Time Travel -- for real

[gatorback]

YEY! We are getting closer to time travel for real:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/30/large-hadron-collider-first-collisions

Staff working on the largest, most complex scientific instrument in the world joined in a standing ovation earlier today as the machine began its long search for new particles, forces and extra dimensions of space.

Applause and cheers broke out across Cern, the European Nuclear Research Organisation near Geneva, at 12.06pm BST, the moment when subatomic particles travelling at close to the speed of light were slammed together in the machine, creating the highest energy particle collisions a laboratory has ever achieved.

The Large Hadron Collider, which took more than 15 years to design, plan and build, went back into service late last year after a massive electrical failure closed it down for 18 months of repair work in September 2008. Engineers had been running the machine at low energy before stepping up to high energy collisions today.

"It's a great day to be a particle physicist," Cern's director general, Rolf Heuer, said. "A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their patience and dedication is starting to pay dividends."

The £6bn collider occupies a 27km circular tunnel 100 metres beneath the French-Swiss border and accelerates two counter-rotating beams of protons to within a whisker of the speed of light. The beams are crossed at four points around the underground tunnel, bringing the protons into head-on collisions inside giant detectors.

The collisions create tiny fireballs that mimic conditions that prevailed in the universe during the first fractions of a second after the big bang, some 13.7bn years ago.

The day started with frustration as two attempts to collide the particle beams failed. The first glitch was caused by a power unit tripping; the second by a sensitive magnet protection system over-reacting to stray currents in the machine.

The machine was designed to collide beams of protons with a combined energy of 14 trillion electron volts (TeV), but in January, Cern managers announced that as a precaution, the collider would operate at only half this energy until the end of 2011. By colliding protons at 7TeV, the machine is now at least three times more energetic than the US Tevatron collider near Chicago.

"With these record-shattering collision energies, the LHC experiments are propelled into a vast region to explore, and the hunt begins for dark matter, new forces, new dimensions and the Higgs boson," said Fabiola Gianotti, spokesman for the huge Atlas collaboration at the LHC.

Dark matter is the mysterious, invisible substance that hugs galaxies and makes up around a quarter of the universe. It is so named because it neither shines nor reflects radiation.

The LHC puts Cern back in the hunt for the long-sought Higgs boson, a particle that was postulated in 1964 by Peter Higgs, a British physicist, and several other researchers. If the Higgs particle exists, it suggests there is an invisible field permeating all of space that gives mass to fundamental particles, such as the quarks and electrons found in atoms.

The collider will close for a year at the end of 2011 for maintenance work and to fit additional safety measures that will protect the machine from breaking when it runs at full energy in 2013.

[samiam]

If time travel is possible then there are time travelers observing us now.

[JaxNative68]

Where is Scott Bakula (aka Dr Sam Beckett) when you need him?

[Burn to Shine]

I think this thing is a HUGE waste of time (travel or not) and money.

[Bostech]

Great,now I can go back to 80's.

[Bostech]

Increase knowledge..and their valets.

[Captain Zissou]

I am much more in favor of this facility because we don't have to pay for it. 
Is it important, sure, but is it a good investment, Nope.

Unless this spins off new amazing technology and inventions like velcro and Dippin Dots, I say this is a giant cash vacuum.

[gatorback]

Oh cool. For those interested, please have a look at the experiment live using these two web cameras!

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

[BridgeTroll]

We have a time machine... it is called Hubble...

[Bostech]

No,we have Arlington.

[gatorback]

I wonder if anybody over there is being investigated for fraud by the FBI.

[Ryan30]

I guess a time machine would be the fastest way out of Springfield-

[Dog Walker]

I wonder if anybody over there is being investigated for fraud by the FBI.

That investigation was completed in 1980.

[gatorback]

I wonder if anybody over there is being investigated for fraud by the FBI.

That investigation was completed in 1980.

Are you sure? That's not what I gathered from the late news last night.

[Dog Walker]

Last night was when the investigation was started, but it was completed in 1980.