Rational Alchemy



Current News

Support Rational Alchemy on Google Plus


Your Pod-Casts

Would you like to pod-cast on Rational Alchemy?   Tell me the rules and how do I do it?  Follow this link.

First results from Large Hadron Collider published Print E-mail
Main Page - Rational Alchemy : Blogs, Musings and News
Written by Nigel Aves   
Tuesday, 09 February 2010 08:47

The results from the highest-energy particle experiments carried out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in December have begun to yield their secrets.

 

Scientists from the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid detector has now totted up all of the resulting particle interactions.

 

They wrote in the Journal of High Energy Physics that the run created more particles than theory predicted.

However, the glut of particles should not affect results as the experiment runs to even higher energies this year.

The LHC is designed to smash together particles and atoms circling its 27km-tunnel in a bid to find evidence of further particles that underpin the field of physics as it is currently formulated.

 

The December announcement of particle beam energies in excess of one trillion electron volts made the LHC the world's highest-energy particle accelerator.

 

Particle particulars

 

That makes the new results a unique look at the field of high-energy physics. The experiments, smashing protons into each other, produced a few more subatomic particles known as pions and kaons than the team was expecting.

"The level is somewhat higher than the most popular models had predicted, and it looks like it is going to increase with energy a little bit more steeply than we expected," said Roland Gunter, a CMS collaboration scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US

.

"I think it's not going to be a problem, but it is one of the many things that we need to know as we move toward searches for the most rare particles and new physics," he told BBC News.

 

He added that the "extra" particles will be more of an issue when, later in 2010, the LHC dedicates itself to collisions involving ions of the element lead, a markedly heavier pair of targets resulting in an even larger array of particles on impact.

 

"We'll know much more about that in two or three months when we look at the next higher energy of 7 TeV (trillion electron volts)."

Add your comment

Your name:
Your email:
Your website:
Comment:
 

Northern CO Skeptics

 

Drink Skeptically in Fort Collins

Skeptics Meetups

 

Warning Radio

 

Amateur Skeptics

 

Dogma Free America

 

Leaders in Free Thought

 

SSASS

 

Gimcrack

 


 

Drop us a line at feedback (at) rational-alchemy (dot) com and we will add your link.

 

Or just drop us a line and let us know how badly we are screwing up!

 


 

Your Monitor Size

Monitor Size
 

Who's On-Line

We have 19 guests online

Site Info

Content View Hits : 240119

Grab Local Feed

Visitors Location

Map IP Address
Powered by

IP2Location.com

Rational Alchemy Template by Ahadesign - Graphic and CSS changes to template Nigel Aves - Powered by Joomla!

About This Site

The Rational Alchemy web site was designed using the Joomla CMS package by Nigel Aves.

If you would like Nigel to design a web site for you that is easy to maintain please contact him here. Contact Nigel

The Rational Alchemy team is Brian Walsh, Jamie Folsom and Nigel Aves.