On hadron colliders, dark matter and black holes

[Redrobes]

Ah thanks - so no news breaking story of the discovery any time soon then. That's actually quite good I think. I guess theres a whole network and super computer cluster(s) to commission now with all the new real data.

[Turgenev]

As a parasitic theorist I get to sit on the other side of the atlantic and, like the kid in the back seat of a car, ask "are we nearly there yet" to the hard working experimentalists. That's why they get to be in the pictures and all the theorists (including the whole theory division of CERN) are noticeably absent. This time is the experimentalists, specifically the beam and accelerator guys. When we start getting results, then you'll see the pics of theorists and detector guys (though still not my own mug unless I come up with something *really* good).

They've done an amazing job. Let's just hope it continues to go this well.

I knew you weren't in the pic, I was just kidding around. BTW I've plugged this thread on other message boards when the talk of the LHC sprouts up. It is very helpful when you have a theoretical particle physicist around to help clear things up and put things into perspective. Keep up the great work, torstan.

[Steel General]

WHOOSH!!

That's the sound of all this Higgs Bosun talk going over my head.

[torstan]

The short version is this. We're looking for a needle in a haystack. By collecting a lot of data, we're making the needle bigger. Right now the needle's so small we wouldn't know it if we sat on it.

@Redrobes: Yep. A huge Grid computing network spread around the world. They're set up to handle the eventual data rate so right now there's this enormous computing system waiting for the data flood and dealing with the trickle that they have. They're testing with this and as the data increases they should be able to sort out all the commissioning of the computing infrastructure to take the strain.

@Turgenev: Glad it's useful. I've enjoyed answering the questions, and it's been an interesting year to be running these updates. I guess the thread is a little unwieldy these days, but hopefully still useful/interesting to people.

[Steel General]

Even though the majority is beyond my understanding, I still find the info posted here both interesting and educational.

[Juggernaut1981]

The short version is this. We're looking for a needle in a haystack. By collecting a lot of data, we're making the needle bigger. Right now the needle's so small we wouldn't know it if we sat on it.

Sure it isn't just making more haystacks with the same number of needles in each haystack and crossing-fingers that someone sees something sparkle somewhere?

But yeah, I'll be curious to see if there are Higgs Bosuns... I just don't want to do the computer programming of the numerous rediculously long applied mathematical equations required to find said needles.

*Goes off to enjoy the chemistry of surfaces, surface energy and bizzarro suspensions and strange properties of common materials like concrete and coffee*

[torstan]

@SG Glad to hear it. If there are specific things that don't make sense then say. My plan was to keep this accessible for all.

@Juggernaut: As for the many haystacks, there's some truth in that. However if you see one glint in one haystack then no-one believes you've seen anything. If you see the same glint in 1000 haystacks then people start to believe you've seen a needle. So the significance increases with statistics.

In other news, the LHC has now got bunches travelling around the ring. These are clouds of particles that get moved around in one lump. This is how they increase the number of interactions. This is one of the big steps up from just having a guidance beam going around. They've managed to generate a few million collissions in each detector which is being used for calibration. They'll be moving the beam energy back up to 1.18TeV for collisions this week hopefully so that the experiments can get their teeth into some proper high energy collision data. So far everything is still going well!

[torstan]

The LHC continues to go well. They've generated lots of data with colissions at the the injection energy and have managed to get long running stable beams at 1.18TeV. Looks like it's al settling down and progressing nicely. I won't be updating too often about progress now.

In other news, here's an example of precisely why scientists should never be allowed to come up with acronyms:

Gimps from extra dimensions

What starts off as an amusing and eye catching title has the depressing habit of being found in experiment and then we all have to talk about these things at conferences with a straight face. We already discuss wino decay, stuffing branes down throats, penguin and moose diagrams (the penguin diagram was the result of an unfortunate bet and a game of darts - but that's another story). Really, people should know better...

[Steel General]

That's funny... and I thought working at a major telecommunications company was acronym hell.

[torstan]

Yep, scientists do that too. The hoops they jump through to get a new theory to have a name that they like.

Oh, and another take on CERN disasters - this one's quite funny:
http://odemo.blogaliza.org/files/2009/12/LCH-grande.png