Slashdot Log In
What Are Must-Sees For Open Day At the LHC?
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Mar 31, 2008 12:06 AM
from the don't-miss-the-hadrons dept.
from the don't-miss-the-hadrons dept.
ribasushi writes "The last open day at the Large Hadron Collider is one week away. While I have a solid chance to go, I am dumbstruck by the insane amount of things to see during the 10 hours of the event. Since I do not know all that much about physics, I am turning to the knowledgeable crowd here at Slashdot — what do you think are the most awesome 5 must-see things on the agenda next Sunday?"
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Black Holes (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Black Holes (Score:5, Funny)
-Lasse
Parent
Re:Black Holes (Score:5, Funny)
They could sell the Black Holes they make in their gift shop, so everyone can have a Black Hole waste disposable system at home.
I can't wait for the LHC Gift Shop to start selling Small Hadron Colliders
Parent
Re:Black Holes (Score:5, Informative)
1- They emit black body radiation at the Hawkings temperature due to quantum evaporation, which for a tiny black hole is very high. A black hole created by an accelerator, composed of the mass of a few particles would likely be extremely hot for a very short time, and so would emit gamma rays. Wikipedia has the calculation for a 1kg BH : the lifetime is approximately 10^{-16} seconds, and the energy output equivalent to the complete anihilation of the 1kg mass (you don't want to be around). Small black holes are *fierce*, however subatomic ones don't really matter. After all accelerators anihiliate particles all the time.
The above is the #1 reason BH potentially created by accelerators are not a concern.
2- Even very large BH are in fact directly visible. They reflect light better [obspm.fr] than a highly polished metallic sphere.
These two facts are direct illustrations that most people, including well-educated scientists, don't know the first thing about BH.
Parent
Re:Black Holes (Score:5, Informative)
First what is a black hole? Let's say we mean the event horizon. That does not reflect light at all. However, the gravitational field surrounding the BH will of course deflect light the same way the gravitational field around a massive star for example would. Therefore the OP was entirely correct, we can only see the effect of the gravitational field but not light emanating from the BH itself. (At least for astronomical BHs that are very massive and have correspondingly low Hawking temperature). Even taking Hawking temperature into account a BH never reflects light, it has a temperature and gives off perfect black body radiation (in the semi-classical approximation which is the only thing we really know about). That is the black hole information paradox, the outgoing radiation seems to have no information about the ingoing one.
A super-massive blackhole in empty space would be one of the darkest objects you could think of (arbitrarily cold, negative specific heat, yadda yadda). Put some infalling matter around it and you get very bright and energetic processes so BHs can power very bright objects in their vincinity. Put some galaxies and stars behind it and it can lense the light coming from these, put some stars in front it and it can deflect a small amount of light so strongly that it comes straight back at you. That is really due to the space time structure induced by its mass, you don't need a BH for either of these effects. Furthermore you wouldn't say a lense is very bright would you? Nor that it reflects light.
Parent
Flux Capacitors (Score:5, Funny)
Other must-sees (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Crowbar (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crowbar (Score:5, Funny)
Bring a can of spray paint, just in case.
Parent
I ask one thing (Score:5, Funny)
Appreciation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Appreciation (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Agreed (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is that at CERN almost everyone is clueful but about "one thing" mostly. It is hard to find someone who has the "large picture"... The ones who do are generally people who have not been working on the LHC for the past 15 years but those who have been working on it since 2-3 years and before that was working at Fermilab or somewhere else like that. Then they can tell you what's new or revolutionary and put things in better perspective.
Honestly, it looks like the OpenDay will be a mad house. We are expecting at least 40,000 people. The queues are going to be awfully long! I feel like we should have a couple more of these OpenDays to accommodate this huge interest but hey, I am not in the management!! I am just a post-doc!
That said, I have given lots of tours at CERN already. I have taken at least 400 people underground just this past year. (Only 12 people are allowed to go at a time with one guide... ) I think the well-known things like ATLAS and CMS will be completely and utterly packed. So I would like to point out a rare gem... It's the LHC-b cavern where you can actually see the insides of the experiment which installed before LHC-b was installed and is now decommissioned and sitting nearby. The problem with ATLAS and CMS is that they are "done" -- meaning, the experiments are assembled wholly and therefore, it is hard to see it's guts. But you can see the guts of this decommissioned detector, which is kind of neat. I work for ATLAS and I love ATLAS to pieces but I think to try to see it on Open Day, one would need to be at CERN and queueing at 8am... or earlier.
If you have never seen a tape reader with robots running around before, the tour to the Computing Center is really cool -- but then again, since there will be no radiation there, you can visit that even after the 1st of May. (1st of May is the date set by the LHC management board to be the last day of public tours to the LHC and experiments. The rest of CERN will still be "visitable" after that.)
If you can not see ATLAS or CMS on the OpenDay or cant be here on the OpenDay but want to see them, there is a cheat... Most of everyone's requests goes through CERN Visitors Service. And they have a pool of guides but the experiments also have a pool of guides. The visitors service is no longer offering tours as they are completely booked until the 1st of May with their guides. But the experiments might still allow for visitors. The way to increase your chances of getting a private tour to one of the experiments is as follows: Find 11 other people who are interested in seeing the experiment with you and then e-mail the ATLAS or CMS secretariat asking for a tour for 12 people on a April xxth at xx:xx. Then they will forward this request to their pool of guides and someone (like me) might actually give you a tour. We like 12 people tours as this is the maximum we can take down and it is a much better "waste" of our time if the tour group is at maximum number... The e-mails for the secretariats are as follows: atlas.secretariat@cern.ch and cms.secretariat@cern.ch
Good luck!
Parent
Please... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Please... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, a lot of bosons are free of charge.
Parent
I'd go see the Atlas detector.. (Score:5, Interesting)
which shows that it's a large open house event with many activities.
Anyhoo, the Atlas detector looked very cool in a magazine I read recently (National Geographic?).
Personally I'd also try to see one of the pulse power supplies that drives the LHC injector kicker magnets, because my father's team designed them.
http://www.triumf.ca/publications/pub/arch05/pp-05-19.pdf [triumf.ca]
Yes you can tell I'm proud of him!
What I'd like to see... (Score:5, Funny)
You can get the answer by repeatedly asking 'What does this button do?'
Re:What I'd like to see... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
see the detectors (Score:4, Interesting)
Have fun!
A serious answer (Score:5, Informative)
If you have any interest at all in the detectors or accelerator, now's the time. Spend your time there; because, you won't be able to "tour" it later. Once it's been running the equipment will become activated (as in radioactive) and the public will no longer be able to tour the underground facilities. There will likely be physicists and technicians on hand who will be happy (excited even) to talk about what they've built.
you can always go back and look at the computer center, control rooms, or whatever at a future open house event (which I'm certain they'll have regularly, to keep the public interested).
For what it's worth, I worked as a technician at a U.S. DOE facility
Nicely Formatted (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a student here working on ATLAS (and I'll be one of the volunteers on the 6th) and I agree with the parent. The two big 'Must sees' are the detectors and the accelerators. The detectors are going to be much more impresive looking. That said, here's my $0.02
ATLAS (point1). This is the biggest detector (and my favorite, though I'm not biased or anything....) but it will also be the most crowded by far.
CMS (point5). Almost as big as ATLAS and still damn impressive. It won't be as crowded because it's a lot further away. It will still be packed though I'm sure.
ALICE (point2). Smaller detector for heavy ions. My guess is this will be pretty crowded to since St Genis is close to CERN
LHCb (point8). Another smaller detector for b quark physics. Between Ferney and Meyrin... no idea if people will go see it.
Those are the 4 detectors ranked (in my opinion) in order of coolness. I'd try to go see 2 of them if you can. Look up info on them online (they all have websites), find out which ones you want to visit. You should also try to see the accelerator somewhere. Point 6 would be my recomendation since the beam dump is also located there (this is where the beam is evacuated in case of emergency. When you realize the energy stored in the beam, this becomes pretty impressive).
Another thing I recomend is the acelerator chain tour (point1):
http://lhc2008.web.cern.ch/LHC2008/OpenDaysE/accelerators.html [web.cern.ch]
There are a lot of other things open, but most of them you can still go and visit when the LHC is running (and the crowds aren't there). One last recomendation. I'd start out going to see things out on the ring, then come back to point1 (Meyrin) and explore it with all the rest of your time. That way you should be able to get the most out of it. See you Sunday!
Parent
Compulsory T-Shirt (Score:5, Funny)
Things to check out (Score:5, Informative)
- before you do anything, check the Microcosm museum in the reception building. This one will explain a lot what's happening.
- this one is a must: be sure to make a trip to either the ATLAS or CMS cavern (those are the two bigger detectors attached to the LHC)
- the ATLAS control room
- the LHC control room
- the computing centre in the IT building
- and if you have time, stop by for a tea in building 40