MoEDAL becomes LHC’s seventh experiment
As reported from CERN 12th May 2010
MoEDAL collaboration.
MoEDAL is the newest of the experiments that will investigate particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Approved by the CERN Research Board in December, the MoEDAL experiment will search for very specific exotic particles.
The experiment is relatively small, cheap and quick to install but its physics potential is huge. The MoEDAL detector will consist of layers of plastic attached to the walls and ceiling of the cavern that houses the VELO detector of the LHCb experiment. Physicists will look for tell-tale collinear ‘etch-pits’ created by a stable particle such as a magnetic monopole or a massive stable supersymmetric particle crossing through the plastic.
The international MoEDAL collaboration, made up of physicists from Canada, CERN, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Romania and the US, have already installed the first square metre of plastic in the LHCb cavern and are preparing to deploy the rest of the detector during the next planned long shutdown of the LHC, which will start late in 2011.
Origin of the Universe
Humans have always sought to understand the origin of the Universe, and the origin of Consciousness. How did the Universe originate? How did consciousness originate? Was consciousness there from the beginning, or did it evolve out of something else? Ever since man stared at the stars above, these questions have persisted.
Discussing the origin of the Universe at first glance may seem like it is quite remote from healing, but in fact the topics are strongly linked.
Let your imagination take you on a trip to what we can visualize as the beginning of time and space, before the Big Bang. All that existed was the most reduced state of energy, constantly flowing in a seemingly random fashion, yet synchronized at some level. This reduced state of energy had been flowing for an infinite amount of time prior to the Big Bang. With no physical matter present, there was only an infinite amount of empty space with energy rippling through it.
Empty space is not really empty at all. Even in a vacuum cooled to near absolute zero, there are still vast amounts of energy within that space. Scientists have theorized that there is enough energy in empty space the size of a cup, to boil all the oceans on earth. These are quantum fluctuations, or spontaneous movements of energy in empty space. Energy is present in the form of waves, meaning it ripples like water in a pond, except in all directions.
Ripples or quantum fluctuations of energy have an effect on each other. Random pulses of energy interact as they bounce off or intersect with each other. Imagine watching ripples in a pond during a rainstorm. Sometimes the ripples converge and form a larger ripple. Eventually these energy fluctuations accumulate at intersections thereby increasing the concentration of energy in a specific area.
When these ripples converge, this can result in the waves “amplifying” each other. If this happens, you then have a region of space with a higher concentration of energy. With a higher concentration of energy you have a heightened probability of a particle being manifested from the energy in empty space. This increases the probability of a quantum particle being manifested from energy fluctuations. Eventually a certain frequency hits the concentrated area, which causes energy to compress, and a quantum particle is created. This instantaneously initiated the Big Bang. As this all occurred at once, it could be more accurately said that we are all from a common energy rather than a particle. I refer to this as a particle for simplicity of understanding.
How can something come from nothing? For some reason, a lot of people tend to arbitrarily classify matter as being something and energy as being nothing. This of course could not be further from the truth. Matter is simply energy when it is broken down (E=MC2). It has been mathematically proven how a particle can be manifested from the energy fluctuations in empty space. Recently scientists have managed to generate a particle solely out of this energy. It is therefore completely possible for matter to manifest from this energy. The probability of these quantum fluctuations lining up in this specific way, which produces matter, is infinitesimally small but there was an infinite amount of time prior to this event.
When the fluctuations intersected in a specific way, the first quantum particle was created and instantly the Big Bang occurred. The origin of the Universe is a natural process evolving from the first particle. Every particle in the entire Universe originated from this common energy.
The mechanism that initiated and drove the Big Bang is actually quite simple. With the manifestation of the first particle, there was the beginning of gravitational force. This gravity pulls in more energy, which manifests more particles. As the number of particles increases, so does the gravitational pull, thus pulling in even more energy.
The initiation of the Big Bang chain reaction was not a “particle”, but was simply quantum energy fluctuations that somehow slightly manipulated the space/time continuum. With the correct conditions, this allowed the creation of the first quantum particle. All matter is simply energy oriented in a way so that it forms a “bend” in the space/time continuum, which essentially is a playing field for matter as it follows the bends in space/time also known as gravity.
Gravity does not pull in the energy directly. Time passes slower around a gravitational field and therefore energy leaves the region of space slower than energy flows in. Although the first singularity may have been a subatomic particle, this small gravitational field was enough to initiate these events because prior to this point there was no gravitational field.
Bends in space/time
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
The LHC is back up and running- sorta! It may take 1-3 years (can you say 2012?) before we know some of the critical information that the LHC, in Cern, can tell us. Evidence of supersymmetry, the idea that every particle has a “super partner” with similar properties in a quantum dimension (according to some physics theories, there are hidden dimensions in the universe), could be discovered one way or the other before 2012.
“The LHC is back,” the European Organization for Nuclear Research announced triumphantly Friday, as the world’s largest particle accelerator resumed operation more than a year after an electrical failure shut it down.
Restarting the Large Hadron Collider — the $10 billion research tool’s full name — has been “a herculean effort,” CERN’s director for accelerators, Steve Myers, said in a statement announcing the success. Experiments at the LHC may help answer fundamental questions such as why Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity — which describes the world on a large scale — doesn’t jibe with quantum mechanics, which deals with matter far too small to see.
Of course, quantum physics is standing most scientists on their heads these days. 
Physicists established a circulating proton beam in the LHC’s 17-mile tunnel at 10 p.m. (4 p.m. ET) Friday, CERN said, a critical step towards getting results from the accelerator. “It’s great to see beam circulating in the LHC again,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “We’ve still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we’re well on the way.”
Located underground on the border of Switzerland and France, the LHC has been inching towards operation since the summer. It reached its operating temperature — 271 degrees below zero Celsius — on October 8 and particles were injected on October 23. Now that a beam is circulating, the next step is low-energy collisions, which should begin in about a week, CERN said. High-energy collisions will follow next year.
Might we create a “black hole” with this monster? Doubtful, but then, who knows anything for sure these days?
Cern LHC the Large Hadron Collider is a success
With over three hours of stable and colliding beams, the Large Hadron Collier image of the day
Beams collided at 7 TeV in the LHC
Geneva, 30 March 2010. Beams collided at 7 TeV in the LHC at 13:06 CEST, marking the start of the LHC research programme. Particle physicists around the world are looking forward to a potentially rich harvest of new physics as the LHC begins its first long run at an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator.
“It’s a great day to be a particle physicist,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their patience and dedication is starting to pay dividends.”
Read the full press release from CERN
LHC first attempt for collisions at 7 TeV
Today is a historical day at the LHC which marks the start of the first attempt for collisions at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam).
Webcasts are available until 18:15 (Central European Summer Time – CEST). The main webcast will include live footage from the control room for the LHC accelerator and from the control rooms of the four main LHC experiments: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb.
A Large Ion Collider Experiment – Does the LHC prove anything other than that the big bang could occur by inelligent design?
Same goes with creating artificial life in a test tube. If we cannot observe these events occurring naturally and can only replicate them in our own controlled tests using our own intelligence doesn't this just add validity to intelligent design?
It is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the last unobserved particle among those predicted by the Standard Model. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would shed light on the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, through which the particles of the Standard Model are thought to acquire their mass. In addition to the Higgs boson, new particles predicted by possible extensions of the Standard Model might be produced at the LHC. More generally, physicists hope that the LHC will enhance their ability to answer the following questions.
Of the possible discoveries the LHC might make, only the discovery of the Higgs particle is relatively uncontroversial, but even this is not considered a certainty. Stephen Hawking said in a BBC interview that "I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of one hundred dollars that we won't find the Higgs." In the same interview Hawking mentions the possibility of finding superpartners and adds that "whatever the LHC finds, or fails to find, the results will tell us a lot about the structure of the universe."
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.[14] (see A Large Ion Collider Experiment). This will allow an advancement in the experimental program currently in progress at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The aim of the heavy-ion program is to provide a window on a state of matter known as Quark-gluon plasma, which characterized the early stage of the life of the Universe.
Let me give you an example of one of those silly syllogisms that you have probably seen.
All humans are primates.
Chimpanzees are primates.
Therefore humans are chimpanzees.
Here's another:
Art is created by intelligence.
Mythology is created by intelligence.
Therefore art is mythology.
And one more:
Intelligence can simulate natural origins.
Life and the universe are natural.
Therefore life and the universe were created by intelligence.
No, it doesn't add validity to intelligent design. It demonstrates the inability of religious fundamentalists to think rationally.
Edit: Oh, here's one more I thought of, which I know appeals to folks in this forum:
NASA made films of men walking on the moon.
Filmmakers can (sort of) fake films of people walking on the moon.
Therefore the moon landings were fake.
So far it hasn't proved much of anything, certainly not that intelligent beings could have caused the Big Bang. The one big thing it has proved, though, is that people really, really, really like the idea that the world is about to come to an end, even when all known science and logic says 'no'.
Also, energy levels significantly higher than those the LHC could achieve happen regularly in the Universe, not just in supernovas and black holes but even in our own upper atmosphere due to cosmic rays.
No, at least not scientifically.
The problem with the "intelligent design" argument is that it completey throws out science — that is, the method by which scientific conclusions are formulated and tested.
Science can never hold a specific hypothesis as a theory solely on the basis that some OTHER hypothesis fails to meet its standard of proof. That is utterly unscientific, and reveals quite clearly that the attempts to establish ID as a scientifically valid proposal are really people just trying to elevate their preconceived beliefs to credibiliy under color of science — but without any of the rigor.
The notion that the failure of some experiments "proves" ID is like saying that evidence that your car is not blue proves that it's yellow. Proponents of intelligen design must provide positive proof of their hypothesis, not merely hold it up as the "default" when some other conclusion appears to fail. Specifically, if they want to argue that the universe arose by an intelligent design, then they must produce the designer, evidence of his responsibility and role in the production of the universe, and subject him to reasonable tests for intelligence. That's how the tenets of intelligent design need to be tested in order to establish them as scientifically rigorous.
Regarding the LHC, it hasn't been really used yet. So to call it a "failure" is premature.
"Controlled" tests in science are NOT a way to gimmick the results, as you seem to suggest. Scientific controls enable effects to be reliably connected to antecedent observations by means of controlling what antecedents can arise.
"Intelligent design" is not science. It is a thin veil over Creationism as taught by a small minority of Christians, the American Fundamentalists. It has no place in a scientific discussion.
No.
And here is why: recreating the circumstances under which, say, abiogenesis is believed to have occurred is NOT the same as making life.
Now, if we took teeny tiny hammers and tongs and welding irons and built a living cell, that would be intelligent design. But if we just put the chemicals in a vat and expose it to the radiation and heat we believe prevailed on ancient Earth, that is NOT design.
The LHC is not out to prove anything regarding the Big Bang. It is merely mimicking, on a very small scale, the energy levels of that event, to see whether supersymmetry is indeed correct.
In the story of Intelligent Design, what is it in the concept which suggests that there was only one designer? Couldn't there very well have been many, many designers each engineering a certain aspect of nature and the universe at different times?
If the story says nothing about the designer(s), it says nothing about the nature and characteristics of the design, in my opinion.
Intelligent Design story is not science.
Actually, considering the fact that the LHC broke within a week of its initial testing, and won't be operational again until March of 2009 or later, all it proves is that very large complicated systems are hard to get right the first time.
What we are trying to say is
"NO"
Well, let's start at your biggest error:
Intelligent Design is a logical fallacy, which tries to justify Christian theology. It has nothing to do with science or pure mathematical logic.
The next smaller errors:
The LHC does not recreate the Big Bang and we have not yet had any true artificial life.
So, you have to remember what a deduction is:
In mathematical logic (the basis of all scientific reasoning), you have the deduction in the form:
A –> B
or "From A we can deduct B" or "Because of A, we have B".
It is not the same as "A <–> B" which can be described as "Everytime you have A, you also have B". For getting to this logical term, you would need A –> B and B–>A to be true.
For example: When you park your car in the sun, it gets hot. (Car AND Sun –> HotCar). But does the other way around also apply? (HotCar –> Car AND Sun). Sure not – you have also other reasons which can make it hot.
One correct possible deduction from "A –> B" is "!B –> !A" or
"If B does not happen, A does also not happen".
So, let's pick the example of the Big Bang. Your desired conclusion today was: Intelligent people (I know that this is pretty inflammatory) can recreate the Big Bang, so the Big Bang can only happen because of intelligent people.
Or in Math:
(Intelligence -> BB) -> (BB -> Intelligence)
Which is not always correct. If you would for example not have intelligence…
Even if humans could recreate the Big Bang (which we can't and we are even with the LHC far away from it), the deduction that only intelligent people or designers could create a Big Bang is not possible.
The only reasoning, which would be always true would be:
(Intelligence -> BB) -> (!BB -> !Intelligence)
Or: If we have no Big Bang, we also have no intelligence. Think about it. 
Nothing can add to the validity of intelligent design since it has no validity. The implication that it has any validity is ridiculous.
<<Does the LHC prove anything other than that the big bang could occur by inelligent design?>>
Which results of the research programme so far could lead to any such conclusion, or aren't you actually bothered about details such as results?
LHC sets new record – accelerates beam to 3.5 TeV
Geneva, 19 March 2010. At just after 5:20 this morning, two 3.5 TeV proton beams successfully circulated in the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. This is the highest energy yet achieved in a particle accelerator, and an important step on the way to the start of the LHC research programme. The first attempt to collide beams at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) will follow on a date to be announced in the near future.
“Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC’s overall design, and the improvements we’ve made since the breakdown in September 2008,” explained CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers. “And it’s a great credit to the patience and dedication of the LHC team.”