22 ms·
Growing Anomalies at the Large Hadron Collider Raise Hopes
- radres 6y agoIf the anomalies are growing we should fund them an additional $10B
- SiempreViernes 6y agoIt’s 4.7/fb of data, meaning data taken up to 2016, but with some gaps it seems. I think the total pp luminosity for the two big ones is around 15/fb, wonder why LHCb has so little in this analysis? Bummer that the significance is only about 0.3 bigger than the last analysis, but at least it’s not a 750 peak yet.
- Roritharr 6y agoWhat's an fb?
- lippel82 6y agoA femtobarn, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit)
- FeepingCreature 6y agoQuoting: > During Manhattan Project research on the atomic bomb during World War II, American physicists at Purdue University needed a secretive unit to describe the approximate cross-sectional area presented by the typical nucleus (10^−28 m2) and decided on "barn". They considered this a large target for particle accelerators that needed to have direct strikes on nuclei, and the American idiom "couldn't hit the broad side of a barn" refers to someone whose aim is very bad. ... > Other related units are the outhouse (1 μb, or 10^−34 m^2) and the shed (10^−24 b (1 yb), or 10^−52 m^2), although these are rarely used in practice.
- Already__Taken 6y ago> needed a secretive unit > American idiom "couldn't hit the broad side of a barn" It's being clever like that what got the Germans in WWII in trouble, I particularly like Wotan -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_name#German_code_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_name#German_code_names Were as the brits made up a random code for this purpose - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rainbow_Codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rainbow_Codes
- mhh__ 6y agoRV Jones's book is a great read about scientific intelligence of WW2. Also, the NRO have previously given away classified orbits of spy satellites on their mission patches.
- cjfd 6y agofemtobarn
- SiempreViernes 6y agoStrictly speaking, those are inverse femtobarns, the nonsensical unit for accumulated number of collisions that particle physicists use.
- semi-extrinsic 6y agoOK, attempt at ELI5: The people are crashing lots of bunches of pebbles into each other, in two streams that meet. Some of the people are interested in observing what happens when the small blue pebble hits a big gray pebble and the big one cracks. They know the "probability" (cross-section) of this process is around 100 fb. Other people care about what happens when little tiny green pebbles collide three at a time. They know the "probability" of this is 11 fb - not so likely since three things need to line up. The people operating the streams of pebbles keep track of how many inverse fb they produce. Let's say in 2019 they produced 0.7 inverse fb. Then the people who care about blue/gray collisions know they can expect to find around 70 events in all the data from 2019, while the green/green/green people know they can expect about 7-8 events. When the people who collide streams of pebbles are going to build yet another Even Bigger Pebble Crashing Machine, they estimate in advance what the "luminosity" will be - how many inverse fb they will produce per year. Then the people looking for events know, "aha, with the new great crasher I can science even more!"
- choeger 6y agoIn other words, someone has lost their marbles?
- mcv 6y agoWhile I really appreciate this attempt to explain what /fb means, I'm not sure replacing sub-atomic particles with pebbles really helps. I did onderstand from your explanation that /fb is called inverse fb and it represents an estimation of a number of collisions. So thanks for that.
- semi-extrinsic 6y agoI freely admit the pebbles were an attempt at deadpan humour that would pass the great HN downvote filter - a most arduous challenge.
- jstanley 6y agoI appreciate the attempt, but this gives no information about what an fb actually is. The word people need is "femtobarn".
- davrosthedalek 6y agoA femtobarn. Unitwise, it's an area, a measure of the probability of an interaction, the "literal" cross section of the things you try to hit. Luminosity, often measured in inverse (femto) barn, is the other side: The number of tries, given by the number of particles you collided. The product of these is the number of events of this type which occur on average. So if you measured for 10 inverse femtobarn integrated luminosity, a process which has a cross section of 1 femtobarn should have happened 10 times.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoFacebook, duh.
- pas 6y agoI found this detailed explanation: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/12071/246093 https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/12071/246093 See also: https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/lhc-report-100-inverse-femtobarns-and-counting https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/lhc-report-100-inve...
- magicalhippo 6y agoThe LHCb detector is different in that it is designed to measure decay products that fly along the beam pipe, rather than those that fly off in all directions like ATLAS and CMB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHCb_experiment#The_LHCb_detector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHCb_experiment#The_LHCb_detec... https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/en/Detector/Detector-en.html https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/en/Detector/Detector-en.html
- SiempreViernes 6y agoThat’s right, it’s mostly forward! So they’re just much less efficient at generating data from the events compared to the big detectors? Still, what’s up with the lack of data from 2013-2015, was it shutdown during all that time?
- magicalhippo 6y ago> So they’re just much less efficient at generating data from the events compared to the big detectors? Yeah basically. > Still, what’s up with the lack of data from 2013-2015, was it shutdown during all that time? That'd be the Long Shutdown 1. We're currently in the Long Shutdown 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Long_Shutdown_1_(2013%E2%80%932015) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Long_Shu...
- mcv 6y ago"Growing anomalies at the Large Hadron Collider" sounds like a premise for a Hollywood horror movie about a strange, shimmering anomaly growing at a science lab.
- bshimmin 6y agoI would so watch this. Perhaps it could involve the infamous baguette [1] mutating into something horrifying. [1] https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/bread-loving-bird-shuts-down-lhc/ https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/bread-loving-...
- kelnage 6y agoAlternatively, see "The Three Body Problem" by Cixin Liu [1] for an interesting take on what such anomalies could indicate! 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)
- xenophonf 6y agoUgh. That book was _terrible_. Maybe something got lost in translation since it's so highly acclaimed, but I just couldn't get past the opening chapters.
- eXpl0it3r 6y agoI'm currently listening to it and I agree so far. There are a lot of very dragging and near pointless chapters. But there have been some stories that pulled me in a bit and that moved the whole topic along. I still don't understand what the opening chapters set up or tried to explain. Maybe it was just about the political/environmental setting or maybe it starts to make sense later on...
- darkerside 6y agoThink of it as a period piece setting. American equivalent might be growing up during the Civil Rights movement. Establishes motivations for characters. Something this book could have used more of, not less.
- imvetri 6y agosuper cool
- foobarbecue 6y agoProbably just weasels. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/29/476154494/weasel-shuts-down-world-s-most-powerful-particle-collider https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/29/476154494...
- hinkley 6y ago"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." - Matt Groening
- lebuffon 6y agoI have found it dis-heartening that higher energy levels at the LHC have not opened new doors into reality. This simulation in which we find ourselves seems designed to obfuscate. :) This small aberration may give some clues... maybe... some day
- logicchains 6y ago>I have found it dis-heartening that higher energy levels at the LHC have not opened new doors into reality. I think the last thing we need is LHC opening new doors into reality. The only thing that could be more dangerous than such research into teleportation is research into teleportation that's conducted on Mars.
- Trasmatta 6y agoBut just think of all the great things we could do with that Argent Energy.
- hinkley 6y agoDon't forget the LHC April Fool's joke where the remote cameras show a black hole eating CERN. There's also a great documentary about interdimensional portals, called Hell Boy, that everyone should watch.
- btrettel 6y agoNot about the article per se: Why do particle/high-energy and quantum physics get so much media attention compared against other branches of physics? HEP and quantum physics are fairly uninteresting to me but I'm wondering about others.
- nxpnsv 6y agoBecause probing the fundamental building blocks of the universe is very interesting to some people. So now your question is: why do people care what we're made of? Not sure about that one although i spend over a decade in HEP... on the other hand, if they don't then what do they care about? It is easier to do physics than to understand people...
- btrettel 6y agoI suppose I disagree about what is "fundamental". On some level I can see how HEP and quantum mechanics are "fundamental" in that they describe the "building blocks" of the universe. But these branches of physics really only describe matter at very small scales. In terms of being actually useful to understand the vast majority of physical situations encounted in practice, HEP and quantum physics are mostly useless. "Classical" physics is more "fundamental" in the sense that it is more useful in a wider variety of contexts. Or at least this is my view, as a fluid dynamicist. Turbulence is far more important than HEP, but unfortunately it receives far less media attention and far less attention from the brightest people. (I think turbulence has HEP beat in funding, though. :-)
- astrophysician 6y ago> Turbulence is far more important than HEP maybe ("importance" is somewhat subjective and I think it's totally valid to have that opinion), but I would argue HEP and maybe early universe cosmology are more fundamental meaning they study the most fundamental building blocks of physics itself. But "fundamental" is not the same as "important" so I'm not trying to suggest these fields are more or less important than others.
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- siscia 6y agoSince we are talking about CERN let me take this opportunity to invite, whoever is interested, to visit the laboratory. Beside the stop imposed by COVID, CERN organize guided tour to the laboratory and when possible the detectors. If you are around the area of Geneva or you happen to be around, I really suggest the visits. The guides are usually people working at CERN so they are quite knowable about it. It is necessary to book the visit in advance.
- sabas_ge 6y agoA lot in advance :) I booked more than a month before because there are 10/20 places available per day.. I visited by myself the Globe (where Tim Berners Lee machine is located) and the microcosm exhibitions by myself, and the guided tour covered and introduction, the LHC control room and the first accelerator (synchrocyclotron)
- kzrdude 6y agoThanks. I got to visit as a student, in 2008/2009 I believe, and it was a great time. Seeing ATLAS and many other experiments.
- _Anken 6y agoSecond! Visiting is very interesting, and the tour guides are real scientists that actually work there. I was lucky that they were able to fit me in same-day even though I hadn't booked ahead as strongly recommended.
- scottwuzhear 6y agoLooks like they got hugged to death: https://visit.cern/tours https://visit.cern/tours Additional uncaught exception thrown while handling exception. Original PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2013] Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 111 in language_list() (line 3053 of /drupal/7.69/includes/bootstrap.inc). Additional PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2013] Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 111 in db_merge() (line 2504 of /drupal/7.69/includes/database/database.inc).
- sanxiyn 6y agoThe previous similar happening is documented at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/750_GeV_diphoton_excess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/750_GeV_diphoton_excess.