Reminder: LHC lights off Sept 10th

[Ender]

linka

Evolutionary Acceleration Research Institute Ready to Start “Squirrel Smasher”
By Brian Briggs

Dallas, TX – Scientists from the Evolutionary Acceleration Research Institute (EARI) announced that the first test of the Giant Animal Smasher (GAS) will begin on December 19, 2008, the 41st anniversary of the premiere of Dr. Dolittle.

Dr. Thomas Malwin, head of the research project, said, "The first test runs will only accelerate microscopic life-forms like bacteria and viruses to high speeds, but theoretically the GAS can handle animals as large as squirrels, hence the squirrel smasher moniker."

Biologists from around the globe hope the GAS will unlock the secrets of the so-called "Darwin particle" that could unlock the secrets to life.

"If we discover the Darwin particle we could possibly create new life-forms, or accelerate evolution to unimaginable levels," said Malwin.

The GAS is a 25 mile tube buried ten feet below the surface, and accelerates the animals at rates up to 6,000 meters per second using a series of pulleys, levers and fusion reactors.

Malwin dismissed critics who claimed that smashing animals together at high speeds was cruel to the animals. He said, "The animals won't be feeling anything. The collision will vaporize the squirrels in a fraction of a second. Their brains won't be able to transmit pain at those speeds, so it'll be painless for them."

Scientists currently rely on computer simulations to smash biological units, but simulations can only do so much, and without the visceral enjoyment of seeing two squirrels collide at thousands of miles an hour.

Malwin said there will be controls in place to prevent new undesirable species from forming. "Only species of the same type will be smashed together, so you don't have to worry about the flying rat, or poisonous Chihuahua nightmare scenarios."

One scientist at CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider, said, "Biologists are just jealous of all the attention the LHC has been getting. Since they aren't real scientists, they had to come up with this atrocity. Next thing you know the psychologists will build a brain smasher to compete."

The picture sells it.

[Darth Wong]

Really, do any of the doomsayers have any technical training? How the hell can banging protons into each other create a gravity well? Come on.

"Come on" is not a valid rebuttal of the concern, even if the concern itself is not valid either. IIRC, the underlying argument was that if you created a collision with subatomic particles and sufficient energy, the mass/energy density might be great enough to create a tiny black hole. The most obvious problem with this argument is that a tiny black hole would just evapourate in a shower of gamma rays, rather than relentlessly sucking in the entire planet as per some peoples' understanding of black holes.

And technically, everything creates a gravity well; it's just a matter of how large it is.

[Count Chocula]

Well, the Sun's full of protons banging into each other, and the sun's got a huge gravity well...

See the connection?

Ohh, now it makes PERFECT sense. Those wacky Euros are farting protons in each others' general direction, on Earth, which has a gravity well!! Banging protons are what makes the Sun all Yellow and Bright and Warm and Stuff! Now we're doing it! And EVERYBODY KNOWS there's a black hole at the center of our sun.

We're all gonna DIIIIEEEEEEE!! I need to call Coast to Coast AM and warn everyone!

[Count Chocula]

"Come on" is not a valid rebuttal of the concern, even if the concern itself is not valid either. IIRC, the underlying argument was that if you created a collision with subatomic particles and sufficient energy, the mass/energy density might be great enough to create a tiny black hole. The most obvious problem with this argument is that a tiny black hole would just evapourate in a shower of gamma rays, rather than relentlessly sucking in the entire planet as per some peoples' understanding of black holes.

And technically, everything creates a gravity well; it's just a matter of how large it is.

You're right of course, Mr. Wong. What irks me about the people who say things like "they're gonna create a black hole that will consume TEH EARF!" crowd is their lack of understanding of scale. A firecracker does not equate to a nuke, except in the most general term that they're both explosive devices. Looking at a few million proton collisions over, what, a few picosends and concluding that that could create a humanity-destroying singularity seems like an unreasonably large, and poorly thought-out, chain of reasoning.

I was half-listening to Coast to Coast on my way in to work this morning; Noory had Charles Seife http://www.charlesseife.com/ on who was talking about the LHC and what scientists hope to discover. A caller on the open lines segment stated that scientists at CERN had measured a 1-2 deg. Kelvin temperature rise in the supercooled conductors. This genius then went on to ask Mr. Seife it it was possible that the temperature rise could get out of control, turning the entire LHC into a ring of plasma and - I shit you not - burning through the Earth's mantle! Mr. Seife answered with far more grace and tact than I could have managed.

[Darth Wong]

I would recommend that you not listen to Coast to Coast AM. The sheer stupidity will fry your brain.

[Count Chocula]

I got burned out on XM Comedy (heard all the bits) and I'm just not a morning music person. Looks like audio books for me!

[Admiral Valdemar]

Reminds me of all the paranoia about British scientists producing the first human-other animal chimaeras. That was going to lead to beasts that would kill us all, or anger God.

Sometimes gross ignorance can be highly amusing in its originality.

[Darth Wong]

Reminds me of all the paranoia about British scientists producing the first human-other animal chimaeras. That was going to lead to beasts that would kill us all, or anger God.

Sometimes gross ignorance can be highly amusing in its originality.

Until the politicians start getting into the act, at which point the stupidity becomes infuriating rather than amusing. Remember Terri Schiavo, and all of those people insisting that the brain is not where the soul lives, so it doesn't matter if 90% of her brain has wasted away?

[Dooey Jo]

Really, do any of the doomsayers have any technical training? How the hell can banging protons into each other create a gravity well? Come on.

Because gravity wells are caused by mass-energy, and the protons in the accelerator have really high energies. Not enough to create a stable black hole though, or indeed any black hole, outside of string theories.

[Kodiak]

So this thing cost $9billion IIRC? What's our monthly operating budget in Iraq?

[The Spartan]

So this thing cost $9billion IIRC? What's our monthly operating budget in Iraq?

On average? Some where in the $12 billion range. Give or take.

[docfrance]

So this thing cost $9billion IIRC? What's our monthly operating budget in Iraq?

About that much, give or take a billion.

I was having a discussion on another board about the LHC, when someone brought up the "fact" that there were "serious concerns" in the Manhattan Project that detonating an atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere. The urban legend seems to be that the Los Alamos scientists thought that this might happen, but went on ahead with the test anyway. A quick google search reveals that this was clearly not the case. The concern was brought up, but it was studied and determined to be a statistical impossibility, as shown in this paper. Still, the parallel between the atmospheric ignition legend and the modern fears of micro black holes and strange matter is funny. They could give even just an ounce of effort to educate themselves on the science behind the experiments, but so many people prefer just to shoot their mouths off without bothering to understand what they're afraid of - they think with their guts rather than their brains.

[Gil Hamilton]

It was actually the Democrats who killed the SSC in 1993 * shakes fist *

That always struck me as terribly ironic. I seem to recall that the cost of tearing the thing down actually cost more than the projected cost of finishing it and running it for a year.

[Patrick Degan]

So this thing cost $9billion IIRC? What's our monthly operating budget in Iraq?

About that much, give or take a billion.

I was having a discussion on another board about the LHC, when someone brought up the "fact" that there were "serious concerns" in the Manhattan Project that detonating an atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere. The urban legend seems to be that the Los Alamos scientists thought that this might happen, but went on ahead with the test anyway. A quick google search reveals that this was clearly not the case. The concern was brought up, but it was studied and determined to be a statistical impossibility, as shown in this paper. Still, the parallel between the atmospheric ignition legend and the modern fears of micro black holes and strange matter is funny. They could give even just an ounce of effort to educate themselves on the science behind the experiments, but so many people prefer just to shoot their mouths off without bothering to understand what they're afraid of - they think with their guts rather than their brains.

Just before Test Shot Baker in 1946, Vice Admiral William H. Blandy had to make this newsreel to quell the fears of the public over the pending atomic shot:

The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the atmosphere, destroying all the oxygen. It will not blow a hole in the bottom of the ocean, causing all the water to run out and all the ships at sea to settle to the bottom. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics called me, setting off these bombs to satisfy some personal whim.

[Kanastrous]

I would recommend that you not listen to Coast to Coast AM. The sheer stupidity will fry your brain.

It's the creativity and emotion and effort invested in the stupidity on that show, that has left me unable to listen any more, even for chuckles.

I just hope that I eventually regenerate the IQ points I lost, while listening.

[chitoryu12]

Really, do any of the doomsayers have any technical training? How the hell can banging protons into each other create a gravity well? Come on.

Because gravity wells are caused by mass-energy, and the protons in the accelerator have really high energies. Not enough to create a stable black hole though, or indeed any black hole, outside of string theories.

Hell, the black hole would be pathetically tiny even if created. It wouldn't have nearly enough mass to suck in me, let alone a whole planet, and that's assuming Stephen Hawking was wrong and it WON'T just evaporate.

[Joviwan]

Really, do any of the doomsayers have any technical training? How the hell can banging protons into each other create a gravity well? Come on.

Because gravity wells are caused by mass-energy, and the protons in the accelerator have really high energies. Not enough to create a stable black hole though, or indeed any black hole, outside of string theories.

Hell, the black hole would be pathetically tiny even if created. It wouldn't have nearly enough mass to suck in me, let alone a whole planet, and that's assuming Stephen Hawking was wrong and it WON'T just evaporate.

The point that I heard with regards to the black hole theory was that, were it actually sustainable, the tiny, tiny black hole would bounce back and forth through the earth as a result of it's gravity, picking an atom here and an atom there as it passed through the planet, and the moment it accumulated enough mass to pick up a molecule, it would rapidly and exponentially suck in everything else until all that was left was a black hole and the ISS floating in orbit with a few very confused astronauts wondering what just happened.

[Winston Blake]

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, I'll point out the'Large Hadron Rap', made by CERN employee Katherine McAlpine. I don't actually like it, but I like the precedent it sets - if somebody at the LHC can do this, they can surely throw together a 6 second 'Commence primary ignition'. Perhaps they'll do it for the first real micro-black-hole test, as opposed to the current warm-ups.

[Ender]

Ok, serious post time:

Hackers Attack CERN and LHC network

Is it now cyberwar over atom-smashing? A team of Greek hackers calling themselvses Greek Security Team has penetrated the Large Hadron Collider and defaced a public website. No real damage done, but the hackers got perilously close. The hackers attacked the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, or CMS. The Guardian reports:

Scientists working at Cern, the organisation that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were “one step away” from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12,500 tons, measuring around 21 metres in length and 15 metres wide/high.

If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider, “it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it.”

Fortunately, only one file was damaged but one of the scientists firing off emails as the CMS team fought off the hackers said it was a “scary experience”.

The hackers breached the CMSMON system, which monitors the CMS software system. CMS takes vast amounts of data during collisions. About CERN’s security apparatus:

Cern relies on a ‘defence-in-depth’ strategy, separating control networks and using firewalls and complex passwords, to protect its control systems from malicious software, such as denial-of-service attacks, botnets and zombie machines, which can strike with a synchronised attack from hundreds of machines around the world.

However, there have been growing concerns about security as remote or wireless access, notebooks and USB sticks offer new possibilities for a virus or worms to enter the network, not to mention hackers and terrorists who might be interested in targeting computers to shutdown the system.

Update: Received the following comments from Andrew Storms, director of security ops at nCircle Network Security:

It’s always difficult for outsiders to understand what may have really
happened without the first-hand technical recount of the events. However,
two things we can always count on — 1) the higher value targets will
receive more attention from hackers 2) the more sophisticated hackers won’t be knocking on the front door.

If its true that the access vector was a Fermilab worker had their access
information compromised, then this points to the higher level of
sophistication of the hackers. They knew that the front door would be
locked, so they probably targeted a trusted individual who would have access to the LHC networks.

Its important to note that the compromise probably began with a human. We are more than often the fault for most system compromises. Hackers know this and have actively been targeting people for years now, with the
understanding that they may unknowingly give the attackers access to what they seek.

Even those with PHDs and deep understanding of higher level mathematics and
physics are prone and susceptible to computer and information security
intrusions.

more

Hackers have mounted an attack on the Large Hadron Collider, raising concerns about the security of the biggest experiment in the world as it passes an important new milestone.

The scientists behind the £4.4bn atom smasher had already received threatening emails and been besieged by telephone calls from worried members of the public concerned by speculation that the machine could trigger a black hole to swallow the earth, or earthquakes and tsunamis, despite endless reassurances to the contrary from the likes of Prof Stephen Hawking.

Now it has emerged that, as the first particles were circulating in the machine near Geneva, a Greek group had hacked into the facility and displayed a page with the headline "GST: Greek Security Team."

The people responsible signed off: "We are 2600 - dont mess with us. (sic)"

The website - cmsmon.cern.ch - can no longer be accessed by the public as a result of the attack.

Scientists working at Cern, the organisation that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12,500 tons, measuring around 21 metres in length and 15 metres wide/high.

If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider, "it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it."

Fortunately, only one file was damaged but one of the scientists firing off emails as the CMS team fought off the hackers said it was a "scary experience".

The hackers targeted the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, or CMS, one of the four "eyes" of the facility that will be analysing the fallout of the Big Bang.

The CMS team of around 2,000 scientists is racing with another team that runs the Atlas detector, also at Cern, to find the Higgs particle, one that is responsible for mass.

"There seems to be no harm done. From what they can tell, it was someone making the point that CMS was hackable," said James Gillies, spokesman for Cern. "It was quickly detected."

"We have several levels of network, a general access network and a much tighter network for sensitive things that operate the LHC," said Gillies.

"We are a very visible site," he said, adding that of the 1.4 million emails sent to Cern yesterday, 98 per cent was spam.

The hacking attempt started around the time that the giant machine was about to circulate its first particles, under the spotlight of the world's media.

On Wednesday afternoon, as the world held its breath as the machine sparked up, CMS team members were scouring computers at the machine for half a dozen files uploaded by the hackers on September 9 and 10.

"We think that someone from Fermilab's Tevatron (the competing atom smasher in America) had their access details compromised," said one of the scientists working on the machine. "What happened wasn't a big deal, just goes to show people are out there always on the prowl."

The CMS team studied the files inserted by the hackers carefully before deleting, in case a "backdoor" had been installed, a means of access to the computer that bypasses security.

The system the hackers managed to access was CMSMON, which monitors the CMS software system as the vast detector takes data, during collisions between particles to study the energies and physics in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, which created the universe.

Cern relies on a 'defence-in-depth' strategy, separating control networks and using firewalls and complex passwords, to protect its control systems from malicious software, such as denial-of-service attacks, botnets and zombie machines, which can strike with a synchronised attack from hundreds of machines around the world.

However, there have been growing concerns about security as remote or wireless access, notebooks and USB sticks offer new possibilities for a virus or worms to enter the network, not to mention hackers and terrorists who might be interested in targeting computers to shutdown the system.

More than 110 different control systems are used at Cern. These systems monitor, supervise and safeguard Cern's accelerators, experiments and infrastructure - from buildings, electricity and heating to access control, radiation protection and safety.

To refine security methods Cern set up a working group called Computing and Network Infrastructure for Controls. One document written by the group said: "Recent events show that computer security issues are becoming a serious problem also at Cern."

However, the team said yesterday that it did not want to comment on security at the international facility.

A few years ago, Stanford University in California announced that a number of high-performance academic computer centres had been attacked by hackers lured by the phenomenal power of the grid - pools of computing power linked by dedicated high-speed networks. Beyond shutting down the machines or stealing or deleting data, one likely malicious use of such power is to crack passwords.

In 2003, hackers broke into ScotGrid, a network of 150 machines based at the University of Glasgow. They intercepted the password of a remote user based in Geneva and used it to gain access to ScotGrid. They ran scripts that tried to reconfigure the machine to steal more passwords.

The commissioning of the giant machine is making extraordinary progress.

Now that the team has managed to get beams of particles circulating stably, they must be "captured" so that the particles stay in bunches.

This has now been done with the anticlockwise beam, circulating a beam for full half an hour. Commissioning, said Gillies, "is going incredibly fast." They now hope to capture the second clockwise beam. "To give you a feel for how well these guys are doing, what happened on Wednesday was days one to four of main commissioning."

This latest step "is really a more significant achievement than Wednesday's fun and games," comments Dr David Sankey of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire.

[chitoryu12]

Because gravity wells are caused by mass-energy, and the protons in the accelerator have really high energies. Not enough to create a stable black hole though, or indeed any black hole, outside of string theories.

Hell, the black hole would be pathetically tiny even if created. It wouldn't have nearly enough mass to suck in me, let alone a whole planet, and that's assuming Stephen Hawking was wrong and it WON'T just evaporate.

The point that I heard with regards to the black hole theory was that, were it actually sustainable, the tiny, tiny black hole would bounce back and forth through the earth as a result of it's gravity, picking an atom here and an atom there as it passed through the planet, and the moment it accumulated enough mass to pick up a molecule, it would rapidly and exponentially suck in everything else until all that was left was a black hole and the ISS floating in orbit with a few very confused astronauts wondering what just happened.

How the fuck would its gravity cause it to bounce around? Did they explain that much in that theory?

Though I seriously doubt that, had it been big enough to suck in a planet, the ISS would be pie for it. So it would be less confused astronauts wondering where their planet went and more confused astronauts watching their planet get sucked away and suddenly flying right at the black hole fast enough to splatter them against the walls of their station.

[Surlethe]

How the fuck would its gravity cause it to bounce around? Did they explain that much in that theory?

A micro-black hole is super-dense, so it falls through ordinary matter. The "bouncing through the Earth" is a description of the fact that such a black hole (if it does not evaporate) will, essentially, become a harmonic oscillator falling through the Earth's center of gravity, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, etc.

Though I seriously doubt that, had it been big enough to suck in a planet, the ISS would be pie for it. So it would be less confused astronauts wondering where their planet went and more confused astronauts watching their planet get sucked away and suddenly flying right at the black hole fast enough to splatter them against the walls of their station.

Wrong. The mass of the Earth would not change, so the ISS would continue to orbit properly.

[Joviwan]

Hell, the black hole would be pathetically tiny even if created. It wouldn't have nearly enough mass to suck in me, let alone a whole planet, and that's assuming Stephen Hawking was wrong and it WON'T just evaporate.

The point that I heard with regards to the black hole theory was that, were it actually sustainable, the tiny, tiny black hole would bounce back and forth through the earth as a result of it's gravity, picking an atom here and an atom there as it passed through the planet, and the moment it accumulated enough mass to pick up a molecule, it would rapidly and exponentially suck in everything else until all that was left was a black hole and the ISS floating in orbit with a few very confused astronauts wondering what just happened.

How the fuck would its gravity cause it to bounce around? Did they explain that much in that theory?

Though I seriously doubt that, had it been big enough to suck in a planet, the ISS would be pie for it. So it would be less confused astronauts wondering where their planet went and more confused astronauts watching their planet get sucked away and suddenly flying right at the black hole fast enough to splatter them against the walls of their station.

Black holes have mass, for one thing, and any black holes created by the LHC would be so small that they just pass through matter, only growing in size when they actually run into something. Since it's affected by gravity (because it has mass), it would be constantly under the affect of earth's gravity, so it would be bobbing around in the center until it picked up material.

As for the ISS, the gravitational pull of the black hole that would grow to absorb the earth would, in fact, be no bigger than the earth's itself; at no point did it gain MORE mass than that of the earth, afterall, since all it absorbed is... the earth. So the black hole would be earth sized and floating around the sun just peachy keen, maintaining the earth's gravity and therefore the ISS's orbit around the earth's gravitational body.

Someone feel free to correct me if I have any of these ideas wrong, of course.

[Joviwan]

GHETTO EDIT:

Or Surlethe can just say what I did in 1/6th the words while I was trying to bring order to my jumbled thoughts.

[chitoryu12]

Well, I learn something new every day.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The hack attacks from concerned idiots is saddening. Aren't we supposed to be living in enlightened times now?