funny youtube stuff

[Gert van Santen]

Tony Scharf schreef:
> the LHC is amazing - if not for the fact its the most complicated
> machine in human history, but also because it will generate more data
> than anything else ever.  It captures and stores about a Gigabyte a
> second!.  One side of the project rarely focused on in the media are
> the enormous challenges capturing, prioritizing, storing and
> distributing that information poses.  It just amazes me.
> 
> The way the LHC works is by using giant magnets to take protons and
> get them moving as fast as possible - close to the speed of light, and
> then smash them into either other.  The energy released in the
> collision tears the protons to pieces, and then the various particle
> detectors got o work trying to take pictures of what they saw.
> 
> the heavier a particle is, the more energy is required to shake it
> loose from the protons (a proton is a hadron, btw).  They needed to
> build the LHC because the Higgs Boson (possibly the particle that
> gives mater mass) needs those high energies to be produced (if it
> exists).  the colider at Fermi Lab (about a half hour drive from my
> house) may be able to get to the energy needed, but only if the mass
> of the Higgs is at the lower end of its theoretical range.
> 
> Why do they want to find it?  basically its all about gravity.  We all
> know gravity works and we have ways of calculating its effects but no
> one has any clue, ultimately, how it functions.  By taking a look at
> the Higgs, its believed that they may be able to find that out.
> figuring out gravities mechanisms could be a radical thing for our
> civilization - look at what understanding of Electromagnetic forces
> have had.
> 
> As to blackholes, it could produce some...but so might Fermi lab have
> been creating them for decades.  And in any case, anyone who has seen
> the Northern Lights has seen energetic hadron collissions of far
> greater magnitude than the LHC can generate.  If that hasnt created a
> blackhole and swallowed the earth in all the time that they have been
> happening, then I think we are safe when they light up the LHC...
> 
> Tony

Thanks, Tony - interesting story.
-- 

:-)

G e r t  v a n  S a n t e n
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www.gertvansanten.nl
www.myspace.com/pbalris
www.waveworld.tv