Time Machine: CERN's Large Hadron Collider
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"QUANTUM SHOT" #389link
Look closely.
This is what the world's first Time Machine may look like
Never heard of "traversable wormholes?"
Well, soon you might start hearing about them, as the world's most powerful particle accelerator becomes functional this spring - unleashing forces, capable of distorting not only space (just like gravity distorts space around Earth), but also TIME.
(image courtesy/copyright CERN)
CERN's Large Hadron Collider is set to become the very first time machine in history.
According to the research published by Irina Arefieva and Igor Volovich, "in general relativity, a time-like curve in space-time will run from past to future. But in some space-times the curves can intersect themselves, giving a closed-like curve, which is interpreted as a time machine - which suggests the possibility of time travel"
Two proton beams travel in opposite directions and collide at four points along the way - replicating the Big Bang conditions of "cosmic plasma", a mysterious almost liquid state, which occurred before quarks had cooled off enough to allow atoms to form together. The Large Hadron Collider will force quarks to break free of their bonds, the matter substance to unravel - to recreate the original "cosmic plasma", and to reconstruct Big Bang conditions. (hopefully on a much smaller scale)
(image courtesy/copyright CERN)
Here are some quick facts:
- 20-year work-in-progress
- A team of 7,000 physicists from more than 80 nations
- 27 kilometers in circumference, 175 meters underground
- facilitating head-on collision of protons, traveling very near the speed-of-light
- each tunnel is big enough to run a train through it.
- temperatures generated: more than 1000,000 times hotter than the sun's core
- superconducting magnets are cooled to a temperature colder than in deep space
(image credit: wiki - via)
The Collider Tunnel:
(image courtesy/copyright CERN)
(click to enlarge; image courtesy/copyright CERN)
(image credit: David Levin)
The most complicated thing that humans have ever built
To better appreciate the enormous scale of this beast, consider that it runs 17 miles across the border of two countries, has detectors in four locations the size of buildings, housed in huge caverns - and if you happen to be inside the tunnel while this thing is in operation, you would have a highly radioactive - and fatal - experience.
Just one superconducting solenoid (CMS) contains in it more iron than the Eiffel Tower. The cost of building LHC is so high, that America had to put a stop to its own Superconducting Super Collider in 1993 (even though 14 miles of tunnel had already been dug in Texas), so today CERN's structure is the lone contender for the title "the most complicated thing that humans have ever built".
(Installation of the CMS silicon tracking detector, photo by Michael Hoch, CERN)
(The world's largest solenoid magnet will be fitted inside, photo by Peter Ginter, CERN)
(image credit: Peter McCready)
(image credit: Peter McCready)
CMS detector, before it was lowered 100m underground:
(image credit: Ryuji Kusumoto)
(image credit: David Levin)
Cross section of the ATLAS detector, the size of a cathedral:
(image credit: David Levin)
There are people in these pictures, for scale (see if you can spot them):
(image courtesy/copyright CERN)
(image credit: David Levin)
The wire bundles (seriously gnarly stuff):
(image credit: Robert Scoble)
The LHC team has been called the "Lords of the Ring", the project itself compared to something out of Star Wars (hopefully not the building of the Death Star). Look at the picture below, doesn't it look like Han Solo's hyperdrive on the left?
(image courtesy/copyright CERN)
The idea is to focus all this incredible energy into the smallest space possible. As they say, "the more energy goes in, the more massive the particles that come out". How massive? How about a miniature black hole?
If not time-travel, other exciting thing produced by LHC may be:
The end of the world as we know it
Apologies for a sensationalist headline, but how would you like a miniature Big Bang generated in your community, with scientists going around in little black vans with blaring loudspeakers: "Everything is under control, remain calm, look for a miniature blackhole in your kitchen sink"?
All jokes aside, scientists do expect excitement, but of the containable kind. The well-known reasons behind building LHC are finding the "God Particle" (Higgs Boson?) and coming up with the "Grand Unified Theory" of all forces of the Universe. For the estimation of dangers associated with LHC, read this paper abstract.
All other weird notions that LHC may produce uncontrollable Medium-sized Bang, or a bad-mannered black hole, are put to rest by CERN scientists: they assure us that "even if black holes will be produced, they will be too small and too short-lived to generate a strong gravitational force." In other words, Geneva is not going to get sucked into anything cosmologically weird.
Good.
The Internet's Web started here...
Time Travel might as well start here, too
CERN scientists know what they talk about, and we can trust them - after all, last time they needed something for sharing collider data, they invented the World Wide Web! According to some sources, even now one THIRD of ALL internet traffic flows thru this facility in CERN's computing center (one of the three main hubs for world wide web):
(image credit: David Levin)
I like how Discover Magazine puts it: "The collisions at LHC could spray out strange new kinds of matter, unfurl hidden dimensions of space, even generate tiny glowing reenactments of the birth of the universe." And now, as we have seen - it may even facilitate time travel.
"We don’t even know what to expect," says French physicist Yves Schutz. "We’re now in a domain of energy that nobody has ever explored."
Click to enlarge:
(image courtesy/copyright CERN)
Particle Art for the Dawning Era
In addition to everything else, the collision of particles makes for an interesting art:
"Simulated Bubble Chamber"
(image credit: Eric Charlton)
Read more: 1, 2, 3
See the huge depository of project's photos here, and full VR here
Article by Avi Abrams, images by exclusive permission of CERN. All rights reserved
Also read "Big Bang v2.0"
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76 Comments:
What a waste of money. God put all we need to know about the Cosmos into His holy book.
Here at Creationism Labs, we seek the Truth in our own way. We hurl King James Bibles together at great speed, smashing them into tiny bits of paper which we paste together to form new Divine Revelations.
HOW DO YOU DO…
TIME TRAVEL
21st century boring you?
Want a way to walk with dinosaurs that isn’t sitting really close to the TV to watch an unrealistic 3D diplodocus eat leaves?
You need a holiday in time, or dinoworld
Tick, tick, tick… tick
1.5 million years since fire was lit, 35,000 years after the birth of art, 16,000 years from the first mappings of stars and 600 years since the blueprints of the helicopter were drawn. We sit here thinking, “Y’know the 21st century could have been a bit more, well, silvery.” Aside from those metal toasters that’ll burn a farmyard animal into your bread and those credit cards with one of the corners cut off a bit. The 21st century has had:
No proper Robots. My house isn’t doing stuff for me when I go to work so when I get back it’s like a new house and the kitchens in the bathroom. Cars and skateboards don’t hover. We can’t holiday in space and the so called information super highway is still not bypassing my brain with an LCD screen in my eye and USB ports in my tippy toes.
AHHhhhh, yet as a time traveller you can go to the future where these things should have occurred with a few other things that you probably didn’t think about; like a chocolate bar called waffpinuts. A wafer, pineapple and nuts bar wrapped in Kevlar.
Then, go back in time to tell all those people on Tomorrows World that hoodwinked our innocent child eyes, “Hey hey, perm-head, that ain't going to happen you pre-foetus futurist fuck.”
And they’d have to believe your aggressive preaching cos you’d bring an almanac from 2008 with all the sports results and next weeks Eastenders from UK-GOLD, so there.
...continues at lifestyleguides.blogspot.com
I've been there on a school trip. Very massive stuff!
Well This Time Travel is meant for atomic particles. If you are actually planning to travel and forget about the urban time then plan your trip for free at my blog.
"a fraction of an inch"?
Shame on you Avi. I'm sure they use micrometer and nanometer scales there...
Great post, but I have a minor nit to pick.
CERN invented the web, not the internet. I'll try to explain the difference without geeking out too much.
The web is the to-level user interface - you just point and click to get around. It's very user friendly, but the real work is done by the internet.
Let me make an analogy. It's a lot like the relation between the user interface (UI) and the operating system (OS) on your computer. The OS does the real work, but is difficult for non-experts to use directly. (think of DOS or UNIX) The UI lives on top of the OS and lets you do things by pointing and clicking. (Think of Windows) That's what makes computers useable by everyone.
So if the web is the UI, then the internet is the OS.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web#History
Again, thanks for the post.
The CERN is the most fascinating place to be if you're interested in particle physics...
It's more than a minor nit. Saying CERN invented the net is like saying Henry Ford invented roads. When someone says something this far off base, I have to wonder about whatever else they've written, too.
The pictures are pretty awesome though.
Claiming 1/3 of the net's traffic routes through CERN is also just wrong; most net traffic does not leave its country of origin. It's like saying 1/3 of all car traffic goes through I-95. (akb427)
This reminds me of John Titor.
www.johntitor.strategicbrains.com
Hope it doesn't blow up the whole planet... No one knows. Anyway I will try to be on vacations far away when they flip the switch. What we know is that the risk is there. I heard many times that they were planning to "observe the big bang". Might not be the same scale etc... but, if you ask me, what they are doing is totally irresponsible. They never mentionned anything concerning the risks, I'm a bit worried...
that smashing-Bibles-together comment was the funniest thing i've read in a long, long time. thank you.
What? Oh my god. They're going to blow us up, or we're gonna get sucked into a man made black hole http://botw.org/articles/endworld.html
I love the anonymous geebsmackers with their "well, he made one mistake so he's obviously an idiot" comments. Puhl-eeze.
Awe inspiring and yet frightening at the same time. Could be a way to join general relativity and quantum mechanics and finally provide us a TOE. I want proof there are more than three spatial dimensions; the fourth being time.
I know perfectly well that my comment is comparing apples and oranges, or perhaps apples and kiwi fruit, but...any scientist who really knows will say that the human brain makes this collider thingee look like a paper airplane next to the space shuttle.
Remember, while this machine is impressive, it took the human brain to conceive the theories behind the technology, design it, manufacture the components, and assemble it. Now THAT's impressive! (Yeah, I know...as I wrote first, the brain is flesh and blood and this thing is mechanical...or whatever it is. But it's still man's work. But the brain...that's a masterpiece conceived and created by God.) Marvelous, marvelous.
First of all I'd like to know how the heck they designed this in the first place. How do they know how they need to design all those intricate little parts when most people don't know how to program their VCR?
Second, this seems dangerous as hell. If it destroys the planet then odviously we're too stupid and careless to be worthy of life and deserve our destruction. But piss on those scientists who just have to KNOW what happens when you recreate the conditions of the big bang.
Third, who gives a damn other than the physicists and scientists? Seriously, more than half the planet doesn't have access to clean drinking water. With all the problems in the world, all the new technologies that could benefit ALL of mankind some enormous amount of money has been spent but will it end poverty? Will it put food on starving people's tables? Will it end wars, solve transportation problems, create economic bliss?
If you asked me I think the eye opening stuff that this experiment will produce will only be interesting and beneficial to less than 1% of the global population. But hey, at least the contractors who worked on this made some good money doing it!
Just to clarify, folks: There won't be any human-sized time-travellers stepping out of thin air at CERN when this things switches on... *Unless* the visitors have developed a completely different method of getting here.
What the LHC *might* do is create something a bit like a tiny test-loop of scalextric track in time, that proves the principle of someday being able to build a full sized motorway. That doesn't mean a bus full of tourists will suddenly appear on top of it. (And if it did, they'd break it! =:o} )
...And to the anonymous fearmongers: The scale of risks are pretty much proportional to amounts of energy involved. Think of the scale of accident that occurs when people drive at 80mph rather than at 40mph: Twice the speed, gives four times the kinetic energy; give four times the destruction when you crash.
Yes, the LHC will be accelerating protons to vast energies... *relative to the size of a proton*, which is incredibly tiny! They aren't going to destroy the planet. If they seriously booboo, they *might* trash some part of the collider which will cost megabucks to fix, but that's it.
Lots more gorgeous photos of the Large Hadron Collider, and an explanation in non-geek language of why it's so cool, on National Geographic magazine's story, "The God Particle":
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/god-particle/achenbach-text
@Peter: WTF is a VCR? Whats life like in the 80s? Is Michael Jackson still a star to you?
*scnr*
"more than half the planet doesn't have access to clean drinking water. With all the problems in the world, all the new technologies that could benefit ALL of mankind some enormous amount of money has been spent but will it end poverty? Will it put food on starving people's tables? Will it end wars, solve transportation problems, create economic bliss?"
This reminds me of the apochryphal story of Michael Faraday demonstrating one of his electromagnetic devices for a visiting politician: the official supposedly asked him what possible use the device could be put to. Faraday's reply: "Someday, you may be able to tax it."
What purpose did electricity come to serve? How many ways has it ended up ameliorating the ills of mankind? If we hold to the sentiment stated above, no one would ever have had the opportunity to find out.
We don't know what lies behind a closed door, we must open it to see: perhaps to find riches enough for all, or nothing.
If we establish a world where no one is allowed to take risks in order to learn, we should not be surprised to see poverty increase, not decrease.
"G Pro said...
Awe inspiring and yet frightening at the same time. Could be a way to join general relativity and quantum mechanics and finally provide us a TOE. I want proof there are more than three spatial dimensions; the fourth being time."
You should check out Richard C. Hoagland and torsion physics. Build on the original Maxwellian physics (before a student of his rewrote his theories to 'clear them up'. Look at Maxwell's first or second editions...).
Thank you Marylin - an awesome link!
@ David Bryden (religion/creationism guy)
In my opinion:
Better spent money than any cathedral or church. Religion-based thinking never solved/discovered anything, it has only caused many years of slowing down technological advancements and caused humans to fight for thousands of years for a cause nobody can specify/prove/show...
Everybody has the right to believe what they want.
I say "let's drop religious cults once and for all", there MIGHT be something out there, but if we're gonna discuss about it we won't find it. Less talk more action!
We should invest a LOT more in (Space) exploration because that's where all the answers lye, not in books written (and constantly adapted) hundreds/thousands of years ago by some men who wanted to have more power/money.
I think lots of religious people would end up in "hell" (if there even is one) because they speak "in the name of God/Allah".
Would you like it if I speak in YOUR name? You don't know who/what your "God" is, so you shouldn't tell others how to worship "Him/Her/It"! You might upset this force.
If we non-indoctrinated people want to investigate through empirical research in stead of mindless swallowing ancient-old mombo-jambo, let us do so.
@ the last anonymous, talking to david there.
ok, you really think he's serious? did you even READ the second part of his post? he's obviously being sarcastic.
Эх братцы !!! Ебанёт так ебанёт!
hmmm, time travel o.O
I don't really believe that it could happen, but I do think that it's worth the research and trying to do
they still don't understand a grand unifying theory. so many things scientists don't know.
But they "assure" us that nothing can go wrong.
If they do recreate the big bang the good news it probably won't hurt for more than a fraction of a millisecond.
So..if we go back in time and kill Hitler- are we going to get some Red Alert timeline?
These 2 scientist go to God & say "We figured it out. We can spontaneously create life out of nothing! We don't need You to do anything"
Good says "Show me"
So the scientists start to show Him & reach down and and grab a handful of dirt.. Then God interrupts them and says " No.. go get your own dirt!"
David Bryden you are a toolbag. Take the bridge.
IM GOING TO TRAVEL TIME SO HARD
Why haven't we found evidence of life in space yet? Because most intelligent species are too curious for their own good: They build a Large Hadron Collider, are surprised when it creates a black hole, and the last word they utter as their planet disappears is "oops."
OMG, John Titor was really from the future !!!!!
www.johntitor.com
Fucking complex. It could and it could not work...time, time travel... something that can not be understood completely. It would be way to easy to "fuck things up." Believing it could be done, and maybe this is it?
I don't think that they'll screw this up or destroy the planet blah blah like everyone's crying about. its CERN for christ's sake. these guys are probably 100 times smarter than anyone reading this article.
If somebody invest such amount of money ho probably expects to get something out of is investment - in other word - Would you invest your many without a real possibility of getting profits?
I wonder who invests and what he expects to get?
Re time travel: may I remind you of the very convincing logic argument by Larry Niven that the only stable state is a universe where time travel isn't possible. :-)
this race of aliens just tried it http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?_rss=1&fuseaction=readrelease&releaseid=528069
How ironic it would be if the chronically neutral Swiss were the ones to destroy the planet. Too bad there wouldn't be anyone left to appreciate it.
Time machine shtime machine, I wanna know who that hottie technician is!
Interesting story on a structure that has huge implications. And thank you for posting all the pics; they really help in giving a proper sense of scale.
who's the sexy engineer girl.. i want to marry her. Could you imagine the pillow talk ;)
Well as time can say, there are still peoples that don't have good insight about too many things in this world, for then to say the dumbest thing should check their mouth at the door, because every things have a point of view and sure enough we have the one's that don't have the wisdom's that give us, shame on you for being dead in the brain.
And about God, don't you think that the knowledge that he is giving us would help man kind along with the wisdoms that we have get. Why would he not help his peoples to learn the true, you have seen it in the book,it call the Bible: The of God.
God put all we need to know about the Cosmos into His holy book.
If that was true, we never would have to seek answers to our questions.
If we were content with holy books, we never would enjoy the miracles of electricy (light, internet etc.) and optics (TV etc.); heck, we would still be living in tribes, hunting and foraging for our survivals. Population: a few thousands, since we wouldn't be able to effectively defend ourselves against predators of the era.
God (in whatever form) gave us our talents and he would not like us wasting them, would he now?
Leave your narrow mind behind; if you do not like the science, do not butt into it.
Thank you.
ok, it sucks that this has to be done...repeating: david bryden was being sarcastic. any person who commented on him by slamming religion, nice try, but you're a twat. smashing king james bibles together then re-arranging the tiny bits of paper to come up with new stuff is not *actually* a part of any christian belief system, as much as it makes sense to believe so. why don't you find something useful to do, like turn yourself into mulch. then you can help out the guy concerned with food distribution throughout the world by growing some out of your arse. seriously.
wow... seems like some people have attention span to read only first sentence of anything... reading a book? what a strange idea.
half the world is starving?
You know what, screw that.
If mankind were to focus our efforts as a whole to carrying every single person who can't feed themselves, there would be ZERO progress.
The fact that most of the world lives in comfort (at least by the standard of being hungry) is a testament to the power of progress. If we spent all our time trying to get food to every hut and village that for whatever reason (be it their government, refusing to move, or refusing to adapt to a new world), then those of us who are pushing forward would never make progress.
Screw them. There I said it and I'm not ashamed of it. It is not the fault of those who are progressing our world that every last person isn't being carried along the way... there are so many billions that ARE being carried that it outweighs it a thousand times.
If the discovery of the telephone was replaced with a tribe being fed for a year would it have been worth it? What of the countless people who have been born since then (and possible due to) that invention? The changes to our world and improvements has saved/produced more lives then that tribe ever would have, and they're productive lives.
Fault does NOT lie on the men and women of progress to drag along every member of society, it falls on both those people and their rulers. Look into the corruption and ass-hattery of some of these poor peoples countrys. Blame them, not the people who are trying to improve the world, and to hell to you for being so simple minded
at least i got to see that sexy female physicist/engineer/tech before they push the big red button and blow the planet to smithereens.
"Childhood's End"
Human Kind had a choice. To remain as organic beings - simple and cooperative or to become distinct evolved processes of thought. Without bodies. There was a point of divination in this work of fiction and it occured ,... AT THE BEGINNING
HOW IN THE WORLD could they have KNOWN that this is EXACTLY what I have in miniature in my newest ROCKET brand ray-gun? UNCANNY!
http://informiorium.blogspot.com/2008/03/alrighty-folks-rocket-brand-ray-gun-is.html
I speak from experience when I say that punching holes in reality is not a good thing.
Nice pictures, but who’s going to benefit from all of this, really?, if you ask me the one that was on the right track many years ago was Nikola Tesla, with his later experiments and vision of a future with free endless energy for everybody, as soon as they knew there wasn’t going to be any profit, they buried Tesla and his projects. Tesla’s theories were fascinating, based on frequencies, he also though about time travel, and there are some documents around that prove his success, on the matter. they were safe and worked, doesn’t any of you wonder why no one has publicly develop Tesla’s latest inventions? or have they done it sneakingly, like with his development of the “death ray”, (HAARP) but with a different purpose. This CERN’s project sounds to me like a fifty-fifty an enormous risk based on one theory, and becomes quite scary when the one pushing the buttons doesn’t even know what’s going to happen. one way or another is a good thing to read peoples reactions to something like this, so thanks to every one.
Goodbye folks. It was horrible knowing you. The end is nigh...