3 ms·

In LHC’s Shadow, America’s Collider Awakens

61 points by digital55 12y ago

spiritplumber 12y ago
I wonder if this is "better" or "worse" than the SSC... Either way, great news. Now if there could only be another space race :) Americans are at their best culturally when they're in a condition where they have to be in a fair competition.
- batbomb 12y ago
  it's different. SSC would have been much, much better than LHC.
  - Create 12y ago
    That wouldn't be hard with the precarity at CERN, aka cheap disposable temp labour w/o healthcare. http://www.tdg.ch/geneve/actu-genevoise/suisse-prete-aider-employes-detaches-cern/story/15383927 http://www.tdg.ch/geneve/actu-genevoise/suisse-prete-aider-e...
    - Oletros 12y ago
      That link doesn't say that the workers don't have healthcare And I still don't understand the relation between some collider being better than another with the working conditions of some workers.
      - Create 12y ago
        Un salaire suffisant et une couverture santé adéquate font souvent défaut. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending. Sweatshops are not worth defending.
        raverbashing 12y ago
        "Un salaire suffisant et une couverture santé adéquate" Do you have the actual values? While low I quite frankly doubt it's in "sweatshop" territory.
        Create 12y ago
        Around the SMIC for a fellow with higher degree (even less for project associates), and surely not enough to afford a family.
      - mark_edward 12y ago
        If you can't see a relationship between the working conditions of the workers and the quality and tempo of the research produced, you must inhabit an entirely separate world.
michas 12y ago
There is one thing I always wanted to know about things like LHC: they are supposed to detect the smallest particles known to a mankind, using detectors that are billions times larger in size. So, let's say that we collide some particles, and a Higg's bozon emerges from the collision. But still, it is just one tiny particle hitting detector at least 14 nm in size (assuming that latest Intel transistor size is the boundry of how small things we can make). So how is it possible that the bozon hitting detector produces any electrical signal at all? And how we tell apart that signal from white electrical noise? For me whole experimental physics is just a scam: bunch of scientist analyzing gigabytes of data which are just random white noise, but if you stare at them long enough then your paranoid mind just start seeing nonexistent paterns and creating wild theories to explain that "patterns"

61 points by digital55 12y ago

I wonder if this is "better" or "worse" than the SSC... Either way, great news. Now if there could only be another space race :) Americans are at their best culturally when they're in a condition where they have to be in a fair competition.

batbomb 12y ago
it's different. SSC would have been much, much better than LHC.
- Create 12y ago
  That wouldn't be hard with the precarity at CERN, aka cheap disposable temp labour w/o healthcare. http://www.tdg.ch/geneve/actu-genevoise/suisse-prete-aider-employes-detaches-cern/story/15383927 http://www.tdg.ch/geneve/actu-genevoise/suisse-prete-aider-e...
  - Oletros 12y ago
    That link doesn't say that the workers don't have healthcare And I still don't understand the relation between some collider being better than another with the working conditions of some workers.
    - Create 12y ago
      Un salaire suffisant et une couverture santé adéquate font souvent défaut. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending. Sweatshops are not worth defending.
      - raverbashing 12y ago
        "Un salaire suffisant et une couverture santé adéquate" Do you have the actual values? While low I quite frankly doubt it's in "sweatshop" territory.
        Create 12y ago
        Around the SMIC for a fellow with higher degree (even less for project associates), and surely not enough to afford a family.
    - mark_edward 12y ago
      If you can't see a relationship between the working conditions of the workers and the quality and tempo of the research produced, you must inhabit an entirely separate world.

michas 12y ago

There is one thing I always wanted to know about things like LHC: they are supposed to detect the smallest particles known to a mankind, using detectors that are billions times larger in size. So, let's say that we collide some particles, and a Higg's bozon emerges from the collision. But still, it is just one tiny particle hitting detector at least 14 nm in size (assuming that latest Intel transistor size is the boundry of how small things we can make). So how is it possible that the bozon hitting detector produces any electrical signal at all? And how we tell apart that signal from white electrical noise? For me whole experimental physics is just a scam: bunch of scientist analyzing gigabytes of data which are just random white noise, but if you stare at them long enough then your paranoid mind just start seeing nonexistent paterns and creating wild theories to explain that "patterns"