... until the LHC is switched on, and science is either revolutionised or tweaked, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, here's a YouTube clip definitely worth watching...

LHC Rap

I know, I know.... usually I feel the same hatred for rap music I reserve for people who crunch crisps and nachos through movies or talk at the theatre, but this rap is a work of genius. It actually explains a lot of the science behind the project, and you can... shock horror... hear the words!!! Keep watching to the end credits, v funny what it says about the dancers...

Stu, I don't know where you find these gems. Thanks !
The beat is funky cool and the lyrics are killing me

P.S. It would not be a bad idea to hire AlpineKat for ESA PR.

This is realy realy good.

Kill Dash Nine by Monzy is still the high bar for nerd raps. If you know any Unix or CS...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fow7iUaKrq4

(And sorry, the language is foul... be warned.)

Scroobius Pip rhymes the Periodic Table, though admittedly he stops at nitrogen. If you like the LHC tune (personally I didn't make it to the end when it turned up on BoingBoing. No flow!), there's a whole 'nerdcore' scene waiting at a google near you; MC Hawking just opened the door...

Hey Stu! That is funny...THIS is rap...

Now THAT's outreach!!! Love it!!!

Me too! Seriously, I usually would rather stick a pair of dog-poo covered chopsticks in my ears than listen to a rap track, but that's a work of genius, right from the start. even better, if you Google the rapper - Kate McAlpine - you find she's a worker at CERN, a real, genuine scientist, and LOVES this stuff, and she's quite overwhelmed by the attention she's getting after recording this.

Well, it's reaching, I'll grant you that....

...it's genius, is what it is.

Shows that scientists are real people with a sense of humor (not insane nerds), and sticks a catchy rhythm in your head to understand the purpose of the instrumentation to boot! Ideal for a junior-high general science class, for instance.

Sooo, LHC is coming online soon. Any final guesses what might happen and how to duck and cover?


Personally I don't think anything destructive will happen to our planet but let's hope that some new answers (or at least new questions) will surface from the initial tests.

PS. and if you don't hear anything from me after wednesday you can then freely assume that the Earth has been consumed by a mini-black hole...

HA!!!

That looks EXACTLY like a bunch of insane nerds trying to rap and dance! But it's fun and clever.

Today (10 Sep) the first beam of protons will zip through the new LHC at the Cern near Geneva, Switzerland. There seems to be a live telecast on http://webcast.cern.ch/index.html starting at 9am CEST.

I'm having a good chuckle at some of the doomsday scenarioes that people could think of! My favorite: It will create a black hole that will eat up Europe ... but, apparently, not the rest of the globe. Got to go to Istanbul, the Bosporus bridge must look, well, you know, half in a black hole

If we're rhyming the periodic table, then who can forget this classic, literally "reanimated" with Flash.

http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html

L o o k s - l i k e - i t - i s - s t i l l - a l l - o k - h e r e . . .

At 10:28 the first beam was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres!
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleas...8/PR08.08E.html

Here's the problem. The media jumped on the whole tiny-black-holes thing and went crazy for it - telling us that the world might end ( even if partially tongue in cheek ) this morning. Now - we know for a fact that the LHC isn't going to cause the end of the world. Fact. Now all the media is breathing a sort of sigh of relief that the world is still here.

BUT

Even if it were to destroy the world ( which it isn't ) - getting the first beam going isn't when that would happen - nor even when the second beam is working - it's the collisions that'll start in a few weeks time that would be the point at which, were there to be a problem ( which there won't ) it would have occurred.

So the media not only got the possibly outcome wrong, but they also got the time wrong.

Double doh!

And that's the most ironic part of it all!

On the positiv side here in the SwissTV news today they put it in perspective and pointed out what a great success it is to get already smoothly a beam through the entire circle at the first time.

Obligatory LHClol.


Paolo Amoroso

First collisions, at two-thirds power, will not be for six to eight weeks. Soon after, the LHC will shut down for the winter. Only after it comes back up next year will there be collisions at full power. The doom sayers are likely to get bored with the careful, methodical buildup to full power collisions.

Schedule Outline http://lhc-commissioning.web.cern.ch/lhc%2Dcommissioning/

* 10th September: First attempt to bring protons around the full circumference, and the full commissioning with beams will start.
* It is expected that it will take about 6 - 8 weeks to have first collisions at 10 TeV centre of mass energy.
* Energy of the 2008 run: Agreed to be 10 TeV. The machine considers this to be a safe setting to optimize up-time of the machine until the winter shut-down (starting likely around end of November). Therefore, simulations can now start for 10 TeV.
* The winter shut-down will then be used to commissioning and train the magnets up to full current, such that the 2009 run will start at the full 14 TeV design energy.

Yes, this thought occurred to me as well, but as your post so eloquently shows, it really is almost too much bother to even bring up...

It seems the general public has some weird James Bond villain evil genius facility vision of big science.... it really is such a caricature that it takes quite an effort to overcome. I wouldn't even be surprised if folks expected to find a big red SELF DESTRUCT button somewhere.

But LHC does have an abort button (via hronir).


Paolo Amoroso

get the CERN courier for all info:
http://cerncourier.com/cws/latest/cern

Well they could upgrade.... does the LHC feature USB ports?

I would like to share with all you the declaration released today by Andrea Camilleri (a famous writer, not a scientist!) during a radio intervew.
Interviewer: "Do you fear about possible Black Hole production inside LHC?"
Camilleri: "No, I do not fear such black holes at all, because I think they are INSIDE the man, they are a projection of our fears about science experiments that we do not understand.
We became very lazy man that don't like the risk and the adventure of scientific search. We prefere to stay within the limits of our poor knowledge, going to sleep happy and satisfied."
I think these words are very clever and can be easily applied to other fields, like space exploration.

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

HA!!!!!

Hey, wait a minute...the link disappeared!

Hey, wait a minute...the walls disappeared!!

Hey, wait a mini...<poof!>

haven't noticed anything yet!

Reckless

Those of us not in Europe are merely experiencing time dilation as we get sucked in.

I have that link on automatic refresh. The second there is a change in status, I'll know.

I guess that explains the server clock (which is in the States) already running a few minutes ahead of European time (also known as THE time), seeing how we're deeper into the gravity well of the hole and are experiencing time dilation.

Hey, if this effect picks up more, I get to have a cheap, one-way time travel machine, neat!

test

VERY cool...

LHC under construction

Very cool indeed I wonder if there is a higher deffinition version

Reckless

That looked so simple. I thought this LHC thing was complicated?

http://www.lhc-live.com/ - there's a reset button.

The original site -- without ads -- is here (via Bad Astronomy).


Paolo Amoroso

Couple of interesting links for all you LHC fans out there...

Firstly, if you're a sci-fi fan (cue Doug exiting this thread! ) and like the Dr Who spin-off series "Torchwood", the BBC produced a Radio 4 play set at CERN, and you can find it here...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/torchwood.shtml

You can download the play for another few days. Sure, it's fluffy, and cheesy, and has lots of in-jokes for fans of cardiff's favourite weevil-chasing gang, but it's got good science in it, hiding amongst all the alien/Torchwoody stuff, and hey, come on... Capt Jack running around CERN trying to save the world, what more do you want on a rainy Saturday?! ( Not sure if this is one of those "UK citizens only" deals, sorry. )

Also, did you know there's a live LHC webcam?

if I mention it again, do I win a prize for Connect 4?

Sorry, James, everyone... posted in haste whilst laughing, didn't bother to check previous posts. What can I say, I'm nicked.

Pesky LHC black holes? It's the escaping strings we've got to watch out for. I refer to the Phoenix part of UMSF, where there's a thread with a subthread on thread...

Andy, still wondering when Doug's going to announce he's sending a "test" post back to Thursday from here.

What will happen when LHC will be really "turned on":
http://a6.vox.com/6a00c2251d6de0549d00f48ce8293e0002-pi

Amusing, but also mildly irritating since it perpetuates the myth that that the sole purpose of the LHC is finding the Higgs particle. Steven Hawking has bet that the Higgs will not be found and yet says, "Whatever the LHC finds or fails to find, the results will tell us a lot about the structure of the universe.... Both the LHC and the Space program are vital if the human race is not to stultify and eventually die out."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2710348/St...r-humanity.html

Sorry about the rant over a joke. It just touched on one of my growing list of pet peeves.

Hmm... Do they have a webcam like that on Wall Street?

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com

An incident occurred at mid-day on Friday 19 Sep. resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel. The needed repair is not a huge one, but it will be very time consuming because of the necessity of warming up the magnets to do it. Too time consuming to restart it before CERN’s obligatory winter maintenance period (that's because of electricity is more (too) expensive then). All that now puts off the date for restart of the accelerator complex into early spring 2009.

Btw. There's an informative blog from US staff members at the LHC.