CERN has officially powered down the worlds largest particle collider.
The Large Hadron Collider known as the LHC is a 17 mile or 27 kilometer underground ring near Geneva Switzerland. It accelerates particles to nearly the speed of light and collides them. In 2012 this facility enabled scientists to discover the Higgs boson. This particle relates to the field responsible for giving mass to other particles.
The machine has now entered what CERN calls Long Shutdown 3. It is scheduled to resume operations around 2030 as the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider.
The primary aim of this upgrade is not to enlarge the collider significantly. Instead it focuses on improving the machines ability to generate high quality data.
In particle physics luminosity measures the rate of particle collisions over time. Higher luminosity increases opportunities to detect rare phenomena that may point to new physics beyond current understanding.
Currently the LHC detectors record about 60 proton proton collisions per bunch crossing. Following the upgrade this figure is expected to increase to between 140 and 200.
Throughout its operational life the upgraded collider could generate approximately 380 million Higgs bosons. This represents a substantial rise from the roughly 55 million produced since the LHC began operations.
A key objective involves detecting rare events where two Higgs bosons are created simultaneously. Such observations could provide deeper insights into the behavior of the Higgs field and offer information about conditions in the early universe following the Big Bang.
The project includes replacing major detector components installing advanced timing systems and upgrading roughly 0.75 miles or 1.2 kilometers of magnets and other infrastructure within the LHC.
CERN has confirmed that this work poses no risk of destroying the universe. Natural cosmic rays produce far more energetic collisions than those at the LHC. These rays have bombarded Earth and objects in space for billions of years without incident.
Britain had a moment of silence for George Floyd. Our politicians kneeled en masse to show their outrage at his killing. "I can't breathe" became a slogan.
George Floyd died on the other side of the world. He wasn't British.
Henry Nowak *was* British and his treatment by the police was shocking and negligent in the extreme. Yet there is no minute of silence. There is no coordinated public campaign. There is no kneeling at sporting events.
And we all know why.
During the summer of BLM, some people said "All Lives Matter". This was treated as the highest form of racism and anyone who said this was immediately cancelled. Why? Because the people in charge don't actually think all lives matter in the same way.
They have created a racial hierarchy of victimhood where a career criminal who died through mistreatment by police in a foreign country with 0 evidence of racism like George Floyd is automatically sanctified because of the colour of his skin.
And Henry Nowak, a British man, one of ours, is automatically dismissed and ignored because of the colour of his.
This is the ugly fruit of so-called "anti-racism", an obsession with race that has created a two-tier society which treats people differently because of the colour of their skin.
This needs to stop.
no wonder we can’t get credible artists to represent us at eurovision when every year the BBC is disrespectful and doesn’t support our representative. just disgusting. where is the delegation????
In Half-life 2, Eli Vance uses the face of a homeless individual from Seattle, who approached Valve while looking for work. Valve decided to pay him and use his face for Eli Vance, however the man was never given any proper credit. To this day, no one knows what his name is, or
An Airbus 380 is on its way across the Atlantic. It flies consistently at 800 km/h at 30,000 feet, when suddenly a Eurofighter with a Tempo Mach 2 appears.
The pilot of the fighter jet slows down, flies alongside the Airbus and greets the pilot of the passenger plane by radio: "Airbus, boring flight isn’t it? Now have a look here!"
He rolls his jet on its back, accelerates, breaks through the sound barrier, rises rapidly to a dizzying height, and then swoops down almost to sea level in a breathtaking dive. He loops back next to the Airbus and asks: "Well, how was that?"
The Airbus pilot answers: "Very impressive, but watch this!"
The jet pilot watches the Airbus, but nothing happens. It continues to fly straight, at the same speed. After 15 minutes, the Airbus pilot radios, "Well, how was that?
Confused, the jet pilot asks, "What did you do?"
The AirBus pilot laughs and says: "I got up, stretched my legs, walked to the back of the aircraft to use the washroom, then got a cup of coffee and a chocolate fudge pastry."
The moral of the story is: When you’re young, speed and adrenaline seems to be great. But as you get older and wiser, you learn that comfort and peace are more important.
This is called S.O.S.: Slower, Older and Smarter.
Dedicated to all my senior friends ~ it’s time to slow down and enjoy the rest of the trip.
Author Unknown