Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo/Matt Inman

For those absolutely devoid of scruples, charity fraud is the field par excellance, in which you can simultaneously harvest kudos for your humanitarianism and make off with vast bundles of untaxed cash. Convictions for charity fraud are so rare as to be nonexistent, so any criminals operating in other fields of endeavor are incurring unnecessary risks.

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:36 pm

http://www.bnl.gov/nsls2/bio/yeck.asp

Image
James Yeck

NSLS-II Assistant Project Director for Conventional Construction

Jim Yeck is the Assistant Project Director for Conventional Construction for the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) project at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).

Jim also serves as the Director of IceCube, a $270 million neutrino telescope currently under construction at the South Pole. Jim joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003 and is currently dividing his time between BNL and UW-Madison.

From 1997 to 2003 Jim was located at Fermilab, where he served as the Project Director for the U.S. Large Hadron Collider (LHC) construction project. Jim managed the DOE and NSFs combined $531 million contribution to the proton accelerator and associated experiments located at CERN, Europes leading particle physics laboratory. He received an award from the Secretary of Energy and the NSF Director for his leadership in establishing the U.S. LHC Project Office.

From 1991 to 1997 Jim was at Brookhaven National Laboratory serving as the DOE Project Manager for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) construction project. During his twenty-year career with DOE, he received several prestigious awards including DOEs Project Manager of the Year Award for his efforts on RHIC. The awards cited Jim's rare talent for managing large-scale projects and his ability to combine good judgment with leadership and people skills.

Jim continues to serve on several DOE and NSF advisory and review panels.

Jim has a B.S. in engineering from the University of Illinois, an M.S. in mechanical and nuclear engineering from Northwestern University, and has studied risk assessment for large science projects as part of doctoral dissertation work at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1982 to 1984 he served in the Peace Corps in Thailand.

Last Modified: May 2, 2014
Please forward all questions about this site to: BNL Web Services
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:36 pm

Large Hadron Collider
by Wikipedia


Image

Large Hadron Collider
(LHC)
LHC.svg
LHC experiments
ATLAS A Toroidal LHC Apparatus
CMS Compact Muon Solenoid
LHCb LHC-beauty
ALICE A Large Ion Collider Experiment
TOTEM Total Cross Section, Elastic Scattering and Diffraction Dissociation
LHCf LHC-forward
MoEDAL Monopole and Exotics Detector At the LHC
LHC preaccelerators
p and Pb Linear accelerators for protons (Linac 2) and Lead (Linac 3)
(not marked) Proton Synchrotron Booster
PS Proton Synchrotron
SPS Super Proton Synchrotron

Beyond the Standard Model

Image

CMS Higgs-event.jpg
Simulated Large Hadron Collider CMS particle detector data depicting a Higgs boson produced by colliding protons decaying into hadron jets and electrons
Standard Model
Evidence[show]
Theories[show]
Supersymmetry[show]
Quantum gravity[show]
Experiments[hide]
Gran Sasso INO LHC SNO Super-K Tevatron NOνA
v t e

Hadron colliders

Intersecting Storage Rings CERN, 1971–1984
Super Proton Synchrotron CERN, 1981–1984
ISABELLE BNL, cancelled in 1983
Tevatron Fermilab, 1987–2011
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider BNL, 2000–present
Superconducting Super Collider Cancelled in 1993
Large Hadron Collider CERN, 2009–present
High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider Proposed, CERN, 2020–
Very Large Hadron Collider Theoretical

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and most powerful particle collider, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) from 1998 to 2008. Its aim is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high-energy physics, and particularly prove or disprove the existence of the theorized Higgs particle[1] and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetric theories.[2] The Higgs particle was confirmed by data from the LHC in 2013. The LHC is expected to address some of the unsolved questions of physics, advancing human understanding of physical laws. It contains seven detectors, each designed for certain kinds of research.

The LHC was built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.[3] It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.

As of 2014, the LHC remains one of the largest and most complex experimental facilities ever built. Its synchrotron is designed to initially collide two opposing particle beams of either protons at up to 7 teraelectronvolts (7 TeV or 1.12 microjoules) per nucleon, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV (92.0 µJ) per nucleus (2.76 TeV per nucleon-pair),[4][5] with energies to be doubled to around 14 TeV collision energy—more than seven times any predecessor collider—by around 2015. Collision data were also anticipated to be produced at an unprecedented rate of tens of petabytes per year, to be analysed by a grid-based computer network infrastructure connecting 140 computing centers in 35 countries[6][7] (by 2012 the LHC Computing Grid was the world's largest computing grid, comprising over 170 computing facilities in a worldwide network across 36 countries[8][9][10]).

The LHC went live on 10 September 2008, with proton beams successfully circulated in the main ring of the LHC for the first time,[11] but nine days later a faulty electrical connection led to the rupture of a liquid helium enclosure, causing both a magnet quench and several tons of helium gas escaping with explosive force. The incident resulted in damage to over 50 superconducting magnets and their mountings, and contamination of the vacuum pipe, and delayed further operations by 14 months.[12][13] On November 20, 2009 proton beams were successfully circulated again,[14][15] with the first recorded proton–proton collisions occurring three days later at the injection energy of 450 GeV per beam.[16] On March 30, 2010, the first collisions took place between two 3.5 TeV beams, setting a world record for the highest-energy man-made particle collisions,[17] and the LHC began its planned research program.

By November 2012, the LHC had discovered two previously unobserved particles (the χb (3P)) bottomonium state and a massive 125 GeV boson (which subsequent results confirmed to be the long-sought Higgs boson), created a quark–gluon plasma, and recorded the first observations of the very rare decay of the Bs meson into two muons (Bs0 → μ+μ-) (a major test of supersymmetry).

The LHC operated at 3.5 TeV per beam in 2010 and 2011 and at 4 TeV in 2012.[18] It operated for two months in 2013 colliding protons with lead nuclei, and went into shutdown for upgrades to increase beam energy to 6.5 TeV per beam, with reopening planned for early 2015.[19]

Background

The term hadron refers to composite particles composed of quarks held together by the strong force (as atoms and molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force). The best-known hadrons are protons and neutrons; hadrons also include mesons such as the pion and kaon, which were discovered during cosmic ray experiments in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

A collider is a type of a particle accelerator with directed beams of particles. In particle physics colliders are used as a research tool: they accelerate particles to very high kinetic energies and let them impact other particles. Analysis of the byproducts of these collisions gives scientists good evidence of the structure of the subatomic world and the laws of nature governing it. Many of these byproducts are produced only by high energy collisions, and they decay after very short periods of time. Thus many of them are hard or near impossible to study in other ways.

Purpose

Physicists hope that the LHC will help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, concerning the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity, where current theories and knowledge are unclear or break down altogether. Data are also needed from high energy particle experiments to suggest which versions of current scientific models are more likely to be correct – in particular to choose between the Standard Model and Higgsless models and to validate their predictions and allow further theoretical development. Many theorists expect new physics beyond the Standard Model to emerge at the TeV energy level, as the Standard Model appears to be unsatisfactory. Issues possibly to be explored by LHC collisions include:[20][21]

Are the masses of elementary particles actually generated by the Higgs mechanism via electroweak symmetry breaking?[22] It is expected that the collider will either demonstrate or rule out the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, thereby allowing physicists to consider whether the Standard Model or its Higgsless alternatives are more likely to be correct.[23][24][25]

Is supersymmetry, an extension of the Standard Model and Poincaré symmetry, realised in nature, implying that all known particles have supersymmetric partners?[26][27][28]

Are there extra dimensions,[29] as predicted by various models based on string theory, and can we detect them?[30]

What is the nature of the dark matter that appears to account for 27% of the mass-energy of the universe?

Other open questions that may be explored using high energy particle collisions:

It is already known that electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force are different manifestations of a single force called the electroweak force. The LHC may clarify whether the electroweak force and the strong nuclear force are similarly just different manifestations of one universal unified force, as predicted by various Grand Unification Theories.

Why is the fourth fundamental force (gravity) so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces? See also Hierarchy problem.

Are there additional sources of quark flavour mixing, beyond those already predicted within the Standard Model?

Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter? See also CP violation.

What are the nature and properties of quark–gluon plasma, believed to have existed in the early universe and in certain compact and strange astronomical objects today? This will be investigated by heavy ion collisions in ALICE.

Design

Image
A Feynman diagram of one way the Higgs boson may be produced at the LHC. Here, two quarks each emit a W or Z boson, which combine to make a neutral Higgs.

Image
Map of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

Image
The 2-in-1 structure of the LHC dipole magnets

The LHC is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator.[4][31] The collider is contained in a circular tunnel, with a circumference of 27 kilometres (17 mi), at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 metres (164 to 574 ft) underground.

The 3.8-metre (12 ft) wide concrete-lined tunnel, constructed between 1983 and 1988, was formerly used to house the Large Electron–Positron Collider.[32] It crosses the border between Switzerland and France at four points, with most of it in France. Surface buildings hold ancillary equipment such as compressors, ventilation equipment, control electronics and refrigeration plants.

The collider tunnel contains two adjacent parallel beamlines (or beam pipes) that intersect at four points, each containing a proton beam, which travel in opposite directions around the ring. Some 1,232 dipole magnets keep the beams on their circular path (see image[33]), while an additional 392 quadrupole magnets are used to keep the beams focused, in order to maximize the chances of interaction between the particles in the four intersection points, where the two beams will cross. In total, over 1,600 superconducting magnets are installed, with most weighing over 27 tonnes.[34] Approximately 96 tonnes of superfluid helium 4 is needed to keep the magnets, made of copper-clad niobium-titanium, at their operating temperature of 1.9 K (−271.25 °C), making the LHC the largest cryogenic facility in the world at liquid helium temperature.

Image
Superconducting quadrupole electromagnets are used to direct the beams to four intersection points, where interactions between accelerated protons will take place.

When running at full design power of 7 TeV per beam, once or twice a day, as the protons are accelerated from 450 GeV to 7 TeV, the field of the superconducting dipole magnets will be increased from 0.54 to 8.3 teslas (T). The protons will each have an energy of 7 TeV, giving a total collision energy of 14 TeV. At this energy the protons have a Lorentz factor of about 7,500 and move at about 0.999999991 c, or about 3 metres per second slower than the speed of light (c).[35] It will take less than 90 microseconds (μs) for a proton to travel once around the main ring – a speed of about 11,000 revolutions per second. Rather than continuous beams, the protons will be bunched together, into 2,808 bunches, 115 billion protons in each bunch so that interactions between the two beams will take place at discrete intervals never shorter than 25 nanoseconds (ns) apart. However it will be operated with fewer bunches when it is first commissioned, giving it a bunch crossing interval of 75 ns.[36] The design luminosity of the LHC is 1034 cm−2s−1, providing a bunch collision rate of 40 MHz.[37]

Prior to being injected into the main accelerator, the particles are prepared by a series of systems that successively increase their energy. The first system is the linear particle accelerator LINAC 2 generating 50-MeV protons, which feeds the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB). There the protons are accelerated to 1.4 GeV and injected into the Proton Synchrotron (PS), where they are accelerated to 26 GeV. Finally the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is used to further increase their energy to 450 GeV before they are at last injected (over a period of 4 minutes 20 seconds) into the main ring. Here the proton bunches are accumulated, accelerated (over a period of 20 minutes) to their peak 4-TeV energy, and finally circulated for 10 to 24 hours while collisions occur at the four intersection points.[38]

Image
CMS detector for LHC

The LHC physics program is mainly based on proton–proton collisions. However, shorter running periods, typically one month per year, with heavy-ion collisions are included in the program. While lighter ions are considered as well, the baseline scheme deals with lead ions[39] (see A Large Ion Collider Experiment). The lead ions will be first accelerated by the linear accelerator LINAC 3, and the Low-Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) will be used as an ion storage and cooler unit. The ions will then be further accelerated by the PS and SPS before being injected into LHC ring, where they will reach an energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon (or 575 TeV per ion), higher than the energies reached by the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The aim of the heavy-ion program is to investigate quark–gluon plasma, which existed in the early universe.

Detectors

See also: List of Large Hadron Collider experiments

Seven detectors have been constructed at the LHC, located underground in large caverns excavated at the LHC's intersection points. Two of them, the ATLAS experiment and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), are large, general purpose particle detectors.[31] A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) and LHCb, have more specific roles and the last three, TOTEM, MoEDAL and LHCf, are very much smaller and are for very specialized research. The BBC's summary of the main detectors is:[40]

Detector Description

ATLAS One of two general purpose detectors. ATLAS will be used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass and extra dimensions.
CMS The other general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter.
ALICE ALICE is studying a "fluid" form of matter called quark–gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang.
LHCb Equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the "missing" antimatter.

Computing and analysis facilities

Main article: LHC Computing Grid

The LHC Computing Grid is an international collaborative project that consists of a grid-based computer network infrastructure connecting 140 computing centers in 35 countries (over 170 in 36 countries as of 2012). It was designed by CERN to handle the significant volume of data produced by LHC experiments.[6][7]

By 2012 data from over 300 trillion (3 x 1014) LHC proton-proton collisions had been analyzed,[8] LHC collision data was being produced at approximately 25 petabytes per year, and the LHC Computing Grid had become the world's largest computing grid (as of 2012), comprising over 170 computing facilities in a worldwide network across 36 countries.[8][9][10]

Operational history

Inaugural tests


The first beam was circulated through the collider on the morning of 10 September 2008.[40] CERN successfully fired the protons around the tunnel in stages, three kilometres at a time. The particles were fired in a clockwise direction into the accelerator and successfully steered around it at 10:28 local time.[41] The LHC successfully completed its major test: after a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen showing the protons travelled the full length of the collider. It took less than one hour to guide the stream of particles around its inaugural circuit.[42] CERN next successfully sent a beam of protons in a counterclockwise direction, taking slightly longer at one and a half hours due to a problem with the cryogenics, with the full circuit being completed at 14:59.

2008 quench incident

On 19 September 2008, a magnet quench occurred in about 100 bending magnets in sectors 3 and 4, where an electrical fault led to a loss of approximately six tonnes of liquid helium (the magnets' cryogenic coolant), which was vented into the tunnel. The escaping vapor expanded with explosive force, damaging over 50 superconducting magnets and their mountings, and contaminating the vacuum pipe, which also lost vacuum conditions.[12][13][43]

Shortly after the incident CERN reported that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, and that – due to the time needed to warm up the affected sectors and then cool them back down to operating temperature – it would take at least two months to fix.[44] CERN released an interim technical report[43] and preliminary analysis of the incident on 15 and 16 October 2008 respectively,[45] and a more detailed report on 5 December 2008.[46] The analysis of the incident by CERN confirmed that an electrical fault had indeed been the cause. The faulty electrical connection had led (correctly) to a failsafe power abort of the electrical systems powering the superconducting magnets, but had also caused an electric arc (or discharge) which damaged the integrity of the supercooled helium's enclosure and vacuum insulation, causing the coolant's temperature and pressure to rapidly rise beyond the ability of the safety systems to contain it,[43] and leading to a temperature rise of about 100 degrees celsius in some of the affected magnets. Energy stored in the superconducting magnets and electrical noise induced in other quench detectors also played a role in the rapid heating. Around two tonnes of liquid helium escaped explosively before detectors triggered an emergency stop, and a further four tonnes leaked at lower pressure in the aftermath.[43] A total of 53 magnets were damaged in the incident and were repaired or replaced during the winter shutdown.[47]

In the original timeline of the LHC commissioning, the first "modest" high-energy collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 900 GeV were expected to take place before the end of September 2008, and the LHC was expected to be operating at 10 TeV by the end of 2008.[48] However, due to the delay caused by the above-mentioned incident, the collider was not operational until November 2009.[49] Despite the delay, LHC was officially inaugurated on 21 October 2008, in the presence of political leaders, science ministers from CERN's 20 Member States, CERN officials, and members of the worldwide scientific community.[50]

Most of 2009 was spent on repairs and reviews from the damage caused by the quench incident, along with two further vacuum leaks identified in July 2009 which pushed the start of operations to November of that year.[51]

Full operation

On 20 November 2009, low-energy beams circulated in the tunnel for the first time since the incident, and shortly after, on 30 November, the LHC achieved 1.18 TeV per beam to become the world's highest-energy particle accelerator, beating the Tevatron's previous record of 0.98 TeV per beam held for eight years.[52]

The early part of 2010 saw the continued ramp-up of beam in energies and early physics experiments towards 3.5 TeV per beam and on 30 March 2010, LHC set the present record for high-energy collisions by colliding proton beams at a combined energy level of 7 TeV. The attempt was the third that day, after two unsuccessful attempts in which the protons had to be "dumped" from the collider and new beams had to be injected.[53] This also marked the start of its main research program.

The first proton run ended on 4 November 2010. A run with lead ions started on 8 November 2010, and ended on 6 December 2010,[54] allowing the ALICE experiment to study matter under extreme conditions similar to those shortly after the Big Bang.[55]

CERN originally planned that the LHC would run through to the end of 2012, with a short break at the end of 2011 to allow for an increase in beam energy from 3.5 to 4 TeV per beam.[18] At the end of 2012 the LHC would be shut down until around 2015 to allow upgrade to a planned beam energy of 7 TeV per beam.[19] In late 2012, in light of the July 2012 discovery of a new particle, the shutdown was postponed for some weeks into early 2013, to allow additional data to be obtained prior to shutdown.

Timeline of operations

Date Event

10 Sep 2008 CERN successfully fired the first protons around the entire tunnel circuit in stages.
19 Sep 2008 Magnetic quench occurred in about 100 bending magnets in sectors 3 and 4, causing a loss of approximately 6 tonnes of liquid helium.
30 Sep 2008 First "modest" high-energy collisions planned but postponed due to accident.[34]
16 Oct 2008 CERN released a preliminary analysis of the accident.
21 Oct 2008 Official inauguration.
5 Dec 2008 CERN released detailed analysis.
20 Nov 2009 Low-energy beams circulated in the tunnel for the first time since the accident.[56]
23 Nov 2009 First particle collisions in all four detectors at 450 GeV.
30 Nov 2009 LHC becomes the world's highest-energy particle accelerator achieving 1.18 TeV per beam, beating the Tevatron's previous record of 0.98 TeV per beam held for eight years.[52]
15 Dec 2009 First scientific results, covering 284 collisions in the ALICE detector.[57]
early Feb 2010 First proton-proton collisions beyond FermiLab's energies, published by the CMS team.[58]
28 Feb 2010 The LHC continues operations ramping energies to run at 3.5 TeV for 18 months to two years, after which it will be shut down to prepare for the 14 TeV collisions (7 TeV per beam).[59]
30 Mar 2010 The two beams collided at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) in the LHC at 13:06 CEST, marking the start of the LHC research program.
8 Nov 2010 Start of the first run with lead ions.
6 Dec 2010 End of the run with lead ions. Shutdown until early 2011.
13 Mar 2011 Beginning of the 2011 run with proton beams.[60]
21 Apr 2011 LHC becomes the world's highest-luminosity hadron accelerator achieving a peak luminosity of 4.67·1032 cm−2s−1, beating the Tevatron's previous record of 4·1032 cm−2s−1 held for one year.[61]
24 May 2011 Quark–gluon plasma achieved.[62]
17 June 2011 The high luminosity experiments ATLAS and CMS reach 1 fb-1 of collected data.[63]
14 Oct 2011 LHCb reaches 1 fb−1 of collected data.[64]
23 Oct 2011 The high luminosity experiments ATLAS and CMS reach 5 fb−1 of collected data.
Nov 2011 Second run with lead ions.
22 Dec 2011 First new composite particle discovery, the χb (3P) bottomonium meson, observed with proton-proton collisions in 2011.[65]
5 Apr 2012 First collisions with stable beams in 2012 after the winter shutdown. The energy is increased to 4 TeV per beam (8 TeV in collisions).[66]
4 July 2012 First new elementary particle discovery, a new boson observed that is "consistent with" the theorized Higgs boson. (This has now been confirmed as the Higgs boson itself.[67])
8 Nov 2012 First observation of the very rare decay of the Bs meson into two muons (Bs0 → μ+μ−), a major test of supersymmetry theories,[68] shows results at 3.5 sigma that match the Standard Model rather than many of its super-symmetrical variants.
20 Jan 2013 Start of the first run colliding protons with Lead ions.
11 Feb 2013 End of the first run colliding protons with Lead ions.
14 Feb 2013 Beginning of the first long shutdown, to prepare the collider for a higher energy and luminosity. When reactivated in late 2014, the LHC will operate with an energy of 13 teraelectronvolts; almost double its current maximum energy.[69]

Findings

CERN scientists estimated that, if the Standard Model is correct, a single Higgs boson would be produced every few hours, and that over a few years enough data to confirm or disprove the Higgs boson unambiguously and to obtain sufficient results concerning supersymmetric particles would be gathered to draw meaningful conclusions.[4] Some extensions of the Standard Model predict additional particles, such as the heavy W' and Z' gauge bosons, which may also lie within reach of the LHC to discover.[70]

The first physics results from the LHC, involving 284 collisions which took place in the ALICE detector, were reported on 15 December 2009.[57] The results of the first proton–proton collisions at energies higher than Fermilab's Tevatron proton–antiproton collisions were published by the CMS collaboration in early February 2010, yielding greater-than-predicted charged-hadron production.[58]

After the first year of data collection, the LHC experimental collaborations started to release their preliminary results concerning searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model in proton-proton collisions.[71][72][73][74] No evidence of new particles was detected in the 2010 data. As a result, bounds were set on the allowed parameter space of various extensions of the Standard Model, such as models with large extra dimensions, constrained versions of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, and others.[75][76][77]

On 24 May 2011, it was reported that quark–gluon plasma (the densest matter besides black holes) has been created in the LHC.[62]

Between July and August 2011, results of searches for the Higgs boson and for exotic particles, based on the data collected during the first half of the 2011 run, were presented in conferences in Grenoble[78] and Mumbai.[79] In the latter conference it was reported that, despite hints of a Higgs signal in earlier data, ATLAS and CMS exclude with 95% confidence level (using the CLs method) the existence of a Higgs boson with the properties predicted by the Standard Model over most of the mass region between 145 and 466 GeV.[80] The searches for new particles did not yield signals either, allowing to further constrain the parameter space of various extensions of the Standard Model, including its supersymmetric extensions.[81][82]

On 13 December 2011, CERN reported that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 115–130 GeV. Both the CMS and ATLAS detectors have also shown intensity peaks in the 124–125 GeV range, consistent with either background noise or the observation of the Higgs boson.[83]

On 22 December 2011, it was reported that a new particle had been observed, the χb (3P) bottomonium state.[65]

On 4 July 2012, both the CMS and ATLAS teams announced the discovery of a boson in the mass region around 125–126 GeV, with a statistical significance at the level of 5 sigma. This meets the formal level required to announce a new particle which is consistent with the Higgs boson, but scientists are cautious as to whether it is formally identified as actually being the Higgs boson, pending further analysis.[84]

On 8 November 2012, the LHCb team reported on an experiment seen as a "golden" test of supersymmetry theories in physics,[68] by measuring the very rare decay of the Bs meson into two muons (Bs0 → μ+μ−). The results, which match those predicted by the non-supersymmetrical Standard Model rather than the predictions of many branches of supersymmetry, show the decays are less common than some forms of supersymmetry predict, though could still match the predictions of other versions of supersymmetry theory. The results as initially drafted are stated to be short of proof but at a relatively high 3.5 sigma level of significance.[85]

In August 2013 the team revealed an anomaly in the angular distribution of B meson decay products which could not be predicted by the Standard Model; this anomaly had a statistical certainty of 4.5 sigma, just short of the 5 sigma needed to be officially recognized as a discovery. It is unknown what the cause of this anomaly would be, although the Z' boson has been suggested as a possible candidate.[86]

Proposed upgrade

Main article: High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider

After some years of running, any particle physics experiment typically begins to suffer from diminishing returns: as the key results reachable by the device begin to be completed, later years of operation discover proportionately less than earlier years. A common outcome is to upgrade the devices involved, typically in energy, in luminosity, or in terms of improved detectors. As well as the planned 2013–2015 increase to its intended 14 TeV collision energy, a luminosity upgrade of the LHC, called the High Luminosity LHC, has also been proposed,[87] to be made in 2018 after ten years of operation.

The optimal path for the LHC luminosity upgrade includes an increase in the beam current (i.e. the number of protons in the beams) and the modification of the two high-luminosity interaction regions, ATLAS and CMS. To achieve these increases, the energy of the beams at the point that they are injected into the (Super) LHC should also be increased to 1 TeV. This will require an upgrade of the full pre-injector system, the needed changes in the Super Proton Synchrotron being the most expensive. Currently the collaborative research effort of LHC Accelerator Research Program, LARP, is conducting research into how to achieve these goals.[88]

Cost

See also: List of megaprojects

With a budget of 7.5 billion euros (approx. $9bn or £6.19bn as of June 2010), the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments[89] ever built.[90] The total cost of the project is expected to be of the order of 4.6bn Swiss francs (CHF) (approx. $4.4bn, €3.1bn, or £2.8bn as of Jan 2010) for the accelerator and 1.16bn (CHF) (approx. $1.1bn, €0.8bn, or £0.7bn as of Jan 2010) for the CERN contribution to the experiments.[91]

The construction of LHC was approved in 1995 with a budget of SFr 2.6bn, with another SFr 210M towards the experiments. However, cost overruns, estimated in a major review in 2001 at around SFr 480M for the accelerator, and SFr 50M for the experiments, along with a reduction in CERN's budget, pushed the completion date from 2005 to April 2007.[92] The superconducting magnets were responsible for SFr 180M of the cost increase. There were also further costs and delays due to engineering difficulties encountered while building the underground cavern for the Compact Muon Solenoid,[93] and also due to faulty parts provided by Fermilab.[94] Due to lower electricity costs during the summer, it is expected that the LHC will normally not operate over the winter months,[95] although an exception was made to make up for the 2008 start-up delays over the 2009/10 winter.

Computing resources

Data produced by LHC, as well as LHC-related simulation, was estimated at approximately 15 petabytes per year (max throughput while running not stated).[96
]
The LHC Computing Grid[97] was constructed to handle the massive amounts of data produced. It incorporated both private fiber optic cable links and existing high-speed portions of the public Internet, enabling data transfer from CERN to academic institutions around the world.[98]

The Open Science Grid is used as the primary infrastructure in the United States, and also as part of an interoperable federation with the LHC Computing Grid.

The distributed computing project LHC@home was started to support the construction and calibration of the LHC. The project uses the BOINC platform, enabling anybody with an Internet connection and a computer running Mac OSX, Windows or Linux,[99] to use their computer's idle time to simulate how particles will travel in the tunnel. With this information, the scientists will be able to determine how the magnets should be calibrated to gain the most stable "orbit" of the beams in the ring.[100] In August 2011, a second application went live (Test4Theory) which performs simulations against which to compare actual test data, to determine confidence levels of the results.

Safety of particle collisions

Main article: Safety of high energy particle collision experiments

The experiments at the Large Hadron Collider sparked fears among the public that the particle collisions might produce doomsday phenomena, involving the production of stable microscopic black holes or the creation of hypothetical particles called strangelets.[101] Two CERN-commissioned safety reviews examined these concerns and concluded that the experiments at the LHC present no danger and that there is no reason for concern,[102][103][104] a conclusion expressly endorsed by the American Physical Society.[105]

The reports also noted that the physical conditions and collision events which exist in the LHC and similar experiments occur naturally and routinely in the universe without hazardous consequences,[103] including ultra-high-energy cosmic rays observed to impact Earth with energies far higher than those in any man-made collider.

Operational challenges

The size of the LHC constitutes an exceptional engineering challenge with unique operational issues on account of the amount of energy stored in the magnets and the beams.[38][106] While operating, the total energy stored in the magnets is 10 GJ (2,400 kilograms of TNT) and the total energy carried by the two beams reaches 724 MJ (173 kilograms of TNT).[107]

Loss of only one ten-millionth part (10−7) of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet, while the beam dump must absorb 362 MJ (87 kilograms of TNT) for each of the two beams. These energies are carried by very little matter: under nominal operating conditions (2,808 bunches per beam, 1.15×1011 protons per bunch), the beam pipes contain 1.0×10−9 gram of hydrogen, which, in standard conditions for temperature and pressure, would fill the volume of one grain of fine sand.

Construction accidents and delays

Wikinews has related news: CERN says repairs to LHC particle accelerator to cost €16.6 million

On 25 October 2005, José Pereira Lages, a technician, was killed in the LHC when a switchgear that was being transported fell on him.[108]

On 27 March 2007 a cryogenic magnet support broke during a pressure test involving one of the LHC's inner triplet (focusing quadrupole) magnet assemblies, provided by Fermilab and KEK. No one was injured. Fermilab director Pier Oddone stated "In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces". This fault had been present in the original design, and remained during four engineering reviews over the following years.[109] Analysis revealed that its design, made as thin as possible for better insulation, was not strong enough to withstand the forces generated during pressure testing. Details are available in a statement from Fermilab, with which CERN is in agreement.[110][111] Repairing the broken magnet and reinforcing the eight identical assemblies used by LHC delayed the startup date, then planned for November 2007.

Problems occurred on 19 September 2008 during powering tests of the main dipole circuit, when an electrical fault in the bus between magnets caused a rupture and a leak of six tonnes of liquid helium. The operation was delayed for several months.[112] It is currently believed that a faulty electrical connection between two magnets caused an arc, which compromised the liquid-helium containment. Once the cooling layer was broken, the helium flooded the surrounding vacuum layer with sufficient force to break 10-ton magnets from their mountings. The explosion also contaminated the proton tubes with soot.[46][113] This accident was thoroughly discussed in a 22 February 2010 Superconductor Science and Technology article by CERN physicist Lucio Rossi.[114]

Two vacuum leaks were identified in July 2009, and the start of operations was further postponed to mid-November 2009.[51]

Popular culture

The Large Hadron Collider gained a considerable amount of attention from outside the scientific community and its progress is followed by most popular science media. The LHC has also inspired works of fiction including novels, TV series, and video games.

The novel Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown, involves antimatter created at the LHC to be used in a weapon against the Vatican. In response CERN published a "Fact or Fiction?" page discussing the accuracy of the book's portrayal of the LHC, CERN, and particle physics in general.[115] The movie version of the book has footage filmed on-site at one of the experiments at the LHC; the director, Ron Howard, met with CERN experts in an effort to make the science in the story more accurate.[116]

The novel FlashForward, by Robert J. Sawyer, involves the search for the Higgs boson at the LHC. CERN published a "Science and Fiction" page interviewing Sawyer and physicists about the book and the TV series based on it.[117]

CERN employee Katherine McAlpine's "Large Hadron Rap"[118] surpassed 7 million YouTube views.[119][120] The band Les Horribles Cernettes was founded by women from CERN. The name was chosen so to have the same initials as the LHC.[121][122]

National Geographic Channel's World's Toughest Fixes, Season 2 (2010), Episode 6 "Atom Smasher" features the replacement of the last superconducting magnet section in the repair of the supercollider after the 2008 quench incident. The episode includes actual footage from the repair facility to the inside of the supercollider, and explanations of the function, engineering, and purpose of the LHC.[123]

The Large Hadron Collider was the focus of the 2012 student film Decay, with the movie being filmed on location in CERN's maintenance tunnels.[124]

Canadian rock musician, Nim Vind wrote and recorded a song called "Hadron Collider".

See also

Book icon
Book: Large Hadron Collider
Bose–Einstein statistics
Compact Linear Collider
International Linear Collider
Very Large Hadron Collider
List of accelerators in particle physics
High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider

References

"Missing Higgs". CERN. 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-10.
"Towards a superforce". CERN. 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-10.
Highfield, Roger (16 September 2008). "Large Hadron Collider: Thirteen ways to change the world". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 2008-10-10.
"What is LHCb". CERN FAQ. CERN Communication Group. January 2008. p. 44. Retrieved 2010-04-02.[dead link]
Amina Khan (31 March 2010). "Large Hadron Collider rewards scientists watching at Caltech". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-04-02.
What is the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid?. CERN. January 2011. Retrieved 2012-01-11.[dead link]
Welcome. CERN. January 2011. Retrieved 2012-01-11.[dead link]
Hunt for Higgs boson hits key decision point
Worldwide LHC Computing Grid main page 14 November 2012: "[A] global collaboration of more than 170 computing centres in 36 countries ... to store, distribute and analyse the ~25 Petabytes (25 million Gigabytes) of data annually generated by the Large Hadron Collider"
What is the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid? (Public 'About' page) 14 November 2012: "Currently WLCG is made up of more than 170 computing centers in 36 countries...The WLCG is now the world's largest computing grid"
"First beam in the LHC – Accelerating science" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 10 September 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-09.
Paul Rincon (23 September 2008). "Collider halted until next year". BBC News. Retrieved 2008-10-09.
"Large Hadron Collider – Purdue Particle Physics". Physics.purdue.edu. Retrieved 2012-07-05.[dead link]
Large Hadron Collider.
"The LHC is back" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 20 November 2009. Retrieved 2009-11-20.
"Two circulating beams bring first collisions in the LHC" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 23 November 2009. Retrieved 2009-11-23.
"CERN LHC sees high-energy success" (Press release). BBC News. 30 March 2010. Retrieved 2010-03-30.
CERN Press Office (13 February 2012). "LHC to run at 4 TeV per beam in 2012". CERN.
CERN Press Office (17 December 2012). "The first LHC protons run ends with new milestone". CERN.
G. F. Giudice, A Zeptospace Odyssey: A Journey into the Physics of the LHC, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-958191-71.
Brian Greene (11 September 2008). "The Origins of the Universe: A Crash Course". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-04-17.
"... in the public presentations of the aspiration of particle physics we hear too often that the goal of the LHC or a linear collider is to check off the last missing particle of the Standard Model, this year's Holy Grail of particle physics, the Higgs boson. The truth is much less boring than that! What we're trying to accomplish is much more exciting, and asking what the world would have been like without the Higgs mechanism is a way of getting at that excitement." – Chris Quigg (2005). "Nature's Greatest Puzzles". Econf C:l. 040802 (1). arXiv:hep-ph/0502070. Bibcode:2005hep.ph....2070Q.
"Why the LHC". CERN. 2008. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"Zeroing in on the elusive Higgs boson". US Department of Energy. March 2001. Retrieved 2008-12-11.
"Accordingly, in common with many of my colleagues, I think it highly likely that both the Higgs boson and other new phenomena will be found with the LHC."..."This mass threshold means, among other things, that something new – either a Higgs boson or other novel phenomena – is to be found when the LHC turns the thought experiment into a real one."Chris Quigg (February 2008). "The coming revolutions in particle physics". Scientific American. pp. 38–45. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
Shaaban Khalil (2003). "Search for supersymmetry at LHC". Contemporary Physics 44 (3): 193–201. Bibcode:2003ConPh..44..193K. doi:10.1080/0010751031000077378.
Alexander Belyaev (2009). "Supersymmetry status and phenomenology at the Large Hadron Collider". Pramana 72 (1): 143–160. Bibcode:2009Prama..72..143B. doi:10.1007/s12043-009-0012-0.
Anil Ananthaswamy (11 November 2009). "In SUSY we trust: What the LHC is really looking for". New Scientist.
Lisa Randall (2002). "Extra Dimensions and Warped Geometries". Science 296 (5572): 1422–1427. Bibcode:2002Sci...296.1422R. doi:10.1126/science.1072567. PMID 12029124.
Panagiota Kanti (2009). "Black Holes at the LHC". Lecture Notes in Physics. Lecture Notes in Physics 769: 387–423. arXiv:0802.2218. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88460-6_10. ISBN 978-3-540-88459-0.
Joel Achenbach (March 2008). "The God Particle". National Geographic Magazine. Retrieved 2008-02-25.
"The Z factory". CERN. 2008. Retrieved 2009-04-17.
Henley, E. M.; Ellis, S. D., eds. (2013). 100 Years of Subatomic Physics. World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-4425-80-3.
Dr. Stephen Myers (4 October 2013). "The Large Hadron Collider 2008-2013". International Journal of Modern Physics A 28 (25): 1330035–1–1330035–65. doi:10.1142/S0217751X13300354.
"LHC: How Fast do These Protons Go?". yogiblog. Retrieved 2008-10-29.
"LHC commissioning with beam". CERN. Retrieved 2009-04-17.
"Operational Experience of the ATLAS High Level Trigger with Single-Beam and Cosmic Rays" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-10-29.
Jörg Wenninger (November 2007). "Operational challenges of the LHC" (PowerPoint). p. 53. Retrieved 2009-04-17.
"Ions for LHC (I-LHC) Project". CERN. 1 November 2007. Retrieved 2009-04-17.
Paul Rincon (10 September 2008). "'Big Bang' experiment starts well". BBC News. Retrieved 2009-04-17.
"First beam in the LHC – Accelerating science" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 10 September 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-10.
Mark Henderson (10 September 2008). "Scientists cheer as protons complete first circuit of Large Hadron Collider". Times Online (London). Retrieved 2008-10-06.
"Interim Summary Report on the Analysis of the 19 September 2008 Incident at the LHC" (PDF). CERN. 15 October 2008. EDMS 973073. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"Incident in LHC sector 3–4" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 20 September 2008. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"CERN releases analysis of LHC incident" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 16 October 2008. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"LHC to restart in 2009" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 5 December 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-08.
"Final LHC magnet goes underground" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 30 April 2009. Retrieved 2009-08-04.
"CERN announces start-up date for LHC" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 7 August 2008.
"CERN management confirms new LHC restart schedule" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 9 February 2009. Retrieved 2009-02-10.
"CERN inaugurates the LHC" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 21 October 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-21.
"News on the LHC". CERN. 16 July 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"LHC sets new world record" (Press release). CERN. 30 November 2009. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
"Big Bang Machine sets collision record". The Hindu. Associated Press. 30 March 2010.
"CERN completes transition to lead-ion running at the LHC" (Press release). CERN. 8 November 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-08.[dead link]
"The Latest from the LHC : Last period of proton running for 2010. – CERN Bulletin". Cdsweb.cern.ch. 1 November 2010. Retrieved 2011-08-17.
"The LHC is back" (Press release). CERN. 20 November 2009. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
First Science Produced at LHC 2009-12-15
V. Khachatryan et al. (CMS collaboration) (2010). "Transverse momentum and pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in pp collisions at √s = 0.9 and 2.36 TeV". Journal of High Energy Physics 2010 (2): 1–35. arXiv:1002.0621. Bibcode:2010JHEP...02..041K. doi:10.1007/JHEP02(2010)041.
"Large Hadron Collider to come back online after break". BBC News. 19 February 2010. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
"LHC sees first stable-beam 3.5 TeV collisions of 2011". symmetry breaking. 13 March 2011. Retrieved 2011-03-15.
CERN Press Office (22 April 2011). "LHC sets world record beam intensity". Press.web.cern.ch. Retrieved 2011-05-22.
Densest Matter Created in Big-Bang Machine, National Geographic Daily News
"LHC achieves 2011 data milestone". Press.web.cern.ch. 17 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-20.
"One recorded inverse femtobarn".
Jonathan Amos (22 December 2011). "LHC reports discovery of its first new particle". BBC News.
"LHC physics data taking gets underway at new record collision energy of 8TeV". Press.web.cern.ch. 5 April 2012. Retrieved 2012-04-05.
"New results indicate that new particle is a Higgs boson". CERN. 14 March 2013. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
Ghosh, Pallab (12 Nov 2012). "Popular physics theory running out of hiding places". BBC News. Retrieved 14 November 2012.
"The first LHC protons run ends with new milestone". CERN. 17 December 2012. Retrieved 10 March 2014.
P. Rincon (17 May 2010). "LHC particle search 'nearing', says physicist". BBC News.
V. Khachatryan et al. (CMS collaboration) (2011). "Search for Microscopic Black Hole Signatures at the Large Hadron Collider". Physics Letters B 697 (5): 434. arXiv:1012.3375. Bibcode:2011PhLB..697..434C. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2011.02.032.
V. Khachatryan et al. (CMS collaboration) (2011). "Search for Supersymmetry in pp Collisions at 7 TeV in Events with Jets and Missing Transverse Energy". Physics Letters B 698 (3): 196. arXiv:1101.1628. Bibcode:2011PhLB..698..196C. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2011.03.021.
G. Aad et al. (ATLAS collaboration) (2011). "Search for supersymmetry using final states with one lepton, jets, and missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector in √s = 7 TeV pp". Physical Review Letters 106 (13): 131802. arXiv:1102.2357. Bibcode:2011PhRvL.106m1802A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.131802.
G. Aad et al. (ATLAS collaboration) (2011). "Search for squarks and gluinos using final states with jets and missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector in √s = 7 TeV proton-proton collisions". Physics Letters B 701 (2): 186–203. arXiv:1102.5290. Bibcode:2011PhLB..701..186A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2011.05.061.
Chalmers, M. Reality check at the LHC, physicsworld.com, Jan 18, 2011
McAlpine, K. Will the LHC find supersymmetry?, physicsworld.com, Feb 22, 2011
Geoff Brumfiel (2011). "Beautiful theory collides with smashing particle data". Nature 471 (7336): 13–14. Bibcode:2011Natur.471...13B. doi:10.1038/471013a.
CERN Press Office (21 July 2011). "LHC experiments present their latest results at Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics". Press.web.cern.ch. Retrieved 2011-09-01.
CERN Press Office (22 August 2011). "LHC experiments present latest results at Mumbai conference". Press.web.cern.ch. Retrieved 2011-09-01.
Pallab Ghosh (22 August 2011). "Higgs boson range narrows at European collider". BBC News.
Pallab Ghosh (27 August 2011). "LHC results put supersymmetry theory 'on the spot'". BBC News.
"LHCb experiment sees Standard Model physics". Symmetry Breaking. SLAC/Fermilab. 29 August 2011. Retrieved 2011-09-01.
"ATLAS and CMS experiments present Higgs search status". CERN. 13 December 2011. Retrieved 2 January 2012.
"CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson". CERN. 4 July 2012. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
First evidence for the decay B0>0 → μ+-[dead link], 8 Nov 2012, draft, LCHb collaboration.
"Hints of New Physics Detected in the LHC?".
F. Ruggerio (29 September 2005). "LHC upgrade (accelerator)". 8th ICFA Seminar. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"DOE Review of LARP". Fermilab. 5–6 June 2007. Retrieved 2011-06-09.
"CERN – The Large Hadron Collider". Public.web.cern.ch. Retrieved 2010-08-28.
Agence Science-Presse (7 December 2009). "LHC: Un (très) petit Big Bang" (in French). Lien Multimédia. Retrieved 2010-10-29. Google translation
"How much does it cost?". CERN. 2007. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
Luciano Maiani (16 October 2001). "LHC Cost Review to Completion". CERN. Retrieved 2001-01-15.
Toni Feder (2001). "CERN Grapples with LHC Cost Hike". Physics Today 54 (12): 21. Bibcode:2001PhT....54l..21F. doi:10.1063/1.1445534.
"Bursting magnets may delay CERN collider project". Reuters. 5 April 2007. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
Paul Rincon (23 September 2008). "Collider halted until next year". BBC News. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"Worldwide LHC Computing Grid". CERN. 2008. Retrieved 2 October 2011.
"grille de production : les petits pc du lhc". Cite-sciences.fr. Retrieved 2011-05-22.
"Worldwide LHC Computing Grid". Official public website. CERN. Retrieved 2 October 2011.[dead link]
BOINC client-server technology#Server design weaknesses, tecnologies weakness on win32 api
LHC@home, BOINC
Alan Boyle (2 September 2008). "Courts weigh doomsday claims". Cosmic Log. MSNBC. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
J.-P. Blaizot, J. Iliopoulos, J. Madsen, G.G. Ross, P. Sonderegger, H.-J. Specht (2003). "Study of Potentially Dangerous Events During Heavy-Ion Collisions at the LHC". CERN. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
J. Ellis J, G. Giudice, M.L. Mangano, T. Tkachev, U. Wiedemann (LHC Safety Assessment Group) (5 September 2008). "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions". Journal of Physics G 35 (11): 115004. arXiv:0806.3414. Bibcode:2008JPhG...35k5004E. doi:10.1088/0954-3899/35/11/115004.
"The safety of the LHC". CERN. 2008. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
Division of Particles & Fields. "Statement by the Executive Committee of the DPF on the Safety of Collisions at the Large Hadron Collider". American Physical Society. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"Challenges in accelerator physics". CERN. 14 January 1999. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
John Poole (2004). "Beam Parameters and Definitions".
Robert Aymar (26 October 2005). "Message from the Director-General" (Press release). CERN Press Office. Retrieved 2013-06-12.
"Fermilab 'Dumbfounded' by fiasco that broke magnet". Photonics.com. 4 April 2007. Archived from the original on 2008-06-16. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"Fermilab update on inner triplet magnets at LHC: Magnet repairs underway at CERN" (Press release). CERN Press Office. 1 June 2007. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"Updates on LHC inner triplet failure". Fermilab Today. Fermilab. 28 September 2007. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
Paul Rincon (23 September 2008). "Collider halted until next year". BBC News. Retrieved 2009-09-29.
Dennis Overbye (5 December 2008). "After repairs, summer start-up planned for collider". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-12-08.
L. Rossi (2010). "Superconductivity: its role, its success and its setbacks in the Large Hadron Collider of CERN". Superconductor Science and Technology 23 (3): 034001. Bibcode:2010SuScT..23c4001R. doi:10.1088/0953-2048/23/3/034001.
"Angels and Demons". CERN. January 2008. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
Ceri Perkins (2 June 2008). "ATLAS gets the Hollywood treatment". ATLAS e-News. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
"FlashForward". CERN. September 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-03.
Katherine McAlpine (28 July 2008). "Large Hadron Rap". YouTube. Retrieved 2011-05-08.
Roger Highfield (6 September 2008). "Rap about world's largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit". Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 2009-09-28.
Jennifer Bogo (1 August 2008). "Large Hadron Collider rap teaches particle physics in 4 minutes". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
Malcolm W Brown (29 December 1998). "Physicists Discover Another Unifying Force: Doo-Wop". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-09-21.
Heather McCabe (10 February 1999). "Grrl Geeks Rock Out". Wired News. Retrieved 2010-09-21.
"Atom Smashers". World's Toughest Fixes. Season 2. Episode 6. National Geographic Channel. Retrieved 15 June 2014.
Boyle, Rebecca (2012-10-31). "Large Hadron Collider Unleashes Rampaging Zombies". Retrieved 22 November 2012.

External Links

Official website
Overview of the LHC at CERN's public webpage
CERN Courier magazine
CERN on Twitter
CMS Experiment at CERN on Twitter
Unofficial CERN on Twitter
LHC Portal Web portal
CERN, how it works on YouTube
Lyndon Evans and Philip Bryant (eds) (2008). "LHC Machine". Journal of Instrumentation 3 (8): S08001. Bibcode:2008JInst...3S8001E. doi:10.1088/1748-0221/3/08/S08001. Full documentation for design and construction of the LHC and its six detectors (1600p).
symmetry magazine LHC special issue August 2006[dead link], special issue December 2007[dead link]
New Yorker: Crash Course. The world's largest particle accelerator.
NYTimes: A Giant Takes On Physics' Biggest Questions.
Why a Large Hadron Collider? Seed Magazine interviews with physicists.
Thirty collected pictures during commissioning and post- 19 September 2008 incident repair, from Boston Globe.
Podcast Interview with CERN's Rolf Landua about the LHC and the physics behind it
"Petabytes at the LHC". Sixty Symbols. Brady Haran for the University of Nottingham.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:37 pm

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
by Wikipedia


Hadron colliders

Intersecting Storage Rings CERN, 1971–1984
Super Proton Synchrotron CERN, 1981–1984
ISABELLE BNL, cancelled in 1983
Tevatron Fermilab, 1987–2011
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider BNL, 2000–present
Superconducting Super Collider Cancelled in 1993
Large Hadron Collider CERN, 2009–present
High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider Proposed, CERN, 2020–
Very Large Hadron Collider Theoretical

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC, /ˈrɪk/) is one of only two operating heavy-ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, and used by an international team of researchers, it is the only operating particle collider in the US.[1][2][3] By using RHIC to collide ions traveling at relativistic speeds, physicists study the primordial form of matter that existed in the universe shortly after the Big Bang.[4][5] By colliding spin-polarized protons, the spin structure of the proton is explored.

RHIC is now the second-highest-energy heavy-ion collider in the world. As of November 7, 2010, the LHC has collided heavy ions of lead at higher energies than RHIC.[6] The LHC operating time for ions is limited to about one month per year.

In 2010, RHIC physicists published results of temperature measurements from earlier experiments which concluded that temperatures in excess of 345 MeV (4 terakelvins or 7 trillion degrees Fahrenheit) had been achieved in gold ion collisions, and that these collision temperatures resulted in the breakdown of "normal matter" and the creation of a liquid-like quark–gluon plasma.[7]

The accelerator

RHIC is an intersecting storage ring particle accelerator. Two independent rings (arbitrarily denoted as "Blue" and "Yellow" rings) circulate heavy ions and/or protons in opposite directions and allow a virtually free choice of colliding positively charged particles (the eRHIC upgrade will allow collisions between positively and negatively charged particles). The RHIC double storage ring is itself hexagonally shaped and 3834 m long in circumference, with curved edges in which stored particles are deflected and focused by 1,740 superconducting magnets using niobium-titanium conductors. The dipole magnets operate at 3.45 T.[8] The six interaction points (between the particles circulating in the two rings) are at the middle of the six relatively straight sections, where the two rings cross, allowing the particles to collide. The interaction points are enumerated by clock positions, with the injection near 6 o'clock. Two large experiments, STAR and PHENIX, are located at 6 and 8 o'clock respectively.[9]

A particle passes through several stages of boosters before it reaches the RHIC storage ring. The first stage for ions is the electron beam ion source (EBIS), while for protons, the 200 MeV linear accelerator (Linac) is used. As an example, gold nuclei leaving the EBIS have a kinetic energy of 2 MeV per nucleon and have an electric charge Q = +32 (32 of 79 electrons stripped from the gold atom). The particles are then accelerated by the Booster Synchrotron to 100 MeV per nucleon, which injects the projectile now with Q = +77 into the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), before they finally reach 8.86 GeV per nucleon and are injected in a Q = +79 state (no electrons left) into the RHIC storage ring over the AGS-to-RHIC Transfer Line (AtR).

To date the types of particle combinations explored at RHIC are p + p, d + Au, Cu + Cu, Cu + Au, Au + Au and U + U. The projectiles typically travel at a speed of 99.995% of the speed of light. For Au + Au collisions, the center-of-mass energy is typically 200 GeV per nucleon-pair, and was as low as 7.7 GeV per nucleon-pair. An average luminosity of 2×1026 cm−2s−1 was targeted during the planning. The current average luminosity of the collider is 30×1026 cm−2s−1, 15 times the design value.[10] The heavy ion luminosity is increased by a factor of 2 through stochastic cooling. [11]

One unique characteristic of RHIC is its capability to collide polarized protons. RHIC holds the record of highest energy polarized protons. Polarized protons are injected into RHIC and preserve this state throughout the energy ramp. This is a difficult task that can only be accomplished with the aid of Siberian snakes (in RHIC a chain 4 helical dipole magnets).[12] Run-9 achieved center-of-mass energy of 500 GeV on 12 February 2009.[13] In Run-13 the average p + p luminosity of the collider reached 160×1030 cm−2s−1, with a time and intensity averaged polarization of 52%.[10]

The AC dipoles have been also used in non-linear machine diagnostics for the first time in RHIC.[14]

The experiments

There are two detectors continuing to operate at RHIC: STAR (6 o'clock, and near the AGS-to-RHIC Transfer Line) and PHENIX (8 o'clock). PHOBOS (10 o'clock) completed its operation in 2005, and BRAHMS (2 o'clock) in 2006.

Among the two larger detectors, STAR is aimed at the detection of hadrons with its system of time projection chambers covering a large solid angle and in a conventionally generated solenoidal magnetic field, while PHENIX is further specialized in detecting rare and electromagnetic particles, using a partial coverage detector system in a superconductively generated axial magnetic field. The smaller detectors have larger pseudorapidity coverage, PHOBOS has the largest pseudorapidity coverage of all detectors, and tailored for bulk particle multiplicity measurement, while BRAHMS is designed for momentum spectroscopy, in order to study the so-called "small-x" and saturation physics. There is an additional experiment, PP2PP (now part of STAR), investigating spin dependence in p + p scattering.[15]

The spokespersons for each of the experiments are:

STAR: Zhangbu Xu (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Physics Department)
PHENIX: David Morrison (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Physics Department) and James Nagle (University of Colorado Boulder, Physics Department)
PP2PP: Włodek Guryn (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Physics Department)

Current results

For a complementary discussion, see quark–gluon plasma.

For the experimental objective of creating and studying the quark–gluon plasma, RHIC has the unique ability to provide baseline measurements for itself. This consists of the both lower energy and also lower mass number projectile combinations that do not result in the density of 200 GeV Au + Au collisions, like the p + p and d + Au collisions of the earlier runs, and also Cu + Cu collisions in Run-5.

Using this approach, important results of the measurement of the hot QCD matter created at RHIC are:[16]

Collective anisotropy, or elliptic flow. The major part of the particles with lower momenta is emitted following an angular distribution dn/d\phi \propto 1 + 2 v_2(p_\mathrm{T}) \cos 2 \phi (pT is the transverse momentum, \phi angle with the reaction plane). This is a direct result of the elliptic shape of the nucleus overlap region during the collision and hydrodynamical property of the matter created.

Jet quenching. In the heavy ion collision event, scattering with a high transverse pT can serve as a probe for the hot QCD matter, as it loses its energy while traveling through the medium. Experimentally, the quantity RAA (A is the mass number) being the quotient of observed jet yield in A + A collisions and Nbin × yield in p + p collisions shows a strong damping with increasing A, which is an indication of the new properties of the hot QCD matter created.

Color glass condensate saturation. The Balitsky–Fadin–Kuraev–Lipatov (BFKL) dynamics[17] which are the result of a resummation of large logarithmic terms in Q² for deep inelastic scattering with small Bjorken-x, saturate at a unitarity limit Q_s^2 \propto \langle N_\mathrm{part} \rangle/2, with Npart/2 being the number of participant nucleons in a collision (as opposed to the number of binary collisions). The observed charged multiplicity follows the expected dependency of n_\mathrm{ch}/A \propto 1/\alpha_s(Q_s^2), supporting the predictions of the color glass condensate model. For a detailed discussion, see e.g. Kharzeev et al.;[18] for an overview of color glass condensates, see e.g. Iancu & Venugopalan.[19]

Particle ratios. The particle ratios predicted by statistical models allow the calculation of parameters such as the temperature at chemical freeze-out Tch and hadron chemical potential \mu_B. The experimental value Tch varies a bit with the model used, with most authors giving a value of 160 MeV < Tch < 180 MeV, which is very close to the expected QCD phase transition value of approximately 170 MeV obtained by lattice QCD calculations (see e.g. Karsch[20]).

While in the first years, theorists were eager to claim that RHIC has discovered the quark–gluon plasma (e.g. Gyulassy & McLarren[21]), the experimental groups were more careful not to jump to conclusions, citing various variables still in need of further measurement.[22] The present results shows that the matter created is a fluid with a viscosity near the quantum limit, but is unlike a weakly interacting plasma (a widespread yet not quantitatively unfounded belief on how quark–gluon plasma looks).

A recent overview of the physics result is provided by the RHIC Experimental Evaluations 2004, a community-wide effort of RHIC experiments to evaluate the current data in the context of implication for formation of a new state of matter.[23] These results are from the first three years of data collection at RHIC.

New results were published in Physical Review Letters on February 16, 2010, stating the discovery of the first hints of symmetry transformations, and that the observations may suggest that bubbles formed in the aftermath of the collisions created in the RHIC may break parity symmetry, which normally characterizes interactions between quarks and gluons.[24][25]

The RHIC physicists announced new temperature measurements for these experiments of up to 4 trillion kelvins, the highest temperature ever achieved in a laboratory.[26] It is described as a recreation of the conditions that existed during the birth of the Universe.[27]

The future

RHIC began operation in 2000 and until November 2010 was the most powerful heavy-ion collider in the world. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN, while used mainly for colliding protons, operates with heavy ions for about one month per year. LHC will eventually operate 28 times higher ion energies, although current LHC operation is at half this energy. As of 2012 RHIC and the LHC are the only operating hadron colliders in the world.

Due to the longer operating time per year, a greater number of colliding ion species and collision energies can be studied at RHIC. In addition and unlike the LHC, RHIC is able to accelerate spin polarized protons, which would leave RHIC as the world's highest energy accelerator for studying spin-polarized proton structure.

A planned major upgrade is eRHIC: The construction of a 10 GeV high intensity electron/positron beam facility, allowing electron-ion collisions. At least one new detector will have to be built to study the collisions. A recent review is given by A. Deshpande et al..[28]

In October 2006, then Interim Director of BNL, Sam Aronson, has contested the claim in a Physics Today report that "Tevatron is unlikely to outlive the decade. Neither is ... the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider", referring to a report of the National Research Council.[29]

Possible closure under flat nuclear science budget scenarios

In late 2012, the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC) was asked to advise the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation how to implement the nuclear science long range plan written in 2007, if future nuclear science budgets continue to provide no growth over the next four years. In a narrowly decided vote, the NSAC committee showed a slight preference, based on non-science related considerations,[30] for shutting down RHIC rather than canceling the construction of the Facility for Rare Ion Beams (FRIB).[31]

Critics of high energy experiments

See also: Safety of particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

Wikinews has related news: Possible black hole created in US

Before RHIC started operation, critics postulated that the extremely high energy could produce catastrophic scenarios,[32] such as creating a black hole, a transition into a different quantum mechanical vacuum (see false vacuum), or the creation of strange matter that is more stable than ordinary matter. These hypotheses are complex, but many predict that the Earth would be destroyed in a time frame from seconds to millennia, depending on the theory considered. However, the fact that objects of the Solar System (e.g., the Moon) have been bombarded with cosmic particles of significantly higher energies than that of RHIC and other man-made colliders for billions of years, without any harm to the Solar System, were among the most striking arguments that these hypotheses were unfounded.[33]

Wikinews has related news: Fireball generated in U.S. laboratory resembles black hole

The other main controversial issue was a demand by critics[citation needed] for physicists to reasonably exclude the probability for such a catastrophic scenario. Physicists are unable to demonstrate experimental and astrophysical constraints of zero probability of catastrophic events, nor that tomorrow Earth will be struck with a "doomsday" cosmic ray (they can only calculate an upper limit for the likelihood). The result would be the same destructive scenarios described above, although obviously not caused by humans. According to this argument of upper limits, RHIC would still modify the chance for the Earth's survival by an infinitesimal amount.

Concerns were raised in connection with the RHIC particle accelerator, both in the media[34][35] and in the popular science media.[36] The risk of a doomsday scenario was indicated by Martin Rees, with respect to the RHIC, as being at least a 1 in 50,000,000 chance.[37] With regards to the production of strangelets, Frank Close, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, indicates that "the chance of this happening is like you winning the major prize on the lottery 3 weeks in succession; the problem is that people believe it is possible to win the lottery 3 weeks in succession."[35] After detailed studies, scientists reached such conclusions as "beyond reasonable doubt, heavy-ion experiments at RHIC will not endanger our planet"[38] and that there is "powerful empirical evidence against the possibility of dangerous strangelet production."[39]

The debate started in 1999 with an exchange of letters in Scientific American between Walter L. Wagner,[40] and F. Wilczek,[41] Institute for Advanced Study, in response to a previous article by M. Mukerjee.[42] The media attention unfolded with an article in UK Sunday Times of July 18, 1999 by J. Leake,[43] closely followed by articles in the U.S. media.[44] The controversy mostly ended with the report of a committee convened by the director of Brookhaven National Laboratory, J. H. Marburger, ostensibly ruling out the catastrophic scenarios depicted.[33] However, the report left open the possibility that relativistic cosmic ray impact products might behave differently while transiting earth compared to "at rest" RHIC products; and the possibility that the qualitative difference between high-E proton collisions with earth or the moon might be different than gold on gold collisions at the RHIC. Wagner tried subsequently to stop full energy collision at RHIC by filing Federal lawsuits in San Francisco and New York, but without success.[45] The New York suit was dismissed on the technicality that the San Francisco suit was the preferred forum. The San Francisco suit was dismissed, but with leave to refile if additional information was developed and presented to the court.[46]

On March 17, 2005, the BBC published an article[47] implying that researcher Horaţiu Năstase believes black holes have been created at RHIC. However, the original papers of H. Năstase[48] and the New Scientist article[49] cited by the BBC state that the correspondence of the hot dense QCD matter created in RHIC to a black hole is only in the sense of a correspondence of QCD scattering in Minkowski space and scattering in the AdS5 × X5 space in AdS/CFT; in other words, it is similar mathematically. Therefore, RHIC collisions might be described by mathematics relevant to theories of quantum gravity within AdS/CFT, but the described physical phenomena are not the same.

Financial information

The RHIC project is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics.[50] It had a line-item budget of 616.6 million U.S. dollars.[51] The annual operational budgets were:[52]

fiscal year 2005: 131.6 million U.S. dollars
fiscal year 2006: 115.5 million U.S. dollars
fiscal year 2007, requested: 143.3 million U.S. dollars

The total investment by 2005 is approximately 1.1 billion U.S. dollars. Though operation under the fiscal year 2006 federal budget cut[53] was uncertain, a key portion of the operational cost (13 million U.S. dollars) was contributed privately by a group close to Renaissance Technologies of East Setauket, New York.[54]

RHIC in fiction

The novel Cosm (ISBN 0-380-79052-1) by the American author Gregory Benford takes place at RHIC. The science fiction setting describes the main character Alicia Butterworth, a physicist at the BRAHMS experiment, and a new universe being created in RHIC by accident, while running with uranium ions.[55]

The zombie apocalypse novel The Rising by the American author Brian Keene referenced the media concerns of activating the RHIC raised by the article in The Sunday Times of July 18, 1999 by J. Leake,.[43] As revealed very early in the story, side effects of the collider experiments of the RHIC (located at "Havenbrook National Laboratories") were the cause of the zombie uprising in the novel and its sequel City of the Dead.

The novel Cold Fusion 2000 by the UK author Karl Drinkwater also referenced the media concerns of activating the RHIC raised by the article in The Sunday Times of July 18, 1999 by J. Leake,.[43] The novel was set in the year 2000 and the first experiments of the RHIC tie into the plot by creating a strange situation that allows the physics-obsessed protagonist to meet his ex lover.[56]

See also

The ISABELLE Project
Large Hadron Collider

References

M. Harrison, T. Ludlam, S. Ozaki (2003). "RHIC Project Overview". Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 499 (2–3): 235. Bibcode:2003NIMPA.499..235H. doi:10.1016/S0168-9002(02)01937-X.
M. Harrison, S. Peggs, T. Roser (2002). "The RHIC Accelerator". Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science 52: 425. Bibcode:2002ARNPS..52..425H. doi:10.1146/annurev.nucl.52.050102.090650.
E.D. Courant (2003). "Accelerators, Colliders, and Snakes". Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science 53: 1. Bibcode:2003ARNPS..53....1C. doi:10.1146/annurev.nucl.53.041002.110450.
M. Riordan, W.A. Zajc (2006). "The First Few Microseconds". Scientific American 294 (5): 34. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0506-34A.
S. Mirsky, W.A Zajc, J. Chaplin (26 April 2006). "Early Universe, Benjamin Franklin Science, Evolution Education". Science Talk. Scientific American. Retrieved 2010-02-16. (Listen)
"CERN Completes Transition to Lead-Ion Running at the LHC". CERN. 8 November 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-08.
A. Trafton (9 February 2010). "Explained: Quark gluon plasma". MITnews.
P. Wanderer (22 February 2008). "RHIC". Brookhaven National Laboratory, Superconducting Magnet Division. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
See "RHIC Accelerators". Brookhaven National Laboratory. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
"RHIC Run Overview". Brookhaven National Laboratory.
M. Blaskiewicz, J. M. Brennan, and K. Mernick, Three-Dimensional Stochastic Cooling in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 094801 (2010).
"Snake charming induces spin-flip". CERN Courier 42 (3): 2. 22 March 2002. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
"RHIC Run-9". Brookhaven National Laboratory/Alternating Gradient Synchrotron. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
R. Tomás et al. (2005). "Measurement of global and local resonance terms". Physical Review Special Topics: Accelerators and Beams 8 (2): 024001. Bibcode:2005PhRvS...8b4001T. doi:10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.8.024001.
The pp2pp Experiment. Rhic.bnl.gov. Retrieved on 2013-09-18.
T. Ludlam & L. McLerran, Phys. Today October 2003, 48 (2003).
L. N. Lipatov, Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 23, 338 (1976).
D. Kharzeev et al., Phys. Lett. B 561, 93 (2002).
E. Iancu & R. Venugopalan, in Quark Gluon Plasma 3, edited by R. C. Hwa & X.-N. Wang, (World Scientific, Singapore, 2003), p. 249.
F. Karsch, in Lectures on Quark Matter, Lect. Notes Phys. 583 (Springer, Berlin, 2002), p. 209.
M. Gyulassy & L. McLarren, Nucl. Phys. A 750, 30 (2005).
K. McNulty Walsh, "Latest RHIC Results Make News Headlines at Quark Matter 2004", Discover Brookhaven 2:1, 14–17 (2004).
I. Arsene et al. (BRAHMS collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757 1, (2005); K. Adcox et al. (PHENIX Collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757, 184 (2005); B. B. Back et al. (PHOBOS Collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757, 28 (2005); J. Adams et al. (STAR Collaboration), Nucl. Phys. A 757, 102 (2005).
K. Melville (16 February 2010). "Mirror Symmetry Broken at 7 Trillion Degrees". Science a Go Go. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
D. Overbye (15 February 2010). "In Brookhaven Collider, Scientists Briefly Break a Law of Nature". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
Perfect Liquid Hot Enough to be Quark Soup
D. Vergano (16 February 2010). "Scientists Re-create High Temperatures from Big Bang". USA Today. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
A. Deshpande et al., Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci. 55, 165 (2005).
S. Aronson, Phys. Today, October 2006, 15.
"NSAC Charges / Reports". Nuclear Science Advisory Committee.
Matson, John (January 31, 2013). "Decelerating American Physics: Panel Advises Shutdown of Last U.S. Collider". Scientific American. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
T. D. Gutierrez, "Doomsday Fears at RHIC," Skeptical Inquirer 24, 29 (May 2000)
R. Jaffe et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 72, 1125–1140 (2000).
Matthews, Robert (28 August 1999). "A Black Hole Ate My Planet". New Scientist.
"End Day". Horizon. 2005. BBC.
W. Wagner, "Black holes at Brookhaven?" and reply by F. Wilzcek, Letters to the Editor, Scientific American July 1999
Cf. Brookhaven Report mentioned by Rees, Martin (Lord), Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century?, U.K., 2003, ISBN 0-465-06862-6; note that the mentioned "1 in 50 million" chance is disputed as being a misleading and played down probability of the serious risks (Aspden, U.K., 2006)
A. Dar, A. De Rujula, U. Heinz, "Will relativistic heavy ion colliders destroy our planet?", Phys. Lett. B470:142–148 (1999) arXiv:hep-ph/9910471
W. Busza, R. Jaffe, J. Sandweiss, F. Wilczek, "Review of speculative 'disaster scenarios' at RHIC", Rev. Mod. Phys.72:1125–1140 (2000) arXiv:hep-ph/9910333
Wagner is a lawyer and former physics lab technician. In 1975, he worked on a project that claimed to discover a magnetic monopole in cosmic ray data ("Evidence for the Detection of a Moving Magnetic Monopole", Physical Review Letters, Vol. 35, (1975)). That claim was later withdrawn in 1978 ("Further Measurements and Reassessment of the Magnetic Monopole Candidate", Physical Review D18: 1382–1421 (1978))
Wilczek is noted for his work on quarks, for which he subsequently was awarded the Nobel Prize
M. Mukerjee, Scientific American 280:March, 60 (1999). The Wagner and Wilczek letters follow in the July issue (vol. 281 no. 1), p. 8.
Sunday Times, 18 July 1999.
e.g. ABCNEWS.com, from the Internet Archive.
e.g. MSNBC, June 14, 2000.
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, Case No. 00CV1672, Walter L. Wagner vs. Brookhaven Science Associates, L.L.C. (2000); United States District Court, Northern District of California, Case No. C99-2226, Walter L. Wagner vs. U.S. Department of Energy, et al. (1999)
BBC, 17 March 2005.
H. Nastase, hep-th/0501068 (2005).
E. S. Reich, New Scientist 185:2491, 16 (2005).
U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics
M. Harrison, T. Ludlam, & S. Ozaki, Nucl. Instr. Meth. Phys. Res. A 499:2–3, 235 (2003).
U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Budget
e.g. FYI, November 22, 2005; New York Times, November 27, 2005.
e.g. APS News Online, March 2006; FYI, November 22, 2005.
Brookhaven Bulletin 52, 8 (1998), p. 2.
Karl's Writing Blog: CF2K - F.A.Q.s. Karldrinkwater.blogspot.com (2013-01-14). Retrieved on 2013-09-18.

Further reading

M. Harrison, T. Ludlam and S. Ozaki (eds) (2003). "The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider Project: RHIC and its Detectors". Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 499 (2–3): 235–880. Bibcode:2003NIMPA.499..235H. doi:10.1016/S0168-9002(02)01937-X. Preprints are available at
BRAHMS
PHENIX
PHOBOS
STAR

External links

Brookhaven National Laboratory Collider-Accelerator Department
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Google Maps
RHIC Run Overview
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:37 pm

Possible black hole created in US
by Wikinews


Monday, March 21, 2005

Image
A concept drawing of a natural Black hole by NASA

US particle physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York have created a fireball in a particle accelerator that bears a striking similarity to a black hole. It was generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) by smashing beams of gold nuclei together at almost the speed of light.

The collision produces a ball of plasma which is about 300 million times hotter that the surface of the Sun. The fireball can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the collision, but in this case 10 times as many jets were being absorbed as had been predicted by calculations.

Physicist Horatiu Nastase of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island says that the calculations show that the fireball has properties similar to that of a black hole. Nastase says this could help explain why so few jets are seen coming out of the fireball. He thinks the particles are being absorbed into the core and reappearing as thermal (Hawking) radiation, just like theory predicts happens in a black hole.

Other physicists have pointed out possible holes in Nastase’s calculations. Carlos Nunez of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts said, “I wouldn’t say his model is wrong, but it’s clearly under construction.”

Even if Nastase turns out to be right, the black holes created pose no danger. At this scale gravity is not the dominant force in a black hole and they quickly evaporate away - this one lasted a mere 10-23 seconds, that is 10 million, billion, billionths of a second.

References

Eugenie Samuel Reich. "Black hole-like phenomenon created by collider" — New Scientist, 19 March 2005
BBC News. "Lab fireball 'may be black hole'" — BBC News, 17 March, 2005

See also

Horatiu Nastase. "The RHIC fireball as a dual black hole" — arxiv.org, 16 Feb 2005
New Scientist, 16 October 2004, p 35
Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider homepage
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:38 pm

Written Testimony of Mr. James H. Yeck, IceCube Project Director before the UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Research and Science Education hearing entitled “NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities Management: Ensuring Fiscal Responsibility and Accountability”, March 08, 2012.

Chairman Brooks, Ranking member Lipinski, and distinguished members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Mr. Jim Yeck and I am the Project Director for IceCube, an NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities (MREFC) Project that created the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. My testimony provides an overview of the IceCube MREFC Project from its beginning to its successful conclusion last year and its operations and responds to the questions from the Subcommittee.

Overview of IceCube MREFC project, from inception to its operations today.

IceCube is a particle detector embedded in a cubic kilometer of deep, very transparent South Pole ice that was designed to detect high-­energy neutrinos from nearby and across the Universe. The science capability of this observatory ranges from detecting neutrinos from dark matter annihilations that are predicted to take place in the sun to bursts of neutrinos from stellar explosions in our galaxy and other nearby galaxies to ultra-­high energy neutrinos produced by violent astrophysical events at the centers of active galaxies across the Universe. The capability of IceCube greatly exceeds that of previous detectors and those currently under construction, and thus its capacity for transformational discovery is very significant.

The IceCube MREFC project was proposed in 1999 and final approvals for construction were given in April 2004. Detector installation started in January 2005 and was completed in December of 2010. A special hot water drill was used to embed the detector instrumentation in the South Pole ice (the ice melted was almost three times the volume of the Capitol dome). Once the holes were drilled in the ice, deployment specialists carefully connected digital optical modules to cables and lowered them into the drill holes to a depth of 2.5 kilometers. Each cable has 60 modules attached to it, and there are 86 cables in total. IceCube has a surface component called IceTop that serves as a cosmic air shower array. The construction effort required almost ten million pounds of cargo and over 30,000 person­‐days of work at South Pole. The total MREFC Project cost of IceCube is $279.5 million. The National Science Foundation provided $242.1 million and funding partners in Belgium, Germany, and Sweden provided support valued at $37.4 million. The IceCube detector exceeds its original performance and sensitivity goals.

The IceCube Collaboration of scientists and professionals includes about 250 people from 39 institutions in 11 countries. The technical, cost, and schedule performance of the IceCube MREFC Project was consistent with the original project baseline and the NSF funding plan approved in 2004. The following chart highlights the cost and schedule plan and performance.

Image

How and why was IceCube identified and selected as a worthy large facilities construction project?

A series of reviews organized by NSF, DOE, and the National Academy Sciences concluded that the proposed IceCube detector would open a new window on the Universe by detecting very high energy neutrinos from objects across the Universe. The scientific and technical review committees found the science to be well motivated and exciting and the detection technique proven. Construction plans matured and eventually committees advised that the IceCube MREFC project was ready for construction.

The process of identifying IceCube as worthy and ready for construction included robust peer and management review organized by NSF and eventually an assessment by the National Academy. This six-­year process started with the submission of a Letter of Intent in February 1998 and concluded with approval by the National Science Board in April 2004.

IceCube Scientific and Construction Readiness Review Timeline

Feb 1998 Letter of Intent submitted to the NSF by Professor Francis Halzen, University of Wisconsin-­‐Madison

May 1999 Astroparticle Physics with High Energy Neutrinos – Open Meeting for the scientific community organized by Francis Halzen

Nov 1999 IceCube Proposal submitted to the NSF on behalf of the U.S. IceCube Collaboration; separate proposals submitted to the German (DESY and Ministry), Sweden, and Belgium (Flemish and Walloon) funding agencies

Early 2000 NSF Peer Review of the IceCube Proposal

Apr 2000 DOE-­‐NSF Science Advisory Group for Experiments in Non-­‐Accelerator Physics (SAGENAP) Review of the IceCube Proposal

June 2000 NSF Readiness Assessment by a External Panel

Oct 2000 National Science Board Approval to Submit IceCube in a Future Budget Request.

Fall 2001 Endorsement of IceCube by the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel’s Subpanel on the Future of Particle Physics in the U.S

Oct 2001 NSF Readiness Review by an External Panel

Nov 2001 NSF Review by an External Panel of the IceCube Enhanced Hot Water Drill Final Design

Sept 2002 International Workshop on Neutrinos and Subterranean Science – Community Input

Sept 2002 NSF Review of IceCube Drilling Plans

Early 2003 National Academy Neutrino Facilities Assessment Committee Review: Neutrinos and Beyond: New Windows on Nature

Sept 2003 NSF External Panel Annual Review

Feb 2004 NSF Review by External Committee of the proposed IceCube MREFC Project Baseline

Apr 2004 NSB Approval to Proceed with IceCube Construction

A National Academy Sciences study reaffirmed the scientific merit of IceCube in 2003, noting that the capability of IceCube greatly exceeds that of previous detectors and those currently under construction, and thus its capacity for transformational discovery was very significant.

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the process?

The primary strengths of the approval process for IceCube were the quality of the external review; the close and effective coordination between NSF’s Office of Polar Programs and the Division of Physics; strong institutional commitment and engagement by the University of Wisconsin–Madison; and the international scientific interest and support of the NSF approval process. It was extremely valuable to be able to defend scientific goals and project plans in front of the highest quality external committees. The breadth and depth of the experience of those assembled for these reviews resulted in better implementation plans and higher confidence that the IceCube MREFC Project would be successful. The shared commitment to achieving successful approval helped the partners to work constructively together during the approval process. NSF’s Office of Polar Programs and the Division of Physics, working with the Large Facilities Office, interacted constructively with UW–Madison and the international partners.

The primary weaknesses of the IceCube MREFC Project approval process were the general environment of uncertainty, the potential for discontinuities in financial support, and the fact that both NSF and UW–Madison were still maturing in terms of their large project processes and general capabilities.

The most cost effective projects are those where there is an early commitment to move the project forward on a schedule that is only limited by the ability to make technical progress. An approval process that is stretched out or unclear in its outcome creates an environment of uncertainty that is extremely difficult to manage at the facility level where day-­to-­day activities include hiring, placing contracts, and paying bills. The most influential factor in the ability of a project to succeed is acquiring experienced and capable staff. Discontinuities in funding and uncertainty can make this challenging, if not impossible. UW–Madison became heavily vested in the success of IceCube and used local resources to bridge funding delays and gaps. This was manageable but not desirable.

NSF large facilities management continues to improve and the guidance and rules are stabilizing. Around 2000, when IceCube was getting started, the NSF large facility guidance was still evolving; e.g., when IceCube was approved it was not permissible to include Education & Outreach in an MREFC Project, now it is. As NSF builds a history of successful MREFC projects there is higher confidence in its management practices. The situation at UW–Madison was similar, and the support arrangements for IceCube evolved in the beginning from a project initially supported out of the Physics Department to an autonomous center within the Graduate School.

How is IceCube currently managed?

IceCube is managed through contracts and memoranda of understanding between the participating legal entities; partnerships between the stakeholders; and line management arrangements that ensures top-­‐to-­‐bottom accountability and open communication.

Management and Contractual Arrangements

NSF and the UW–Madison. The IceCube Construction Project and the Maintenance and Operations (M&O) Program of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory are managed under the terms of Cooperative Agreements between the NSF and UW–Madison. A Project Management Plan details the management arrangements for the Construction Project and an Operations Plan covers the M&O Program. UW–Madison executes subawards to U.S. universities and laboratories for both the Construction Project and Operations Program.

IceCube Collaboration.

The group of scientists motivated by the IceCube scientific goals and their institutions form the IceCube Collaboration. The Collaboration Governance Document describes the organizational matters of the collaboration including the election procedure for the Spokesperson [icecube.wisc.edu/collaboration/governance.php]. As described in the Cooperative Agreements and in the Collaboration Governance Document, UW–Madison executes a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that defines the institutional responsibilities for all constituent institutions. The Construction Project MOUs defined each institution’s construction “deliverables” and the Maintenance & Operations MOU addresses the responsibilities of each institution in support of successful operations.

Antarctic Support.

The Office of Polar Programs (OPP) has lead responsibility for the IceCube program within NSF. OPP tasks their Antarctic support contractor, Raytheon Polar Services Company (RPSC), and the Air National Guard, to provide the logistics and field support required for IceCube construction and operations. During the construction phase UW–Madison defined the IceCube construction project support requirements and OPP provided IceCube MREFC funding to RPSC via their contracts. This three-­‐party arrangement was initially challenging but worked well as the project matured.

International Oversight and Finance Group (IOFG).

NSF and representatives of the foreign funding agencies typically meet on an annual basis to review IceCube progress. The foreign funding agencies made significant contributions to the construction project and operations program. The foreign collaborating institutions are accountable to their respective funding agencies to deliver on their construction project and operations support commitments. In addition to in-­kind contributions of hardware and labor there is a cash contribution to a “common fund” to support the computing and software necessary for the large IceCube data volumes.

Management Partnerships

IceCube Collaboration and UW–Madison.


IceCube management is based on effective partnerships between stakeholders that share ownership in the success of the entire IceCube program. There is close partnership between the IceCube Collaboration (over 250 scientists and professionals from 39 institutions and 11 countries) and UW–Madison, which serves as both a collaborating institution and as host institution for both the construction project and the operations program. The IceCube Collaboration worked on every aspect of the detector. A remarkable aspect of the construction phase was the wide distribution of the hardware development across the collaboration. Production and testing of digital optical modules was completed in Sweden, Germany, and the U.S. (UW–Madison).

NSF and UW–Madison.

The partnership between NSF and UW–Madison provides the management accountability necessary to ensure that resources are used efficiently and that construction and operations goals are consistently achieved. NSF is the primary funding agency for IceCube having provided about 85% of the construction project funding and providing 63% of the annual M&O support. Over 80% of the NSF MREFC funding was allocated directly to, and managed by UW–Madison, with the remainder allocated to RPSC and the Air National Guard.

NSF/UW–Madison and Foreign Funding Agencies.

The direct engagement of the NSF program managers and the UW–Madison IceCube leadership with the primary foreign funding agencies is a partnership demanded by the international nature of the support for the scientific collaboration. Representatives of the foreign funding agencies are invited to review project plans, participate in external reviews, evaluate reports, and provide general oversight to the IceCube program.

Key Management Arrangements

The key management arrangements used to manage IceCube include: 1) clear lines of accountability and authority from NSF to UW–Madison and to the IceCube construction project and operations program, 2) detailed scope, schedule, and budget definition, 3) explicit cost and schedule contingency derived from risk assessment, 4) regular reviews by external committees, 5) tracking and progress reporting against established milestones, budgets, and performance metrics, and 6) routine oversight by NSF, UW–Madison, and foreign funding agencies. It is important to emphasize the IceCube approach used for contingency management, external reviews, and project oversight.

Contingency Management.

An essential tool of project management is to define an explicit contingency budget within the total project cost baseline that is derived from an assessment of risk. The IceCube MREFC project performance baseline was approved in April 2004 and included a 22% contingency budget. In order to create this contingency budget the project scope was reduced from 80 deep ice cables to 70. The built-­‐in incentive for all parties was to control costs in order to restore the original project scope. The management flexibility enabled by the project contingency budget allowed significant efficiencies to be gained in the deep ice drilling and instrumentation production and testing program. Schedule performance made possible by contingency expenditures resulted in cost savings and full scope restoration to 80 cables plus an additional six cables made possible by additional foreign contributions.

External Reviews.

Peer reviews organized by NSF were absolutely essential to IceCube success. These reviews were typically carried out on an annual basis beginning after the submission of the initial proposal and continuing throughout the duration of the MREFC Project. The review committee membership was tailored to the needs of the project and the committee recommendations and advice were always constructive and helpful. It is a great strength of the scientific community that its members embrace the opportunity to help each other through service work on these types of committees. The UW–Madison IceCube Project Office established a standing Project Advisory Panel, Science Advisory Committee, and Software & Computing Advisory Panel. These advisory bodies met annually and provided input directly to the project. The combination of the NSF organized reviews and the IceCube project advisory bodies ensured that critical issues were identified early and that project plans included input from experts.

Project Oversight.

NSF provided effective oversight of IceCube. The NSF Program Manager during the approval and construction phase was a senior and experienced NSF program manager. There was a high level of engagement with UW–Madison and the IceCube Project Office. IceCube, like all large complex projects, encountered significant challenges during each project phase and the NSF Program Manager coordinated input within NSF and provided clear guidance to the IceCube Project Director. The NSF Program Manager and the IceCube Project Director had an open approach to communicating project information while respecting their distinct roles. The UW–Madison IceCube Leadership Team, chaired by the UW–Madison Chancellor, met on a quarterly basis and provided consistent oversight of the IceCube MREFC Project. This maintained a high level of institutional commitment throughout the construction project and the transition into operations.

Construction and Transition to Operations Strategies

The main project strategy was to maximize the installation of instrumentation each South Pole summer by ensuring that installation was not limited by the availability of instrumentation. This placed a priority on the critical activity—safely drilling holes in the South Pole ice sheet. Major constraints included the limited construction season of three months during the Antarctic summer, limited transport flights for cargo and fuel, and available bed space at the McMurdo and South Pole stations for people. The U.S. Antarctic Program infrastructure, including the bases, supply chain, and experience, was critical to project success.

What are the roles and responsibilities of the facility staff and the roles and responsibilities of NSF in the management and oversight of IceCube?

As noted earlier in this testimony there was a close partnership between the NSF and UW– Madison. One of the main reasons that this partnership worked extremely well was the clear and common understanding of the distinct roles and responsibilities of the two parties and an environment of mutual respect and trust. Respect and trust developed during the startup phase of this relationship enabled effective management of critical challenges as the two parties worked efficiently together.

NSF Roles and Responsibilities

The NSF is responsible for seeing that the IceCube MREFC Project meets its baseline requirements of cost, schedule, scope, and technical performance. The NSF has a special role in IceCube because of its responsibilities in managing operation of the Amundsen-­‐Scott South Pole Station. These responsibilities include: safety; physical qualification of project staff; environmental protection; transport of personnel, fuel and equipment; and the provision of housing, food service, support personnel, logistical support, IT support, and general infrastructure support.

Within the NSF the Office of Polar Programs (OPP) is the lead organizational unit responsible for the conduct of scientific, technical, cost, schedule and management reviews, general progress reviews, and agency guidance regarding the IceCube Project. OPP designates a Program Officer (PO) who provides continuous oversight and guidance through direct communication with the UW–Madison IceCube Project Director and site visits to UW and other project sites, including the South Pole Station. The IceCube Program Officer is the Project Director’s point of contact at the NSF.

UW–Madison Roles and Responsibilities

The UW–Madison is the host institution for the IceCube Project Office and the home university of the Principal Investigator. The responsibilities of the host institution include:

• Providing internal oversight for the project.
• Appointing the Project Director (subject to concurrence by the NSF, and the IceCube Collaboration Board).
• Ensuring that the Project Office has adequate staff and support.
• Ensuring that an adequate management structure is established for managing the project and monitoring progress.
• Ensuring that accurate and timely reports are provided to the NSF, IOFG, and the IceCube Collaboration.
• Developing subawards with other U.S. collaborating institutions and providing appropriate funding.
• Establishing MOUs between the UW and non-­‐U.S. collaborators defining the non-­‐U.S. collaborators’ deliverables.

IceCube Principal Investigator

The Principal Investigator is responsible to the Vice Chancellor for Research and the NSF for the overall scientific direction of the IceCube Project. The Principal Investigator is Co-­Spokesperson for the IceCube Collaboration during the construction phase and an ex-­officio member of the IceCube Collaboration Board. The Principal Investigator communicates to the Project Director the scientific goals established by the IceCube Collaboration and concurs on the project implementation plan established by the Project Director.

Project Director

The IceCube Project Director (PD) is appointed by the Vice Chancellor for Research, subject to concurrence by the IceCube Collaboration Board and the NSF. The UW holds the Project Director (PD) responsible for execution of the construction project. The PD serves as the primary point of contact for the IceCube Collaboration and the NSF on all construction matters. The PD establishes the detailed Project Execution Plan that supports the IceCube scientific goals as described in the IceCube Proposal and in the Cooperative Agreement. The PD executes and controls project activities to ensure that project objectives, including cost and schedule baselines are met. The PD also serves as Co-­Principal Investigator on the Project, and advises the Principal Investigator and the Collaboration Spokesperson on all issues that affect the IceCube scientific goals.

Other responsibilities of the Project Director include:

• Development of project scope and integrated cost and schedule baseline plans that are consistent with funding plans.
• Approval of annual budgets and funding allocations for institutions receiving NSF funding and MOUs with non-­‐U.S. collaborating institutions.
• Ensuring that adequate project management control and reporting systems are implemented.
• Establishment of the IceCube Change Control Board and approval of baseline changes at Change Control Level 1.
• Chairing monthly project status reviews involving the Level 2 managers and selected Project Office staff.

How do you work with NSF to ensure that the American taxpayer is getting a return on this investment?

The IceCube MREFC investment is carefully managed as addressed earlier in this testimony. Performance metrics were developed for the Operations Program that help to ensure that this continuing investment is also an efficient use of American taxpayer. Over 5,000 digital optical modules (DOMs) instrument one billion tons of ice (cubic kilometer) a mile and a half below the South Pole surface.

Early operational results with the IceCube instrumentation are good:

• A total of 98.5% of the 5,484 DOMs installed and frozen into the deep ice at the South Pole are currently taking data and reliability analysis indicates that 98.0% of these DOMs will still be taking data in ten years.
• Detector uptime is approximately 99.0%.
• Every hour the IceCube Neutrino Observatory detects over 10 million downward-­‐ going cosmic particles and about 5 upward-­‐going neutrinos.

The international IceCube Collaboration carries out the scientific program and shares responsibility for the M&O program including service work by research groups to manage the large data volumes and direct financial support. The details of these contributions are managed and tracked at a very detailed level.

Image

The return on the IceCube investment is primarily measured by the quality of the scientific output. This is measured by the scientific publications [icecube.wisc.edu/pubs] and regular peer review of IceCube research proposals routinely submitted by Principal Investigators from the collaborating institutions. IceCube is unique in its discovery potential given the large instrumented detector volume in the Southern Hemisphere. The merit of the investment in IceCube is broadly acknowledged and there are plans to construct a detector of similar scale (KM3NET) in the Mediterranean Sea. This is largely a European initiative and would result in a Northern Hemisphere neutrino observatory that is complementary to IceCube.

How was the entire life cycle of the project, including management and operations after construction, taken into account in the management and oversight of IceCube?

The biggest challenges with MREFC projects are often the transition phases: 1) R&D, project definition and planning, and the transition into a construction start, 2) ramp up into full construction, 3) efficient ramp down of the construction effort, and 4) the transition into operations. MREFC funding does not cover R&D, operations, or research and therefore these transitions and the full program of support require multiple proposals and an integrated funding plan by the NSF. These transition phases were also difficult for IceCube but managed successfully by the collaborating parties. Discontinuities in funding and support can be detrimental as the facility managers strive to maintain a team of talented and motivated people, which is essential to the program’s success. The NSF MREFC program has matured over the last decade and there is now substantial institutional experience that benefits the current generation of MREFC projects.

IceCube R&D and Construction Start

NSF and other parties supported AMANDA, essentially a prototype of the IceCube detector. AMANDA operated prior to and then concurrently with the initial IceCube construction and provided valuable experience regarding relevant hardware, software, and data management and helped to develop the scientific, engineering, and institutional experience within the IceCube Collaboration needed to propose IceCube. The IceCube proposal was based on the success of AMANDA, although the scale-­‐up to IceCube was significant.

Transition to Operations

The initial IceCube proposal and the reviews that followed provided opportunities to present and critique the life cycle requirements of the facility. For example, the IceCube proposal submitted in 1999 included an estimate of the annual operating requirements; the project baseline reviews in 2004 assessed the plan for transitioning into operations; the NSF and foreign funding agencies began meeting to discuss operations plans in 2005; and, initial operations funding was provided in 2007.

Research

The development of the IceCube scientific goals and exploitation of the scientific potential of the facility requires continuing support to the collaborating groups. Collaborating university groups in the U.S submit proposals to the NSF on a three-­year cycle and these proposals undergo peer review. This foundation of research support enables the return on the MREFC investment.

What have been the biggest challenges you have faced with the project thus far and how were they rectified?

The biggest challenges encountered include the scale-­up from AMANDA to IceCube; establishing management capability and support arrangements at UW–Madison; ensuring the safety of the deep ice drilling operation; and, the limited NSF experience in the stewardship of large facilities during the late 1990’s. A major challenge was a potential hold on IceCube when a policy of no new construction starts was imposed following a change in administration. This uncertainty was resolved once it was clarified that the National Science Board had already approved IceCube for inclusion in future NSF budget requests, thus building on the ongoing success of the AMANDA project.

The success of the AMANDA detector was essential but still not sufficient to move forward with IceCube. The scientific collaboration needed to grow in depth and capability. Deep ice drilling and instrumentation fabrication needed to transform from R&D scale into large-­scale production. A substantial engineering effort was made to design detector systems for high reliability since the sensors, once frozen in the ice, are not physically accessible and cannot be repaired. The design was also optimized for ease of maintenance and operation. For example automatic calibration systems were a design goal to limit ongoing operations efforts at the South Pole. The time between the IceCube proposal submission and the start of construction in 2004 allowed the transformation and the scale-­‐up that was needed.

Establishing an effective Project Office at UW–Madison required the active engagement of the university leadership. The business, administrative, and human resource systems that are effective for typical university business are not well suited for a schedule driven large project like IceCube. UW–Madison moved to establish IceCube as a center within the Graduate School with direct control over support personnel and resources. Experienced managers and engineers were hired from outside the university and the dialogue between the project personnel and the university leadership was focused on what was needed to succeed and the actions to be taken for that success.

The IceCube production drilling operation required the drill to operate 24 hours a day for 7 or more continuous days. This required three shifts that needed to operate in a seamless manner with each new shift picking up where the last shift left off. In the first year of IceCube deep ice drilling there was a serious accident requiring immediate medical evacuation from the South Pole and recovery in New Zealand. This accident provided a serious wake up call to all the parties and many improvements in training, staffing, and equipment were implemented before the second drilling season. Examples of improvements include retention of experienced drillers and additional shifts. An additional 85 holes were drilled over the next five years without another serious injury and with an exemplary safety record.

The stewardship of a large facility requires engagement, problem solving, and support over decades. The needs of a large facility are quite different than those of a research grant. Facility stewardship requires an active role by the funding agency that goes beyond the mantra of “NSF responds to proposals” and is more of a joint ownership and partnership. The MREFC program has matured significantly over the last decade since IceCube was originally proposed. There is excellent sharing of experience, lessons-­‐learned, and ingredients to success. A brief distillation of these points is provided below.

Lessons Learned from the IceCube MREFC Project Experience

Set realistic goals for the MREFC Project baseline

• Scope reduced to 70 cables (86 final total)
• Operations ramp up when detector ready to start science program

NSF support and oversight

• NSF collaborated with UW–Madison to best support the project
o Dedicated and experienced IceCube Project Officer
o Annual peer reviews of project performance and recommendation tracking
• MREFC Project funding secure and predictable
• Start-­‐up, operations, and research funding requires advance planning

UW–Madison commitment and support

• University leadership involvement critical at key junctures
• Recruiting experienced personnel essential to project success
• Establishing expert advisory committees to inform project plans

Project management

• Create partnerships—share information, integrate efforts, and jointly share successes and failures
• Integrate the physics and engineering efforts; creating a single line of accountability promotes teaming and shared ownership of results
• Recruit production expertise—achieves higher quality and lower production costs
• Openly communicate issues and ensure transparency—shifts approach from ignore and hope to open responsibility and action (no surprises)
• Invest in safety—goal is shared responsibility and excellence
• Automate project tracking tools—reduces the time and effort from performance measurement to corrective responses
• Overarching goal is to eliminate uncertainty and risk—resolution is better than perfection
• Facility management of the contingency budget with full transparency on decisions

Ingredients to IceCube and MREFC Program Success

• Funding agency (NSF and European Partners) commitment with clear roles
• Strong facility/host role (UW–Madison) as an equal partner with NSF
• Project organization populated with high quality people -­‐ recruit experience
• Project & Collaboration leaders
o Made timely decisions
o Served as an umbrella for the distributed team so they could do their jobs
o Managed expectations and communicated plans and results
• Understood the project including characteristics that were common to other large projects and those that were unique, e.g., Antarctic support and environment
• Established realistic project goals, developing a track record of success
• Maintained credibility with stakeholders
• Sought collective ownership of problems and solutions

Image

Image
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:38 pm

Friends of Science East
P.O. Box 552
Shoreham, NY 11786
(516) 744-0010

Mission: Establishment of the Nikola Tesla Science & Technology Center and Museum

Friends of Science East, Inc. was born on February 14, 1996. At that time, the official New York State approvals were filed making Friends of Science East, Inc. a not-for-profit corporation in the state. Federal tax exempt status was also obtained as of this date. The genesis of this event occurred approximately one year earlier.

The Science Museum housed in the Shoreham-Wading River High School was experiencing growth pains—not enough space to incorporate all of the activities, programs and exhibits that were becoming increasingly popular. The museum had been through a review that indicated it was in the museum's and its visitors' interests to expand in a moderate fashion.

The school district did not have any additional space to lend, and members of the museum board began to ask if finding a larger space off the school campus might be a good idea.

For several years, Science Museum board members had been interested in the land known as the "Peerless Property," after its former owners, Peerless Photo Products, which had been bought by Agfa, a division of the Bayer Corporation. The property had been owned at the turn of the century by inventor and scientist Nikola Tesla.

Tesla had built a laboratory there in 1901 called Wardenclyffe, designed by the renowned architect, Stanford White. He also had White design a huge tower to be used for the transmission of signals world wide. The tower was demolished in 1917, but the original laboratory building still stands, along with several other structures which were added by subsequent owners. This seemed an interesting, if not ideal, site for a future science museum.

Image
Tesla Laboratory at Wardenclyffe

The Science Museum board decided to create an offshoot organization to pursue the acquisition of the Tesla property, and the Friends of Science East, Inc. came into being.

Since that beginning, FSE, Inc. has had several meetings with representatives from Agfa, Brookhaven Town, Suffolk County, New York State, Shoreham Village and various fraternal, civic and business organizations locally; has begun legal affiliation with the Tesla Wardenclyffe Project, Inc., a group dedicated to the preservation of Wardenclyffe, and has set in motion the actions which it is hoped will result in the Tesla property becoming the future home of the Tesla Museum and Science Center at Wardenclyffe.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:39 pm

NYS Department of State
Division of Corporations
Informational Message
The information contained in this database is current through June 23, 2014.

No business entities were found for Science Museum.
Please refine your search criteria.
To continue please do the following:
Tab to Ok and press the Enter key or Click Ok.

______________________________

NYS Department of State
Division of Corporations
Informational Message
The information contained in this database is current through June 23, 2014.

No business entities were found for the science museum.
Please refine your search criteria.
To continue please do the following:
Tab to Ok and press the Enter key or Click Ok.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:39 pm

http://www.swrschools.org/staff/Default.aspx?school=56
SHOREHAM-WADING RIVER CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT
250B Route 25A | Shoreham, NY 11786 | Phone: (631) 821-8100

Staff Directory

Shoreham Wading River High School

Faculty and Staff

Administration

Daniel Holtzman (Principal) -- dholtzman@swr.k12.ny.us
Mark Passamonte (Interim Athletic Director) -- mpassamonte@swr.k12.ny.us
Kevin Vann (Asst. Principal) -- kvann@swr.k12.ny.us
Dr. Michael J. Winfield (Asst. Principal) -- mwinfield@swr.k12.ny.us

Art

Jason Andria
Cathy Jaworowski
Shannon Westcott

Business

Melissa Cosgrove

Cafeteria

June Fusco
(Cook)
Susan Matura
(Food Service)
Kristy McInnes
(Food Service)
Sandra Moyet
(Food Service)
Alexis Nieves
(Food Service)
Karen Ospina
(Manager)
Kelly Sicoli
(Food Service)
Dawn Van Wickler
(Food Service)
Michael Zaferatos
(Food Service)

Clerical Support

Donna Annunziato
Rose Bennett
Cathy Caracciolo
MaryJean Carlson
Terry Fisher
Jean Husing
Pat LeDeoux
Gail Longo
Jane Redavid

Custodial Staff

Salvatore DeLalla
Matthew DiDiego
Ron Godizzaro
Anthony Marcellino
(Head Custodian)
Ron Morgan
Ricardo Pinero
Sean Rudd
Germaine Williams
Louis Zabbia

English

Jean Branna
(Lead)
Brenna Gilroy
Mary Hygom
Jordan Kroll
Heather Leccese
(Reading/AIS)
Marcie Marino
John Mitchell
Jennifer Nazer
Matthew Seery

English as a Second Language

Patricia McCabe
(District Wide)

Foreign Language

Meredith Barron
Noelle DiSpirito
Francine Fuchs
(Lead)
Audrey Kaem
Melissa Stallone
Katherine Ziegler

Guidance

Justin Arini
Lucy Eschbach
Sal Rosato

Hall Monitors

Linda Alfano
Debbie Baxter
Lucille Fedan
Wendy Holbrook
Barbara Zale

Library

Kristine Hanson

Mathematics

James Barry
Ellen Fraser
Michael Gabriel
(Lead)
Carol Giordano
Andrew Moschetti
Anne Marie Tarulli
Danielle Texeira

Music

Dennis Creighton
Steve Fayette
David Minelli

Nurse/Health

Regina Johnson
(School Nurse)
Mary Mitchell

Physical Education

Robert Feise
Dennis Haughney
Debbie Lutjen

Psychologist

Pete D'Elena
(School Psychologist)

Science

Jenna D’Amico -- jdamico@swr.k12.ny.us<jdamico@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Alan Gandt -- agandt@swr.k12.ny.us<agandt@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Robert Marino -- rmarino@swr.k12.ny.us<rmarino@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Karrie McGuire -- kmcguire@swr.k12.ny.us<kmcguire@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Sherry Neff -- sneff@swr.k12.ny.us<sneff@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Kevin Nohejl -- knohejl@swr.k12.ny.us<knohejl@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Lauren Ocker -- locker@swr.k12.ny.us<locker@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Christine Rubenstein -- crubenstein@swr.k12.ny.us<crubenstein@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Julie Sanders -- jsanders@swr.k12.ny.us<jsanders@swr.k12.ny.us>;
Tom Tomaszewski -- ttomaszewski@swr.k12.ny.us<ttomaszewski@swr.k12.ny.us>;
(Lead)
Jennifer Zito -- jzito@swr.k12.ny.us<jzito@swr.k12.ny.us>;

Security

Richard Cambria
Michael Greck
Richard Hembury
Susan Ingrassia

Social Studies

Ann Gianfalla
Jason Malvagno
Kevin Mann
Matthew Millheiser
Kevin O'Handley
Erin Schmalzle
Ruth Squillace
Jane Swersey

Social Worker

Jaclyn Anci

Special Education

Ann Augsbach
Daria Capone
(Life Skills)
Beverly Didie
Melissa Donnelly
Deborah Dost
Thomas Fabian
Rhonda Gordon
Michele Hart
Lucille McKee
Jessica Wolf

Speech and Language

Allison Desmond

Student Assistance Counselor

Teaching Assistants

Mary Ellen Alfano
Sarah Brant
Michelle Collyer
Diane Dracker
Susan Eitel
Gerald Flynn
Michele Ingemi
Michelle Kavanagh
Denise Kohart
Nicki Onufrak
Sandy Pedersen
Lisa Rozmus
Nancy Sperling
Joseph Tangel
Lorraine Valvo

Technical Support

Teacher Website Course
(Teacher Website Course)
Miriana Kanzler -- mkanzler@swr.k12.ny.us<mkanzler@swr.k12.ny.us>;
(Science Support)
Kim Koch
(Computer Lab Assistant)
Chris Liszanckie
(Computer Support)
Andrew Lyons
Robert Martin
(Computer Support)
Robert Martin
Tom Wagner
(Audio Visual)

Technology

Linda Blasko
Peter Esposito
(Director of Technical Services)

________________________________

Shoreham-Wading River High School

Daniel Holtzman, Principal
631-821-8264

Kevin Vann, Assistant Principal
631-821-8133

Dr. Michael J. Winfield, Assistant Principal
631-821-8135

Mark Passamonte, Athletic Director
631-821-8132

Main Office - 821-8140

Attendance Office - 821-8136

Athletic Office - 821-8132

250A Route 25A (Click Here for Directions)
Shoreham, NY 11786
Hours: 7:20 a.m.–2:05 p.m.

School News Update

June 2014 Testing Letter and Bus Schedule
June 2014 Testing Letter
10 AM Exam Bus Schedule
12 PM Exam Bus Schedule

June 2014, Regents/Final Examination Schedule

Parent Letter: Senior Transition Presentation

2014 BOCES Summer School Information

Response Hotline for parents/students

Social Host Law Information

8th Grade Parent Night Presentation

Class of 2014 Royal Family

Junior Family Night Presentation

8th Grade Parent Meeting – Transitioning to the High School, 6 PM, HS Library
Parent-Teacher Conferences, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Junior Class Parent Meeting – The College Application Process, 7:30 PM, HS Library

2014 AP Examination Information
AP Exam Schedule
AP Exams Parent Letter

Spring 2014 Mini-College Day Participants

Book Talk Letter to Parents

Financial Aid Night Flyer

2014 Cap & Gown Information
2014 Cap & Gown Letter
2014 Cap & Gown Flyer

Colleges Visiting SWR 2013-2014

PTSA Membership Form
PTSA Letter to Parents

Yearbook Ordering Information

National Merit Scholarship Announcement

AP Scholars

ELA Honors Parent Letter to Grade 9 and 10

Congratulations to Shoreham-Wading River High School business students, Matthew Gladysz and Zach McAuley for being the 2012-2013 winners in the Foundation for Investor Education, Long Island Stock Market Challenge. Both students participated in the challenge during Mrs. Cosgrove's Wall Street class for the fall and spring semesters. Zach McAuley placed third in the region during the fall semester and Matthew Gladysz placed second in the region during for spring semester. Congratulations to both!

Parent-Teen Driving Contract & Letter
Challenge Day Letter & Picture

Suicide Awareness and Prevention

Facebook Suicide Prevention Information
http://www.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Face ... _8193.html
http://www.peersnet.org/action-alerts/p ... prevention

Naviance Parent Letter and Naviance Information

Principal's Message
April 2014

Dear Parents and Students:

As we slowly enter spring (despite the temperature) and enter the last phase of another school year, it is an exciting, but stressful time for students and parents alike. It is imperative that parents join us in emphasizing the importance of maintaining their child’s academic focus.

In that spirit, I ask that you refer to the extra help and after school tutorial schedules on our website as well as the upcoming testing schedule (when posted) and encourage your child to seek out additional support from their teachers. Should you have questions or concerns related to your child (academic or otherwise); please contact his/her teacher or guidance counselor immediately.

Additionally, please join us in stressing the value of proper preparation for June finals and Regents examinations by ensuring ample study time and nightly rest is allotted, students are on-time and well nourished for each exam.

In addition, we have many important and exciting events starting in May and continue through the end of the school year:

• National Honor Society Induction: May 1, 8:00 P.M.
• Junior Prom: May 17, 7:00-11:00 P.M.
• Senior Athletic Awards Night: May 19, 6:00 P.M., Refreshments, 6:30 P.M. Event
• Underclassmen Awards Night: May 28, 7:30 P.M.
• Spring Concert: May 29, 7:30 P.M.
• Senior Day: June 12, 7:30 A.M.-1:00 P.M
• Senior Recognition Night: June 12, 7:00 P.M.
• Graduation Rehearsal: June 23, 8:00 A.M.
• Graduation Rehearsal: June 26, 8:30 A.M. (Caps and Gowns will be distributed)
• Senior Prom: June 26, 7:00-11:00 P.M.
• Commencement: June 28, 9:00 A.M.

As in the past, the commencement ceremony will give our graduating seniors the appropriate sendoff they deserve while celebrating the dedication and hard work they displayed throughout their years at Shoreham-Wading River High School.

Let’s continue to work together to support our students’ successes throughout the remainder of the year.

I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.

Sincerely,
Dan Holtzman
Principal
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:39 pm

Shoreham-Wading River High School
by Wikipedia

Shoreham-Wading River High School
Location
250B Route 25A
Shoreham, New York 11786
United States
Information
Type Public
Established September 1975
School district Shoreham-Wading River Central School District
Principal Dan Holtzman
Faculty 64.0 (on FTE basis)[1]
Grades 9 to 12
Enrollment about 800
Student to teacher ratio 18.1[1]
Color(s) Navy Blue and Gold
Mascot Wildcat
Website Shoreham-Wading River High School official page

Shoreham-Wading River High School is a Public secondary school located in Shoreham, New York. The school serves about 800 students in grades 9 to 12 in the Shoreham-Wading River Central School District.

Overview

The school colors are navy blue and gold, and the mascot is the wildcat. The North Shore Public Library is connected to the school building .

The Wildcat Pause, the school's official newspaper, has won many awards over the years.[2]

Among the school's second language courses is American Sign Language. Several advanced placement courses are offered as well, including AP US History, AP Calculus AB and AP Computer Science A.

Notable alumni

D. B. Sweeney, actor[3]
Keith Osik, Major League Baseball player[4][5]
William T Throwe, International Physics Olympiad Gold medalist[6]
Jesse Jantzen, NCAA Wrestling Champion[7]
Jeff Bennett, Teacher and Author of Secondary Stages: Revitalizing High School Theatre. HS Auditorium is named after him.

Athletics

The Shoreham-Wading River Boys' Cross Country team won the NYS Class B Championships in 2007.

In 2006-2007, the boys' and girls' lacrosse teams won the NYS Class C Championship. They became only the second school to win both the boys' and girls' New York state championships in the same year; the other school was Garden City in 2001. The girls' and boys' teams would do this for a second time in the 2011-2012 season. The boys also won the State Championship in 2002, while the girls would repeat in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

References

"Shoreham-wading River High School". National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved 2008-02-28. "Students: 839 (2005-06)"
"Wildcat Pause Wins 18 Awards" (PDF). Retrieved 2008-04-20.
Alvin Klein (January 13, 1981). "First Shoreham 'Idyll,' Then Stardom". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
"Yastrzemski Award". Newsday. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
Robert Leuner (September 1, 2005). "SWR graduate joins Washington Nationals". The Village Beacon Record. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
"U.S. Physics Team Wins Golds/Silver". AAPT. Retrieved 2008-04-19.
Dave Kindred (April 26, 2004). "Pin your hopes on this student-athlete". Sporting News. Retrieved 2008-06-17.
History. Shoreham-Wading River Central School District. Retrieved on 19 April 2008.
http://www.dyestat.com//?pg=us-2008-NXN ... amRankings

External links

Shoreham-Wading River High School official page http://www.swrschools.org/schools/swrhs.asp [DEAD LINK]
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, by Indiegogo

Postby admin » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:40 pm

Image

Search Criteria :Name Containing 'tesla' and Registrant Type = ''

One item found.1
Organization Name
Click on the name of an organization listed below to access the organization's registration status and a list
of filings submitted to the Charities Bureau and to view filings submitted since November 2006. NY_Reg#_ EIN Registrant Type City State
TESLA MEMORIAL SOCIETY INC 02-79-48 222314173 NFP SCOTCH PLAINS N

Image

No matches were found [for Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe]
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

PreviousNext

Return to Charity Fraud -- It's All About Bears and Cancer

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests