amazing phenomenon

THE LARGEST WINDOWS ON EARTH

2012-07-18T07:50:00.001-07:00

Click Here to See Information About LBT for the General Public

Official LBT Press Release
Large Binocular Telescope brings the Universe into Sharper Focus
Released on March 15th, 2012 at 7:00 AM MST

News on the Large Binocular Telescope:
● NPR Article: Arizona Telescope Sets New Standard For Optical Astronomy (March 15, 2012)
● LBT Ground Breaking Adaptive Optics Technology Video - 3:40 minutes (September 2010)
● 12 Hours of Observing in 1 Minute by Marco Pedani, September 2010)
● LBT Adaptive Optics Technology Video - 8.02 MB (August 2010)
● AO Press Release: LBT Achieves Breakthrough with Adaptive Optics (June 2010)
● Astronomy Magazine Publication (August 2009)
● AASTA Report (July 2009)
● LBT on National Geographic Telescopes (June 2009)
● The New Galileos: Andrew Luck-Baker meets today's telescope builders and astronomers (May 2009)
● "100 Hours of Astronomy" Interview with Richard Green, Part 1 (April 3, 2009)
● "100 Hours of Astronomy" Interview with Richard Green, Part 2 (April 3, 2009)
● "100 Hours of Astronomy" Interview with Richard Green, Part 3 (April 3, 2009)
● LBT Achieves First Binocular Light (Press Release)
● LBT featured in the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" (Feb2008)

Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is an optical telescope for astronomy located on Mount Graham (10,700-foot (3,300 m)) in the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona, and is a part of the Mount Graham International Observatory. The LBT is currently one of the world's most advanced optical telescopes; using two 8.4 m (27 ft) wide mirrors can give the same light gathering ability as a 11.8 m (39 ft) wide single circular telescope and detail of 22.8 m (75 ft) wide one.^[3] Either of its mirrors would be the largest optical telescope in continental North America. Strehl ratios of 60-90% at H band and 95% at M band have been achieved by the LBT.^[4]

Project

LBT, originally named the Columbus Project. it is a joint project of these members: the Italian astronomical community (represented by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, INAF); the University of Arizona; University of Minnesota,^[5] University of Notre Dame,^[5] University of Virginia,^[5] the LBT Beteiligungsgesellschaft in Germany (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Landessternwarte in Heidelberg, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich and Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn); The Ohio State University; Research Corporation in Tucson.
The telescope design has two 8.4-meter (28 ft) mirrors mounted on a common base, hence the name "binocular".^[3] LBT takes advantage of active and adaptive optics, provided by Arcetri Observatory. The collecting area is two 8.4 meter aperture mirrors, which works out to about 111m² combined. This area is equivalent to an 11.8 meters (39 ft) circular aperture, which would be greater than any other single telescope, but it is not comparable in many respects since the light is collected at a lower diffraction limit and is not combined in the same way. Also, an interferometric mode will be available, with a maximum baseline of 22.8 meters (75 ft) for aperture synthesis imaging observations and a baseline of 15 meters (49 ft) for nulling interferometry. This feature is along one axis with the LBTI instrument at wavelengths of 2.9 - 13 micrometres, which is the near infrared.^[6]

Mountain controversy

T. hudsonicus grahamensis

The choice of location sparked considerable local controversy, both from the San Carlos Apache Tribe, who claimed the mountain is sacred, and from environmentalists who contended that the observatory would cause the demise of an endangered subspecies of the American Red Squirrel, the Mount Graham Red Squirrel. Environmentalists and members of the tribe filed some forty lawsuits—eight of which ended up before a federal appeals court—but the project ultimately prevailed after an act of the United States Congress.
The telescope and mountain observatory survived two major forest fires in eight years, the more recent in the summer of 2004. Likewise the squirrels continue to survive, though experts believe their numbers fluctuate dependent upon nut harvest without regard to the observatory.^[7]^[8]

First light

NGC 891 was selected as first light.

The telescope was dedicated in October 2004 and saw first light with a single primary mirror on October 12, 2005 which viewed NGC 891.^[9]^[10] The second primary mirror was installed in January 2006 and became fully operational in January 2008.^[3]
The first binocular light images show three false-color renditions of the spiral galaxy NGC 2770. The galaxy is 88 million light years from our Milky Way, a relatively close neighbor. The galaxy has a flat disk of stars and glowing gas tipped slightly toward our line of sight.
The first image taken combined ultraviolet and green light, and emphasizes the clumpy regions of newly formed hot stars in the spiral arms. The second image combined two deep red colors to highlight the smoother distribution of older, cooler stars. The third image was a composite of ultraviolet, green and deep red light and shows the detailed structure of hot, moderate and cool stars in the galaxy. The cameras and images were produced by the Large Binocular Camera team, led by Emanuele Giallongo at the Rome Astrophysical Observatory.
In binocular aperture synthesis mode LBT will have a light-collecting area of 111 m ², equivalent to a single 11.8-meter (39 ft) surface and will combine light to produce the image sharpness equivalent to a single 22.8-meter (75 ft) telescope. However, this requires a beam combiner that was tested in 2008, but has not been a part of regular operations.^[11] It can take images with one side at 8.4 m aperture, or take two images of the same object using different instruments on each side of the telescope.

Adaptive optics

In the summer of 2010, the "First Light Adaptive Optics" (FLAO) - an adaptive optics system with a deformable secondary mirror rather than correcting atmospheric distortion further downstream in the optics - was inaugurated.^[4]^[12] Using one 8.4 m side, it surpassed Hubble sharpness (at certain light wavelengths), achieving a Strehl ratio of 60-80% rather than the 20-30% of older adaptive optic systems, or the 1% typically achieved without adaptive optics for telescopes of this size.^[12]^[13] Adaptive optics at a telescope's secondary (M2) was previously tested at MMT Observatory by the Arcetri Observatory and University of Arizona team.^[14]

In the media

The telescope has also made appearances on an episode of the Discovery Channel TV show Really Big Things, National Geographic Channel Big, Bigger, Biggest,^[15] and the BBC program The Sky At Night. The BBC Radio 4 radio documentary "The New Galileos" covered the LBT and the JWST.^[16]

Discoveries

LBT, with the XMM-Newton was used to discover a galaxy cluster 2XMM J083026+524133 in 2008, over 7 billion light years away from Earth.^[17] In 2007 the LBT detected a 26th magnitude afterglow from the gamma ray burst GRB 070125.^[18]

Instruments

Some current or planned LBT telescope instruments:^[3]

LBC - optical and near ultraviolet wide field prime focus cameras. One is optimized for the blue part of the optical spectrum and one for the red.
PEPSI - A high resolution and very high resolution optical spectrograph and imaging polarimeter at the combined focus.
MODS - two optical multi object and longslit spectrographs plus imagers. Capable of running in single mirror or binocular mode.
LUCIFER - two multi-object and longslit infrared spectrographs plus imagers. The imager has 2 cameras and can observe at both seeing limited and diffraction limited with adaptive optics.
LINC/Nirvana - wide-field interferometric imaging with adaptive optics at the combined focus.
LBTI/LMIRCAM - 2.9 to 5.2 micron fizeau imaging and medium resolution grism spectroscopy at the combined focus.
LBTI/NOMIC - N band nulling imager for the study of protoplanetary and debris disks at the combined focus.
FLAO - first light adaptive optics to correct atmospheric distortion
ARGOS - multiple laser guide star unit capable of supporting ground layer or multi conjugate adaptive optics

some pics that you are forced to bilieve!!!!!!!!!

2012-07-05T02:37:00.001-07:00

Believe It or Not!

Believe it or not, the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory at the University of Tokyo has been able to create a robot that will accurately predict and consistently beat humans at rock, paper, scissors – 100% of the time! Lately, we’ve seen robots take a giant leap in intelligence especially after one of them won Jeopardy, but did they have to beat us at rock, paper, scissors too?

Japanese scientists wrote the following on their latest creation:

“In this research we develop a janken (rock-paper-scissors) robot with 100% winning rate as one example of human-machine cooperation systems. Human being plays one of rock, paper and scissors at the timing of one, two, three. According to the timing, the robot hand plays one of three kinds so as to beat the human being.
Recognition of human hand can be performed at 1ms with a high-speed vision, and the position and the shape of the human hand are recognized. The wrist joint angle of the robot hand is controlled based on the position of the human hand. The vision recognizes one of rock, paper and scissors based on the shape of the human hand. After that, the robot hand plays one of rock, paper and scissors so as to beat the human being in 1ms.
This technology is one example that show a possibility of cooperation control within a few miliseconds. And this technology can be applied to motion support of human beings and cooperation work between human beings and robots etc. without time delay.”

But…isn’t the robot cheating? Yes, the robot cheats. By watching the image from a camera that can determine the position of your hand every millisecond, it is aware of your move the very moment you make it. And as soon as your hand starts to form that rock, the robot is giving you some paper to wrap it up.

Though rock-paper-scissors-ing is a fun way to show off their technology, the robot is much more than just a toy. It’s an important demo of the mechanics that could allow human beings and their robot friends to communicate with each other, silently but effectively. The machines read our moves, and respond in kind. Pretty darn cool!

WELL YOU TOOO CAN SEE THIS ROBOT ROCK PAPER SCISSORING WITH A HUMAN

the amazing world of ripleys

Edward Meyer, Ripley’s VP of Archives, does an interview with Joe Burbank and gives us an look inside the amazing and strange world of Ripley’s Warehouse. From 19th Century Vampire Killing Kits, to prom dresses made out of thousands of StarBurst candy wrappers … the artifacts and works unbelievable items that flow through the shelves of the warehouse are sure to astonish both young & old alike.

Come inside and take a quick glance at the fantastic world of believe it or nots!

Large Hadron Collider

2012-07-04T20:27:00.003-07:00

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) from 1998 to 2008, with the aim of allowing physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high-energy physics, and particularly that of the existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson^[1] and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetry.^[2] The LHC is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature. It contains six detectors each designed for specific kinds of exploration.

The LHC lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. Its synchrotron is designed to collide opposing particle beams of either protons at up to 7 teraelectronvolts (7 TeV or 1.12 microjoules) per nucleon, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV (92.0 µJ) per nucleus (2.76 TeV per nucleon-pair).^[3]^[4] It was built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.^[5]

On 10 September 2008, the proton beams were successfully circulated in the main ring of the LHC for the first time,^[6] but 9 days later operations were halted due to a magnet quench incident resulting from an electrical fault. The ensuing Helium gas explosion damaged over 50 superconducting magnets and their mountings, and contaminated the vacuum pipe.^[7]^[8] On 20 November 2009 proton beams were successfully circulated again,^[9] with the first recorded proton–proton collisions occurring 3 days later at the injection energy of 450 GeV per beam.^[10] On 30 March 2010, the first collisions took place between two 3.5 TeV beams, setting the current world record for the highest-energy man-made particle collisions,^[11] and the LHC began its planned research program.

The LHC will operate at 4 TeV per beam until the end of 2012, 0.5 TeV higher than in 2010 and 2011. It will then go into shutdown for 20 months for upgrades to allow full energy operation (7 TeV per beam), with reopening planned for late 2014.

Large Hadron Collider
(LHC)
LHC experiments

ATLAS	A Toroidal LHC Apparatus
CMS	Compact Muon Solenoid
LHCb	LHC-beauty
ALICE	A Large Ion Collider Experiment
TOTEM	Total Cross Section, Elastic Scattering and Diffraction Dissociation
LHCf	LHC-forward
MoEDAL	Monopole and Exotics Detector At the LHC
LHC preaccelerators
p and Pb	Linear accelerators for protons (Linac 2) and Lead (Linac 3)
(not marked)	Proton Synchrotron Booster
PS	Proton Synchrotron
SPS	Super Proton Synchrotron

Hadron colliders

Intersecting Storage Rings

CERN, 1971–1984

Super Proton Synchrotron

CERN, 1981–1984

ISABELLE

BNL, cancelled in 1983

Tevatron

Fermilab, 1987–2011

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

BNL, 2000–present

Superconducting Super Collider

Cancelled in 1993

Large Hadron Collider

CERN, 2009–present

Super Large Hadron Collider

Proposed, CERN, 2019–

Very Large Hadron Collider

Theoretical

Etymology

Main articles: Hadron and Collider

The term hadron refers to composite particles composed of quarks held together by the strong force (as atoms and molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force). The best-known hadrons are protons and neutrons; hadrons also include mesons such as the pion and kaon, which were discovered during cosmic ray experiments in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
A collider is a type of a particle accelerator with directed beams of elementary particles. In particle physics colliders are used as a research tool: they accelerate particles to very high kinetic energies and let them impact other particles. Analysis of the byproducts of these collisions gives scientists good evidence of the structure of the subatomic world and the laws of nature governing it. Many of these byproducts are produced only by high energy collisions, and they decay after very short periods of time. Thus many of them are hard or impossible to study in other ways.

Purpose

A simulated event in the CMS detector, featuring the appearance of the Higgs boson

Physicists hope that the LHC will help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, concerning the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity, where current theories and knowledge are unclear or break down altogether. Data are also needed from high energy particle experiments to suggest which versions of current scientific models are more likely to be correct – in particular to choose between the Standard Model and Higgsless models and to validate their predictions and allow further theoretical development. Many theorists expect new physics beyond the Standard Model to emerge at the TeV energy level, as the Standard Model appears to be unsatisfactory. Issues possibly to be explored by LHC collisions include:^[13]

Are the masses of elementary particles actually generated by the Higgs mechanism via electroweak symmetry breaking?^[14] It is expected that the collider will either demonstrate or rule out the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, thereby allowing physicists to consider whether the Standard Model or its Higgsless model alternatives are more likely to be correct.^[15]^[16]^[17]
Is supersymmetry, an extension of the Standard Model and Poincaré symmetry, realised in nature, implying that all known particles have supersymmetric partners?^[18]^[19]^[20]
Are there extra dimensions,^[21] as predicted by various models based on string theory, and can we detect them?^[22]
What is the nature of the dark matter that appears to account for 23% of the mass-energy of the universe?

Other open questions that may be explored using high energy particle collisions:

It is already known that electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force are different manifestations of a single force called the electroweak force. The LHC may clarify whether the electroweak force and the strong nuclear force are similarly just different manifestations of one universal unified force, as predicted by various Grand Unification Theories.
Why is the fourth fundamental force (gravity) so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces? See also Hierarchy problem.
Are there additional sources of quark flavour mixing, beyond those already predicted within the Standard Model?
Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter? See also CP violation.
What are the nature and properties of quark-gluon plasma, believed to have existed in the early universe and in certain compact and strange astronomical objects today? This will be investigated by heavy ion collisions in ALICE.

Design

A Feynman diagram of one way the Higgs boson may be produced at the LHC. Here, two quarks each emit a W or Z boson, which combine to make a neutral Higgs.

Map of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

The LHC is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator.^[3]^[23] The collider is contained in a circular tunnel, with a circumference of 27 kilometres (17 mi), at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 metres (160 to 574 ft) underground.
The 3.8-metre (12 ft) wide concrete-lined tunnel, constructed between 1983 and 1988, was formerly used to house the Large Electron–Positron Collider.^[24] It crosses the border between Switzerland and France at four points, with most of it in France. Surface buildings hold ancillary equipment such as compressors, ventilation equipment, control electronics and refrigeration plants.
The collider tunnel contains two adjacent parallel beamlines (or beam pipes) that intersect at four points, each containing a proton beam, which travel in opposite directions around the ring. Some 1,232 dipole magnets keep the beams on their circular path, while an additional 392 quadrupole magnets are used to keep the beams focused, in order to maximize the chances of interaction between the particles in the four intersection points, where the two beams will cross. In total, over 1,600 superconducting magnets are installed, with most weighing over 27 tonnes. Approximately 96 tonnes of liquid helium is needed to keep the magnets, made of copper-clad niobium-titanium, at their operating temperature of 1.9 K (−271.25 °C), making the LHC the largest cryogenic facility in the world at liquid helium temperature.

Superconducting quadrupole electromagnets are used to direct the beams to four intersection points, where interactions between accelerated protons will take place.

When running at full design power of 7 TeV per beam, once or twice a day, as the protons are accelerated from 450 GeV to 7 TeV, the field of the superconducting dipole magnets will be increased from 0.54 to 8.3 teslas (T). The protons will each have an energy of 7 TeV, giving a total collision energy of 14 TeV. At this energy the protons have a Lorentz factor of about 7,500 and move at about 0.999999991 c, or about 3 metres per second slower than the speed of light (c).^[25] It will take less than 90 microseconds (μs) for a proton to travel once around the main ring – a speed of about 11,000 revolutions per second. Rather than continuous beams, the protons will be bunched together, into 2,808 bunches, so that interactions between the two beams will take place at discrete intervals never shorter than 25 nanoseconds (ns) apart. However it will be operated with fewer bunches when it is first commissioned, giving it a bunch crossing interval of 75 ns.^[26] The design luminosity of the LHC is 10³⁴ cm⁻²s⁻¹, providing a bunch collision rate of 40 MHz.^[27]
Prior to being injected into the main accelerator, the particles are prepared by a series of systems that successively increase their energy. The first system is the linear particle accelerator LINAC 2 generating 50-MeV protons, which feeds the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB). There the protons are accelerated to 1.4 GeV and injected into the Proton Synchrotron (PS), where they are accelerated to 26 GeV. Finally the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is used to further increase their energy to 450 GeV before they are at last injected (over a period of 20 minutes) into the main ring. Here the proton bunches are accumulated, accelerated (over a period of 20 minutes) to their peak 7-TeV energy, and finally circulated for 10 to 24 hours while collisions occur at the four intersection points.^[28]

CMS detector for LHC

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^[29] (see A Large Ion Collider Experiment). The lead ions will be first accelerated by the linear accelerator LINAC 3, and the Low-Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) will be used as an ion storage and cooler unit. The ions will then be further accelerated by the PS and SPS before being injected into LHC ring, where they will reach an energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon (or 575 TeV per ion), higher than the energies reached by the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The aim of the heavy-ion program is to investigate quark–gluon plasma, which existed in the early universe.

Detectors

See also: List of Large Hadron Collider experiments

Six detectors have been constructed at the LHC, located underground in large caverns excavated at the LHC's intersection points. Two of them, the ATLAS experiment and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), are large, general purpose particle detectors.^[23] A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) and LHCb, have more specific roles and the last two, TOTEM and LHCf, are very much smaller and are for very specialized research. The BBC's summary of the main detectors is:^[30]

Detector	Description
ATLAS	One of two general purpose detectors. ATLAS will be used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass and extra dimensions.
CMS	The other general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter.
ALICE	ALICE is studying a "fluid" form of matter called quark–gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang.
LHCb	Equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the "missing" antimatter.

Operational history

Inaugural tests

The first beam was circulated through the collider on the morning of 10 September 2008.^[30] CERN successfully fired the protons around the tunnel in stages, three kilometres at a time. The particles were fired in a clockwise direction into the accelerator and successfully steered around it at 10:28 local time.^[31] The LHC successfully completed its major test: after a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen showing the protons travelled the full length of the collider. It took less than one hour to guide the stream of particles around its inaugural circuit.^[32] CERN next successfully sent a beam of protons in a counterclockwise direction, taking slightly longer at one and a half hours due to a problem with the cryogenics, with the full circuit being completed at 14:59.

2008 quench incident

On 19 September 2008, a magnet quench occurred in about 100 bending magnets in sectors 3 and 4, causing a loss of approximately six tonnes of liquid helium, which was vented into the tunnel, and a temperature rise of about 100 degrees celsius in some of the affected magnets. Vacuum conditions in the beam pipe were also lost, and mechanical damage was caused.^[33] Shortly after the incident CERN reported that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, and that – due to the time needed to warm up the affected sectors and then cool them back down to operating temperature – it would take at least two months to fix.^[34] Subsequently, CERN released a preliminary analysis of the incident on 16 October 2008,^[35] and a more detailed one on 5 December 2008.^[36] Both analyses confirmed that the incident was indeed initiated by a faulty electrical connection. A total of 53 magnets were damaged in the incident and were repaired or replaced during the winter shutdown.^[37]
In the original timeline of the LHC commissioning, the first "modest" high-energy collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 900 GeV were expected to take place before the end of September 2008, and the LHC was expected to be operating at 10 TeV by the end of 2008.^[38] However, due to the delay caused by the above-mentioned incident, the collider was not operational until November 2009.^[39] Despite the delay, LHC was officially inaugurated on 21 October 2008, in the presence of political leaders, science ministers from CERN's 20 Member States, CERN officials, and members of the worldwide scientific community.^[40]
Most of 2009 was spent on repairs and reviews from the damage caused by the quench incident, along with two further vacuum leaks identified in July 2009 which pushed the start of operations to November of that year.^[41]

Full operation

On 20 November 2009, low-energy beams circulated in the tunnel for the first time since the incident, and shortly after, on 30 November, the LHC achieved 1.18 TeV per beam to become the world's highest-energy particle accelerator, beating the Tevatron's previous record of 0.98 TeV per beam held for eight years.^[42]
The early part of 2010 saw the continued ramp-up of beam in energies and early physics experiments towards 3.5 TeV per beam and on 30 March 2010, LHC set the present record for high-energy collisions by colliding proton beams at a combined energy level of 7 TeV. The attempt was the third that day, after two unsuccessful attempts in which the protons had to be "dumped" from the collider and new beams had to be injected.^[43] This also marked the start of its main research program.
The first proton run ended on 4 November 2010. A run with lead ions started on 8 November 2010, and ended on 6 December 2010,^[44] allowing the ALICE experiment to study matter under extreme conditions similar to those shortly after the Big Bang.^[45]
CERN has declared that the LHC will run through to the end of 2012, with a short technical stop at the end of 2011. The energy for 2011 was 3.5 TeV per beam, whereas for 2012 it was decided to run the LHC at 4 TeV per beam. In 2013 the LHC will go into a long shutdown to prepare for higher-energy running starting in 2014.^[12]

Timeline of operations

Date	Event
10 Sep 2008	CERN successfully fired the first protons around the entire tunnel circuit in stages.
19 Sep 2008	Magnetic quench occurred in about 100 bending magnets in sectors 3 and 4, causing a loss of approximately 6 tonnes of liquid helium.
30 Sep 2008	First "modest" high-energy collisions planned but postponed due to accident.
16 Oct 2008	CERN released a preliminary analysis of the accident.
21 Oct 2008	Official inauguration.
5 Dec 2008	CERN released detailed analysis.
20 Nov 2009	Low-energy beams circulated in the tunnel for the first time since the accident.^[46]
23 Nov 2009	First particle collisions in all four detectors at 450 GeV.^[10]
30 Nov 2009	LHC becomes the world's highest-energy particle accelerator achieving 1.18 TeV per beam, beating the Tevatron's previous record of 0.98 TeV per beam held for eight years.^[42]
28 Feb 2010	The LHC continues operations ramping energies to run at 3.5 TeV for 18 months to two years, after which it will be shut down to prepare for the 14 TeV collisions (7 TeV per beam).^[47]
30 Mar 2010	The two beams collided at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) in the LHC at 13:06 CEST, marking the start of the LHC research program.
8 Nov 2010	Start of the first run with lead ions.
6 Dec 2010	End of the run with lead ions. Shutdown until early 2011.
13 Mar 2011	Beginning of the 2011 run with proton beams.^[48]
21 Apr 2011	LHC becomes the world's highest-luminosity hadron accelerator achieving a peak luminosity of 4.67·10³² cm⁻²s⁻¹, beating the Tevatron's previous record of 4·10³² cm⁻²s⁻¹ held for one year.^[49]
17 Jun 2011	The high luminosity experiments ATLAS and CMS reach 1 fb^-1 of collected data.^[50]
14 Oct 2011	LHCb reaches 1 fb^-1 of collected data.^[51]
23 Oct 2011	The high luminosity experiments ATLAS and CMS reach 5 fb^-1 of collected data.
5 Apr 2012	First collisions with stable beams in 2012 after the winter shutdown. The energy is increased to 4 TeV per beam (8 TeV in collisions).^[52]
4 July 2012	"Higgslike" particle discovered.

Findings

CERN scientists estimate that, if the Standard Model is correct, a single Higgs boson may be produced every few hours. At this rate, it may take about two to three years to collect enough data to discover the Higgs boson unambiguously. Similarly, it may take one year or more before sufficient results concerning supersymmetric particles have been gathered to draw meaningful conclusions.^[3] On the other hand, some extensions of the Standard Model predict additional particles, such as the heavy W' and Z' gauge bosons, whose existence might already be probed after a few months of data collection.^[53]
The first physics results from the LHC, involving 284 collisions which took place in the ALICE detector, were reported on 15 December 2009.^[54] The results of the first proton–proton collisions at energies higher than Fermilab's Tevatron proton–antiproton collisions were published by the CMS collaboration in early February 2010, yielding greater-than-predicted charged-hadron production.^[55]
After the first year of data collection, the LHC experimental collaborations started to release their preliminary results concerning searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model in proton-proton collisions.^[56]^[57]^[58]^[59] No evidence of new particles was detected in the 2010 data. As a result, bounds were set on the allowed parameter space of various extensions of the Standard Model, such as models with large extra dimensions, constrained versions of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, and others.^[60]^[61]^[62]
On 24 May 2011 it was reported that quark–gluon plasma (the densest matter besides black holes) has been created in the LHC.^[63]
Between July and August 2011, results of searches for the Higgs boson and for exotic particles, based on the data collected during the first half of the 2011 run, were presented in conferences in Grenoble^[64] and Mumbai.^[65] In the latter conference it was reported that, despite hints of a Higgs signal in earlier data, ATLAS and CMS exclude with 95% confidence level (using the CLs method) the existence of a Higgs boson with the properties predicted by the Standard Model over most of the mass region between 145 and 466 GeV.^[66] The searches for new particles did not yield signals either, allowing to further constrain the parameter space of various extensions of the Standard Model, including its supersymmetric extensions.^[67]^[68]
On 13 December 2011 CERN reported that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 115-130 GeV. Both the CMS and ATLAS detectors have also shown intensity peaks in the 124–125 GeV range, consistent with either background noise or the observation of the Higgs boson. It is expected that there will be sufficient data by the end of 2012 for a definite answer.^[69]
On 22 December 2011 it was reported that a new particle had been observed, the χ_b (3P) bottomonium state.^[70]
4 July 2012 – the CMS at CERN team "announces the discovery of a boson with mass 125.3 ± 0.6 GeV/c² within 4.9 sigma." This meets the formal level required to announce a new particle which is "consistent with" the Higgs Boson, but scientists are cautious as to whether it is formally identified as actually being the Higgs Boson, pending further analysis.^[71]

Proposed upgrade

Main article: Super Large Hadron Collider

After some years of running, any particle physics experiment typically begins to suffer from diminishing returns: as the key results reachable by the device begin to be completed, later years of operation discover proportionately less than earlier years. A common outcome is to upgrade the devices involved, typically in energy, in luminosity, or in terms of improved detectors. A luminosity upgrade of the LHC, called the Super LHC, has been proposed,^[72] to be made in 2018 after ten years of operation.
The optimal path for the LHC luminosity upgrade includes an increase in the beam current (i.e. the number of protons in the beams) and the modification of the two high-luminosity interaction regions, ATLAS and CMS. To achieve these increases, the energy of the beams at the point that they are injected into the (Super) LHC should also be increased to 1 TeV. This will require an upgrade of the full pre-injector system, the needed changes in the Super Proton Synchrotron being the most expensive. Currently the collaborative research effort of LHC Accelerator Research Program, LARP is conducting research into how to achieve these goals.^[73]

Cost

Main article: List of megaprojects

With a budget of 7.5 billion euros (approx. $9bn or £6.19bn as of Jun 2010), the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments^[74] ever built.^[75] The total cost of the project is expected to be of the order of 4.6bn Swiss francs (approx. $4.4bn, €3.1bn, or £2.8bn as of Jan 2010) for the accelerator and SFr 1.16bn (approx. $1.1bn, €0.8bn, or £0.7bn as of Jan 2010) for the CERN contribution to the experiments.^[76]
The construction of LHC was approved in 1995 with a budget of SFr 2.6bn, with another SFr 210M towards the experiments. However, cost overruns, estimated in a major review in 2001 at around SFr 480M for the accelerator, and SFr 50M for the experiments, along with a reduction in CERN's budget, pushed the completion date from 2005 to April 2007.^[77] The superconducting magnets were responsible for SFr 180M of the cost increase. There were also further costs and delays due to engineering difficulties encountered while building the underground cavern for the Compact Muon Solenoid,^[78] and also due to faulty parts provided by Fermilab.^[79] Due to lower electricity costs during the summer, it is expected that the LHC will normally not operate over the winter months,^[80] although an exception was made to make up for the 2008 start-up delays over the 2009/10 winter.

Computing resources

Data produced by LHC, as well as LHC-related simulation, was estimated at approximately 15 petabytes per year (max throughput while running not stated).^[81]
The LHC Computing Grid^[82] was constructed to handle the massive amounts of data produced. It incorporated both private fiber optic cable links and existing high-speed portions of the public Internet, enabling data transfer from CERN to academic institutions around the world.^[83]
The Open Science Grid is used as the primary infrastructure in the United States, and also as part of an interoperable federation with the LHC Computing Grid.
The distributed computing project LHC@home was started to support the construction and calibration of the LHC. The project uses the BOINC platform, enabling anybody with an Internet connection and either OS X or Linux,^[84] as well as Windows, to use their computer's idle time to simulate how particles will travel in the tunnel. With this information, the scientists will be able to determine how the magnets should be calibrated to gain the most stable "orbit" of the beams in the ring.^[85]

Safety of particle collisions

Main article: Safety of particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

The experiments at the Large Hadron Collider sparked fears among the public that the particle collisions might produce doomsday phenomena, involving the production of stable microscopic black holes or the creation of hypothetical particles called strangelets.^[86] Two CERN-commissioned safety reviews examined these concerns and concluded that the experiments at the LHC present no danger and that there is no reason for concern,^[87]^[88]^[89] a conclusion expressly endorsed by the American Physical Society.^[90]

Operational challenges

The size of the LHC constitutes an exceptional engineering challenge with unique operational issues on account of the amount of energy stored in the magnets and the beams.^[28]^[91] While operating, the total energy stored in the magnets is 10 GJ (equivalent to 2.4 tons of TNT) and the total energy carried by the two beams reaches 724 MJ (173 kilograms of TNT).^[92]
Loss of only one ten-millionth part (10⁻⁷) of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet, while the beam dump must absorb 362 MJ (87 kilograms of TNT) for each of the two beams. These energies are carried by very little matter: under nominal operating conditions (2,808 bunches per beam, 1.15×10¹¹ protons per bunch), the beam pipes contain 1.0×10⁻⁹ gram of hydrogen, which, in standard conditions for temperature and pressure, would fill the volume of one grain of fine sand.

Construction accidents and delays

Wikinews has related news: CERN says repairs to LHC particle accelerator to cost €16.6 million

On 25 October 2005, José Pereira Lages, a technician, was killed in the LHC when a switchgear that was being transported fell on him.^[93]
On 27 March 2007 a cryogenic magnet support broke during a pressure test involving one of the LHC's inner triplet (focusing quadrupole) magnet assemblies, provided by Fermilab and KEK. No one was injured. Fermilab director Pier Oddone stated "In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces". This fault had been present in the original design, and remained during four engineering reviews over the following years.^[94] Analysis revealed that its design, made as thin as possible for better insulation, was not strong enough to withstand the forces generated during pressure testing. Details are available in a statement from Fermilab, with which CERN is in agreement.^[95]^[96] Repairing the broken magnet and reinforcing the eight identical assemblies used by LHC delayed the startup date, then planned for November 2007.
Problems occurred on 19 September 2008 during powering tests of the main dipole circuit, when an electrical fault in the bus between magnets caused a rupture and a leak of six tonnes of liquid helium. The operation was delayed for several months.^[97] It is currently believed that a faulty electrical connection between two magnets caused an arc, which compromised the liquid-helium containment. Once the cooling layer was broken, the helium flooded the surrounding vacuum layer with sufficient force to break 10-ton magnets from their mountings. The explosion also contaminated the proton tubes with soot.^[36]^[98] This accident was thoroughly discussed in a 22 February 2010 Superconductor Science and Technology article by CERN physicist Lucio Rossi.^[99]
Two vacuum leaks were identified in July 2009, and the start of operations was further postponed to mid-November 2009.^[41]

Popular culture

The Large Hadron Collider gained a considerable amount of attention from outside the scientific community and its progress is followed by most popular science media. The LHC has also sparked the imaginations of authors of works of fiction, such as novels, TV series, and video games, although descriptions of what it is, how it works, and projected outcomes of the experiments are often only vaguely accurate, occasionally causing concern among the general public.
The novel Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown, involves antimatter created at the LHC to be used in a weapon against the Vatican. In response CERN published a "Fact or Fiction?" page discussing the accuracy of the book's portrayal of the LHC, CERN, and particle physics in general.^[100] The movie version of the book has footage filmed on-site at one of the experiments at the LHC; the director, Ron Howard, met with CERN experts in an effort to make the science in the story more accurate.^[101]
The novel FlashForward, by Robert J. Sawyer, involves the search for the Higgs boson at the LHC. CERN published a "Science and Fiction" page interviewing Sawyer and physicists about the book and the TV series based on it.^[102]
CERN employee Katherine McAlpine's "Large Hadron Rap"^[103] surpassed 7 million YouTube views.^[104]^[105] The band Les Horribles Cernettes was founded by female members of CERN. The name was chosen so to have the same initials as the LHC.^[106]^[107]
National Geographic's "World's Toughest Fixes," Season 2 (2010) Episode 6 "Atom Smasher" features the replacement of the last superconducting magnet section in the repair of the supercollider after the 2008 quench incident. The episode includes actual footage from the repair facility to the inside of the supercollider, and explanations of the function, engineering, and purpose of the LHC.^[

The big crunch

2012-07-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

In physical cosmology, the Big Crunch is one possible scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the metric expansion of space eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately ending as a black hole singularity.

Overview

Big Crunch overview

If the universe is finite in extent and the cosmological principle (not to be confused with the cosmological constant) does not apply, and the expansion speed does not exceed the escape velocity, then the mutual gravitational attraction of all its matter will eventually cause it to contract. If entropy continues to increase in the contracting phase (see Ergodic hypothesis), the contraction would appear very different from the time reversal of the expansion. While the early universe was highly uniform, a contracting universe would become increasingly clumped. Eventually all matter would collapse into black holes, which would then coalesce producing a unified black hole or Big Crunch singularity.

The Hubble Constant measures the current state of expansion in the universe, and the strength of the gravitational force depends on the density and pressure of the matter and in the universe, or in other words, the critical density of the universe. If the density of the universe is greater than the critical density, then the strength of the gravitational force will stop the universe from expanding and the universe will collapse back on itself. Conversely, if the density of the universe is less than the critical density, the universe will continue to expand and the gravitational pull will not be enough to stop the universe from expanding. This scenario would result in the 'Big Freeze', where the universe cools as it expands and reaches a state of entropy.^[1] One theory proposes that the universe could collapse to the state where it began and then initiate another Big Bang, so in this way the universe would last forever, but would pass through phases of expansion (Big Bang) and contraction (Big Crunch)^[2]

Recent experimental evidence (namely the observation of distant supernova as standard candles, and the well-resolved mapping of the cosmic microwave background) has led to speculation that the expansion of the universe is not being slowed down by gravity but rather accelerating. However, since the nature of the dark energy that is postulated to drive the acceleration is unknown, it is still possible (though not observationally supported as of today) that it might eventually reverse sign and cause a collapse.

The unknown dimension

2012-07-04T19:29:00.001-07:00

In mathematics, four-dimensional space ("4D") is an abstract concept derived by generalizing the rules of three-dimensional space. It has been studied by mathematicians and philosophers for almost three hundred years, both for its own interest and for the insights it offered into mathematics and related fields.

Algebraically it is generated by applying the rules of vectors and coordinate geometry to a space with four dimensions. In particular a vector with four elements (a 4-tuple) can be used to represent a position in four-dimensional space. The space is a Euclidean space, so has a metric and norm, and so all directions are treated as the same: the additional dimension is indistinguishable from the other three.

In modern physics, space and time are unified in a four-dimensional Minkowski continuum called spacetime, whose metric treats the time dimension differently from the three spatial dimensions (see below for the definition of the Minkowski metric/pairing). Spacetime is thus not a Euclidean space.

The possibility of spaces with dimensions higher than three was first studied by mathematicians in the 19th century. In 1827 Möbius realized that a fourth dimension would allow a three-dimensional form to be rotated onto its mirror-image,^[1] and by 1853 Ludwig Schläfli had discovered many polytopes in higher dimensions, although his work was not published until after his death.^[2] Higher dimensions were soon put on firm footing by Bernhard Riemann's 1854 Habilitationsschrift, Über die Hypothesen welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen, in which he considered a "point" to be any sequence of coordinates (x₁, ..., x_n). The possibility of geometry in higher dimensions, including four dimensions in particular, was thus established.

An arithmetic of four dimensions called quaternions was defined by William Rowan Hamilton in 1843. This associative algebra was the source of the science of vector analysis in three dimensions as recounted in A History of Vector Analysis.

The fourth dimension was popularised by Charles Howard Hinton, starting in 1880 with his essay What is the Fourth Dimension?; published in the Dublin University magazine.^[3] He coined the terms tesseract, ana and kata in his book A New Era of Thought, and introduced a method for visualising the fourth dimension using cubes in the book Fourth Dimension.^[4]^[5]

In 1908, Hermann Minkowski presented a paper^[6] consolidating the role of time as the fourth dimension of spacetime, the basis for Einstein's theories of special and general relativity.^[7] But the geometry of spacetime, being non-Euclidean, is completely different from that popularised by Hinton. The study of such Minkowski spaces required new mathematics quite different from that of four-dimensional Euclidean space, and so developed along quite different lines. This separation was less clear in the popular imagination, with works of fiction and philosophy blurring the distinction, so in 1973 H. S. M. Coxeter felt compelled to write:

Little, if anything, is gained by representing the fourth Euclidean dimension as time. In fact, this idea, so attractively developed by H. G. Wells in The Time Machine, has led such authors as John William Dunne (An Experiment with Time) into a serious misconception of the theory of Relativity. Minkowski's geometry of space-time is not Euclidean, and consequently has no connection with the present investigation.

Vectors

Mathematically four-dimensional space is simply a space with four spatial dimensions, that is a space that needs four parameters to specify a point in it. For example a general point might have position vector a, equal to

This can be written in terms of the four standard basis vectors (e₁, e₂, e₃, e₄), given by

so the general vector a is

Vectors add, subtract and scale as in three dimensions.

The dot product of Euclidean three-dimensional space generalizes to four dimensions as

It can be used to calculate the norm or length of a vector,

and calculate or define the angle between two vectors as

Minkowski spacetime is four-dimensional space with geometry defined by a nondegenerate pairing different from the dot product:

As an example, the distance squared between the points (0,0,0,0) and (1,1,1,0) is 3 in both the Euclidean and Minkowskian 4-spaces, while the distance squared between (0,0,0,0) and (1,1,1,1) is 4 in Euclidean space and 2 in Minkowski space; increasing actually decreases the metric distance. This leads to many of the well known apparent "paradoxes" of relativity.

The cross product is not defined in four dimensions. Instead the exterior product is used for some applications, and is defined as follows:

This is bivector valued, with bivectors in four dimensions forming a six-dimensional linear space with basis (e₁₂, e₁₃, e₁₄, e₂₃, e₂₄, e₃₄). They can be used to generate rotations in four dimensions.

Orthogonality and vocabulary

In the familiar 3-dimensional space that we live in there are three coordinate axes — usually labeled x, y, and z — with each axis orthogonal (i.e. perpendicular) to the other two. The six cardinal directions in this space can be called up, down, east, west, north, and south. Positions along these axes can be called altitude, longitude, and latitude. Lengths measured along these axes can be called height, width, and depth.

Comparatively, 4-dimensional space has an extra coordinate axis, orthogonal to the other three, which is usually labeled w. To describe the two additional cardinal directions, Charles Howard Hinton coined the terms ana and kata, from the Greek words meaning "up toward" and "down from", respectively. A length measured along the w axis can be called spissitude, as coined by Henry More.

Geometry

See also: Rotations in 4-dimensional Euclidean space

The geometry of 4-dimensional space is much more complex than that of 3-dimensional space, due to the extra degree of freedom.

Just as in 3 dimensions there are polyhedra made of two dimensional polygons, in 4 dimensions there are polychora (4-polytopes) made of polyhedra. In 3 dimensions there are 5 regular polyhedra known as the Platonic solids. In 4 dimensions there are 6 convex regular polychora, the analogues of the Platonic solids. Relaxing the conditions for regularity generates a further 58 convex uniform polychora, analogous to the 13 semi-regular Archimedean solids in three dimensions.

Regular polytopes in four dimensions
(Displayed as orthogonal projections in each Coxeter plane of symmetry)
A₄	BC₄		F₄	H₄
5-cell	tesseract	16-cell	24-cell	120-cell	600-cell

In 3 dimensions, a circle may be extruded to form a cylinder. In 4 dimensions, there are several different cylinder-like objects. A sphere may be extruded to obtain a spherical cylinder (a cylinder with spherical "caps"), and a cylinder may be extruded to obtain a cylindrical prism. The Cartesian product of two circles may be taken to obtain a duocylinder. All three can "roll" in 4-dimensional space, each with its own properties.

In 3 dimensions, curves can form knots but surfaces cannot (unless they are self-intersecting). In 4 dimensions, however, knots made using curves can be trivially untied by displacing them in the fourth direction, but 2-dimensional surfaces can form non-trivial, non-self-intersecting knots in 4-dimensional space. Because these surfaces are 2-dimensional, they can form much more complex knots than strings in 3-dimensional space can. The Klein bottle is an example of such a knotted surface. Another such surface is the real projective plane.

Hypersphere

Stereographic projection of a Clifford torus: the set of points (cos(a), sin(a), cos(b), sin(b)), which is a subset of the 3-sphere.

The set of points in Euclidean 4-space having the same distance R from a fixed point P₀ forms a hypersurface known as a 3-sphere. The hyper-volume of the enclosed space is:

This is part of the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric in General relativity where R is substituted by function R(t) with t meaning the cosmological age of the universe. Growing or shrinking R with time means expanding or collapsing universe, depending on the mass density inside.^[9]

Cognition

Research using virtual reality finds that humans in spite of living in a three-dimensional world can without special practice make spatial judgments based on the length of, and angle between, line segments embedded in four-dimensional space.^[10] The researchers noted that "the participants in our study had minimal practice in these tasks, and it remains an open question whether it is possible to obtain more sustainable, definitive, and richer 4D representations with increased perceptual experience in 4D virtual environments."^[10] In another study,^[11] the ability of humans to orient themselves in 2D, 3D and 4D mazes has been tested. Each maze consisted of four path segments of random length and connected with orthogonal random bends, but without branches or loops (i.e. actually labyrinths). The graphical interface was based on John McIntosh's free 4D Maze game.^[12] The participating persons had to navigate through the path and finally estimate the linear direction back to the starting point. The researchers found that some of the participants were able to mentally integrate their path after some practice in 4D (the lower dimensional cases were for comparison and for the participants to learn the method).

Dimensional analogy

A net of a tesseract

To understand the nature of four-dimensional space, a device called dimensional analogy is commonly employed. Dimensional analogy is the study of how (n − 1) dimensions relate to n dimensions, and then inferring how n dimensions would relate to (n + 1) dimensions.^[13]

Dimensional analogy was used by Edwin Abbott Abbott in the book Flatland, which narrates a story about a square that lives in a two-dimensional world, like the surface of a piece of paper. From the perspective of this square, a three-dimensional being has seemingly god-like powers, such as ability to remove objects from a safe without breaking it open (by moving them across the third dimension), to see everything that from the two-dimensional perspective is enclosed behind walls, and to remain completely invisible by standing a few inches away in the third dimension.

By applying dimensional analogy, one can infer that a four-dimensional being would be capable of similar feats from our three-dimensional perspective. Rudy Rucker illustrates this in his novel Spaceland, in which the protagonist encounters four-dimensional beings who demonstrate such powers.

Cross-sections

As a three-dimensional object passes through a two-dimensional plane, a two-dimensional being would only see a cross-section of the three-dimensional object. For example, if a balloon passed though a sheet of paper, a being on the paper would see a circle gradually grow larger, then smaller again. Similarly, if a four-dimensional object passed through three-dimensions, we would see a three-dimensional cross-section of the four-dimensional object–for example, a sphere.

Projections

A useful application of dimensional analogy in visualizing the fourth dimension is in projection. A projection is a way for representing an n-dimensional object in n − 1 dimensions. For instance, computer screens are two-dimensional, and all the photographs of three-dimensional people, places and things are represented in two dimensions by projecting the objects onto a flat surface. When this is done, depth is removed and replaced with indirect information. The retina of the eye is also a two-dimensional array of receptors but the brain is able to perceive the nature of three-dimensional objects by inference from indirect information (such as shading, foreshortening, binocular vision, etc.). Artists often use perspective to give an illusion of three-dimensional depth to two-dimensional pictures.

Similarly, objects in the fourth dimension can be mathematically projected to the familiar 3 dimensions, where they can be more conveniently examined. In this case, the 'retina' of the four-dimensional eye is a three-dimensional array of receptors. A hypothetical being with such an eye would perceive the nature of four-dimensional objects by inferring four-dimensional depth from indirect information in the three-dimensional images in its retina.

The perspective projection of three-dimensional objects into the retina of the eye introduces artifacts such as foreshortening, which the brain interprets as depth in the third dimension. In the same way, perspective projection from four dimensions produces similar foreshortening effects. By applying dimensional analogy, one may infer four-dimensional "depth" from these effects.

As an illustration of this principle, the following sequence of images compares various views of the 3-dimensional cube with analogous projections of the 4-dimensional tesseract into three-dimensional space.

Cube	Tesseract	Description
		The image on the left is a cube viewed face-on. The analogous viewpoint of the tesseract in 4 dimensions is the cell-first perspective projection, shown on the right. One may draw an analogy between the two: just as the cube projects to a square, the tesseract projects to a cube. Note that the other 5 faces of the cube are not seen here. They are obscured by the visible face. Similarly, the other 7 cells of the tesseract are not seen here because they are obscured by the visible cell.
		The image on the left shows the same cube viewed edge-on. The analogous viewpoint of a tesseract is the face-first perspective projection, shown on the right. Just as the edge-first projection of the cube consists of two trapezoids, the face-first projection of the tesseract consists of two frustums. The nearest edge of the cube in this viewpoint is the one lying between the red and green faces. Likewise, the nearest face of the tesseract is the one lying between the red and green cells.
		On the left is the cube viewed corner-first. This is analogous to the edge-first perspective projection of the tesseract, shown on the right. Just as the cube's vertex-first projection consists of 3 deltoids surrounding a vertex, the tesseract's edge-first projection consists of 3 hexahedral volumes surrounding an edge. Just as the nearest vertex of the cube is the one where the three faces meet, so the nearest edge of the tesseract is the one in the center of the projection volume, where the three cells meet.
		A different analogy may be drawn between the edge-first projection of the tesseract and the edge-first projection of the cube. The cube's edge-first projection has two trapezoids surrounding an edge, while the tesseract has three hexahedral volumes surrounding an edge.
		On the left is the cube viewed corner-first. The vertex-first perspective projection of the tesseract is shown on the right. The cube's vertex-first projection has three tetragons surrounding a vertex, but the tesseract's vertex-first projection has four hexahedral volumes surrounding a vertex. Just as the nearest corner of the cube is the one lying at the center of the image, so the nearest vertex of the tesseract lies not on boundary of the projected volume, but at its center inside, where all four cells meet. Note that only three faces of the cube's 6 faces can be seen here, because the other 3 lie behind these three faces, on the opposite side of the cube. Similarly, only 4 of the tesseract's 8 cells can be seen here; the remaining 4 lie behind these 4 in the fourth direction, on the far side of the tesseract.

Shadows

A concept closely related to projection is the casting of shadows.

If a light is shone on a three dimensional object, a two-dimensional shadow is cast. By dimensional analogy, light shone on a two-dimensional object in a two-dimensional world would cast a one-dimensional shadow, and light on a one-dimensional object in a one-dimensional world would cast a zero-dimensional shadow, that is, a point of non-light. Going the other way, one may infer that light shone on a four-dimensional object in a four-dimensional world would cast a three-dimensional shadow.

If the wireframe of a cube is lit from above, the resulting shadow is a square within a square with the corresponding corners connected. Similarly, if the wireframe of a tesseract were lit from “above” (in the fourth direction), its shadow would be that of a three-dimensional cube within another three-dimensional cube. (Note that, technically, the visual representation shown here is actually a two-dimensional shadow of the three-dimensional shadow of the four-dimensional wireframe figure.)

Bounding volumes

Dimensional analogy also helps in inferring basic properties of objects in higher dimensions. For example, two-dimensional objects are bounded by one-dimensional boundaries: a square is bounded by four edges. Three-dimensional objects are bounded by two-dimensional surfaces: a cube is bounded by 6 square faces. By applying dimensional analogy, one may infer that a four-dimensional cube, known as a tesseract, is bounded by three-dimensional volumes. And indeed, this is the case: mathematics shows that the tesseract is bounded by 8 cubes. Knowing this is key to understanding how to interpret a three-dimensional projection of the tesseract. The boundaries of the tesseract project to volumes in the image, not merely two-dimensional surfaces.

Visual scope

Being three-dimensional, we are only able to see the world with our eyes in two dimensions. A four-dimensional being would be able to see the world in three dimensions. For example, it would be able to see all six sides of an opaque box simultaneously, and in fact, what is inside the box at the same time, just as we can see the interior of a square on a piece of paper. It would be able to see all points in 3-dimensional space simultaneously, including the inner structure of solid objects and things obscured from our three-dimensional viewpoint. Our brains receive images in the second dimension and use reasoning to help us "picture" three-dimensional objects. Just as a four-dimensional creature would probably receive multiple three-dimensional pictures.^{[citation needed]}

Limitations

Reasoning by analogy from familiar lower dimensions can be an excellent intuitive guide, but care must be exercised not to accept results that are not more rigorously tested. For example, consider the formulas for the circumference of a circle and the surface area of a sphere: . One might be tempted to suppose that the surface volume of a hypersphere is , or perhaps , but either of these would be wrong. The correct formula is .

amazing phenomenons

2012-07-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

The Higgs Particle and Your Free Guide to the Higgs Boson

The Higgs boson is a type of elementary particle within the Standard Model of particle physics. It plays a key role in modern scientific theories of the universe and its existence or non-existence is considered pivotal in determining which theories about the nature of the physical universe are more likely to be correct.
The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted in 1964 to explain the Higgs mechanism—the mechanism by which elementary particles are given mass.^{[Note 2]} While the Higgs mechanism is considered confirmed to exist, the boson itself—a cornerstone of the leading theory—had not been observed and its existence was unconfirmed. Its tentative discovery in 2012 may validate the Standard Model as essentially correct, as it is the final elementary particle predicted and required by the Standard Model which has not yet been observed via particle physics experiments.^[4] Alternative sources of the Higgs mechanism that do not need the Higgs boson also are possible and would be considered if the existence of the Higgs boson were to be ruled out. They are known as Higgsless models.
The Higgs boson is named after British physicist Peter Higgs who was one of six authors in the 1960s who wrote the ground-breaking papers covering what is now known as the Higgs mechanism and described the related Higgs Field and boson. Technically, it is the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, and the non-zero value of the ground state of this field gives mass to the other elementary particles such as quarks and electrons through the Higgs mechanism. The Standard Model completely fixes the properties of the Higgs boson, except for its mass. It is expected to have no spin and no electric or color charge, and it interacts with other particles through the weak interaction and Yukawa-type interactions between the various fermions and the Higgs field.
Because the Higgs boson is a very massive particle and also decays almost immediately when created, only a very high energy particle accelerator can observe and record it. Experiments to confirm and determine the nature of the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN began in early 2010, and were performed at Fermilab's Tevatron until its close in late 2011. Mathematical consistency of the Standard Model requires that any mechanism capable of generating the masses of elementary particles become visible at energies above 1.4 TeV;^[5] therefore, the LHC (designed to collide two 7 TeV proton beams, but currently running at 4 TeV each) was built to answer the question of whether or not the Higgs boson exists.^[6]
On 4 July 2012, the two main experiments at the LHC (ATLAS and CMS) both reported independently the confirmed existence of a previously unknown particle with a mass of about 125 GeV/c² (about 133 proton masses, on the order of 10^-25 kg), which is "consistent with the Higgs boson" and widely believed to be the Higgs boson. They acknowledged that further work would be needed to confirm that it is indeed the Higgs boson and not some other previously unknown particle (meaning that it has the theoretically predicted properties of the Higgs boson) and, if so, to determine which version of the Standard Model it best supports.
well it' not the end as we still don't know what to make of this billion $ search for higgs boson.
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