Fabiola Gianotti...four years and the Higgs boson

"Q&A with Fabiola Gianotti, Higgs hunter"

Symmetry sits down with Fabiola Gianotti, who recently finished an eventful four years as spokesperson for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.

by

Lori Ann White

April 19th, 2013

Symmetry

Physicist Fabiola Gianotti, one of the two experiment leaders who announced the discovery of a Higgs-like particle last summer, recently stopped by Stanford University to deliver the physics department’s annual Hofstadter Lectures. Symmetry writer Lori Ann White took the opportunity to interview Gianotti about her time as spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment; her nomination to be Time magazine’s 2012 Person of the Year; the future of the Large Hadron Collider; and, of course, Gianotti’s use of the oft-maligned Comic Sans font.

S: How is life different now that you've finished your term as ATLAS spokesperson?

FG: It's a different life (laughs). Of course the four years as spokesperson were unique—a great time, a very special scientific and human adventure. Unforgettable.

Now I am back to doing more hands-on work, which is different but is equally interesting and stimulating. I like my “new life.” I feel pretty much like a post-doc, and I am working with many young people.

S: What are your impressions of your time as spokesperson now?

FG: I'm extremely grateful to the ATLAS collaboration for giving me such an important and prestigious opportunity. The past four years have been very intense for the whole LHC community—accelerator, experiments, computing—very demanding, every day a new challenge. For sure we didn’t get bored!

The huge number of satisfactions and accomplishments since the LHC started operation at the end of 2009 reward decades of hard work by the community. People should keep in mind that the Higgs boson was not discovered in a few months.

From a more personal point of view, it was for me very enriching to work with so many competent, motivated, enthusiastic and dedicated ATLAS colleagues, in particular the young people. There is a very strong team spirit in ATLAS, which has allowed us to face in the best way difficulties and challenges and savor together several outstanding accomplishments.  
 
S: What do you consider your best accomplishment as spokesperson?

FG: Frankly, I don’t know. I have tried to do my best for the experiment as every other ATLAS colleague. What we accomplished is the result of this collective work, over the years.

S: Do you feel your nomination for Time magazine’s Person of the Year is an indication that the public doesn't understand how collaborations work?

FG: All the people who have contributed to the LHC should have been runners-up for Time’s Person of the Year. But I guess this would have been unpractical.

I am obviously honored to have been selected by Time, but I consider myself to be there as a representative of a much bigger community, so I share this honor with my ATLAS and CMS colleagues, as well as the LHC accelerator team and all the people who have been working on the LHC project over the years.

I think it's positive that Time magazine has chosen a representative from science and research as one of the runners-up. It’s a very good demonstration that society values knowledge.
 
S: How has the discovery of the Higgs changed your life?

FG: It has changed it in that I have now much stronger relationships with people outside our field. The discovery of the Higgs boson has raised a big interest in society. I've had the chance to give a few public lectures since the 4th of July. At each time, the attendance is huge, and people ask very good questions that indicate their genuine interest and that they have prepared themselves. I also receive a huge number of mails from young people, in particular teenagers and undergrad students, who would like to know more about the Higgs boson, the LHC, how to become a scientist, etc. It's really very nice to see how much people are interested in fundamental knowledge.

S: I have to ask. Why do you use Comic Sans in your slides?

FG: Because I like it. It's so cute. As you see, I didn't change it [for the Hofstadter Lectures]. I find it a sweet and pleasant font.
 
S: What do you think of the reactions to your use of the font?

FG: (laughs) I was amazed. It made such a big splash. I learned that a person in the UK is running a campaign to rename Comic Sans to Comic CERN.

S: What future news do you anticipate coming out of the LHC experiments?

FG: Now that we have discovered a new particle, we are going to measure it in detail, so I expect many more nice results about the Higgs boson to come out in the next months.

For the rest, I have no idea. I am serious. The LHC has been conceived and built to address a long list of questions, of which the existence of the Higgs boson is only one. There are many others: the composition of dark matter, the origin of the matter/antimatter asymmetry in the universe, the unification of forces, etc.

So we will continue to work and hopefully we will be able to solve, at least partially, some of these issues. We will see what surprise nature has set aside for us.

I think the best reward will be to find something totally unexpected. So I would say I don't know today what future news to anticipate. But I hope it will be something very intriguing.

Fabiola Gianotti [Wikipedia]

When physicists get bored..."Decay"

"Watch this: 'Decay,' a zombie movie made by physicists and filmed at the Large Hadron Collider"

by

Adi Robertson

December 9th, 2012

THE VERGE

Zombie movies are a dime a dozen, but Decay, a full-length film released for free online today, offers an unusual setting for the rise of the living dead. Decay was shot on location at CERN by Luke Thompson, a University of Manchester physics Ph.D. student and first-time filmmaker, and its plot injects zombies into the search for the Higgs Boson, which was likely discovered earlier this year. Other physics students and at least one professor round out the small cast and crew.

In many ways, Decay is standard B-horror, but the dark tunnels around the Large Hadron Collider make for some fantastically creepy scenes. Thompson also hopes that it will satirize popular perceptions of science — the LHC, particularly, has been the epicenter for speculation about world-destroying black holes and other types of super-science. While CERN has no official involvement in the project (the film wasn't set in sensitive locations), it's told Wired that Decay "shows how pure science can stimulate creativity."

Higgs boson announcement...the drama is not effective

"Physicists to Make Major 'God Particle' Announcement Next Week"

by

Jeanna Bryner

December 8th, 2011

LiveScience

Scientists at the Swiss lab that hosts the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will announce their latest findings in the search for an elusive subatomic particle called the Higgs boson or "God particle," next week. Already blogs and online news outlets are abuzz with speculation about the big announcement.

The CERN lab in Geneva has cautioned that LHC's ATLAS and CMS experiments have not accrued enough data to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the Higgs boson, an as yet undetected particle thought to give all other particles their mass.

Even so, the BBC is reporting that a "respected scientist from the CERN particle physics laboratory has told the BBC he expects to see 'the first glimpse' of the Higgs boson next week."

The LHC is a 17-mile (27-kilometer) long underground circular tunnel where particles are smashed into one another at near light speed. The collisions produce enormous amounts of energy, releasing various exotic particles that may include the Higgs boson.

Standard physics model is on the line

"End of Higgs Search Will Confirm or Refute the Standard Model of Physics 'Within Months'"

by

Alexis Madrigal

July 24th, 2011

The Atlantic

The number one particle on physicists most-wanted list, the Higgs boson, has played a key role in our understanding of the universe. As first predicted in 1964, the Higgs is theorized to be responsible for giving all other particles mass. Only one problem: no one's ever glimpsed one in any experiment ever. And we've been looking. The reason we run high-energy particle collisions is that all kinds of exotic particles can be found in the rubble. Or, more properly, the signatures of their decay into more prosaic subatomic bits can be detected.

Scientists at Fermilab's Tevatron particle collider have been looking for a long, long time -- and they've made significant strides in recent years in constraining the possible attributes of the elusive particle. But the Tevatron doesn't appear to create high enough energy collisions to find the Higgs.

Now, though, CERN's new atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, has provided what a physicist called a "tantalizing" hint of precisely where the Higgs may be. In fact, "within months" we should have enough data to know for sure where the Higgs is... if it actually exists.

And that's really the most fascinating possibility. If scientists can't find the Higgs even at LHC energies, then the entire model of standard physics will have to be rethought. And there's nothing better in physics than experimental data ruining the theory.

"Two Breakthroughs in Two Days: Scientists Announce Two Higgs Boson 'God Particle' Discoveries"

by

Alastair Stevenson

July 25th, 2011

International Business Times

Within two days of each other, European and American teams of scientists have reported early indications of the elusive Higgs boson "God" particle, the missing link in science's Standard Model theory of particle physics.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern have indicated that they may have made the first steps to discover the mysterious Higgs boson '"God'" particle. The discovery was made when the two teams monitoring the centres two colliders detected unusual bumps in the 120 and 140GeV (gigaelectronvolts) spectrum.

The mysterious Higgs boson is the the missing particle in science's Standard Model theory of particle physics. If discovered, the particle's existence would prove current scientists understanding of why certain elements have mass while others, like light, do not.

The scientists quickly noted that the bump could indicate the existence of the ellusive particle, which is thought to exist between the 114 and 185GeV spectrum.

The research was carried out at the custom built 18-mile tunnel on the French Swiss-border by the Atlas and CMS research teams. The tunnel was built to allow researchers to search for new physics particles and behaviours by slamming subatomic particles together at near light-speed.

The scientists were quick to point out that it is too early to confirm whether the data bump could definitely be attributed to the Higgs particle. Statistical fluctuations, flaws in computer data and human error could all offer alternative explanations for the bump.

"We cannot say anything today, but clearly, it's intriguing," said Atlas spokeswoman Fabiola Gianotti.

Similar Discovery in America

Meanwhile, just two days after the European teams announced their potential breakthrough physicists working at the Fermilab facility in Illinois reported a similar step forward in the Higgs boson particle search.

The lab has its own $10 billion collider named Tevatron. Like the European teams, the U.S. scientists made the discovery by firing protons and antiprotons down multi-mile long tunnels to create high energy collisions.

Like the European teams the Femilab scientists detected similar but "weaker" bumps in their data, indicating the presence of the ellusive particle.

Unfortunately, also like the European Teams, the U.S. team was quick to point out that it was too early to tell whether the data definitively showed the Higgs boson in action. The team pointed out that after the data was further examined it may well point to an alternative explanation.

The particle's existence was first theorised by Edinburgh University physicist Peter Higgs in 1964. Higgs theorized that certain particles actually gained mass via an invisible field present throughout the universe.

"LHC destroy Earth" poll

Will the LHC gobble up the Earth by a small blackhole?

Yes...0
No...5

Yes, I am aware that I asked a similar question on March 13th of this year ["LHC/"dooms day" poll"] but I thought I would rephrase it to solicit some responses. I think the percent of fear mongers is small [like those that wish Pluto would regain planetary status] and pose no significant threat or concern.

Annihilation of the world put on hold

Eleventh hour legal wrangling

"Fear and trembling"...of the unknown

Government and lawyers put suits to rest

LHC again

LHC shut down for maintenance

Still fussing in the courts about the LHC

Princeton physics coed finds LHC error

Xiaohang Quan '09, a physics concentrator, poses in front of a detector in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, over spring break. Quan discovered a miscalculation in the hardware of the LHC, which is the world’s largest particle accelerator.

There is a lesson to be learned here...valuable insight can come from youth. The LHC people had overlooked something at the LHC and Xiaohang Quan, an undergraduate senior in physics at Princeton discovered the anomaly.

"Senior improves supercollider algorithm"

by

Tasnim Shamma

March 23rd, 2009

The Daily Princetonian

Xiaohang Quan '09 was working on her senior thesis when she found a miscalculation in the hardware of the world's largest particle accelerator.

Quan, a physics concentrator, traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last week with physics professors Christopher Tully GS '98, Jim Olsen and Daniel Marlow for the annual meeting of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). This year, however, they also came to discuss Quan's discovery with the designers of the hardware for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which, as part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has the potential to revolutionize particle physics.

In the hardware used to record and capture events in the LHC, she discovered errors that were leading to the appearances of double images because of particle streams known as jets.

Quan's thesis focuses on the various jet selection criteria for the LHC and finding which algorithms will be most efficient for analysis of the physics. She has worked with Tully over the past few years and said she was surprised when she discovered a discrepancy between her predictions and results when drawing her initial plots.

"If further analysis related to this discovery goes well, I think it will show physicists the right jet selection criteria to use," Quan said. "It will save much time and trouble for people, I hope."

Tully, Quan's thesis adviser, presented the errors they found in the calculations during a video conference with scientists from CERN two weeks ago.

"We came to CERN [last week] to discuss with the designers of the hardware how to put glasses on our algorithms so as to remove these double images," Tully explained.

Quan added that many physicists at the conference said they were surprised to learn she is only a college senior.

"I think people would normally assume that I am a physics graduate student, so they were kind of surprised to learn that I am in fact an undergraduate," she said.

The LHC is an accelerator located in a circular 17-mile tunnel more than 100 meters below the border of France and Switzerland. There are four main particle detectors located around the ring, in which beams of protons or heavy ions intersect and in which protons are smashed against one another at almost the speed of light. The experiments are meant to recreate conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

The LHC, which cost more than $4 billion to build, was functional for a total of 10 days last September before damage to several superconducting magnets led to its temporary shutdown. It is expected to be operational again this September.

"Once it begins operating [again], the energy frontier will be an order of magnitude beyond what any accelerator has been able to achieve so far, and it will be able to collide beams at an unprecedented intensity," Tully said.

He added that Quan's contribution was "not atypical."

"Improvements to the algorithms are part of a normal process of scientific investigation that serve to improve the performance of the detectors," Tully explained. "It is this kind of work that constantly perfects the capabilities of the LHC experiments to do the best physics they can, and is business as usual for the physicists."

The search for the origin of mass in the Universe

The CMS experiment, the project the University high-energy physics group is most involved with, is an experiment within the LHC that may detect dark-matter particles. It is also expected to aid in verifying the existence of the Higgs boson.

The Higgs boson is the only unobserved particle in the standard model of particle physics. This particle has often been labeled the "God particle" in popular culture for the expectation that its discovery will yield many of the answers to the origin of the universe.

Tully has worked since 1989 on the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP), the forerunner of the LHC which was optimal for studying the importance of the electromagnetic and weak forces. These forces, he said, are "intimately related" to the origin of mass. He said he realized that understanding the origin of mass involved the search for the Higgs boson, the discovery of which could shed further light on the composition of all of the matter in the universe.

"We don't know what 70 percent of the universe is made of, and that's not 70 percent somewhere else," Tully said. "We are living in what we don't understand."

Tully was named head of the Higgs boson search team at LEP in 2000.

Under his direction, the group began focusing in on masses around 114 times that of the proton for the mass of the Higgs boson, allowing the group to focus its experiments and narrow the mass range at which the Higgs could be located.

Because of the LEP shutdown in November 2000 to make way for the installation of the LHC in the same tunnel, Tully said that the Tevatron collider in Illinois is "next up at bat" to discover the Higgs boson.

He joined the Tevatron collider team studying the sensitivity of the Higgs boson in 2002, and several of his Ph.D. students from the University are currently leading the team. If the Tevatron experiments are successful, though, they will not be on the same scale as what the LHC may discover, since those experiments are conducted at significantly lower energies.

Tully added that he expected to travel to CERN, which he described as the "world cafe of particle physics," at least once per month and would be spending a large part of this summer there to prepare the CMS experiment.

Peter Toshev '11, Tatiana Medvedeva GS, Edmund Berry GS, Andrzej Zuranski GS and Adam Hunt GS will be joining him.

"All eyes are on the LHC right now, so I am looking forward to working in an environment where the level of excitement around the research will be high," Toshev, who will be the only Princeton undergraduate at CERN this summer, said in an e-mail. "This highlights a great part of Princeton — the high level of interaction of undergraduates with people at the top of their field."

SMACKDOWN for "God Particle"

Only a mother of a physicist could love this? The stalled and patient participants are fighting for supremacy in the discovery of the Higgs Boson [God Particle].

"God's Broken Machine"

As Europe makes repairs to its shiny new particle accelerator, U.S. rivals prepare to steal the prize.

by

Fred Guterl and William Underhill

March 7th, 2009

NEWSWEEK

Investors aren't the only ones feeling a pit in their stomachs lately. Physicists at the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, are seeing their dreams of Nobel Prizes go down the drain along with the Dow. The collider was sold to the European public as the best chance of discovering a piece of subatomic debris so important to our understanding of the universe that it's been dubbed the "God Particle." Less than a month after scientists flipped the switch on the new machine back in September, however, it broke down. Repairs will take a year.

The wait itself isn't so bad—particle physicists are used to biding their time while technicians fix their big, delicate machines. Now, though, a U.S. rival seems to have exploited the lull by staging a last-minute comeback, threatening to leapfrog the Europeans to the prize. This week scientists at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, will announce new data that not only narrows the gap between them and the coveted God Particle, but also suggests that the LHC may not be particularly well placed to make the discovery at all. The finding is a public-relations blow to the LHC and tarnishes Europe's newly burnished image as a leader in Big Science.

The problem is partly of the physicists' own making. The LHC, completed last year at a cost of €3 billion, triggered an American-style media blitz. The BBC devoted an entire day of radio programs to the project. The world's press ran headlines like "Mankind's Greatest Experiment," "Hunt Begins for Secrets of the Universe" and "The Shot Heard Round the Universe." (NEWSWEEK put the collider on its cover, too.) One account described the LHC itself as the "God Machine."

Perhaps the biggest mistake was in creating such high expectations for what is only one of many goals, though arguably the most important: to discover the Higgs boson (a.k.a. the God Particle). Whether the Higgs exists goes to the heart of particle physics—if there's no Higgs, the "standard model" of the universe that physicists have been honing for a half century would need major revision. Finding out entails sending protons around a magnetic racetrack and then smashing them into one another at high energies. The LHC, the argument went, is the only machine big enough to reach the energies needed to make the Higgs (if it exists) appear.

The only problem with that story is that it might not be entirely true. The standard model predicts that the Higgs will fall within a range of energies—from 114 giga-electron-volts to 185 GeV. The LHC is, without question, master of the upper portion of that range. Using it to hunt the Higgs at the lower energies, however, would be like shooting quail with a cruise missile. Fermilab's smaller Tevatron collider, it turns out, may be better suited. The Higgs, the new Fermilab data show, does not exist for a portion of the upper range, putting it in the Tevatron's cross hairs and suggesting that the LHC may be more peripheral to the search than previously thought. "We've made their jobs a little bit harder," says Fermilab physicist Dmitry Denisov, "because we've excluded the region they're good at."

European scientists are putting a brave face on the news. They emphasize all the other things the LHC is expected to do, such as uncovering evidence of higher dimensions and the mysterious "dark matter" thought to make up 70 percent of the universe. "Seeing the Higgs boson is really a small part of the game," says Sergio Bertolucci, the LHC's director of research and computing. If the Higgs turns out not to exist, LHC data will help in figuring out why not. If Americans are first to find the Higgs, the LHC will help confirm the discovery and embellish it with detail.

Fermilab scientists, in their magnanimity, are eager to agree. "We could not compete with LHC," says Denisov. "Our detectors aren't as modern or complex as LHC's. But to be able to reach this unexplored region of the universe first is, of course, creating a lot of excitement." The findings come as a much-needed morale boost in Batavia. The Bush administration had cut Fermilab's budget, creating a brain drain to Geneva. Now the lab's 900 scientists have begun to feel young again. Cars can be seen in the parking lots on Saturday nights as researchers pore over experimental data. In the past four months, 30 new Ph.D. students have signed on to help with the research—an increase of 25 percent. "That really helps us," says Denisov.

Missing the Higgs boson would be a setback not only to the LHC, but it also might lower Europe's appetite for big, expensive scientific projects that don't have direct relevance to pressing problems like climate change. For the time being, of course, the poor economy has turned all spending into stimulus. When the crisis settles and the bills come due, however, the physicists in Geneva might want to have some dark matter or a few extra dimensions to show for their efforts.

LHC/"dooms day" poll

Do you fear the "dooms day" rhetoric about the LHC?

Yes...0
No...4 [100%]

Chicken Little lost this one.


Annihilation of the world put on hold

Eleventh hour legal wrangling

"Fear and trembling"...of the unknown

Government and lawyers put suits to rest

LHC again

LHC shut down for maintenance

Still fussing in the courts about the LHC

"And in this corner...Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory"

One begins to wonder if blood letting will occur? The Higgs boson [God Particle] is the prize and the race between Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the LHC is on. One problem...the LHC is down for maintenance thus FermiLabs has currently an advantage. Also remember that the DOE is footing the bulk of the sponsorship funds.

"Fermilab can't help but beam in race for 'God Particle'"

by

Don Babwin

February 21st, 2009

Associated Press

This might not be the question the guys at the bar are asking -- but it gets particle physicists going:

Does the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron particle accelerator in the far west suburbs still have a shot against the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland?

The competition? To find evidence of a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson, better known as the "God Particle," that's believed to give mass to all the matter that makes up the universe.

"This has been the holy grail of high-energy physics for the last 30 years," said Joe Lykken, a senior scientist at Fermilab in Batavia.

Only months ago, it seemed that European Organization for Nuclear Research -- or CERN -- scientists at the Large Hadron Collider would win the race.

"People laughed at the idea of [Fermilab] finding the Higgs," Lykken said. "Our accelerator was not built to find the Higgs."

The LHC was. It's the world's largest atom-smasher, far more powerful than Fermilab's Tevatron. It kicked off with an impressive show of force in September, when beams of protons were fired at the speed of light.

The idea that Fermilab could pull ahead in the Higgs search seemed about as likely as a Model T beating a Corvette in a drag race.

But just more than a week later, the LHC was shut down because of faulty wiring.

Fermilab scientists, meanwhile, say their accelerator is running very well -- raising hopes that its ongoing tests will result in Higgs particles.

And things are looking up money-wise, as well.

"We were looking at huge budget cuts last year," Lykken said, "and now we are hoping to get stimulus-package money and scrambling to see the best way to use it."

Another Fermilab scientist, Dmitri Denisov, said its "probability of discovering" the Higgs is between 50 percent and 90 percent.

Annihilation of the world put on hold

"LHC’s biggest collisions on hold until after 2010"

by

Jon Cartwright

February 10th, 2009

physicsworld.com

Maximum-energy collisions will take place at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) only after 2010.

Following the recommendations of LHC staff given at a workshop last week in Chamonix, France, CERN management has decided upon a restart schedule that will see the accelerator collide protons at record energies of 10 TeV towards the end of this year. However, collisions at the maximum collision energy of 14 TeV will have to wait until at least 2011.

CERN says it has made the decision to ensure that there is enough data produced next year for theorists to search for new physics.

"The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for the data," said CERN director general Rolf Heuer in a prepared statement. "It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start-up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year."

The schedule specifies that the LHC will have protons re-enter its ring at the end of September — six weeks later than previously estimated — and will see its first collisions a month later. It will operate through winter, perhaps without stopping for any of the usual four-month maintenance period, while working up to 10 TeV. During this time staff will also try injecting lead ions into the rest of CERN's accelerator complex, which feeds the LHC. This will open up the possibility of ion-ion collisions in late 2010.

'Real optimism'

The LHC circulated its first protons on 10 September last year to a global audience, but its commissioning was brought to an abrupt halt nine days later when an electrical fault caused a huge magnet "quench" which evaporated some six tonnes of liquid helium into the underground tunnel. The force of the helium leak was such that it broke anchors in the concrete floor and ruptured connections between the magnets.

Since then CERN has been assessing the LHC's safety and conducting repairs, which could total as much as CHF 40m (£23m). The repairs include the replacement of 53 magnets, the installation of additional pressure-relief valves, and the laying of hundreds of kilometres of new cable to monitor electrical resistance in an improved "early warning" system.

CERN says that the improved early-warning system will be in place before the LHC’s restart. However, the lab also says that it has identified two more "suspect" connections, which are being addressed.

"For the three golden days [after 10 September] the atmospheric was electric," Steve Myers, CERN's director of accelerators and the chair of the Chamonix group, told physicsworld.com. "Immediately afterwards there was disappointment and deception. Now there is cautious but real optimism for the start-up. There is also great belief."

"Atom-smasher relaunch delayed to September: official (Update)"

February 9th, 2009

physicsorg.com

The world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet (CMS), at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)'s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particule accelerator in Geneva. Europe's Big Bang atom-smasher will not now restart until the end of September, following a major breakdown that marred its multi-billion dollar launch one year earlier, researchers said Monday.

Researchers announced Monday a new delay for the restart of Europe's Big Bang atom-smasher, saying the faulty multi-billion dollar machine would now be turned back on in late September.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) had planned to relaunch the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this spring before delaying it to the summer.

But CERN management decided to aim for a September restart to reinforce protection systems.

"The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data," CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer said in a statement.

"It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start-up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year."

The machine broke down only days after being switched on in September 2008, causing more than 30 million Swiss francs of repairs (20 million euros, 26 million dollars).

CERN's new German director signalled in an interview late January that he would be more cautious than his French predecessor, with the relaunch having been repeatedly put back since the vast scientific experiment was launched amid worldwide fanfare last year.

Heuer said then that the bill for repairs on the six billion Swiss franc particle accelerator could even reach 40 million Swiss francs.

With 10,000 staff involved and after more than a decade of painstaking work, the first proton beams were fired down the new accelerator in a blaze of publicity on September 10, 2008, only to break down due to a helium leak from its cooling system nine days later.

Heuer has said that he does not want to push for a full energy beam until 2010 at the earliest, after new protection systems have been added.

"The new schedule foresees first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October," CERN said in Monday's statement.

The LHC -- which runs through a 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva -- is the most powerful in a series of atom-smashers at the 20-nation research organisation that have successfully helped advance knowledge of particle physics and the workings of the laws of nature since CERN was founded in 1954.

Designed to shed light on the origins of the universe, the LHC took nearly 20 years to complete and cost six billion Swiss francs (3.9 billion euros, 4.9 billion dollars) to build in a tunnel complex under the Franco-Swiss border.

It aims to resolve some of the greatest questions surrounding fundamental matter, such as how particles acquire mass and how they were forged some 13.7 billion years ago.

In the countdown to the September launch, some scientists sought to halt the proceedings, convinced that the experiment could create black holes and extinguish life on Earth forever.

Their apocalyptic fears turned out to be misplaced.

Human error...an LHC problem emerges

So, human error was to blame for the shut down of the LHC. Okay, that is acceptable--humans do make errors. It is a minor setback that can be repaired. It's a good thing that this was a terrestrial malfunction and not happening half way to Mars with humans in danger. The point being, and this is a legitimate extrapolation, that mechanical errors are possible and can escalate to a serious situation especially in a highly restricted environment such as space.

"One bad electrical connection sparked collider shutdown"

by

Alexander G. Higgins

2008

Associated Press

GENEVA - A bad electrical connection likely caused the malfunction that sidelined the world's largest atom smasher days after it was launched with great fanfare, a senior scientist said Monday.

The fault was probably a poor soldering job on one of the particle collider's 10,000 connections, said Lyn Evans, project leader of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Nuclear Research Organization.

Only one fault in 10,000 isn't bad, "but it cost dearly," Evans said. It will take at least two months for the repair, meaning the collider cannot be restarted until spring, after its mandatory shutdown due to high electricity costs during the winter.

Evans said he still hasn't been able to examine the damage because the collider is too cold to be opened. The machine operates at extremely cold temperatures to take advantage of superconductivity - the ability of some metals to conduct electricity without any resistance near absolute zero degrees.

It has to be warmed gradually to room temperature over five weeks so that humans can work inside and make repairs, Evans said. Then it will take another five weeks to re-chill it.

The collider was started before a global audience on Sept. 10, with beams of protons being fired at nearly the speed of light around the collider, first in one direction and then in the other. The electrical fault occurred nine days later.

Before the failure, the plan had been to step up power on the collider so that scientists could start with test collisions of subatomic particles before the winter shutdown. That will have to wait until next April, Evans said.

He said he expected it will then take about a month - until the end of May - to get the machine to high energy.

"It was a hard blow for us," he said. The failure occurred during the final test of the collider - a large tube running around the circumference of a 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva. All the other seven sections of the tunnel had passed the test.

CERN specialists have already figured out that a connector between electromagnets failed and heated up, causing a magnet "quench," or shutdown. It apparently melted a hole in the tube, causing a leak that spilled about a ton of the liquid helium used to chill that section.

The high-energy collisions enable physicists to understand better how the smallest bits of matter - and everything and everyone - are made. They also hope it will take them even closer to the "Big Bang," which many theorize was the massive explosion that formed the universe.

By colliding protons from the nucleus of hydrogen atoms at high energy, the CERN machine is designed to recreate, on a minuscule scale, a view of what matter looked like in the rapid cooling one-trillionth of a second after the explosion.

"60 Minutes" and the LHC

Argonne National Laboratory

"'60 Minutes' segment to feature high-energy physicists Sunday"

ARGONNE, Ill. (Sept. 25, 2008)—Bob Stanek of Argonne's High Energy Physics Division is one of several scientists to be featured in "The Collider," a segment of CBS' "60 Minutes" TV show, scheduled for this Sunday, Sept. 28, at 6 p.m.

The segment, which focuses on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, will also feature scientists Monica Dunford from the University of Chicago, Steven Goldfarb from the University of Michigan, Steve Nahn from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and James Gillies and Austin Ball from CERN.

Archived segment

LHC shut down for maintenance

I suppose this will make some people happy.

"Hadron Collider halted for months"

September 20th. 2008

BBC News

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says.

Part of the new collider was turned off for the weekend while engineers investigated a magnet failure.

But a Cern spokesman said the damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.

The failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.

Cern spokesman James Gillies said the sector that was damaged will have to be warmed up well above absolute zero so that repairs can be made.

Cern would have to shut off the new particle collider do to the repairs, he added.

Delays

The first beams were fired successfully around the accelerator's 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring over a week ago.

The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. However, the fault appears to have ruled out any chance of these experiments taking place for the next two months at least.

The quench occurred during final testing of the last of the LHC's electrical circuits to be commissioned.

At 1127 (0927 GMT) on Friday, the LHC's online logbook recorded a quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between the Alice and CMS detectors.

The entry stated that helium had been lost to the tunnel and that vacuum conditions had also been lost.

It added that the Cern fire brigade had been called to the scene.

he superconducting magnets in the LHC must be supercooled to 1.9 kelvin above absolute zero, to allow them to steer particle beams around the circuit.

As a result of the quench, the temperature of about 100 of the magnets in the machine's final sector rose by around 100C.

The setback came just a day after the LHC's beam was restored after engineers replaced a faulty transformer that had hindered progress for much of the past week.

"LHC loses liquid helium"

by

Jon Cartwright

September 19th, 2008

physicsworld.com

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has lost up to a tonne of liquid helium after some of its superconducting magnets inadvertently heated up this morning, physicsworld.com has learnt.

A log entry written by the current LHC co-ordinator at 11:27 am CET (10:27 am BST) states that there has been a “massive quench” in sector 3–4. Quenches occur when superfluid helium in the magnets rises above its operating temperature of 1.9 K, and can be caused, for example, when a proton beam veers off course.

According to the entry, firefighters were dispatched to that area of the tunnel. It also says that the vacuum in that part of the beam pipe was lost.

A source at CERN, the European lab hosting the accelerator, says that the quench caused one tonne of superfluid helium — about 1% of the LHC’s total — to escape.

An official spokesperson was not available for comment. However, a message on the machine’s website states: "During the commissioning of the final LHC sector (sector 3–4) for 5 TeV operation, an incident occurred at 12:05 [am] today resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel. Further details are not yet known. Investigations will continue over the weekend and more information will be made available as soon as possible."

An LHC status report on the same website shows that temperatures are now being brought down, implying that technicians have been able to replace the lost helium.

The problem will be a disappointment to the operations team, who had enjoyed a highly successful media day last week when they circulated beams of protons in both directions around the machine’s 27 km-long ring.

Must have been chaos...

LHC and new technologies

Despite the "doomsday" rhetoric the technological possibilities from LHC science are much larger as well as obtaining a better cosmological understanding of the universe.

"Large Hadron Collider to Have "Practical" Spin-Offs?"

by

John Roach

September 12th, 2008

National Geographic News

A multibillion-dollar atom smasher on the Franco-Swiss border may help scientists treat diseases, improve the Internet, and open the door to travel through extra dimensions, according to physicists.

On Wednesday scientists cheered and champagne flowed as the first beam of protons lapped around the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground tunnel at the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, was designed to solve big mysteries in science, such as the nature of dark matter and what the universe was like just after the big bang.

The massive machine could also lead to medical and technological advances, some experts argue.

Such potential breakthroughs are often an "ancillary benefit" of big science projects like the LHC, said Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and author at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Still, Krauss said, these benefits are a misguided way to justify building the atom smasher.

"It's like trying to argue that manned space missions were useful for Tang," he said, referring to the powdered drink mix popularized in U.S. households by NASA in the 1960s.

"Our job as scientists is to explain that these esoteric things [such as dark matter] are not completely unrelated to humanity," he added. "Ultimately, we address the questions of how we got here and what we're made of."

Already Providing Benefits

In the months ahead, scientists will use the LHC to ramp up opposing proton beams to nearly light speed and smash particles together, breaking them into smaller components.

Monstrous detectors will pore through the detritus, helping scientists examine the conditions of the very early universe.

The computer network set up to process the mountains of data generated by each collision is already inspiring spin-offs, noted Andy Parker, a professor of high energy physics at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, who helped design the grid system.

Parker is also involved with a Cambridge-based company that is using the grid technology, which links together thousands of computers, to better index images on the Internet.

Such a system determines the task to be done, the processing power required, checks for availability, sends the task out, gets it done, and ships it back to the scientist—all while the person sits at a desk.

"I don't have to do anything to achieve [all] that," Parker said.

Technologies developed for earlier atom smashers—such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider that booted up in New York in 2000 and the Fermilab Tevatron started in 1987 in Illinois—are today ingrained in mainstream society, Parker noted.

Positron emission tomography (PET) scans, for example, are common at most major hospitals to make images of the insides of patients' bodies, often to look for cancerous tumors.

The technique stems from general studies of antimatter and the use of particle detectors, Parker said.

And more medical professionals are turning to proton beams similar to those used in the LHC to blast away tumors deep inside bodies.

"What you can do there is send a beam of protons into the patient, which does essentially no damage at all to the tissues on the way in," Parker explained.

"All the damage is done at the point where the protons stop. And by tuning the energy of the protons, you can make them stop inside the tumor."

As scientists working with the LHC learn to better focus and control proton beams, the improvements will likely trickle down to the medical profession, he added.

Faster Than Light

Future spin-offs from the LHC are less certain.

"We don't know what we're going to find out," Parker said.

Though admittedly far-fetched, one sexy idea is that the LHC may find extra dimensions of space/time. If so, the discovery could open the door to technologies that allow people to travel faster than the speed of light.

In a sense, Parker explained, scientists may discover an ability to move chunks of space-time from one place to another through those extra dimensions, effectively bypassing the known laws of physics.

"If you went to the 23rd century and there were people flying around faster than the speed of light, you would say, What is it you found out that enabled you to do this?" Parker said.

"And the answer might be, It all started when we discovered there were these extra dimensions."

Krauss, of Arizona State University, said that even without such advances, curiosity-driven research is fundamental to maintaining our current standard of living for generations into the future.

"It will help create innovation and enhance the economic future of our children in ways that we don't know," he said, adding that the chance to work with machines such as the LHC often attracts students to the sciences.

Krauss added that the big science questions being probed with the LHC are also personally relevant and practical for all members of society.

He explained that just as people are made of stardust, the origins of those particles in stardust stretch back to the beginning of the universe.

"If it all works out, you'll get a better understanding of what you're doing here," he said. "And, to me, that is the greatest benefit of science."

LHC security breached

To the hackers: GET A LIFE!

"Hackers Infiltrate Large Hadron Collider"

by

Brandon Keim

September 14th, 2008

Wired

The Large Hadron Collider has been hacked.

"We're pulling your pants down because we don't want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes," wrote the intruders in a note left on the Collider's website.

Identifying themselves as Group 2600 of the Greek Security Team, the hackers accessed computers connected to the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, one of four key subsystems responsible for monitoring the collisions of protons speeding around the 18-mile track near Geneva, Switzerland.

The Telegraph reported that the attack began on Wednesday, shortly after physicists activated the Collider. A few scientists had worried that the experiment could inadvertently create a planet-destroying black hole.

Physicists called this impossible, or at least extraordinarily unlikely. But the hack raises a different sort of worst-case scenario: the largest and most complicated science experiment in history, intended to reveal basic information about the composition of matter, derailed by malevolent intruders.

"The LHC experiments have very complex computer systems for data recording and analysis and even more sensitive systems for experiment control, trigger and data acquisition," said MIT physicist and Collider collaborator Frank Taylor. "You could imagine that penetrating the 'real time domain' could have catastrophic consequences."

The hackers were stopped before they could access the Collider's central computer system, but were described by the Telegraph as being "one step away" from full control of the CMS. They deleted one as-yet publicly unidentified file -- the hacker equivalent, perhaps, of counting coup.

"There seems to be no harm done. From what [the computer security team] can tell, it was someone making the point that CMS was hackable," said James Gillies, spokesman for Cern, to the Telegraph.

Computer security at the Collider has received less attention than other aspects of the historic experiment, but insiders have previously expressed concern.

In November, an article in the computer affairs newsletter of CERN -- the European Organization for Nuclear Research, home to the Collider -- warned of potential security breaches.

"Vulnerability scans at CERN using standard IT tools have shown that commercial automation systems often lack even fundamental security precautions: some systems crashed during the scan, while others could easily be stopped or have their process data altered," wrote CERN computer security officer Stefan Luders.

The consequences of a breach, wrote Luders, "are inherent to the design of CERN's accelerators and the affiliated experiments. All run a variety of control systems: some of them are complex, some of them deal with personnel safety, and some of them control or protect expensive or irreplaceable equipment. Thus, CERN's assets and their proper operation are at stake."

"Hacking is a bad thing," said Lee Smolin, a professor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics who is not involved with the Collider. "It can damage the work of thousands of people who have been working for decades to advance science."

Peter Higgs and the LHC

Peter Higgs

"Quiet man making a big bang"

PROFILE: PROFESSOR PETER HIGGS

September 14th, 2008

NEWS.scotsman.com

IT MUST be a daunting experience to have a particle that's the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe named after you, particularly if you are a self-deprecating academic who shies away from the limelight. Even more intimidating must be the knowledge that a Nobel Prize hangs on the efforts of 10,000 scientists from 100 countries to prove the particle's existence, for once and for all. But it's a fate Professor Peter Higgs – the man who thought up the existence of the famous Higgs bosun particle, also known as the God particle, on a walk down Edinburgh's Roxburgh Street in 1964 is finally getting used to.

As the frenzy surrounding the switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 300ft underground on the French/Swiss border climaxed last week, Higgs was making the headlines in a manner more typical of self-publicist and the professor's nemesis Stephen Hawking. With the end of the world forecast by some, the 79-year-old professor was whisked away from the quiet life he spends reading, walking and playing with his grandchildren, to speak to scores of journalists anxious to know if the Earth was about to be sucked into a big, black hole, and how he plans to celebrate if the world's biggest ever experiment proves him right (he says he has a bottle of champagne on ice).

Higgs and Hawking have had a combustible relationship ever since Hawking first poo-pooed his work on particles. And as scientists set out to replicate conditions minutes after the Big Bang, their row erupted into public again. When Hawking said that it would be "more interesting" if the particle was not found, Higgs hit back, saying the world's most famous physicist's work on the subject wasn't "good enough".

It was a rare display of irascibility from a man who, on coming up with his theory, wrote a note to one of his PhD students which read: "This summer I have found something that is totally useless", and who has bent over backwards to appease two scientists who came with the same theory at roughly the same time and are sore that he got all the credit. Robert Brout and Francois Englert had long resented the fact their contribution had been overshadowed. But a few years ago, Higgs sought them out and made peace with them. "They had reason to be aggrieved," he said. Higgs, an atheist, who has two sons, is also embarrassed by the God particle tag, even though it only came about because the publishers of scientist Leon Lederman's book on the theory wouldn't allow him to call it "the goddamn particle" – a name inspired by its elusiveness.

Born in Newcastle in 1929, Higgs' childhood was a trifle unstable. A combination of poor health – asthma followed by pneumonia – and frequent moves caused by his father's job as a BBC sound engineer meant he was taught at home. Then, when he moved with his mother to Bristol and attended Cotham Grammar School, his education was disrupted by the war. Nevertheless, Higgs proved a gifted pupil. Inspired by the work of one of the school's alumni, father of quantum mechanics Paul Dirac, he decided to study theoretical physics, eschewing Oxford and Cambridge for King's College, London, where it became clear he was hopeless at experiments. "There were accidents," he has said mysteriously.

Higgs had long had an affection for Edinburgh – having hitch-hiked to the Festival – and jumped at the chance to become a lecturer at the city's university in 1960. There, he began to be intrigued by the question of what gives matter its weight. It may be 44 years ago, but Higgs can clearly recollect the moment it all started to make sense. It was Thursday, July 16 and he was sitting in the departmental library at the University of Edinburgh, reading an article with which he disagreed. An idea began to crystallise and by the following Monday as he walked to his university office, he had perfected his theory in his own mind.

Here comes the science bit. Concentrate. Higgs believed the idea that particles were massless when the universe began, acquiring their mass a fraction of a second later, as a result of interacting with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs particle.

Some scientists believe its discovery could bring to light entirely new types of strong interactions, while others claim it could reveal a new fundamental physical symmetry called "supersymmetry".

Not that Higgs' theory was an immediate hit in scientific circles. Indeed his lack of pomposity may stem from the length of time it took for anyone to recognise the importance of what he was saying. The first article he presented was rejected by the editor of the European Journal of Physical Letters, based, somewhat ironically, at the Central European Research Network (CERN), which is in charge of the LHC experiment. A revised article, still less than two sides of A4 paper, was accepted by an American journal, the Physical Review Letters the following month. Later, the Higgs particle would become part of the Standard Model – the framework of theoretical physics that describes how fundamental particles interact. And in 1966, Higgs was invited to speak at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey – where Einstein and Oppenheimer once worked – one of the highest accolades a scientist can receive.

As the prizes stacked up, Higgs became more engrossed in his work, his marriage to Jodie, an American, began to suffer and they split up in 1972. But then his divorce began to take its toll on his work. "After the break-up of my marriage, I think I just lost touch with the things I should have been learning about just to follow up my own work. I couldn't keep up," he has said. In 1980, Edinburgh University awarded Higgs a professorship and he devoted more of his energy to teaching and administration.

Throughout this time, his passion for politics continued unabated and he held strong views on those issues where science and ethics collide. A member of CND in the 1960s, he left when the group extended its remit from campaigning against nuclear weapons to campaigning against nuclear power. And he supported Greenpeace until the group opposed genetically modified organisms.

Higgs finally retired from the university in 1996. The LHC experiment, however, has thrust him, somewhat reluctantly back into the thick of things. Last week, as 70,000 members of the public went to look at the 17-mile long machine, Higgs too went underground to see the two huge detectors that will search for his particle.

If the scientists find it, it will be the crowning moment in Higgs' illustrious career and the bubbly will be popped. And if they don't, the master of the understatement admits he'll be "rather sad". "If it isn't found, then I no longer understand what I think I understand," he said.

Peter Higgs vs Stephen Hawking


LHC--no problem so far