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Posts Tagged ‘check the date’

Lab news

Friday, April 1st, 2016

Get the latest news from the world’s biggest science lab! All the facts, all the truth, totally verified and true beyond all reasonable doubt. 85% official news. Brought to you by the team that revealed Elvis landing on the moon.

ATLAS to install neutrino calorimeters

The ATLAS detector is currently the largest experiment on the CERN site, weighing over 7,000 tonnes, spanning 50 m across and almost 50 m long. It can detect nearly all particles produced in the record breaking high energy collisions provided by the LHC. These particles have strange names like the electron, proton, pion, Ξ(1530)3/2+, photon, friton, demi-semi-lepton and Boris. But there is a big problem, which becomes more pressing as we reach higher and higher energies, and that is the neutrino. This is a tiny, neutral, almost massless particle that was predicted in 1930, and it comes in different flavours (the most popular being mint.) The ATLAS Collaboration has an ambitious plan to extend the capabilities of its detector by being the first such general purpose detector to install neutrino calorimeters. At the moment a neutrino is seen as “missing transverse energy”, and that makes it really hard to find new particles.

ATLAS Spokesperson, Dave Charlton, said “Look I really don’t have time for this, I have to go to a meeting!”. After reporters blocked his path and stole his CERN card he added “Fine, how about ‘This is a very exciting time for ATLAS and we are happy to be leading the field in this area. Detecting neutrinos will open up new parameter space and allow to perform searches never seen before.’ Now give me my CERN card, the Weekly meeting cannot start without me.” By seeing neutrinos directly, physicists would be able to observe the annoying neutrino backgrounds that get in the way of dark matter searches. They could count the neutrinos directly to see if they agree with long standing predictions.

Proposals for the new ATLAS neutrino calorimeters

Proposals for the new ATLAS neutrino calorimeters

But not everyone is happy with the proposal. We spoke to a neutrino expert, and after she closed the door on us, we went to Wikipedia. Apparently neutrinos are so bad at interacting that they need about one light years of lead before they can be seen. This would have some impact on the local (and not so local) area. We spoke with a representative from Geneva Airport. He said “If the proposed plans are succesful this would mean moving Geneva Airport. The people and businesses of Geneva rely on the airport for connections with the rest of the world. It would be very inconvenient and not very efficient to commute a light year to reach the airport. Most rental car contracts will not allow you travel that far.”

It’s not yet clear where the supply of lead will come from. A sphere of solid lead would contain more than the global supply, even if every atom was liberated from the Earth’s crust. We would need 38 orders of magnitude more than there is on the planet. That’s more than a million million million. It’s lots. There is also a problem with the sheer size of the proposal. “There are problems we still have to solve”, said an ATLAS physicist “We have a Solar Passage Working Group, and NASA is helping us deal with other local astronomical bodies that might pose impact challenges. Trigger is an issue. Right now it takes about 100 milliseconds to trigger an event. With the new neutrino calorimeters it could take up to 3 years.”

The proposals, if approved, will be implemented by 2600.

CMS developing “truth matching” for data

For decades the CMS Collaboration has used a common tool known as “truth matching” with its simulation studies. Every particle in a simulation has information associated with it, including its mass, energy, charge, momentum, spin, and favourite movies. All these quantities have to be estimated using measurements from the simulated detector, so they are never perfectly known. However with a simulation you can match up the particles to what really happened with the so-called “truth record”, and this is what we call truth matching. If you have a particle travelling with a certain momentum in a certain direction you can compare it to the truth record and find out exactly what kind of particle it is. That means you no longer need those tricky identification algorithms, and you can remove background processes trivially.

“This makes my analysis super easy!” said one CMS student. “I might even graduate next week.” Truth matching has been applied to simulations for several decades, and it it is unique in being the only method that has not also been applied to data. Everything else, from machine learning to Bayesian analysis, have been developed using simulation before being moved over to real data. By employing ouija boards, dowsing techniques, and Feng Shui, CMS psychics have reported initial success. “There are definitely a lot of protons in the LHC beam.” one said. The LHC beam does indeed contain about a million million protons per bunch, and this has been seen by some as a sign of confirmation of the method. Others are more skeptical. “Those protons could have come from the magnets or the pipes. There’s a lot of matter in these tunnels. The results prove nothing.”

One of the first complete data events to be truth matched, a diphoton Higgs decay

One of the first complete data events to be truth matched, a diphoton Higgs decay

If the truth matching of data is successful, it could lead to a revolution in particle physics. Detectors could be slimmed down, time could be saved in the analysis process, and the peer review process would be streamlined. “Rather than having to measure the levels of signal and background, a process that can take months, we can simply count how many electrons bosons we have.” The initial findings are only the first step, and there are plans to extend the data truth matching to more complex final states. It’s expected that by 2019 the CMS Collaboration will be able to truthmatch Higgs bosons, top quarks, and even new particles we’ve never seen before.

A tearful Polish professor, who pioneered the use of the famous ‘pseudorapidity’ variable said “I have been waiting for this breakthrough my entire career. This will make the lives of so many scientists so much simpler.”

LHCb made a big blunder, and you won’t believe what it is!

Senior LHCb physicists were left red faced today when they discovered a terrible blunder. “How could we not have seen this?” Spokesperson Guy Wilkinson said. “It’s been staring us in the face for years” blurted Operations Coordinator Barbara Storaci.

LHCb, a huge science machine that lives underground on the Franco-Swiss border, is hiding a huge secret. Sources on reddit tell us “This kind of hting happens al the time. The Eiffel Tower was bilt up-side-down for the frist few weeks.” and “OMG! WTF? ORLY?”

Can you see what’s wrong with this picture? 98% of people can’t!

The LHCb schematic, with the approved geometry

The LHCb schematic, with the approved geometry

It turns out that when LHCb was made, the engineers only built half a detector. “Now I see it I can’t unsee it!” exclaimed a postdoc, spilling crepe on the table as he spoke.

“It may be true that we only built half a detector”, an anonymous researcher said “but at least it was the forward half.” So far there are no plans to correct the problem, and the Collaboration has already produced hundreds of world class papers with the current detector and shows no signs of stopping.

ALICE alchemists quit after years of research

A team of alchemists working on the ALICE Collaboration have today announced that their research program will end today. The collection of six pesudoscientists, a small minority of the total Collaboration, are hanging up their lab coats after declaring their research “unworkable” and “a total abysmal failure”. The ALICE Collaboration investigates the collisions of Lead ions with other particles in the LHC. The Collaboration has been responsible for a wide range of discoveries concerning the quark-gluon plasma, which is a form of primordial matter from the early universe.

The STAR experiment contained real Gold atoms

The STAR experiment contained real Gold atoms

However it is not the quark-gluon plasma that the small band of alchemists are studying. Instead they want to turn the Lead into Gold, and they want to use the LHC to do it. Most of them came from the previous generation of ion collider experiments, based in Brookhaven, New York. At those facilities there was an abundance of Gold in the experimental apparatus, and it the alchemists looked to replicate this success.

“I just don’t understand” said Bob Bobbatrop, the Master Mage “we had so much success with the RHIC accelerator! The LHC must be producing negative energy fields and the crystals in our detector must be misaligned.” ALICE Spokesperson, Paolo Giubellino, was quick to distance himself from the misfit alchemists. “They are not representative of the Collaboration as a whole, and frankly, I don’t know how they got in here in the first place. The RHIC facility in Brookhaven collided Gold ions, so of course these so-called alchemists found Gold. They’d have to be even stupider not to find it there! This is why we have a peer review process. We’ve even started to arrange psuedomeetings in a local coffee shop where they present their results, and they haven’t yet noticed that most of the people listening are tourists. Even the local barista rolls her eyes when they talk. Meanwhile we can get on with the real research.”

But like a gauge violating wavefunction, Bob Bobbatrop is not phased. “We have vastly superior software! When we need a random number we don’t rely on a C++ library, we use a 20 sided die. You can’t get more serious than that.”

Cryogenics team start charity drive

Do you have any old, unwanted fridge magnets? You can send them to CERN! Last year the cryogenics team at CERN faced problems that lead to the failure of some magnets. Now, a charity drive is starting where you can donate your old magnets, and these will be attached to the outside of failing magnets to give them a boost. “We accept any magnets! That magnet you purchased on vacation? Yes, we’ll take it. Do you have magnetic letters? We will take those too.”

Donated magnets in the staging and testing area

Donated magnets in the staging and testing area

Some magnets are more useful than others. Magnets with mini thermometers can help engineers keep track of the state of the supercooled LHC magnets. The resident artists at CERN have expressed an interest in the magnetic “fridge poetry” packs. Magnets that feature cats will be used in the RF cavity sector. So please, take a look at your fridge, and see if you really need that snow globe magnet from Oslo, or that hula girl magnet from Hawai’i. Why leave it sitting in your kitchen when it can be helping research on the world’s largest machine?

Creative solution to poster defacement row

In recent weeks the media has reported on defacement of the LGBT CERN posters at the lab, with many being removed or subject to grafitti. CERN Director General, Fabiola Gianotti, has taken these incidents very seriously. “The targeting of a single group of posters for abuse like this unacceptable” she said, “and so I have made the decision that from now on, all types posters at CERN will be removed or defaced. CERN is a lab of equal opportunities, and it must be free from discrimination.”

Teams of administrators, including Gianotta herself, have been seen walking the corridors of CERN and instituting this new policy. Posters announcing a SUSY conference have had “NO MORE SYMMTRY BRAKING HERE!!1!” scrawled across them, and a poster advertising a symposium on solar neutrinos was subjected to “Go back to where you came from. The sun.” written on it. Even parking signs are not immune, with slogans such as “Parking? More like… splarking!” and a fire exit sign was seen with a neatly written note underneath saying “They had fire in Hitler’s Germany too, you know”.

One of the many posters subject to the new policy

One of the many posters subject to the new policy

By attacking all signs and posters at the lab, the aim is to make nobody feel victimised or isolated. Staff are encouraged to use their own initiative and are recommended to mutter incoherently under their breath as they do so. “If nothing else” one technician said “it’s made the lab more surreal. I don’t even know how much a coffee is anymore. Apparently it’s now one ‘WHY ARE YOU READING THIS?!’, but it used to be 1.60 CHF.”

LIGO result explained

In February 2016, the LIGO experiment announced it had observed gravitational waves, predicted over a century ago by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The discovery is thought to have come from the merging of two massive black holes, from over a billion light years away. However, two students have come forward to say that they created the waves in their apartment, using a waffle iron, an iPhone, and the cluck of a chicken. “We’ve been working on this prank for weeks” said the first student, “and we had no idea it would be taken seriously!” The second student added “We had to eat so many Pringles to get enough tubes for the wave generator.”

Captain McNuggets, relaxing in the garden

Captain McNuggets, relaxing in the garden

The real hero of the story is their chicken, Captain McNuggets, who made the characteristic “chirp” sound. So did LIGO really detect gravitational waves? “Oh, absolutely!” the pair of students replied. The machine they made could produce gravitational waves of any frequency and amplitude desired, but it was only made “for a bit of a laugh” and is unlikely to see further research. The machine itself was dismantled in October to make space for their latest project, the “ballistic taco-launcher”.

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Data recall at the LHC?

Tuesday, April 1st, 2014

In a stunning turn of events, Large Hadron Collider (LHC) management announced a recall and review of thousands of results that came from its four main detectors, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ALICE, in the course of the past several years when it learned that the ignition switches used to start the LHC accelerator (see the enclosed image) might have been produced by GM. Image

GM’s CEO, A. Ibarra, who is better known in the scientific world for the famous Davidson-Ibarra bound in leptogenesis, will be testifying on the Capitol Hill today. This new revelation will definitely add new questions to the already long list of queries to be addressed by the embattled CEO. In particular, the infamous LHC disaster that happened almost six years ago on 10 September 2008 and cost taxpayers over 21Million dollars to fix, has long suspected been caused by a magnet quench. However, new data indicate that it might have been caused by too much paper accidentally placed on a switch by a graduate student, who was on duty that day.

“We want to know why it took LHC management more than five years to issue that recall”, an unidentified US Government official said in the interview, “We want to know what is being done to correct the problem. From our side, we do everything humanly possible to accommodate US high energy particle physics researchers and help them to avoid such problems in the future.  For example, we included a 6.6% cut in US HEP funding in the President’s 2015 budget request.” He added, “We suspected that something might be going on at the LHC after it was convincingly proven to us at our weekly seminar that the detected Higgs boson is ‘simply one Xenon atom of the 1 trillion 167 billion 20 million Xenon atoms which there are in the LHC!'”

This is not the first time accelerators cause physicists to rethink their results and designs. For example, last year Japanese scientists had to overcome the problem of unintended acceleration of positrons at their flagship facility KEK.

At this point, it is not clear how GM’s ignition switches problems would affect funding of operations at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, CA.

 

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1st April 2014. The LHC is currently in shutdown in preparation for the next physics run in 2015. However the record breaking accelerator is danger is falling far behind schedule as the engineers struggle with technical difficulties 100m below ground level.

The LHC tunnels house the 27km long particle accelerator in carefully controlled conditions. When the beams circulate they must be kept colder than anywhere else in the solar system, and with a vacuum more empty the voids of outer space. Any disruption to the cryogenic cooling systems or the vacuum systems can place serious strain on the operations timetable, and engineers have found signs of severe damage.

Scientists patrol the LHC, inspecting the damaged areas.

Scientists patrol the LHC, inspecting the damaged areas.

The first indications of problems were identified coming from Sector 7 between areas F and H. Cryogenics expert, Francis Urquhart said “My team noticed dents in the service pipes about 50cm from the floor. There was also a deposit of white fibrous foreign matter on some of the cable trays.” The pipes were replaced, but the damage returned the following day, and small black aromatic samples were found piled on the floor. These were sent for analysis and after chemical tests confirmed that they contained no liquid Helium, and that radiometry found they posed no ionisation risk, they were finally identified as Ovis aries depositions.

Ovis aries are found throughout the CERN site, so on-site contamination could not be ruled out. It is currently thought that the specimens entered the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator and proceeded from the SPS to the LHC, leaving deposits as they went. The expert in charge, Gabriella Oak, could not be reached for comment, but is said to be left feeling “rather sheepish”.

Elsewhere on the ring there was another breach of the security protocols as several specimens of Bovinae were found in the ring. The Bovinae are common in Switzerland and it due to their size, must have entered via one of the service elevators. All access points and elevators at the LHC are carefully controlled using biometry and retinal scans, making unauthorised entry virtually impossible. Upon being asked whether the Bovinae had been seen scanning their retinae at the security checkpoints, Francis Urquhart replied “You might very well think that. I could not possibly comment.” While evidence of such actions cannot be found CCTV footage, there have been signs of chewed cud found on the floor, and Bovinae deposits, which are significantly larger than the Ovis deposits, owing to the difference in size.

The retinal scans at the LHC are designed exclusively for human use. A search of the biometric record database show at least one individual (R Wiggum) with unusual retinae, affiliated to “Bovine University”.

It is not known exactly how much fauna is currently in the LHC tunnels, although it is thought to be at least 25 different specimens. They can be identified by the bells they carry around their necks, which can sound like klaxons when they charge. Until the fauna have been cleared, essential repair work is extremely difficult. “I was repairing some damage caused by a passing cow” said Stanford PhD student Cecilia, “when I thought I heard the low oxygen klaxon. By the time I realised it was just two sheep I had already put on my safety mask and pulled the alarm to evacuate the tunnels.” She then commented “It took us three hours to get access to the tunnels again, and the noises and lights had caused the animals to panic, creating even more damage to clean up.”

This is not the first time a complex of tunnels has been overrun by farm animals. In the early 90s the London Underground was found to be infested with horses, which turned into a longterm problem and took many years to resolve.

Current estimates on the delay to the schedule range from a few weeks to almost a decade. Head of ATLAS operations, Dr Remy Beauregard Hadley, comments “I can’t believe all this has happened. They talk about Bovinae deposits delaying the turn on, and I think it’s just a load of bullshit!”

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Now that we are on the verge of completing the Standard Model of Particle Physics, it’s time to look to the future of the field. Five physicists at CERN present their new state of the art* theory: The Substandard Model of Physics!

“It’s easy to understand but questionably accurate.” Mandy Baxter (Marine Biogeochemical Microbiologist, USCB)

Thanks to the actors.
The Substandard Model Task Force:
Androula Alekou (Neutrino Expert)
Katie Malone (Higgs Expert)
Stephen Ogilvy (Flavor Expert)
Aidan Randle-Conde (QCD Expert)
Lee Tomlinson (QFT Expert)

Steve Marsden (Standard Model Expert)
Helen Lambert (Environmental Sanitization Team)

You can find Steve and Aidan on youtube and twitter:
http://www.youtube.com/signifyingsomething
http://www.youtube.com/aidanatcern
@sigsome @aidanatcern

Visit the US LHC Blogs at Quantum Diaries:
http://www.quantumdiaries.org/lab-81

Music: Off to Osaka, Kevin Macleod, http://www.incompetech.com

Images taken from CKMFitter (http://ckmfitter.in2p3.fr), UTFit (http://www.utfit.org), Wikimedia.

This video does not reflect the views of CERN. It does not even reflect the views of the actors. In fact I’d be surprised if it reflected the views of anyone at all.

Thanks to Adam Davidson for inspiring the name. It was a off handed comment you made about 7 years ago that stuck with me ever since. Finally it has become a reality!

Apologies for the slightly out of focus footage and extra frame. Some small technical glitches always get through.

(*We’re just not sure what kind of a state, and what kind of art it is.)

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After gathering a huge amount of data the physicists at the Ice Cube experiment in Antarctica have come to an inescapable and startling conclusion. There is a massive body orbiting the Earth, and the scientists can see its “shadow” in their data. They can even trace its path across the sky.

This body is called “Luno” by some scientists and it seems to be cross the sky once every 29.5 days. The mass of Luno is estimated to be quite staggering- about 1% of the mass of the Earth! Despite its large size there seems to be little danger posed by this body, It seems to be orbiting happily, showing no sign deviating from its course. Taking a look at the data once the movement of Luno is taken into account gives a striking pattern, confirming that its orbit is indeed stable over long periods of time:

The position of neutrinos in the sky respect to Luno (Ice Cube)

The position of neutrinos in the sky respect to Luno (Ice Cube) (Link to pdf)

The Ice Cube experiment is a neutrino observatory that searches for high energy neutrinos from outer space. These are thought to be given off by gamma ray bursts, neutron stars and alien TV broadcasts. (Some controversial theories also state that we can expect high energy neutrinos from malfunctioning microwave ovens and vacuum cleaners. But it would have to be some extreme form of malfunction.) As the neutrinos cosmic rays hit Luno they interact and the associated neutrinos don’t make it to Ice Cube. This is how Ice Cube see the “shadow” of Luno:

Schematic of the shadow of Luno (Ice Cube)

Schematic of the shadow of Luno (Ice Cube) (Link to pdf)

Other observations of Luno

This is not the first time that a particle physics experiment has speculated about a massive extra terrestrial body. The experiments at LEP postulated the existence of a massive body outside the Earth that changed their centre of mass energies. The assumptions went as far as to say that Luno was responsible for huge tidal forces that changed the shape of the Earth subtly around LEP. Then again, the LEP experiments were also sensitive to the TGV train timetables and meetings of the CERN Yoga Club.

Scientists at NASA have been studying Luno and they have come to some interesting conclusions. The most striking prediction is that Luno should be visible to the naked eye. Luno should reflect electromagnetic radiation from the sun, making it particularly visible at night. It is also thought that Luno is largely responsible for the tides we see in the seas and oceans across the world, a phenomenon which had been a mystery for centuries. Luno could even block the line of sight between the sun and the Earth, causing nightfall for a brief period of time. This could cause panic for people from scientifically illiterate cultures, nocturnal animals and biochemists. After much study there have been a number of artist’s impressions to help with identification of Luno:

Artist's impression of Luno to aid identification (NASA)

Artist's impression of Luno to aid identification (NASA)

Ancient prophecy

Although Ice Cube has only discovered Luno recently, there are several examples of prophecy of Luno in various forms. Several ancient civilizations drew pictograms that represented Luno in some way with some examples, such as the Tarot deck, surviving to the present day. Some cultures even had a Luno deity, such as Khonsu of the ancient Egyptians. His pictogram includes a large figure, which carries Luno. Given the size of Luno, we should be able to see the large figure as well, but all searches have been fruitless. Some people think that this figure may be even harder to find than SUSY, or even extra dimensions (outside of the Terry Pratchett universe.)

Khonsu (discovered portions shown in gray) (Wikipedia)

Khonsu (discovered portions shown in gray) (Wikipedia)

Whatever Luno is, it should be heralded as one of the greatest discoveries of 2012, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it won the Nobel Prize!

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