lots of big shiny machined aluminum parts bolted together.

check out the frame, which appears to be made of fully machined great big hunks of aluminum bolted into a octagon. holy moly

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/god-particle/achenbach-text

Big stuff is cool!

Yes, but do not attempt to understand theoretical physics.

Down that path lies madness!

Inversely then, cool stuff is big. Good Golly Miss Molly, She's as Cool as She's Big.

I watched a show awhile back (may have even been on the NG channel) about them rigging the sections of that thing together....it was amazing (to me at least, being as I do some oddball rigging myself) to watch them getting those huge components down a tunnel and into place, with VERY tight tolerances relating to positioning. I can't remember now what the weights and clearances were specifically, but I do remember it wasn't something I would have wanted the responsibility for......it was awe-inspiring to say the least

not only big ali but also big electronics

Some years ago (>10?) I met a German Klystron engineer who was poached to design/manufacture/install. . . 200+ 10 KW tubes to generate UHF to enegise one of the CERN projects. Each tube was rated at 10KW continuos, 250kW pulsed. So 200 X 250 KW = 50 MW, peak power - Wow!!
Frank

I have a friend who's a maintenance tech on the UK version of that at ISIS, they have a couple of lathes and mills etc in the toolroom they can use as they go about their tasks and we always chew the fat about machinery and turbo bikes (another bad habit we share), and the conversation I had with him when I first learned he had gone to work there was about what machinery was in the tool room, expecting a load of cutting edge stuff, not a bridgeport and a couple of older manual lathes. They have all sorts of metering for background radiation of various sorts and residual magnetism levels, and can only work in certain areas for so long as a result.
He said to me that I was the first person who he didnt have to explain what a particle accelerator was to first

I sometimes wonder if we really want to see the result of recreating aspects of the big bang. Seems like unforseen things could get messy in a hurry.

Nice link!
Several years ago, we did quite a few parts for the core of the Atlas detector. The Indiana University technician I worked with spent a year in France helping to put things together. He had some incredible stories about the size of the equipment and the technology. Like when a pair of forceps were pulled from an engineer's pocket by a superconducting magnet. Right through the fabric!

The parts we made were sent to I.U. and Duke University for assembly. People all over the world were involved with the project in lots of different ways.

Fear

I don't consider myself a technophobe by any stretch, but I do believe that something like this project, or the one where they are going to create "mini" black holes, or genetic engineering is going to be the death of us.

I hope I don't sound like the "If God wanted us to fly he would have given us wings" crowd.

MattW said:

I don't consider myself a technophobe by any stretch, but I do believe that something like this project, or the one where they are going to create "mini" black holes, or genetic engineering is going to be the death of us.

Click to expand...

Depending on what you read burning coal (or even wood) may be the death of us.(shrug) I guess we will just have to take a look and be careful. Some things are very uncertain, some things we are pretty sure about, yet nothing is 100% certain when it comes to experimental physics. The theorists told us that there is a limit to certainty and the experimentalists have been confirming that for a while now. I have heard it said that when they triggered the first atom bomb they weren't 100% sure that it wouldn't start a chain reaction in all the surrounding matter... essentially turning the whole planet into a bomb. They were pretty sure that it wouldn't because they had already done controlled chain reactions.

As far as 'mini'-black holes are concerned... again we are pretty sure that they won't gobble up the planet. In this case 'mini' means really freakin small. They are about the size of a Planck volume
( (6.3 × 10^−34 inches)^3)
and exist for about Planck time
(5.391x 10^-44 seconds)
IOW they are very very small and evaporate really really quickly.

I agree that genetic engineering can pose far greater risks though perhaps not as spectacular as the whole planet exploding or winking out of existence.

My main concern (being an experimental physicist in the US) is that we are not much in on this project. Used to be we led the world in big physics. If the project at CERN had been done here most of the contracts to build all that stuff would have gone to US companies. Sure it ain't cheap... but the whole thing costs less than 3 months of the Iraq war (just to put it into perspective.) Used to be that their (the rest of the world) best and brightest wanted to come here to work... now our best and brightest want to go there to work.

I hope I don't sound like the "If God wanted us to fly he would have given us wings" crowd.

Click to expand...

Well... we ate the apple (or so the story goes.)

-DU-

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The requested URL /2008/03/god-particle/achenbach-text was not found on this server.
>>>Snip


all I got to see,

Went to see the hub bub, and its all gone already :-(

Lots more pictures and info about the LHC at Cern are available on the CERN website

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/LHCb Photo

enginebuilder. dunno, sorry. just go to national geographic magazine. on the web ot newstand. it's this months artical

I get the paper copy and the paper picture is a fold out 3 pager. it's awsome. much better than the online version.

I saw that tv show on the assembly work for that thing, they had something like 6 inches total clearance as they dropped the parts down the access shaft.

Each part only cost 10 million or so to make so there was no pressure on the crane driver

Boris

I think it is amazing that the parts they are showing are the detectors ... there is also 16.5 miles of liquid helium cooled magnets that make up the particle accelerator. Big science indeed!

It is interesting to reflect on how far things have come. Compare this effort to the pictures of Lawrence's original cyclotron:

http://www.aip.org/history/lawrence/larger-image-page/epa-20.htm

I know that physicists in the US lament that we did not fund a competitor to CERN but I don't really agree. The US has contributed a great deal to the development of such devices: SLAC and Batavia, for example. I'm not sure that 10 billion dollars or whatever it would have cost for the Texas effort is really worth the taxpayers money.

Cheers,
Bob Welland

I worked for an aluminium extruder who supplied CERN amongst others at the start of the eighties, had the pleasure of a visit to the labryinth below geneva/wherever, the engineers are in a leage of thier own, the physycists are barking mad, and the most inteligent explanation i got to what the hell they were up to came from one of the canteen staff, i think the place is a public version of dreamland, we had to make lead lines ali pipes to go into the thing, the lead was rescued from battleships in the scappa flow off orkney, or so they told me.
well worth a visit.
mark

BobWelland said:

I know that physicists in the US lament that we did not fund a competitor to CERN but I don't really agree. The US has contributed a great deal to the development of such devices: SLAC and Batavia, for example. I'm not sure that 10 billion dollars or whatever it would have cost for the Texas effort is really worth the taxpayers money.

Cheers,
Bob Welland

Click to expand...

I lived in Texas at the time construction was underway and I for one regret it wasn't finished. The SSC that was never completed, although almost 2 billion was spent, but would have been roughly 54 miles in circumference. It would have (obviously) been a much larger and more powerful accelerator than what we are all admiring in the article. I think it was finally killed in either '92 or '93 and here we are 15 years later watching another country move ahead of us (US) by finishing something vastly inferrior to what we could and should have done a decade and a half ago.

.......and we wonder why we are losing our edge over the rest of the world?

hybidder said:

.......and we wonder why we are losing our edge over the rest of the world?

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The US is foolish spending $5 trillion on a needless Iraq war while the other industrialized countries are investing in research and infrastructure. Also the US government has become USA Inc. , like a multinational corporation with no national allegiance, where anything goes to reduce costs including exporting our tax dollars. It is a Strange world where G.W.Bush is not president but C.E.O. The giving of our tax dollars a $40 Billion contract for air refueling tankers to European Air bus instead of using our own money to employ Americans is outrageous. We are being dragged down to third world status when it comes to money spent on research and employing the engineers and manufacturing people that pay the taxes. BTW the unemployed don't pay taxes.

genetic engineering is going to be the death of us

Click to expand...

Matt, you say that like it's a BAD thing.



Jim