first available decent impact.
So the logic is which is greater finite gravity dragging in energized space or matter approaching infinite mass through centripetal forces? If this makes sense then worry because science says it is wrong.
The math and the logic just break down at such extremes and there is no safe way to know what will happen other than speculation from a very safe distance.
9. Michael Noonan | 08.11.08
Sorry my last comment was too long. Isn’t it odd that the detector for muons is 12,500 tonnes for beams to hit beams in passing and yet the stop blocks in the dump area to completely stop the beams in case of an accident is just 1000 tonnes.
10. Gawain | 08.12.08
Michael- So you’re saying we should expect a big ‘boom?’ Do you have a website or blog? I’m not educated regarding any of this, but I find your theory fascinating.
11. Jesus christ | 09.06.08
This is the final test. Those that protest this particle collider will be saved by the rapture. Those that owe their loyalty to satan, materialism, gold, muti-nationals and demonic works shall perish in the black hole. This world in all its beauty, trees, flowers, birds, oceans and mountains that I have given you were not enough. You were not satisfied, were greedy, cruel and selfish. I tried to help you but no one seemed interested.
12. simon | 09.09.08
Just approximately 200-year-old modern science, cannot unfold the equation of matter, life, energy to its deepest part. Stop creating such kind of toys, that can only digest multi million dollars. Whatz the use of knowing who created this universe, and then start creating the new ones. Just look at what we have already given by God, its all ready-made, why not try to save this planet earth, why cant we spend money on this. There are lot people out there who need food, who are suffered, dying each n every second coz they are ill, any scientist out there to help them rather digging himself in the deep space……..?
sry for ma English, but hope you all can understand what me tryin to say…thnx
14. Dr. Karenika Von Blomberg | 09.09.08
Guys,
Don’t worry about this, trust us. Everything is alright. I mean, there is only a 2% chance that we will create black holes every time we do collisions. I mean, cmon guys, it probably won’t happen. Trust us, buddy.
15. Scott Buxton | 09.10.08
personally i dont understand why you would want to create a machine that has a possibility of killing a whole enitre race. We have done alot to get earth as progressed as it is at this moment in time, so why try and ruin it by creating something we dont exactly need. Whether the big bang happened or not is peoples own theory but it doesnt matter that much that we have to make a machine with a possibility that it will kill the whole entire planet do we?
or is that what the world has come to….
16. Zap Viruz | 09.10.08
yes ppl,
Just think of the brighter side of dis experiment
if dis is successful then most of the theories are redefined
Hope dis experiment’s gonna be succesful
17. Paul Jones | 09.10.08
Dear explorers of the early techniclogical era,
As a scholar, as well as an independent physicist, I would like to state some theories of mine that could possibly help aid this situation. In our time, our space, and our world, we’ve been able to scientifically identifiy the most beautiful things and prospects that this Galaxy that we live inside has to offer. The passing of time has accomplish storing much knowledge databases within our minds and will continue to add more information to our minds. For this next part, I will be discussing my views about ‘God’ and the vigilance man has created to protect ‘God’, please remember that we all have our opinions. My first opinion is about people who look to ‘God’ for answers and I believe that these people are very un-intelligent although I do admit that many religons have good guidelines, although, most religons were created to control a mass amount of people, and turn them into hardware tools. The Bible which is massivly printed and distributed amongst hotels is looked at if it was a god when in-fact the bible even states within the ten commanments that it is a sin if someone views any idol as a god, which instantly creating thousands of people who would be considered sinners and even the people who fear the crucifix in their churches as if it was a god and any one of these people who look to this religon would never harm the crucifix… The truth is: The Bible is history, and with this history has come many wars all because another man has thought differently about this history with a different man.
My hypothesis about the Sun and the planets was that our Planets were originally generated by small balls of -positively charged magnetic matter which were created from the Sun, and since this matter has the same magnetic charge as the sun, these balls were pushed away from the Sun, just like two positive magnets touching eachother. When the planet matter was far enough away from the Sun it started collecting everything that came near it pulling all the negative magnetic matter to the positive planet matter thus creating a larger mass, an idea that supports this theory: The sun stays in the middle of were all of the planets revolve, Why arent the planets being pulled directly into the sun just like a meteor being pulled into earth? if calculated the mass correctly of the earth and the sun would be the same as a meteor being pulled into earth, maybe there is another type of gravity which we’ve not discovered yet, that pulls the planets close to the sun although enough not to pull them inside it.
Also, if my calculations are correct, this device will collapse and pull Earth into itself inside out from the direction that the gravity is being pulled to, so please check your calculations again or try lowering how much gravity is going to be created. thanks.
It is inevitable for a man to lie about an afterlife to encourage and favor his people or pets.
Most of those people who ask for donations for the starving children in africa are just frauds, please do not get pulled into this type of scam. I’m sure most africans can find something to eat, especially when almost 70% of matter in this world is edible except the toxic things.
One more thing, I think that people who believe in God are very naive and just want things handed to them in life because they are beging someone whom other people told existed so that god would fly down and bring you a christmas present everytime you pray. I just would like to mention this so I can put an effect on all of the people who think simply in this world and please remember my name as this is not the first time you will see it. 
I hope this helps.
-Paul
18. Lisa Ammann-Irminger | 09.11.08
Most interesting report! I enjoyed sniffing some very scientific air and hearing of new ideas and future projects! Lisa Ammann-Irminger, 11.09.2008
19. Widow | 09.17.08
To risk human life, even at the 2% chance of a small black hole forming, is irresponsible on all of humanity’s part. I protest this experimentation for it is wrong in dangling us by a thin thread above a flame. The concept of GOD doesn’t register with me but I AM Wiccan and the risk of human life, all life for that matter, is too great to risk it time and time again for the purpose of finding out more and more about our universe. Let sleeping dogs lie, for what humans cannot concieve they will never comprehend in the struggle and strain to understand all of the universe’s secrets. We will one day, not heeding the words of the wise, perform actions which we regret but by then will be unable to recant,redress,reform or retreat from. Just remember that the beauty of this world is “here” and “now” and while we are alive we should enjoy it all.
20. Haley | 09.20.08
So as bad as this sounds I dont realy stay up to date on world events such as this and this experiment is the main reason why I do not. Honestly all the information that I have just taken in from the past hour of hearing about this from my family and now on here has just made me super depressed and afraid of what is going to happen tomorrow. The 2% chance of the black hole is sill a chance that I do not want to attempt and I know that there are others that have the same feelings. If the black hole indeed open we would all ve sucked in within a half second…never even being able to tell our loved ones goodbye…I know we are curious and want to see what new theory we can prove today but this one is idiotic and we need to stop trying to disprove God and accept that there are some things that we just need to not try and discover…
21. Nick | 09.20.08
This whole experiment is just another stupid theory to disprove GOD and make man feel like they are just as powerful…we need to accept that this is our world and we dont need to play the role of GOD and make the big bang again….pretty soon scientists will be pairing animials up on an arch…
22. Widow | 09.23.08
its not about the disproving of God its about figuring out how our universe works, to say they seek to disprove some CREATOR is ignorant. its not about religion its about science, get your facts straight
23. W T Mathews | 09.29.08
Tribulations ,and Scientists playing God. I thought it very coincidental creating Black holes, and crossing the Abyss of Knowledge. Some things our human mind just simply cannot comprehend. We will all understand though when we are all dead. Once that unknown dimension is discovered. Another weird coincidence, is this so called UFO that is supposed to be seen for 3 days on Oct. 14. Supposedly, it is here already, just cannot be seen yet. It is hiding in the other dimension. The world is fixing to endure some major changes. I personally hope the people are ready for it.
24. N8 | 10.01.08
It has been an historic constant to ponder, debate, and experiment with the grand notion of where we came from and why we exist. To oppress those instinctual urges at the behest of blind dogmatism is a far more dangerous concept than this proton collider will ever be. I fully support this intellectual endeavor and I cringe at the ‘fire and brimstone’ messages on this board. I do believe in fully rounded debate, however, I refuse to accept ignorant and sensationalist claims of impending doom. I prefer the comments and actions of those who have read many, many books to those who simply adhere to one ‘good book.’
25. matt | 10.28.08
i feel like something of this magnitude shouldnt be left to blowhardy scientist…the people of the world should determine wether or not they want this useless information…maybe were forgetting the big picture…life is beautiful…what is a world withought the mysteries of faith and god…we need to regress…this is insane
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
1. Large Hadron Collider Set To Begin Testing This Weekend « What’s Behind Doerr Number One | 08.10.08
2. So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish : The New Nixon: News and Commentary about the President, his Times, and his Legacy | 09.09.08
Leave a Comment
We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate - even pointed disagreement - is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published.
Tip: Do not write a novel. Keep it short. We will not publish lengthy comments. Come up with your own statements. This is not a place to cut and paste an email you received. If we recognize it as such, we won't post it.
Please do not post any comments that are commercial in nature or that violate copyrights.
Finally, we will not publish any comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence.
1. Robert I. Marsh II | 08.07.08
An excellent CERN LHC overview update! There are still many, who have not grasped the magnitude of these experiments, as yet. Keep up the excellent work, and keep those LHC updates coming.
http://thefifthknight.blogspot.com/
Remember: Follow the ‘White Rabbit’!