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LHC; ..a read for those interested in physics
Topic Started: Dec 4 2009, 01:48 PM (158 Views)
John Galt
Fulla-Carp
I don't know if any of you are interested in current happenings in physics, but are a couple of items on the Large Hadron Collider, a supercollider built outside of Geneva, Switzerland. I have a friend who has been working on it almost since the inception of the project. They finally got it up and running about a year ago. It blipped for a while, but it's back up and they are starting to get some collisions.

OK, so my geek is showing...

Background: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-sci-hadron1-2009dec01,0,7338976.story

A view from the project (not my friend): http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49304408,00.htm?tag=mncol;txt
Edited by John Galt, Dec 4 2009, 02:01 PM.
Let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness.
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1hp
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Fulla-Carp

Is that the same technical "blip" as they use when talking about global warming data?

Seriously, it will be interesting to see what results they get out of this contraption. Just hope it doesn't cause all the people of the world to blackout for 2 minute 17 seconds (ok, you have to watch Flash Forward to get that one).

There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and................
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Mark
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Oh wait. :D
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Luke's Dad
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Emperor Pengin
So John, was your friend the one that designed the part that got wiped out by a baguette crumb dropped by a passing bird?
The problem with having an open mind is that people keep trying to put things in it.
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John Galt
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:bluebiggrin:

Actually, he's a mathematician. He probably developed software that simulated a baguette crumb being dropped by a bird.
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George K
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Finally
This stuff fascinates me. I don't pretend to understand more than about 5% of it. But at least I know what a "hadron" is, and recognize some of the terminology.
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OperaTenor
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Lighting off the LHC and destroying the planet. :rimshot:


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John Galt
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George K
Dec 4 2009, 03:50 PM
This stuff fascinates me. I don't pretend to understand more than about 5% of it. But at least I know what a "hadron" is, and recognize some of the terminology.
Me, too. I understand maybe 2 percent. It's just exciting to know there is work like this going on out there.

David exhibits an understated brilliance. We attended the same university, and though he is a bit younger than I, he was already doing graduate level math when I was in my junior year. I was taking a course in abstract algebra (turned out to be my mathematical wall). You do highly useful things like prove the law of commutativity (you remember, a + b = b + a).

About six of us formed a study group to work on some problems, and we slaved over one unsuccessfully for several hours. I called David to get some help. I read him the problem, he thought about it for about 20 seconds, and in three sentences outlined the answer. It was obvious; it just took someone like him to make it so!

I'm in awe of people like him. And yet he never makes you feel stupid.

Now that's brilliant.

Edited by John Galt, Dec 4 2009, 04:32 PM.
Let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness.
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