Second chance for LHC

[kc0itf]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... n-collider

They should have "Particles from the FUTURE Xing" clearly marked off!

Most physicists believe he is right. "If it works, we will have built the most complex machine in history," said one. "If not, we will have assembled the world's most expensive piece of modern art."

I'm thinking the latter is right on!!!

[mharratsc]

The thing that gets me about all this nonsense is... they're trying to understand the composition of something found in Nature... by smashing it at near-light-speed in a head-on collision and watching the pieces fly?!

That's like trying to learn anatomy from a train wreck! >.<

I swear- I bet these guys' other hobby is going to demolition derbys...


Mike H.

[GaryN]

They are supposed to be firing up the beast again this weekend, not at anywhere near its maximum power, very sensible idea I'd say
I was wondering why they don't crash protons and anti-protons, thinking protons at those energies would repel each other strongly (I told you I'm not a scientist!) and came upon this page with some explanations. I'm wondering about sub-quarks, but I think they need even more energy to look for those. Get the checkbook out.

http://www.cogito.org/Util/PrintDetail. ... ntId=17819

I think the wheels will fall off before they get to full power, any other predictions out there?

[MattEU]

No Higgs

What will failing to detect a Higgs mean?

If no Higgs is detected after three years of the LHC running at full energy, then this points to a more complicated Higgs field. It could be because the Higgs decays to known particles that are difficult to detect at the LHC or it decays to invisible particles - ones that don't interact with the detector.

Failure could also be a sign of a non-standard model Higgs - which would mean it could be lighter or heavier than expected and thus harder to find. Or it could indicate a more exotic Higgs field - perhaps with several different Higgs bosons interacting in a way not yet fully understood.

What next?

Other mechanisms for endowing particles with mass will be seriously considered. For example, when two W bosons collide, they are thought to produce a Higgs. If no Higgs exists, however, whatever else is produced by W boson scattering would be the obvious next place to look for what endows matter with mass. The process could be examined extensively with the Super LHC.

No detection at the LHC could be bad news for the International Linear Collider, because it has a lower energy than the LHC and so couldn't look for a potentially heavy Higgs. The Compact Linear Collider would be the better option.

Future colliders: Beyond the LHC