Large Hardon Collider

[BerenTebogo]

I briefly looked into it, but didn't get very far. Funny how when grad school sucks the joy out of physics that isn't your field isn't it?

How was working at CERN over the summer?!

[kareface]

Great, got to make anti hydrogen and got approved to test out a theoretical new process for anti hydrogen production, worked on a ton of projects and got to see some cool stuff that isn't public yet. Attended the summer lectures which were pretty good, but a little hot and cold at times (depending on who they got). Got to travel around Europe and spent some time at Cambridge, which has a mind blowingly beautiful campus. It's like something out of Harry Potter, I don't even have words. All in all it was one of the best summers I've had. Would have been nice to stay but I had classes starting so I had to come back.

[Prim]

Startalk discussion has been in a few threads, but this was the least old to bump. New season of Startalk on NGTV now, featuring his interview with Bill Clinton.

www.startalkradio.net

[myreality]

Some extreme engineering.



About to be switched on later this month. If successful then we are witnessing one of the greatest achievements of mankind.

http://inhabitat.com/worlds-largest-...er-this-month/

At a cost of more than $1 billion, the W7X took a total of 19 years to build. According to Science News, the labor and cost that went into building the Stellarton design could be worth it – as it has some significant advantages over the competing tokamak technology.

Related: MIT’s groundbreaking mini fusion reactor could power the world within 10 years

“Once started, stellarators naturally purr along in a steady state and they are not prone to the potentially metal-bending magnetic disruptions that plague tokamaks,” writes Daniel Clery of Science News. The tokamaks are significantly simpler to build, but can only operate for short periods of time and are subject to major magnetic disruptions.

All the blood, sweat and dollars put into the project will be tested later this month when Germany’s nuclear regulatory body is set to give the go-ahead to start up the W7-X. If all goes well, this technology could become a mainstay in the clean energy future of the planet.

[Zzsark]

Amazing, but in a project that takes that long to complete the amount of second guessing design (re-design) as technology progress must be frustrating. Look forward to seeing what comes of this.

[myreality]

Amazing, but in a project that takes that long to complete the amount of second guessing design (re-design) as technology progress must be frustrating. Look forward to seeing what comes of this.

Can't imagine what it would feel like to hear that a new discovery could destroy your project. Especially near the completion of said project.

[BerenTebogo]

Can't watch video atm, can anyone tell me what the net energy usage is and the time it can maintain the process?

We've had "fusion reactors" prototypes for a while now, maybe 15-20 years? But the problem is that they require more energy than usable energy they produce and it could only be maintained for fractions of seconds.

I haven't heard of anything groundbreaking through the grapevine so I'd be surprised if this one is THAT much better than the multiple prototypes (i.e. tokamak(?) projects) we already have around the world.

[myreality]

Not sure if this is what your looking for but this is the wiki for it i think. Nothing final as it has yet to turn on.

http://fusionwiki.ciemat.es/wiki/W7-X

Parameter Value Unit
Major radius, R0: 5.5 m
Minor radius, a: 0.53 m
Plasma volume, V: 30 m3
Non-planar coils: 50
Planar coils: 20
Number of ports: 254
Rotational transform, ι/2π: 5/6-5/4
Magnetic field on axis, B0: <3 T
Stored energy, W: 600 MJ
Heating power, P: 15-30 MW
Pulse length: 30 min
Machine height: 4.5 m
Machine diameter: 16 m
Machine mass: 725 t

Unable to watch the video at the moment hopefully this information can help in the meantime.

[BerenTebogo]

30 min would be a huge increase (afaik) from previous prototypes if it can actually do it.

[kareface]

Sath is right, don't expect too much. I hope it succeeds, and I give it credit for a very unique design, but I don't expect much.

[Kryssan]

Stellerators are fairly tried and true, if complicated beasties. They've been responsible for a few of the advancements though; the predecessor to WS-7X was WS-7AS and if you can ferret out the research papers such as this one you can see what they're more or less about.

Always temper one's expectations with fusion, but stellerators have always been interesting, the dark horse that has largely remained off to the side.

[BerenTebogo]

Wanted to post this as one of the most common space/science questions I get asked - and I see discussed - involves space exploration (either by us or aliens).

I am a huge sci-fi fan, so I am all about embracing the concepts, but I do think it is important to realize that the "fi" in sci-fi stands for fiction. I'm always surprised/disappointed by the number of people who just don't understand why "well eventually we'll be able to go faster" is as reasonable as assuming "in the future all humans will have wings and three dicks".

So I think this http://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our...will-sink.html is a very good read. It's an essay by a science fiction author who has done their due diligence and research into many of the real problems that sci-fi glosses over in space travel. It is an essay, but I poured through it and it had some points that even I hadn't considered (and this is something I consider myself to be fairly knowledgable about) with regards to suspended animation and feasibility of proper shielding from stellar radiation.

It's long but I really do think it is an important read for anyone who has any opinions about space travel.

[BerenTebogo]

Stellerators are fairly tried and true, if complicated beasties. They've been responsible for a few of the advancements though; the predecessor to WS-7X was WS-7AS and if you can ferret out the research papers such as this one you can see what they're more or less about.

Always temper one's expectations with fusion, but stellerators have always been interesting, the dark horse that has largely remained off to the side.

You ARE still around!

[BaneTheBrawler]

i can see some problems with wings, but i am confident we could make 3 dicks happen

[Buffy]

Wanted to post this as one of the most common space/science questions I get asked - and I see discussed - involves space exploration (either by us or aliens).

I am a huge sci-fi fan, so I am all about embracing the concepts, but I do think it is important to realize that the "fi" in sci-fi stands for fiction. I'm always surprised/disappointed by the number of people who just don't understand why "well eventually we'll be able to go faster" is as reasonable as assuming "in the future all humans will have wings and three dicks".

So I think this http://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our...will-sink.html is a very good read. It's an essay by a science fiction author who has done their due diligence and research into many of the real problems that sci-fi glosses over in space travel. It is an essay, but I poured through it and it had some points that even I hadn't considered (and this is something I consider myself to be fairly knowledgable about) with regards to suspended animation and feasibility of proper shielding from stellar radiation.

It's long but I really do think it is an important read for anyone who has any opinions about space travel.

I've read some of his other stuff. Red/Blue/Green Mars and The Martians I think. Reasonably good sci-fi, not my favorite, certainly not as terrible as some other stuff.

Sath you've posted about this multiple times and we've exchanged some PMs on it. There is no current working hypothesis of faster-than-light travel that has any basis in reality, right? Mostly because of the energy requirements involved?

We need something unforeseen and unpredictable to make it achievable. Something that isn't currently hypothesized. Wormholes that connect solar systems or David Weber's "Grav Waves" from the Honor Harrington series.

Otherwise we're just stuck here. Not that it is going to affect any of us. There won't even be a self-sufficient extra-planetary colony in our lifetime anyway.

[BerenTebogo]

Pre-edit: "wrt" is shorthand for "with respect to". I use it a lot when in physics mode. Sorry.

There exists no model of physics which is experimentally verifiable that we have any knowledge of which admits matter traveling faster-than-light. Period.

There are theoretical models and mathematical artifacts (due to symmetries, physical vs unphysical solutions to systems, coordinate transformations, and more) which admit such things but there is no way to test them, which means it isn't science, which means it doesn't matter. Also, anyone with head situated somewhere other than clouds will look at solutions of this type which arise from external constraints imposed on a system and realize that, barring an experimental method of repeatable testing, there is literally zero reason to assume aforementioned solutions are physical.

Energy is one limiting factor, in a perfect scenario, yes. More strictly limiting are the fundamental laws of physics. To a layman, the statement "information cannot propagate faster than the speed of light" isn't any more concrete than a sign that says "do not enter". People see such a statement and go "ok but what if it can? Problem solved". It is hard to find a relatable level of "no, this cant happen" that translates for everyone. Especially if such a person admits belief in the supernatural. It's really one of those things that you can only describe reasonable in terms of hyperbole. It is a completely valid statement to say that the entire earth will spontaneously turn into a chocolate-vanilla ice cream cone before any information travels faster than the speed of light wrt an external observer. If such principles weren't so fundamental there is literally no way we would be here talking about it now.

In terms of things unforseen: we are always witnessing new phenomena in all areas of physics, which is cool. But this "new" phenomena is never a surprise. It is always experimental verification of what theoretical models predicted beforehand. That's just how it works. Even for stuff like applied quantum mechanics where we are trying to encode entropic bits represented by entangled quantum states into something we can transmit over fiber or wifi. It sounds nuts but models (and this is important) which already describe other verifiable physics also predict that we can do this. Stuff like wormholes and shit are extrapolations of solutions. By their very definition (as physical phenomena) they can never be experimentally verified. When you enter a wormhole (read : fundamental singularity in the einstein field equations. Read : black hole) you can only send information to an observer outside the black hole (worm hole, whatever you want) by having that information go faster than the speed of light. I.E. You cant. So there is no way to ever verify any theory involving wormholes (no you cannot just spend an arbitrary x-trillions of dollars sending craft after craft into black holes. Is every BH a wormhole? Only some? What if travel isnt instantaneous? What if end up 10 billion light years away and can only send signal back we'll get 10b years later?) so that is out.

As far as gravity waves, this is literally my field. Its what I get paid for. I am so comfortable about my expertise in the field that I'm going to forgo giving examples and just say no, there are no applications of ftl from GWs, period.

So long fucking post later, yes, you are correct. There are no current models of FTL travel that have any basis in reality. You are somewhat correct in stating energy as a problem, but insofar as you can prove it to yourself using basic equations from special relativity, the energy needed to accelerate a velocity of any massive object ( m > 0) to c goes to infinity. You need infinite energy to accelerate an electron to speed of light.

[BerenTebogo]

Small addendum:

Re: things not currently hypothesized (or that we havent even considered)

It is important to understand how well our physical models work. For newtonian (every day life) we have that shit as solved as it will ever get. Obviously in science we never stop and rest on our laurels, if tomorrow someone drops a penny at sea level and it falls at 8m/s^2 we will rewrite every science text ever written - but it wont.

For the very small - we predict behavior of particles 10^15 times smaller than the world we live in to staggering degrees of accuracy. Some of the new physics we see a lot of is from that area, but really new stuff only really happens when we start cooling fundamental particles to absolute zero. Except for quantum, always new stuff coming from quantum. Kareface is doing PhD in some QM field I believe, he may be fun to drag into convo.

For the very large? Consider that we can shoot hunks of metal into space at terrifying velocities and have them be on target within fractions of a percent decades later. Consider that if we didn't understand relativistic effects your GPS would literally never be right for more than like 5 minutes after ever hard reset. Satellites (active) would constantly crash into one another. Consider that we can measure the speed of light by shooting laser at mirrors we motherfucking put on the fucking moon because humans are awesome. Consider that we can discern the atmosphere of planets light years away from us just by looking at how they behave and by looking through spectroscopic telescopes.

Modern life as we know it would grind to a halt, or rather would never have made it to this point, if physics didnt work the way our equations say it does. The only real BIG unknowns , imo , are dark matter and dark energy.

Those are the only two things in the entire universe that we know so little about that I can say "you know what, who knows what the fuck we could do if we could measure it". The problem is that dark matter is non-baryonic. Meaning it can NEVER interact with us. Dark matter never stops passing through us without ever interacting with us. It passes through us, the planet, everything we can ever measure it just floats right on through. How do you harness something you can never interact with? (Here interact doesn't mean like "oooh I feel some DM~" it means like even photons (massless) and neutrinos (very weakly interacting) will produce a measurable physical effect when they hit an electron. Dark matter (carrier particles unknown) have never - and presumably will never - interact. Unless incident rate on geological timescales)

(I do believe there are largescale experiments setup to detect DM that work in similar fashion to neutrino detectors WIMPs - weakly interacting massive particles)

[Kryssan]

You ARE still around!

Barely even really. Real life and all that. I hadn't even browsed the forums in a long time until yesterday when I had free time to kill.



To add on to what Sath's saying, dark matter / energy are a big unknown ( baryonic matter is not a majority of the 'known' matter of the universe ) but even so any use of it would be as exotic as our current imaginations / machinations on FTL - and we know all of those are bogus.

That's not to say it can't be done one day, scientists live for the idea of proving one another wrong and nailing a theory like GR / SR as wrong in some way would be a defining moment but given how well GR / SR have stood up so far - the imagination station is the only place we have feasible atm for FTL.


Personally though I don't see how it would matter, even if we did have FTL. You still gotta figure out something like Star Trek's inertial dampener system, and more importantly, you still gotta figure out artificial gravity or use some system like Ghost in the Shell's to replace human bodies.

Humans don't do so well in space. Without some serious boons like artificial gravity ( which doesn't protect you from anything but your own body's issues ) or, you know, ditching the human body altogether ( which still leaves the radiation problem, electronics like radiation about as much as human bodies do ) any 'long term' spaceflight idea is harebrained at best, regardless of what kind of drive you're using for the flying around bit.

I mean, even NDT's fav. idea for finding aliens - going ice fishing on Jovian moons - isn't possible right now. Forget the idea of getting there, even if you got there the radiation from Jupiter is likely to pwn anything intended to be there for a while that we could send that way, human or not.

[myreality]

Wendelstein 7-X stellarator fusion reactor launch is today. There was a live stream but it became private. Heard the first test was successful, whatever that means. At work so cannot delve to deeply.

[archibaldcrane]

We're talking about it in the nuclear power thread.