Large Hardon Collider

[Eliseos]

Did someone say money?????

Now, here's hoping they actually get that money.

[zoobernut]

Yay that probably means my father-in-law will have steady work for a while.

[willriker]

I liked the talk about soup better.

On a side note, If water bears can live through anything and there can be as many as 11k per liter of water... How many water bears do you recon us soup fans have eaten?

Even weirder, how many are inside of us. OMG i must have pee'd out water bears!

O.o

[Eliseos]

Someone photoshop the Kurt Kobain "is that a fucking bear?" gif to have water bears.

[Mizango]

Someone photoshop the Kurt Kobain "is that a fucking bear?" gif to have water bears.

looool that would be awesome.

[zoobernut]

http://waterbear.bioapps.biozentrum....er_bear_p1.jpg

RAWR!

[willriker]

:O Yeah, water bears are awesome.

[Effluo]

I guess this is as good a place as any for this. A little space pr0n:


http://io9.com/5462909/the-parasitic...ive-dying-star

http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/p...gblackhole.jpg

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole ever observed. Six million light years from Earth, it lies at the heart of a spiral galaxy, and is rapidly orbiting and eating a massive star.

According to a release about the new discovery:

The newly announced black hole lies in a spiral galaxy called NGC 300 . . . "This is the most distant stellar-mass black hole ever weighed, and it's the first one we've seen outside our own galactic neighbourhood, the Local Group," says Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield and lead author of the paper reporting the study. The black hole's curious partner is a Wolf–Rayet star, which also has a mass of about twenty times as much as the Sun. Wolf–Rayet stars are near the end of their lives and expel most of their outer layers into their surroundings before exploding as supernovae, with their cores imploding to form black holes.

In 2007, an X-ray instrument aboard NASA's Swift observatory scrutinised the surroundings of the brightest X-ray source in NGC 300 discovered earlier with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. "We recorded periodic, extremely intense X-ray emission, a clue that a black hole might be lurking in the area," explains team member Stefania Carpano from ESA.

Thanks to new observations performed with the FORS2 instrument mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have confirmed their earlier hunch. The new data show that the black hole and the Wolf–Rayet star dance around each other in a diabolic waltz, with a period of about 32 hours. The astronomers also found that the black hole is stripping matter away from the star as they orbit each other.

"This is indeed a very 'intimate' couple," notes collaborator Robin Barnard. "How such a tightly bound system has been formed is still a mystery."

See the scientific paper "NGC 300 X–1 is a Wolf-Rayet/Black-Hole binary" (PDF), to appear in Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society

[Lhyet]

So, what happens when that goliath goes supernova and turns into a black hole? Two black holes closely orbiting each other sounds like dividing by zero.

Black holes are so damn cool.

[willriker]

IM thinking it would be absorbed by the black hole before it goes nova. But, two black holes will merge together forming one bigger black hole.

I was just watching something on black holes the other day... man i wish i could remember the programs name.

[Mizango]

I was just watching something on black holes the other day... man i wish i could remember the programs name.

What channel? If it was the History channel then it was "The Universe", if it was Nat. Geo then it was probably "Naked Science". We could also throw PBS's 'Nova' in there as well the the new season doesn't begin until this fall.

But yes, blackholes are awesome indeed.

[Abandon]

Miz.... come on, man. You were doing so good, then you had to come post here. Stop that shit

[Mizango]

Cant help it man QQ Science is up there with bitches and money on my list of must haves.

[Mizango]

I got plenty of all 3, ya dig?

[Abandon]

I'm telling. She'll beat the hell out of you.

[Mizango]

Nah, she knows son. She knew that when she got with me, luckily she climbed her way up to a tie.

[Lhyet]

Scientists Plan to Skip Mid-Range, Crank LHC up to Full Power
Full power collisions will begin in 2013 -- after upgrade

September of 2008 was set to be a landmark year for the physics community. The Large Hadron Collider, a massive 17-mile-long track beneath the Franco-Swiss border was coming online and promised to at last allow physicists to glimpse the long theorized, but never observed Higgs boson, nicknamed the "God particle".

However, a malfunction killed those hopes, pushing the launch back to 2009. A cold winter slowed repairs and it was August 2009 when the repairs finally wrapped up. In November the collider was brought back online at last. Within days it recorded its first collisions and before long set a new world record -- despite operating at a mere fraction of its prospective power.

Amid a winter shutdown, researchers are now planning their next move, even as they sift through a wealth of data collected from the initial collisions. This week they laid out an ambitious plan for the collider.

In 2010 and 2011 they plan to operate the collider at 3.5 TeV per beam, much more than 1.18 TeV per beam recorded in November, and significantly more than the previous record holder, the U.S.-based Fermilab, which has achieved 1 TeV beams. To put these numbers in context, a mosquito has about 1 TeV in kinetic energy -- but it has 1023 to 1024 atoms in them, many with dozens of protons. The LHC is packing all this energy into a single proton -- a feat akin to packing all the people in the world into a square smaller than the tiniest transistor.

According to the LHC road map, the collider will shut down in 2012, skipping "mid-range" collisions of around 5 TeV per beam. Instead, it will receive a circuitry upgrade to help it handle its peak designed power -- 7 TeV per beam. In 2013 it will begin collisions at a record combined energy of about 14 TeV -- about 14 mosquitoes per proton pair, in layman's terms.

Until the LHC achieves peak power in 2013, FermiLab still has a chance to beat it and be the first to observe the Higgs boson. However, if the particle is less lightweight, it will likely not be observed until the LHC cranks up the juice.


I can't help but feel the LHC is being a bit of a cock-tease. 2013 is faaarrr too long to see that thing at full capacity.

[Woozie]

^ Wow, is technically the first on topic post in like 30 pages lol. Thread should be changed to "Science Discussion" (or I guess "Physics Discussion" since there's much more physics than any other science here.

So they say it will be running by 2013, meaning it will actually be running by nearly 2015.

[zoobernut]

I would like it to be "Science discussion" personally since it would be nice to have a place to post interesting stuff from other realms of science.

I agree with the sentiment though.

[Waef]

To put these numbers in context, a mosquito has about 1 TeV in kinetic energy -- but it has 1023 to 1024 atoms in them, many with dozens of protons.

That can't be right...