Talk:Large Hadron Collider/Archive 9

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Arrest of LHCb employee

Hi, somebody added to the "Operational Challenges" section a paragraph about a LHCb engineer being arrested for suspected terrorist activities. As is clear in the news, these suspected activities are in no way related to the LHC, therefore I don't see why the story should be mentioned in this article (even less so in the "operational challenges" section). There are thousands of people collaborating to the LHC experiments and we certainly don't have to mention every time one of them is suspected of a crime. Would we add a paragraph if a CERN employee had been caught dealing drugs? Of course, the mere mention of terrorism generates a lot of media hype (possibly with a wink to the supposed "dangers" of the LHC) but I don't think that we should fall in this trap. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:30, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

agree, he wasn't even an employee of the LHC. Verbal chat 11:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

He was a researcher for an external institute. Because CERN has nuclear in the title, it's generating a lot of shoddy journalism about Al Qaeda and nuclear concerns. Much like they did when certain people without an understanding of science or maths kept feeding the journos bones. Press release on the issue. ^Khukri 12:32, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh my, here we go. He works at LHCb, LHCb studies antimatter, antimatter may be used to destroy the Vatican, I guess you catch the drift... ;-) Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

spoilers

Does wikipedia have some sort of standardized spoiler warning? This article needs spoiler warnings for the details of works listed in this section on portrayals of the LHC in fiction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.162.168.60 (talk) 11:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

There are certain templates for spoilers, but the information isn't any different to what you would see on the back of the book or the DVD. ^Khukri 11:10, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Spoilers are also now deprecated, are they not? Wwheaton (talk) 13:39, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Yea seems so, I remember a discussion a year or so back about it, people saying "whaddya expect, come to an encyclopedia and visit an article on a film and not expect to see the plot is mad. ^Khukri 17:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

LHC being sabotaged by time travelers from the future

Great stuff. Do you think this is worth a mention in the article, perhaps under Construction Accidents and Delays? The physicists mentioned in the article claim their theory is backed by mathematics, but none of the articles on the subject ever delve into the specifics.Snottywong (talk) 22:31, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

It should be reported some where in the article.--Michael C. Price ^talk 06:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Please wait a bit and let's hear what other regular editors think before modifying the article (I already know that MichaelCPrice and I have opposite point of views on this issue). In the physics community this is considered a sad case of a once-respectable physicist gone utterly crackpot, but it's precisely the kind of sci-fi stuff that newspapers love. And as soon as the media move on to the next crackpottery, everybody will forget about this one. Anyway, if it must be cited in the article it cannot certainly be in the "Construction Accidents and Delays" section, but rather in a new "Crazy Stories in the News" section... Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 09:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with the "Crazy Stories in the News" section, but I suspect you many have to soften the title just a wee bit for stability. :-) --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:33, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to back up my statement about the attitude in the physics community: here are the papers of Nielsen and Ninomiya on the topic. You can see that the original 2007 paper (the last in the list) has only six citations, out of which four are self-citations, one (arXiv:0712.0715) is from an unpublished and uncited paper, and one (arXiv:0808.1932) is meant as a joke. Two of the Nielsen-Ninomiya papers are indeed published in a second-tier peer-reviewed journal, but this might not be totally unrelated with the fact that Ninomiya is an editor of that journal... The problem with this sort of papers is that nobody takes them seriously enough to even bother refuting them, and they just lie there until some newspaper digs them out. BTW, for some reactions in the blogosphere, see this and this. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

See WP:UNDUE. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:04, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I hope I made clear above that the weight of this Nielsen-Ninomiya paper in the physics community is basically zero. The story has been around for more than two years and, differently from the dozens of crackpot papers that go down the drain every month without anybody noticing, was quite well known, because Nielsen is a relatively famous physicist who has done important stuff in the past. People simply chose to ignore it because they deemed it irrelevant (and, I suspect, embarrassing). Then along came this recent article on NYT and the story started going around the media, even eliciting a polite (and, again, embarrassed) reaction from CERN. I don't mean to misrepresent Michael's position and he will probably argue it by himself, but I guess he thinks that the very fact that a story about the LHC generates attention in the media is enough to deserve a mention in the article. However, one problem I foresee with a "Crazy Stories in the News" section is that whatever we put in it will outlive its brief moment of fame, and we will be stuck with an outsized collection of irrelevant anecdotes (unless we keep updating the section to reflect the popularity of each story). Anyway, it is a debate worth having, because this is certainly not going to be the last crackpottery about the LHC that finds its way into the press. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, my position is "that the very fact that a story about the LHC generates attention in the media is enough to deserve a mention in the article", although I would add that "my position" is also the position advocated (indeed mandated) by WP policy. Policy aside, can people not see that we need such a section so that these stories can be rebutted? If you can't see that I am not going to bother to argue the point, since policy is clear anyway.--Michael C. Price ^talk 16:04, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Rebutted by whom? As I wrote above, for many of these stories the reaction of the scientific community is simple indifference, leaving the field free to whoever shouts louder in the newspapers. And the attention span of newspapers is short, what seems relevant today will be forgotten next week. Finally, I may have misunderstood, but it seems to me that the policy about "Undue Weight" linked above by Headbomb goes in the direction opposite to what you claim. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

If we were reporting that time travellers from the future had sabotaged the LHC then WP:undue would be decisive and negative. But we are not. We are proposing reporting that "the media report crazy stories". We agree that they are crazy stories. Therefore undue weight is in our favour.--Michael C. Price ^talk 11:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

In principle I am not completely against a section for "Crazy Stories in the Media" (as opposed to mentioning saboteurs from the future in the "Accidents and Delays" section, or time travel in the "Purpose" section), but I see various potential problems in it. The first is how to unambiguously convey the message that the stories are crazy without falling into the trap of original research. As I mentioned, in most cases serious physicist do not even bother debunking the crackpot theories (with the exception of the micro-blackhole controversy which is indeed well described in a dedicated article). And I don't think that a citation count such as the one I gave above, showing that Nielsen-Ninomiya's idea has absolutely no credit in the physics community, would be acceptable for the article. The second problem is that the section would quickly turn into another "In Popular Culture", i.e. a list of anecdotes that are more or less interesting or funny for a few days, after which they become irrelevant. But I see that I am repeating myself and it would be better to hear what other editors think. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:06, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to respond to one point: I think a citation count would be acceptable in the article.--Michael C. Price ^talk 13:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Everyone's giggling running round and saying it's crazy, it's funny, it's being debunked then why the hell are we looking to add it in to the article? Wikipedia is not for listing every piece crack pottery that gets into print, let's use some common sense here. Just because it got news space doesn't instantly make it credible or even worth inclusion. As before with certain other scientists just because they got air time, doesn't make it notable or worth inclusion, I think this, this and someone has already mentioned WP:UNDUE sums up my beliefs on the subject. ^Khukri 15:05, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The undue weight concern has already been addressed, and seems to cover much of the other linked concerns.

Khukri says don't add because it has been debunked, whilst Ptrslv72 says he's worried that it hasn't been debunked.

To answer Khukri's question, we should add it because it is notable, and media myths need debunking.--Michael C. Price ^talk 16:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The discussion rotates around what kind of weight we must take into account when deciding whether a story is notable enough to be in the LHC article. If this weight has anything to do with actual science it seems to me that there is no contest and that WP:UNDUE sums it all: the story does not belong in the article. If by weight we mean media exposure it's a different situation (but again, this is a very ephemeral kind of weight, and in a week I will feel free to remove the story because it is no longer in the news). Finally, I am not convinced that Wikipedia is always the right place to debunk media myths, as this may involve some degree of original research. In some cases the best way to fight a media myth is simply not to give it undue relevance. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but notability isn't temporary. And to Michael, the undue weight hasn't been addressed, maybe to your satisifaction and there are three of us here that think it hasn't, If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article. the fact the press like to take idiots who shout cataclysm a channel for their fringe theories is neither here nor there, Wikipedia doesn't. The problem with it being CERN, the tolerance for whether it gets print space or not is proportional to how much lunacy or doom they can imply in the article. And I won't speak for Ptrslv but I'd like to think his opinions on whether it's been debunked or not are in line with the blog articles he linked. ^Khukri 17:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

For the problem of debunking I was speaking in general, not about this particular case. Frankly, I don't know if anybody bothered to point out specific inconsistencies in Nielsen-Ninomiya's paper or if it was just considered too rambling to even be taken into consideration. But to Michael I would reply that I am not worried about it, because I know that serious physicists have more pressing stuff to do than chasing each crackpottery that gets media attention. I just wish that the same applied to Wikipedia editors... ;-) Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that it should be added because it is actually being reported across the world. Surely, these ideas will always be part of the history of the machine. In the fullness of time, perhaps this type of media reporting will be seen to reflect how the machine was perceived. Snowman (talk) 16:58, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

This is also being reported across the world. Should it be added to the LHC article? In the long term, a section on media reporting will be a dump for all the bulls#!t that newspapers dig out to fill their science pages... Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Since it'll all be in its own section (possibly even own article), what's the problem?--Michael C. Price ^talk 17:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you want to start (and maintain) a new "LHC in the media" article please do me a favour and take "In Popular Culture" with you... Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I may well do that, although I feel no obligation to maintain or 'own' such an article. This is, of course, the solution adopted by many articles; I see no reason why it shouldn't work here as well.--Michael C. Price ^talk 21:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

If nobody maintains it, I hereby predict that not only will it become a dumpster, it will also be a soapbox for the scaremongers that can't publish their rants in the "LHC" or "Safety of the LHC" articles... Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The blackholes controversy is notable. The ninjas from the future isn't. If we'll start listing everything that was said in the media about the LHC, we'll have a section 20 times the size of the meat of this article. Crank nonsense stays out, unless there's actual notability, not only mere mentions in the media. I could go out today and claim the LHC might disturb the path of the Moon leading it on a collision course with the earth in the next 10 years and I could get featured in several newspapers. As someone said above, notability isn't temporary. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:55, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Headbomb, your comment Crank nonsense stays out, unless there's actual notability, not only mere mentions in the media. is strange. Media coverage is almost the definition of notability. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:09, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Sure? Check WP:NTEMP and WP:NOT#NEWS. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

In this context, yes I am sure. These LHC stories are not one-offs, but appear again and again in the media and are influential (as that story you posted indicated).--Michael C. Price ^talk 21:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

If you seriously think that an article entitled "Schoolgirl wanted to lose virginity before Large Hadron Collider caused end of world" indicates anything else than the fact that The Telegraph is an unmitigated pile of bullshit I cannot really help you... ;-) Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:09, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

You could say a lot of things about the machine, but I bet it would not be reported in the media. Snowman (talk) 18:03, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Wanna bet, if botanist, sci-fi writers, tank drivers, language teachers can all get media space, as someone who works there bet yer arse I could. ;) ^Khukri 18:22, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

No bets. Snowman (talk) 19:29, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Co-ordinates for the centre of the LHC?

Can anyone elaborate if there is anything at the absolute centre of the LHC 17 mile circumference? Like a village or a house? And what are the map co-ordinates for the centre of the LHC circumference? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.170.24.205 (talk • contribs)

Why would this be relevant to the article? Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:50, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

There is no absolute centre as it's not a circle, it's more of an uneven octagon with very rounded corners. The rough centre would be somewhere in a field between Bretigny and Vesegnin. ^Khukri 15:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Upgrade after 2010

The only citation given for the claim that CERN will shutdown the LHC at the end of 2010 to work on upgrading to achieve 14 TeV center-of-mass collisions is a press release from CERN from Summer 2009. Aside from the fact that they definitely won't shutdown after only a year of (less-than-desirable luminosity) runs, it is widely known that they won't be pushing for anything above 10 TeV CoM. I don't have a reference to give off hand, but I've personally heard Rolf Dieter-Heuer state in a public lecture at the end of this Summer that they won't be going above 10 TeV. I'm sure someone can find a proper reference and remove the current information from the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.56.6.197 (talk) 15:35, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know the plan is still to aim for the original 14 TeV, or at least as near as possible to it. Frankly speaking, I think that you misheard, as I doubt that Heuer would make an announcement of such importance in a public lecture without going through the official channels (including the CERN press office). Anyway if it was a public lecture you can probably find the slides and back up your claim. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 18:54, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

14 TeV is still the goal, and I can almost guarantee the shutdown this time next year will occur, as well as the upgrade there's an extensive maintenance campaign to be carried out, which even without the upgrade the maintenance has to be done. ^Khukri 19:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't quite understand your issue. A press release from CERN is certainly a reliable source in this context. (Could a news article about the plans, inevitably based on a CERN press release, be more credible?) It has been understood for many months that operation in 2010 will be at 3.5 GeV per beam, though certainly if things go very well (or very badly) that schedule might change either way. Increasing luminosity will likely be a long continuing process, first involving beam tuning and operational improvements as more is learned, and then probably hardware upgrades down the line. So I do not see that a change in the article is necessary, though of course improvements are always possible and welcome. Wwheaton (talk) 19:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Conversions

Hi, do we really need the conversion from eV to Joules? It makes the text less readable without adding information (the reader unfamiliar with eV is most likely unfamiliar with Joules too). Incidentally, I would lose also the conversion from tonnes to pounds (if it was up to me I'd get rid of the miles too, but not everybody might agree with that ;-) Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 00:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

In this particle physics context, I think eV, MeV, and TeV (Wikilinked as usual) are entirely appropriate, and joules adds nothing, except perhaps occasionally, pedagogically, for comparison of particle or beam energies to more familiar macroscopic experience. I think metric tons should stand for pounds and tonnes, and km for miles, since it is an EU project, and SI is the general global standard (except in backward countries, like America...  :) ). Though I suppose we must bow to Wikipedia policy, which may overrule us here. Wwheaton (talk) 20:02, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

eV, eV/c, eV/c^2 are good enough on this article. Everything else should be in SI, with perhaps conversion for distances. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:50, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

But is it more than 1.21 gigawatts? 75.118.170.35 (talk) 16:38, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Is what more? Pardon me, but if you are serious, I cannot understand your question. If it relates to eV, ergs or joules, then the answer is "neither", since these latter are units of energy, and gigawatts is power, ie energy per unit time (billion joules per sec, in that case). No amount of power is greater than or less than (or equal to) an amount of energy, any more than 1 kg can be greater or less than one quart. Wwheaton (talk) 20:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Erm Will, I think yer being had, you might want to think about flux capacitors ;) ^Khukri 20:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. These pesky kids, I guess I'll just crawl back into my cave.... Bpppppt! Wwheaton (talk) 21:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Beam on!

This week's Nature (received in mail yesterday) has a cryptic item in their front material that says beam has been injected! No further info provided, it may not yet have even reached the main ring. Whee!! Wwheaton (talk) 20:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Beam was injected through TI2 past Alice up towards a TED (a beam blocker) near Pt3 2 weekends back, I think there's been injection from the Ti8 side but don't know if that got as far as the machine. I'll see what I can find out out that can be sourced. ^Khukri 20:38, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Bulletin has the TI2 injection here, can't find anything RS for anticlockwise injection. ^Khukri 20:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Last night beam went through CMS with splash seen in the detector, see here. Regards ^Khukri 08:23, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Good news. How long before we know if the magnetic upgrades are working? When does the real data start to emerge? --Michael C. Price ^talk 08:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

The quench systems and dump valves have all been tested so we can say they are working now they will only get used in the event of a problem and all the splices were analysed. The data starts with tests like these, but collisions should be within a couple weeks of full beam, so could be within maybe 4 weeks. ^Khukri 08:43, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Halted By Bird Crumbs

This site: [Fox News] tellls that Large Hadron Collider was halted by bird crumbs.Agre22 (talk) 03:16, 8 November 2009 (UTC)agre22

See the thread above this one and the page edit history. -- BenRG (talk) 15:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Exact Date

This news source, http://blogs.physicstoday.org/newspicks/2009/11/lhc-tests-hint-that-collider-w.html, shows that the first collisions begin in the 20th of November. --71.236.128.36 (talk) 14:05, 9 November 2009 (UTC)Kyle Mckenzie Street

Sorry that's incorrect, it says full beam cycle will be around the 20th. I would also note that 'around the 20th' is very ambiguous. I wouldn't be surprised if we go for full beam end of next week, which would make the first 450 GeV collisions around 1st December. ^Khukri 12:41, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Bomber bird

I edited the "bomber bird theory" our of the reference to the Times article as it is pure speculation (as is the original shape of the bread). However, the whole story seems irrelevant to me and I wonder if we couldn't simply drop it. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It was added before and I removed it, then it was added again by a different editor. I just removed it again, but I wouldn't be opposed to re-adding it if there's enough interest, of course. -- BenRG (talk) 14:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Here is a statement from CERN about the bird incident. It really seems small fry to me and I don't think it deserves to be mentioned in the article. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:56, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

After reading the CERN news release I feel that it does. It seems that a number of users are leaving comments on this discussion page wondering why they haven't seen this incident on WIKI. It seems to be important to them? It's common knowledge in the advertising profession that for ever one person that takes the time to leave a comment there are 200 other people that share the same opinion. On a different note, Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia is it not? So shouldn't the entries be "encyclopedic" (en·cy·clo·pe·dic (ADJ):Embracing many subjects; comprehensive)? Was it not damage to the LHC? Did it not cause a setback? Do you have any other rational, logical justification for why it shouldn't be included other than "(I think it's) small fry"? What's wrong with a single sentence reading "On Tuesday 3 November, a bird carrying a baguette bread caused a minor short circuit in an electrical outdoor installation that supplies power to a section of the LHC." You could even include "The incident was similar in effect to a standard power cut, for which the machine protection systems are very well prepared to deal with." Or are you concerned about bandwidth costs? (^o^) Omnicron Solaris (talk) 05:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

By all means add it but even though notability isn't temporary in a few months, once the comedic value has gone, someone will come in and delete it anyways saying why the hell is this in the article. Thank you as well for the definition of what encyclopedic means, I'm sure there will be some astounded at it's actual meaning. Wikipedia has it's own guidelines though, things like WP:NOTNEWS etc. Me personally I'm not fussed either way, if some come here wanting corroboration of what they already know, so be it, but in the grand scheme of things a power cut that did no damage, caused no disruption apart from some poor ol technician having to run out to Point 8 to see why the cryo plant had tripped, isn't really notable except for the fact 1) it's comedic and 2) the media is jumping on everything concerning the LHC, and the more bizarre the better. As I said once LHC data starts coming in and start up etc it will all even itself out in the end. ^Khukri 08:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well it might be a possible story for wikinews, but I don't see the relevance here - remember we are writing an encyclopaedia, the appropriate weight for this is probably very low indeed. Organisations like CERN have departments pumping out press releases, and at times that can require ruthless editing to prevent articles like this being buried under wp:trivia. The thing that we need to ask ourselves about this is, what extra information does this give us about the large hadron collider? People come here for a synopsis, a general understanding of a subject, sometimes it is helpful to put ourselves in the shoes of a newbie reading this in five years time. If this is something that breaks the flow of the article, and has readers stop and try to work out the relevance of this to the Higgs boson, then it probably doesn't belong in the article. Now if it had caused a delay in the LHC or they hadn't had systems in place to cope with such power outages that would be relevant. ϢereSpielChequers 08:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I was just finished writing a passage on the bird when i noticed the warning just below! ;-) I think it is relevant, the reasoning "it does not give any additional information" can be applied to every single "XY in popular culture" section in millions of Wiki-Entries - including this one about the Dan Brown book.

Anyhow, if someone wants to add it, here's the wikicode: * On November 3rd during testing, LHC-scientists noticed a dangerous raise in temperature from -271 to -265°C of the supercooled magnets in Sector 81. When they investigated the problem they found a bit of bread. It is estimated that a passing bird had dropped the "bit of baguette", which caused a short circuit in an overground electrical substation responsible for cooling the magnet in the collider ring, which is buried underground. Officials said that the incident was not a major setback and that operation should finally be started as planned later in November 2009. -- DeeKay64 (talk) 10:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I wrote (last post) something a while back about the 'in popular culture' section that may be relevant here. Also Wikipedia does frown on in popular culture sections in general, for a number of reason, trivia, not lists etc. Now is this anymore news worthy or notable, than the fact beam circulated to Pt5 successfully at the weekend, or the injection tests through Alice the week previous was a success, or that the beam splash was successfully seen within CMS, as these have all been reported through out the press, in greater detail? Not really as it's an ongoing process and within a week or so, it would be removed as it's not really relevant. This is one of the things we should try and avoid is creating an encyclopedic article on the now. The inclusion of the bird stuff as I have already written would just for it's humorous nature, which in itself isn't encyclopedic, and would almost certainly be edited away at some point in the future. ^Khukri 10:44, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

DeeKay64 is spot on when he writes that the baguette bird incident could appear in a trivia list such as "XY in popular culture" (but in this article we have somewhat strict criteria even for that section). However, all the editors so far wanted to add it to the "Construction accidents and delays" section. Now, the whole story boils down to the fact that a piece of bread caused a fault in a power supply and a two-day delay in the operations (I have no idea how the CERN people can say for sure that it was dropped by a bird, and BTW the link that I gave is to "user news", not to an official press release). Just compare this story with the others that are listed in the section and you will realize how small fry it is: half a line for a killed worker, four lines for the September 19 disaster, and now you want to add four lines for a piece of bread? There have been - and will be - dozens of one-day breaks caused by minor accidents, and surely we don't have to list all of them. What makes this story a bit different is just the entertainment value added by the "bomber bird" theory, and the fact that the tabloids picked it up. As in the "Saboteur from the future" case, most editors seem to agree that this is not enough to justify a mention in the article. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:38, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Yup, agree completely. Just have to grin, (revert,) and bear it, until the fuss dies down. When we have collisions over 2 TeV CM energy, we can move on to more interesting material.... Soon, we hope. Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 02:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

intro

The article is not written for scientists. The information in the intro sentence is so highly specific about the purpose of the collider as to be meaningless to the lay-person.... e.g., the phrase "an energy of 574 TeV per nucleus." Note that no article in Newsweek or the New York Times would make the mistake of mentioning anything nearly this beyond its readership in the introduction to an article about the collider... why, because including such highly specific information would be useless to most of the readers. All readers need general information first, then somewhere in the article can be the data. Otherwise, the information is merely a form of hubris on the part of the editors of the article.842U (talk) 23:49, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi, the nature of a collider is first and foremost defined by the kind of particles it collides. This information should definitely be in the first sentence of the lead. As for the energy of the collisions, well, it is what makes the LHC better than its predecessors. I don't see how the info on the energy can be considered more technical or less relevant than the depth and circumference of the tunnel, which you were willing to leave in the opening sentence. One thing that might indeed go "beyond the readership" of NYT is the use of TeV as energy unit. But that is the unit that is relevant to high-energy physics, tough luck. And in a Wiki article, differently from NYT, we can hyperlink TeV so that the interested reader can immediately find out what it means. Finally - but this is just my personal opinion - I think that Wiki articles on scientific topics should stick to a more rigorous use of language than newspaper headlines. Otherwise, why not to call them "atom-smashers" instead of colliders? Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

TeV... is it much ? or not so much ? and waht is the hype all around ? what is the point of sepnding so much money on LHC ? Would it be better for by-reader if the intro told somthing like "LHC can collide particles at energy xxxx times more than previous maximum achived on yyy collider. That makes possible for zzz and www tests, that yyy an all other colliders in the world were too weak for". You see, not absolute TeV values, but relational to previous achievments. View angle is "what is new about LHC" rather "TechSpec of LHC". 83.237.58.170 (talk) 13:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad question. Though we have struggled with it, as the record below shows. "It is 7x more energetic than the Fermilab Tevatron, the previous record holder which [our theorist friends tell us] should be high enough to guarantee either verifying the existence and key properties of the Higgs Boson, or else reveal some fundamental new physics beyond the Standard Model for the most basic laws of nature, thus breaking a conceptual logjam that has blocked progress in fundamental physics for two or three decades." Should something like the previous sentence be integrated into the lead paragraph? This is a bloody battleground, let's see what our comrades say first. Be warned that when you seriously try to define the Higgs or the Standard Model, you get into deeper waters than the lead sentences allow, alas. Cheers, Bill Wwheaton (talk) 22:15, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Individual editors do not decide the level of "rigor" the articles receive. There are standards. Let's check those out before we go head to head.842U (talk) 11:50, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

What a load of crap. Of course individual editors decide the level of rigor articles receive; if you don't want to be a snob, then Wikipedia isn't the place for you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.90.111.65 (talk) 05:23, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

No one is talking about going head to head, so there's no need for the rhetoric. The LHC is a state of the art, at the cutting edge of science machine, the energies it will run at are in large part what differentiates it from its predecessors and the terminology is linked for those unfamiliar them. Though I am patently against dumbing down articles as Ptrslv72 has said above, I can see however people's eyes glazing over as they get stuck into the lede and get confronted with this terminology, and your suggestion of putting this later in the article is not out of order at all. Though the article caters for the masses, it must also have content for those in the know and qre looking for details. I would have no problems it being moved to the purpose or design section, but something should be retained in the lede stating that it is operating at huge energies far above anything previously. Cheers ^Khukri 12:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

As I already wrote above, I think that the type of collided particles should be in the first sentence, because this information defines what we mean by "collider" (unless 842U believes that "hadron" is more accessible to the NYT reader than "proton" or "lead ion"). Whether or not to give numbers for the energy can be subject of discussion, but as Khukri writes we should still make clear that this energy is far higher than what was available before. And if we decide against numbers for the energy in the first sentence I see no reason whatsoever to retain such irrelevant trivia as the circumference and depth of the tunnel. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:35, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think articles should be dumbed down for the masses, but at the very least the introductions to the articles should be accessible to a layperson who is not experienced in the field. People come to wikipedia to learn about things that they otherwise know nothing about. I don't think scientists come to wikipedia to do research. The 574 TeV data is important and useful, but such specific information has no place in the introduction. Also, I am confused by Ptrslv72's comments that the circumference and depth of the tunnel should also be omitted from the intro if we leave out the specific TeV data. I think you're either missing the point, or just trying to be spiteful because you disagree with 842U. The point is not to create an outright ban on specific information in the introduction, but instead to make the introduction accessible to the layperson. A typical person will have absolutely no problem identifying with and visualizing a tunnel that is 175 meters underground and 27 km in circumference (although it would be much easier for me to visualize it if the diameter were given instead of the circumference, but that's another point altogether). However, the average person cannot identify with a particle beam that has an energy of 574 TeV, despite the fact that that is one of the defining characteristics of the LHC. It doesn't mean that information isn't important, it just doesn't have a place at the top of the article, in my opinion. Snottywong (talk) 22:46, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Or at least not in the first paragraph of the lead. The relevance of the numbers 7 TeV etc is that they are currently the largest, which is already mentioned. So move these figures into a later paragraph.--Michael C. Price ^talk 06:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The main reason why I reverted 842U's edit was that it removed from the lead also the info that the LHC collides protons or lead ions. Concerning the numbers for the energy, 842U was complaining about super-specific info, which I interpreted as technical trivia. Under this point of view, depth and circumference of the tunnel are certainly less essential (i.e., more like technical trivia) than the energy of the particles. It might well be that the concept of energy is somewhat less easy to visualize for the layman than the concept of circumference, but I don't think that having that bit of information in the lead makes it inaccessible. But I won't start a crusade about this as long as the nature of the collided particles stays in the lead. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 09:54, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

What about rearranging stuff between the first paragraph and later paragraphs of the lead? I also like the idea of expressing the size in terms of diameter.--Michael C. Price ^talk 10:27, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Personally I like it the way it is, but I might yield to majority. Move the numbers if you want, but please leave "protons" and "lead ions" (and the fact that the energy is the highest) in the first sentence. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:04, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

That may be difficult if we move 7 Tev et al into the following sentence. The first sentence is a bit too long anyway, and needs breaking up.--Michael C. Price ^talk 13:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Current status

I am reverting the revert of my update of the LHC's status, because without my edits, the third paragraph of the article is deceptively overly optimistic about the LHC's current status.

Part of the over optimism problem involves the word "circulating". The first sentence of the third paragraph says that beams were successfully "circulated ... for the first time" on 10 September 2008. Then the last sentence of the third paragraph says that particles are "circulating in the LHC once again" as of 23 October 2009. That makes it sound like the LHC is back up to the status where it was on 10 September 2008, which is not true. The big milestone that the LHC achieved on 10 September 2008 was that the first beam was steered all the way around the entire LHC. All that was accomplished in October 2009 was that a beam was steered through one single section of the LHC. So without my edits, the third paragraph uses the same word ("circulating") to mean two different things ("going all the way around" vs. "going part way around").

Getting a beam going through at least one section of the LHC again was a significant milestone, but the much bigger milestone will be when the beam is again going around the entire LHC, like it did on 10 September 2008. And providing the current status of the beam as going half way around gives a better indication of how close the LHC is now to the bigger milestone, than does the dated information about the beam at least going through one section.

If the dated "one section" news is somehow considered to be more important than the current news about getting the beam going up to half way around, then at the very least, the third paragraph needs to be reworked so that it doesn't give an incorrect impression that the LHC is back up to where it was on 10 September 2008. Red Act (talk) 04:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it too much it will all change again, plan is for full beam next Friday, with 450 GeV collisions due beginning of December the plan has it 13 days after full beam. Though I can see where on the press office page it says high energy collisions in 2010, it's always been the plan to have collisions 450 GeV collisions this year afaik, which in my mind is much more important. ^Khukri 07:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Any reasonable guess as to the time needed to go from 0.45 TeV per beam to 3.5 TeV? (Of course I understand "it depends" on a lot of unpredictable minor problems that may or may not turn up.) -- Bill Wwheaton (talk) 18:04, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

11 days from 450gev to 3.5tev is the plan ^Khukri 01:25, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Which implies 3.5TeV before the end of 2009? This contradicts the last sentence of the lead,

and the first high energy collisions are expected to most likely occur in early 2010.

--Michael C. Price ^talk 08:48, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Yup, but what I say isn't WP:RS so we'll just have to leave it as is until maybe mid next week. As I said to the original poster I wouldn't get too excited about the current wording if it's RS then it's OK, as the time draws nearer the plan is getting greater detail but not everything is reported and the timelines change. So far everything is going really good so wouldn't be surprised if it gets advanced even further. ^Khukri 10:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

They say "this weekend"' see what you think: [1]. --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:00, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

That's for beam, which is almost certain they'll be beam by then. ^Khukri 05:29, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, it may be trivia, but here is a "reputable source" for the possibility of surpassing Fermilab this year. Happy Chanukah, or whatever!! Wwheaton (talk) 23:21, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

CERN's LHC breaks itself (CNN.com video)

I heard from CNN.com videos that the CERN's LHC has broke down due to "a piece of crusty French bread that found its way into the collier's inner workings," screwing up the LHC. According to 2 physicists, the culprit may be the heat-exposed particle, travelling back in time to destroy itself.

Here's the link to the video "Big Bang" machine destroys itself (from CNN.com video)

RYAN 3000 (talk) 05:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

See this article in the CERN Bulletin. The short version is that a routine situation at CERN was turned into fake news by clueless reporters. -- BenRG (talk) 11:24, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I heard that a part of the machine broke down when a piece blew off, taking someone's head clean off; I guess mishaps are to be expected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.90.111.65 (talk) 05:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

and internet rumours...... ^Khukri 07:29, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

url fix

update #53 note to http://earlytoday.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/hackers-claim-there’s-a-black-hole-in-the-atom-smashers’-computer-network/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.237.58.170 (talk) 13:39, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

That's old stuff, from 2008, which has been long-resolved if I recall correctly. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

LHC "bird-bread" strike

http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/

Bird-bread strike

The rehabilitation of the beleaguered Large Hadron Collider was on hold tonight after the failure of one of its powerful cooling units caused by an errant chunk of baguette.

The £4 billion particle-collider faced more than a year of delays after a helium leak stymied the project in its first few days of operation. It is gradually being switched back on over the coming months but suffered a new setback on Tuesday morning.

Scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva noticed that the system’s carefully monitored temperatures were creeping up.

Further investigation into the failure of a cryogenic cooling plant revealed an unusual impediment. A piece of crusty bread had paralysed a high voltage installation that should have been powering the cooling unit.

The cooling systems are in place to keeps the collider functioning at a temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero. As soon as there is a small rise in temperature the super-conducting magnets stop functioning and fail safes come into operation to control the collider.

A spokeswoman for CERN confirmed that baguette was responsible for the latest hiatus, but she conceded that mystery surrounded the way it got into the vital power installation, which is protected by high security fences.

“Nobody knows how it got there,” she told The Times. “The best guess is that it was dropped by a bird, either that or it was thrown out of a passing aeroplane.”

“Obviously this was slightly surprising. Within the team there was some amusement once they had relaxed after initial concerns.”

The bread was discovered on a busbar - an electrical connection inside one of eight buildings above ground on the 17-mile (27km) circuit in the Swiss countryside.

The spokeswoman said: “The collider extends over a very large area – you have to have a very comprehensive system to try to avoid problems of this kind. We’re talking about a couple of days down time.”

Scientists hope that the temperature will be restored by around midnight tonight allowing work to continue. The failure of the cooler meant the temperature rose around 5 degrees to the equivalent of about -266C.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Magic Physicist (talk • contribs) 09:37, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Please scroll up, old news and incorrect :/ ^Khukri 10:09, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Heavy ions or protons, what's the difference?

I'm curious as to why you use both heavy ions and protons?

First of all, lead ions obviously have more mass, thus higher energy in the collision, but doesn't the magnets have to be much stronger to keep the extra mass in the ring... And if you have these strong magnets couldn't you get a single proton up to a higher speed instead?

And secondly, if it's possible to collide the lead ions at much higher collision energies, why use protons at all?

Apologies in advance if these are obvious or stupid questions. :)
—Apis (talk) 22:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Could it be that heavy ions are interesting because there are many hadrons at once in one collision, while protons is just two very high energy particles involved? Hmm, and maybe I should point out that I ask not purely out of personal curiosity but this could perhaps be explained in the article, unless it's very complicated?
—Apis (talk) 13:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The quantity that matters is called "rigidity", which is momentum per unit charge. Particles of the same rigidity will be bent to follow exactly the same path through exactly the same fields. At the maximum attainable 8T field, the bending magnets of the LHC are thus limited to a certain rigidity that they can bend into the 27 km/2π radius circle. Relativistic momentum is p = γmv = E/c, for particles of mass m, velocity v, and energy E, where γ is the Lorentz factor. ²⁰⁸Pb has ~208 times the mass of a proton, but only 82 times the charge. Work it out, and you get the quoted energy for bare lead nuclei with the same rigidity as 7 TeV protons. So the lead has higher energy, but the nuclei are moving a bit slower, and the quark-quark collisions are a somewhat less energetic. But it is expected that in such a dense and high-energy context, quarks will no longer be confined into 2*208 separate nucleons, but may escape into a "quark plasma", the "quark soup" that some of us find distasteful. Such a state would have existed very shortly after the big bang, which is why the media keep saying the LHC was built to recreate conditions at that time—a half-truth. Anyway, this "deconfinement" of the quarks into nucleons, is a subject of great interest, and the lead is to investigate that. Wwheaton (talk) 00:29, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for taking the time to explain. So the lead ions will hopefully dissolve/vaporize into a bubble of "quark plasma" (gas/liquid/soup etc) upon collision, while at the proton-proton collisions they will look for new high-energy particles such as Higgs?
—Apis (talk) 17:07, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Right—so far as my understanding goes. Some of the above might go into the article, if anyone wants to use it. I do not have good references at my fingertips. Wwheaton (talk) 20:21, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The onset of deconfinement article might be of some interest to you, although it's rather technical. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:04, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Photos of the repairs, LHC, and experiments

Photos available at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/large_hadron_collider_ready_to.html. 24.60.190.107 (talk) 06:38, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Fabulous pix, almost as good as being there! Thanks! We should link to these from the main article, should we not? Wwheaton (talk) 18:03, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

-- Which I have just done, under External links. Wwheaton (talk) 18:38, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I sent that link to a bunch of old friends, and one of the oldest (and smartest) of my fellow space freaks, now a NASA project manager, wrote back "Those guys have seen Forbidden Planet a few too many times". Time to watch it again myself, I guess! Wwheaton (talk) 01:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Collision images

The image on this page is presumable released for general consumption? [2]. If so, let's have it on this page. Fig (talk) 09:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The photo is property of CERN and not released under GDFL and be difficult to argue it under fair use as it's not necessary, sorry. I think we'll be unlikely to find any photos from the experiments we could put on the pages for this reason. ^Khukri 10:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Edit warring

See also: Talk:Large Hadron Collider/Archive 8 § MichaelCPrice's new version

Guys, Lets stop the sniping in edit summaries and leaving messages for each other in your reversions. May I suggest that you turn the version back to the version first thing this morning and then start discussing the changes here on the talk page before anyone gets pinged for 3rr or edit warring. Though I may side with some of you in certain discussions wrt to the LHC I am also an admin and will take what actions necessary to stop disruption to the project. Regards ^Khukri 16:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Ben deleted Michael's paragraph and Michael deleted mine. Now we have a clean slate and it looks like an excellent starting point for a discussion. If more than two people are involved it will hopefully not degenerate in a brawl like the previous one... I have something to do now, I'll be back later. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't mind reverting back per Khurki, or leaving blank as per Ptrslv72. Either way I would like to point to the lastest New Scientist story (which includes contributions from Witten and Weinberg). Consequently Headbomb's proposed statement, which I've trimmed even further,:

Of the discoveries the LHC might make, the Higgs particle and supersymmetric partners have been keenly awaited by physicists for over 30 years, although neither of these can be considered certainties.

seems balanced, proportionate and sufficient. We don't need to go into the various justifications for the the Higgs particle or supersymmetry; they have their own articles.--Michael C. Price ^talk 17:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

My problem with the sentence that Michael proposes is that I don't find it particularly informative. Why would it be interesting that the Higgs and SUSY have been "keenly awaited" for thirty years? Composite-Higgs models have been around (and "keenly awaited" by the people who work on them) for as long as SUSY. Large extra dimensions have been around for "only" ten years, but they are not less keenly awaited, and their discovery would be much more spectacular than SUSY's (micro black holes, anyone?). In fact, physicists are keenly awaiting any sign of new physics beyond the SM, and the only prospect that they find truly terrifying (see Weinberg's quote in the NS article) is if the LHC finds only the Higgs. This might spell the end of high-energy particle physics, as it would be very difficult to get any funding for the next expensive toy. Singling out SUSY (or the Higgs, for that matter) in the sentence seems quite arbitrary to me. Besides, I question the relevance of a quotation from a conference proceeding of a relatively unknown physicist (Belyaev), published on a relatively unknown journal (Pramana). Digging a bit in the arXiv you could find similar sentences by the dozen.

For what concerns "my" paragraph that Michael deleted, I don't know why he found it cumbersome. As to "long winded", well, it may have been, but just because I was trying to summarize two concepts that - as often happens in theoretical physics - are difficult to explain to the layman. Those concepts were 1) the fact that electroweak observables call for a light Higgs and 2) the fact that the hierarchy problem calls for new physics at the TeV scale. It cannot be denied that without that paragraph the article contains less information on the physics. Whether or not the paragraph was necessary in the context of the "Purpose" section is for anybody to judge. Explaining why we expect to discover stuff at the LHC did not seem out of place to me, but if the other editors disagree I won't insist.

Finally, I have no problems with the New Scientist article (with the exception of the ludicrous claim that supersymmetry explains the confinement of quarks in protons and neutrons). Indeed, in an edit that for some reason was reverted, I had added a citation to it in the "supersymmetry" item of the list of key questions that the LHC might help answer. Incidentally, you should have a look at the box at the end of the article, which explains (with a quote from Witten, no less) that finding SUSY at the LHC does not necessarily provide a confirmation of string theory (remember the old discussion about the Hawking quote?). Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Headbomb (below) has already addressed all of the substantive issues, by repeating stuff from the archives. (Why do we have to repeat ourselves? Because someone's not listening.) I'll only add that Ptrslv72 hinting that I'm too ignorant or stupid not to have already understood the point that Witten makes about strings => SUSY but SUSY =/=> strings is a classic example of why it is so hard to dialogue with Ptrslv72. Anyone can look at the archives and see that this was endlessly clarified before. Some people just don't listen it seems. And that is my final word in the subject.--Michael C. Price ^talk 00:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Addressing why Higgs/SUSY are deserving of a such a mention (from the archive):

I interpret "keenly awaited" as in meaning its a viable option that's been proposed since a pretty long time by particle physics standards, and everyone wanting data on this so they can make progress on the question. I'm not an expert on these topics, but at every conference I attended, SUSY was the de facto working hypothesis. Every alternative is pitched as "an alternative to SUSY", SUSY is never pitched as being the alternative to anything else. ... There might be better and clearer ways of saying what is meant, but the current version certainly isn't broken enough to warrant removal of content.

Higgs and SUSY are the two giants question the LHC is expected to give answers to. If there's a third, let's add it, but I can think of no other issue that compares to these two. Search the abstracts of the hep-th arxiv for this year yields 297 hits for supersymmetry, 176 for Higgs (26 for Higgs boson), and 87 for extra dimensions, roughly a 3:2:1 ratio, which matches what I see in general physics conferences (Higgs = near certainty, SUSY = majority would be more surprised to not discover SUSY at the LHC, Extra dimensions = Proponents would hope, but do not expect, to find it at the LHC). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with this ranking of the topics, it was indeed reflected in my summary of Quigg's sentences (see "my" paragraph, in particular the last line). My point is that speculating on how "keenly awaited" the discoveries are, and for how long, is not informative and sounds plain weird. As to Michael's hurt feelings (above) there was no offense meant. I am not concerned about what he does or does not understand but, rather, about the presence or absence in the article of the misleading quote from Hawking. That quote is gone for the moment but who knows, it might always come back (but, on strings, Witten trumps Hawking ;-) Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 01:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing "weird" about reporting that expectations are running high. It is not speculation, since that is what the New Scientist article, amongst others, reports; it is a perfectly objective fact.

BTW glad you think Witten trumps Hawking. Witten is the source of what you describe as the "ludicrous claim". --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:15, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The ludicrous claim is not by Witten, it is by the author of the article, who clearly does not understand what he's writing about here. Seiberg and Witten have shown that certain supersymmetric models can exhibit confinement. They certainly haven't argued that the confinement of quarks in QCD is due to supersymmetry... For amused comments on this issue, see e.g. this blog of a SUSY skeptic and this other blog of a SUSY enthusiast. Now excuse me but it's too late in my time zone. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 01:29, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that blog thisyesterday morning. They and you are over interpreting NS, IMO. --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

If you knew what I was talking about, why your comment "Witten is the source of the claim"? Just provocation? Let's cut the bickering and try to address the relevant points of the discussion. I agree that SUSY is the leading candidate for BSM physics, at least in view of the number of people who worked on it (still, not everybody in the field thinks so, see the first of the blogs that I linked above). The sentences on new physics in "my" paragraph did reflect this ranking. However, I also think that framing the issue in terms of how "keenly" the various discoveries have been awaited over the years is just funny and introduces a subjective element in the discussion (unless you adopt a creative and somewhat contrived definition of the words "keenly awaited", as in Headbomb's comments above). For what concerns "my" paragraph explaining why we expect to discover both the Higgs and BSM physics in the energy range accessible to the LHC, neither you nor Headbomb have elaborated on why it should be removed. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:24, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Your opening sentence makes no sense to me. I don't see how NS have "ludicrously" distorted Witten et al -- but since this is irrelevant to the article I see no purpose in persuing this topic.

Your comment about "keenly awaiting" is just recycling without engagement. I've already said that NS is a source for this description, which can therefore be reported, and I don't see a response to this point.

I gave a concise description of why I thought "your" paragraph should be removed earlier in my edit comment, and in the final sentence of my first statement in this section. And I am so tired of repeating myself. --Michael C. Price ^talk 23:19, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Re confinement: you don't see it, too bad, let's move on.

Re "keenly awaiting": I don't know what you think that the NS article demonstrates. That there is expectation to find or disprove SUSY at the LHC? Sure, there is, who would deny it? But I question the necessity to leave in the article - just below the list of "key questions that the LHC might help solving" - a trivial statement that, as BenRG and I already argued, applies to all of the possible discoveries of the LHC. If you want to give more prominence to SUSY, we can certainly move the corresponding item higher up in that list, and attach to it a citation to the NS article (actually, this would be appropriate independently of what we do with the subsequent paragraph).

Re "my" paragraph: you're gonna have to try harder than that. In the edit comments you wrote that the paragraph was "cumbersome" and "long winded". Both criticisms need to be motivated and, anyway, concern the form and not the content of the paragraph. They might be a reason for improving the paragraph, but certainly not for removing it. For the final sentence of your statement, I suppose you refer to We don't need to go into the various justifications for the the Higgs particle or supersymmetry; they have their own articles.. The paragraph that you deleted was not meant to provide "justifications" for the Higgs or SUSY. It was meant to explain why we expect to find both the Higgs and BSM physics precisely at the energy scales that are accessible at the LHC. In my opinion, this info does belong in the LHC article, but I am certainly open to discussion. Absent that, the impression will linger that you deleted "my" paragraph just as a petty retaliation to the fact that BenRG had detected "yours".

BTW, in the next few days I will be in a situation of sporadic access to the internet. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:02, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

New proposal. I like the reordering, which better reflects the Brian Greene source. He lists what are now the first three (Higgs, SUSY, extradimensions). I suggest we say these are the main reasons, and there are also these further reasons etc etc. No introductory paragraph is needed (any duplication, if any, can be moved into the bullet points). --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've been bold and done it. See what you all think. One question though; what is the ion collider subsection doing in the purposes section? Surely there is a better place in the article for it? --Michael C. Price ^talk 17:51, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally I see no reason to remove the introductory paragraph, and while I approuve reordering the key questions (indeed, it was my idea ;-) I don't like this division into "A-list" questions and "other" questions: go tell the people of LHCb, for example, that CP and flavour studies are secondary issues... On another point: there are several BSM models that propose candidates for Dark Matter, not just the MSSM, and the present abundance of DM suggests that the particle might be in the mass range accessible to the LHC. The identity of Dark Matter is truly one of the key questions that the LHC can answer to. It deserves an item of its own, as opposed to being mentioned only in the context of SUSY. I had started to modify the article to correct this but I was in a hurry and screwed up the edit summary. Then I realized the slaughter perpetrated by Michael on the whole section and decided to postpone any intervention to when I have more time (BTW, weren't we asked at the beginning of this thread to discuss the modifications on the talk page before implementing them?) Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 20:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

A-B list divide is suggested -- as I previously said (i.e. repeating myself once again) -- by the Brian Greene source. Brian Greene also mentioned dark matter only in the context of SUSY. BTW that source has just today gone restricted access, which is a bit of a pain. --Michael C. Price ^talk 20:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, you might be aware that the landscape of high-energy particle physics is a bit wider than a single article of Brian Greene... Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:51, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I didn't put the source there. --Michael C. Price ^talk 23:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. the ion collider subsection is in the Purpose section because it explains the purpose of the ion collision program: studying quark-gluon plasma. Where else would you put it? Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 20:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Well then turn it into a bullet point like the others. --Michael C. Price ^talk 20:12, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The ion program might deserve a slightly expanded discussion because of the different nature and energy of the collided particles. Anyway, it's your whole idea of reducing the section to a list of bullet points that seems gratuitous to me. It simply subtracts information from the article, I don't see what we gain from it (incidentally, you haven't addressed the issue of why to remove "my" paragraph, but the problem is now bigger than that). Anyway, I am not going to touch your stuff any further until we hear what the other editors think about it. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:51, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

ALICE's differences are not relevant to its purpose. Since ALICE has its article all we need is a link to it, alongside a brief description of its purpose? And I don't see what information is lost from the introductiory paragraph that hasn't been incoporated into the bullet points.--Michael C. Price ^talk 23:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Quark soup??? Seriously, is this article going to be published on Mickey Mouse? And could other regular editors please state what they think about Michael's unilateral rewriting of the "Purpose" section? Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, quark matter then? That's surely a minor problem. I kind of liked the bulleted format for the purpose section, it really is clearer than a dense, undifferentiated paragraph. I think the Higgs needs to be first, and SUSY close behind, but that's an ignorant, lay physicist's opinion. Wwheaton (talk) 14:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the honorable gentleman is too humble. ^Khukri 15:21, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

You are very gracious sir; yet my ignorance is a pit without a bottom, I assure you. BTW, I hit a bug editing on the article page from the beta test version; it failed to recognize my login, while the main page knew me even after a reload. I exited beta and it worked, and I have filed a bug report (a new experience...), but it is conceivable that it has something to do with the LHC article, so be warned. Wwheaton (talk) 15:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I am certainly not against a list of bullets for the "key questions". I am against killing the two paragraphs above and below the list, which provided additional information on the physics. Wwheaton/Khukri, if you think that those paragraphs must both be removed please explain why, if I am really in a minority I will not insist. As to QGP, why do we have to dumb down the article this way? If you look on SPIRES you find more than 1500 articles with "quark gluon plasma" in the title, and only seven with "quark soup", and all of them are tongue-in-cheek titles (e.g. "boiling hot quark soup"). Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The National Science Foundation uses "soup" when talking about ALICE here. --Michael C. Price ^talk 12:02, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I hadn't seen this edit. There is a huge difference between using the word 'soup' (in quotation marks) in an extended sentence such as "ALICE will explore conditions in the first instants of the universe, a few microseconds after the Big Bang, when matter was in its primordial state, a 'soup' of quarks and gluons", and summarizing the topic in a bullet point such as "What was the nature of the quark soup in the early universe?". If you don't see it by yourself, I cannot explain it to you. I found the thing particularly irritating because it came in the context of a general dumbing down of the section. Incidentally, even ALICE uses the word soup sometimes, but here on WP we are presumably all adults and we can call things by their name. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:24, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh I see that in the meantime "quark soup" has gone (thanks). As to the new opening paragraph by Wwheaton, may I point out that the LHC will not say much about "the intersection of quantum mechanics and general relativity" (i.e., quantum gravity) unless it finds large extra dimensions? If you want to single out a topic in the opening paragraph let it be the Higgs and/or BSM physics, as it was before. All this emphasis on quantum gravity is definitely out of place. My objections still stand: 1) arbitrary separation of topics in A-list and B-list 2) the downgrading of Dark Matter to a SUSY subtopic, and 3) the deletion of the paragraph that explains why we expect to find both Higgs and BSM at the weak scale. But I feel a bit like I am swimming against the current, which seems to point towards removing from the article the actual information on the physics in favour of slogans. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:36, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Points 1) and 2) come from Brian Greene as I've said 2 or 3 times before. Re 3), I removed the words "electroweak symmetry" but not the link behind them to the Higgs mechanism. Perhaps we could mention quantum gravity in the extradimensional bullet point; I've no problem with that. --Michael C. Price ^talk 17:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

huh? it's already there. What do you think string theory is? Ptrslv72 (talk) 20:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments like that do you no favours. They are not the same thing, so quit your sneering knowall attitude. --Michael C. Price ^talk 00:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I am certainly unqualified to rank the issues; I am happy to leave that to the consensus of other editors. Yet I think detailed discussion of the physics really cannot go into the LHC article itself, except as links to the separate articles on the questions it is intended to explore. I do think the "Purpose" lead sentences need to make clear that the LHC is intended to address the frontier, law-of-nature issues (such as we now understand them) that must be resolved somehow if the advance fundamental physics is not to be blocked. The point, to my mind, is to state that the LHC has a foundational role in the further progress of physics: it's really that important to the whole enterprise. Wwheaton (talk) 17:35, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

To Michael: the fact that point 1) and 2) come from Brian Greene does not mean much. There are dozens of popularizing articles (not to mention thousands of scientific articles) on BSM physics, so you should remember that the single article that you are reading in a particular moment is not the Bible. If you read a popularizing article on extra dimensions it will make it sound as if extra dimensions is the most exciting (earth-shattering, remember?) issue of all, and the same applies to flavour, supersymmetry, cosmology, time travel (alas) or whatever else. For what concerns Dark Matter, the cosmological data tells us only that it is (probably) made of a weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP). Supersymmetry happens to provide a natural candidate for it (the neutralino) but a lot of other models for BSM physics have their own candidate. Indeed, this is a prime criterion for model building: "does my new model solve the dark matter problem?". If you want me to dig the arXiv and send you examples I'll do it, but believe me, Dark Matter is a stand-alone issue no matter what you may have read in Brian Greene. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Your assumption that I'm idiot who slavishly follows the latest pop-science article is noted. And you wonder why I stopped waiting for a consensus to form between us, eh? --Michael C. Price ^talk 00:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Michael, my impression, like Ptrslv72's, is that you have very little knowledge of high-energy physics. If I'm wrong about that then please say so, but I don't know what else to conclude from this subthread, for example. I know from your MWI FAQ that you have a background in traditional quantum mechanics, but I've never seen you demonstrate knowledge of QFT or anything based on QFT, and in a few cases, like the above, you seem to positively display a lack of knowledge. When you do talk physics in this thread you say the sorts of things that can be found in sources like New Scientist and The Elegant Universe, and these are also the sources you cite in your favor. I can't make sense of your writing except by assuming that you've learned what you know about high-energy physics from popularizations. But you get offended when people make that assumption when talking to you. Not understanding high-energy physics doesn't make you an idiot any more than not understanding a foreign language. And people with an imperfect command of English are welcome to contribute to the English Wikipedia. But a different style of communication and interaction is called for in those cases. I really feel that this has to be resolved if this thread is ever to end. I don't think Ptrslv72 knows how to communicate with you, and I know I don't. -- BenRG (talk) 10:01, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

BenRG, I'm grateful that at least you are asking whether I understand QFT instead of assuming I don't. I see no value in subjective self declarations of knowledge and make a point of never commenting on my own competence; however I have an MSc in QFT if that makes you happy. Unlike Ptrslv72 I do not assume other people are ignorant. There was a miscommunication in that subthread, I misinterpreted something and -- making the assumption that Ptrslv72 knew what he was talking about -- I used a poor choice of expression. And yes, I do get offended when people make the assumption that I'm stupid and ignorant; is that so surprising? Ptrslv72 made a similar terminological error elsewhere, however I don't assume from that that he doesn't know what he's talking about -- anyone can express themselves poorly at times.

I reason I quote popular sources, such as Scientific American, is because I think they are the appropriate sources for wikipedia; they're accessible and often written by authorities. We are not meant to be quoting or sourcing directly from the primary literature. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

We are not meant to be quoting or sourcing directly from primary literature in the article, but we may very well do so to advance the discussion in the talk page. What I (and, I presume, BenRG) object to is your tendency to use popular sources to counter arguments based on scientific literature (as in "points 1 and 2 come from Brian Greene" above). BTW, at the end of the section I provided the promised references on non-SUSY DM. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:05, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

To Wwheaton: the paragraph I am referring to in my point 3) tried to explain that we expect to find both the Higgs and BSM physics at the energy scale accessible to the LHC and not, say, at energies 10 or 100 times bigger. In my opinion this kind of information is appropriate for the LHC article (just check it out in a version of the article prior to Friday's edit war). As to the "Purpose" lead sentences, I see what you mean, but - still - the chances that the LHC will shed light on quantum gravity remain rather slim no matter what your (or my) hopes and wishes are. The article was more honest when that paragraph said that the LHC might shed light on the mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking and on the presence of physics beyond the Standard Model. Finally, the consensus among the editors depend very little on how "qualified" they are, so don't be shy in offering your opinions as an interested reader. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Ptrslv72. The best thing that we have going for us here is that "The Truth" is not going to change while we struggle to express it best, and one must hope that it "will out" in the great WikiKitchen. (With so many cooks, we do pretty good.) Anyhow, I agree of course that the QM/GR problem is not very likely to get solved by the LHC, one may only hope for a few clues if we are lucky. And dark matter is indeed a probably a better mystery for us to target, I do agree. On with the soup, quark or mock-turtle, or whatever.... Wwheaton (talk) 23:13, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that the sentence

"It is anticipated that the collider will either demonstrate or rule out the existence of the elusive Higgs boson(s),.."

is incorrect. Rather than change this and cause another volcanic quark soup eruption, I offer a suggestion here. I think it should say something along the lines of

"It is anticipated that the collider will either demonstrate or rule out the existence of the elusive 1 Tev-range/low energy Higgs boson(s),..."

because what Quigg reports (see ref in article) is that we are only assured of finding a Higgs or some BSM at the LHC. Therefore there remains the possibility of discovering some low energy BSM and no low energy Higgs, but that an undetected Higgs exists at a higher energy; i.e. it has not been "ruled out".--Michael C. Price ^talk 11:08, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

A Higgs boson much heavier than 1 TeV makes no sense as a particle (indeed, it would be so broad that you could no longer call it such). I tried to explain this to you in one of our very first threads, go back to it for the references. Note that by "Higgs boson" we mean the particle associated with the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, not just any elementary scalar. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:10, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course in this context, although it can refer to other SSBs as well. I presume you mean this ref, which should be added to the bullet point.--Michael C. Price ^talk 14:41, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually no, I am not referring to the electroweak precision observables (which suggest that the SM HIggs is lighter than roughly 160 GeV). I am referring to the well-known fact that the mass and the decay width of the Higgs boson are correlated, so that, to put it in simple words, a very heavy (multi-TeV) Higgs would decay so quickly that you could not even identify it as a particle (i.e., it would behave like an excessively "broad" resonance). There are other (technical) reasons why the Higgs should not be heavier than a TeV, and they are discussed in the (technical) reference that I gave you long ago. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not clear why the ref you previously indicated as relevant you now appear to say is irrelevant.

Also, decaying too quickly to be identified as a particle does not sound convincing. We need a source that says that explicitly.--Michael C. Price ^talk 17:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

The discussion I was referring to is at the end of the first subsection in this thread, the reference is pages 59-72 of this review (see in particular the bottom of page 63). As to the part that is not clear to you, there are two independent issues that you must consider. Consistency with the electroweak precision observables requires the SM Higgs to be lighter than 160 GeV. However, in extensions of the SM that still include the Higgs mechanism, the Higgs might be heavier than that, because its contribution to the precision observables might be screened by the contribution of new particles. However, even in those extensions, the Higgs mass and its coupling to the pseudo-Goldstone bosons (which form the longitudinal component of the gauge bosons) are correlated, so a very heavy Higgs would have very intense couplings to the gauge bosons and therefore a very large decay width (other arguments, more technical, are listed in the reference). I am sorry if you were not convinced by my explanation above, but you cannot have it both ways. Wordings such as "broad resonance" or "large decay width" should be clear to a person who is in the field, but when I use this technical jargon you do not always understand what I mean. If on the other hand I try to talk to you as to a non-specialist you complain about being treated like an idiot (note, BTW, that I never called you names). BenRG is right on the fact that we have a communication problem. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 20:15, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

The ref I mentioned comes from the same context (and even same paragraph) as the other, so I can hardly be expected to know which you meant.

I did not say I didn't understand your jargon; I said I wasn't convinced by your argument as presented. These putative heavy/highly coupled Higgs fields would still appear in Feynman diagrams and can therefore be considered as particles (as can all fields in one viewpoint). The notion of what defines a particle is not cut-and-dried. Once again you have assumed that because I wasn't convinced of your presentation or use of language it must be through elementary ignorance.

Anyway, the first ref convinces me more than the 2nd. You, it seems, find the latter more convincing. No problem, just cite both. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

This is not a contest on which argument is more convincing, they address quite different issues: the argument about electroweak precision observables is a matter of consistency of the SM prediction with experimental data, while the "obese Higgs" argument is a matter of internal (mathematical, if you want) consistency of the Higgs mechanism. Anyway, the obesity of a multi-TeV Higgs is just one among its problems, the one that seemed easier to explain. The issue that is more frequently mentioned in this context (as explained in the reference) is the violation of unitarity in WW scattering. As to the misunderstanding, perhaps it did not come out right so let me rephrase it: if you want to be treated as an expert it should not be necessary for me to explain why an excessive decay width is problematic. When I try to explain it "in simple words" (as I wrote) there is no point in complaining that it sounds simplistic. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not claiming to be an expert (and I was never an experimentalist), but neither am I a layman who only reads pop science. Stop making that assumption an excuse for derailing the conversation and we'll get along a lot better.--Michael C. Price ^talk 00:51, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I would be derailing the conversation? Read the thread from the start: I wrote that a multi-TeV Higgs would be too broad to even be considered a particle and you replied with the reference on electroweak precision observables. Was I to blame for thinking that you did not understand what I meant and trying to explain it in simple words? Then you declared yourself unconvinced by the explanation in simple words and asked for a source. How was I supposed to divine that you knew what I meant all along and were in fact concerned with a subtle issue on the definition of particle? Why didn't you state it from the beginning and save us the trouble? Anyway, the source that I provided (quite autoritative, check the citation count) states clearly that a width larger than the mass is seen as problematic, and details many other theoretical problems associated with a multi-TeV Higgs.

Anyway, let's try to attack the problem form another angle: when Quigg tells you that the unitarity of vector-boson scattering requires either the Higgs or new physics below the TeV scale, he means that the sector responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking must be below the TeV scale. If there is no Higgs below the TeV scale there must be a new mechanism - alternative to the Higgs mechanism - that breaks the EW symmetry below the TeV scale (e.g. technicolor). In that case, there is no point in speculating about a Higgs heavier than the TeV scale. As I wrote at the beginning, the Higgs is a scalar associated to the mechanism of EWSB, and if the EW symmetry is broken by some other mechanism that does not involve the Higgs then there is no Higgs, period. I hope this was clearer than my previous attempt. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 09:06, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

By "the conversation" I meant the conversation here generally (i.e. covering the last few months), not just this specific conversation. That said, you got your chronologly mixed up. You gave your resonance explanation after I had come back with the ref you had cited earlier, not before. Anyway, your second paragraph is much clearer. Thank you. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I think my chronology was right: my first sentence contained the word "broad" which, to a specialist, immediately points to the width of a resonance. You did not seem to get it so I thought I had to explain in more pedestrian terms. Anyway it looks like the "heavy Higgs" issue is settled now, which is all that matters. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:44, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. So where do you want to put the ALICE material, since its purpose is already covered in the bullet points?--Michael C. Price ^talk 12:52, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Re the ALICE subsection I suggest merging it into the ALICE article and/or the design section here. Any objections?--Michael C. Price ^talk 04:21, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that in the present version of the Purpose section, with all of the physics issues reduced to bullet points, the part on ALICE sticks out somewhat oddly. Do as you please - you break it, you own it. I find that the section as a whole comes out of last week's rewriting substantially impoverished, but I am quite tired of trying to maintain a standard of scientific accuracy that most other editors (with exceptions) do not seem to find necessary.

I will just add a comment about the Dark Matter issue: a quick perusal of the first paragraph of this contribution to conference proceedings, and of section 3 of this review, will show you that supersymmetry is just one among many possible extensions of the Standard Model offering a candidate for Dark Matter. In other words, the LHC might shed light on the nature of DM independently of whether it finds supersymmetry or not, which is why I was telling you above that the DM issue deserves a bullet of its own. Besides, it is not obvious to me how the LHC could provide information on the nature of dark energy. While it may have made sense to lump dark matter and dark energy together in a single bullet on cosmological issues that the LHC might help clarifying, a bullet for dark energy alone seems unjustified. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I think you're right about dark energy. Whether dark energy is just the cosmological constant is not something we'll discover from the LHC. I've no problem removing it, if others agree. Any objections, anyone, to its removal? --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:44, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

But you still think I am wrong about Dark Matter? Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:36, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

That depends what you're saying. There are lots of DM candidates, but how do they relate to the LHC? One of the links concludes pessimistically: "While the prospects for discovering physics beyond the standard model at the TeV scale are excellent, a precise determination of the properties of the DM particle, to the level where the theoretical predictions of DM observables reach the precision of the cosmological measurements is much more difficult." --Michael C. Price ^talk 18:00, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

How do they relate??? they might be discovered at the LHC, isn't that enough? The sentence that you quote applies to all the candidates - including the neutralino of SUSY models - and it just says that the LHC will not measure the properties of the DM candidate with a precision that matches the precision of the cosmological observations. Pity, but not very relevant to the question we are discussing here, which is whether "DM at the LHC" is a sub-topic of "SUSY at the LHC" or a topic of its own. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:34, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

True, but the source (Brian Greene) did list DM as a SUSY subtopic w.r.t. the LHC's purpose. --Michael C. Price ^talk 16:16, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I produced scientific sources in support of my argument. In view of those sources, do you agree with my point or not? If you do, change the text accordingly (or let me do it). If you don't, explain why. If there is something you don't understand in the sources, ask for explanations. Either way, stop hiding behind the wording of a popularizing article on NYT. Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:22, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

The Brian Greene source was already in the article before I came along. Reflecting what authoritative sources (such as BG) say is how Wikipedia works. It seems to me that you do not understand this, but insist on synthesis from primary sources and your own knowledge. The question is not about technical knowledge but about the weightings that should be given to such facts and their presentation, and you have a poor record in this department, IMO. BG is very likely weighting his perception of the LHC's purposes w.r.t. to the likelihood of the various outcomes; perhaps he views the SUSY solution to DM as the most likely - but I don't know what was in his mind, and neither do you, which is why we just go with the source.

Please note that the current wording does not exclude a non-SUSY DM from the purposes. I've no objection to that being made more explicit, although I believe that BG's orginal weighting should be borne in mind.

--Michael C. Price ^talk 17:54, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Particle physics is a wide and complicated subject and a single popularizing article (even a good one such as Brian Greene's) will inevitably provide only a partial reflection of it. I could very easily give you another newspaper article where the priorities are ordered a bit differently, such as this one from the latest issue of the Economist (check the next-to-last paragraph: it does not even mention SUSY, only Higgs and Dark Matter). But you know what? It does not really matter, there are hundreds of newspaper articles on the internet and you can pick your favourite to back up nearly anything you want to write about (including ninja saboteurs from the future). It is our task as editors to choose the weighting of the different topics, and I don't see anything wrong in referring to primary sources in a talk page discussion to back up this or that argument. The authors of the two reviews that I quoted are more qualified than Brian Greene on the topic of Dark Matter at the LHC, and the reviews themselves are more authoritative than a popularizing article on NYT. The message that I get from them (and, admittedly, from my personal knowledge of what is going on in theoretical particle physics) is that the nature of Dark Matter is one of the questions on which the LHC can shed some light, independently of whether it finds SUSY or not. If you agree with this I don't understand why we are arguing: we should both be eager to improve the text. If you disagree, please say something more than "Brian Greene said so". You are allowed to do it on the talk page. Anyway, I'd like to hear the opinion of other editors on the use of primary sources (and personal knowledge) in the talk page, it is an issue that has come up more than once. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:23, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. the opening paragraph of the section still carries a very misleading emphasis on quantum gravity. Any plans to improve that? Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:23, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed about opening paragraph. Why repeat what's covered later?

I guess we could include non-SUSY DM in the "B-list".

And, yes, we can talk about things here, but to be frank I don't trust your judgement (you blew your remaining cred' with the quark soup eruption, IMO). --Michael C. Price ^talk 16:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

<unindent> To be honest chasing the inclusion of one article because you like the author in my opinion isn't encyclopedic or good judgement, and whether or not you trust someones judgement or not is irrelevant if they are producing verifiable sources. ^Khukri 16:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Judgement is also about the balancing of sources, all of which may be verifiable. Undue weight and so on. --Michael C. Price ^talk 18:02, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Michael, the relevance of your opinion on my judgement or credibility is proportional to your understanding of particle physics, you do the math. I usually try to back up my arguments with scientific sources, and saying that you "don't trust me" is just a cheap excuse to avoid discussion on the specific issues. And please, when exactly did I violate the WP policy on undue weight? Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:35, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

As usual you try to make the issue one of technical competence, whereas the issue of one of clarity and accessibility. --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The issue is whether Dark Matter must be a separate bullet point or a side remark in the SUSY bullet. What have clarity and accessibility to do with that? Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Everything, I should think. We must have a different idea of what "clarity and accessibility" means, irrespective of which solution is best. --Michael C. Price ^talk 18:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Call me stupid, but I still don't get it: how is one of these two versions more (or less) clear and accessible than the other? Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:51, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

BTW, in the "quark soup" business I proved that the wording is not used (if not tongue-in-cheek) in the scientific literature. What was wrong with that? Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:35, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

You didn't prove anything of the sort, but even if you had, that wouldn't mean the phrase was inappropiate to an article where most of the readers are not physicists. Nor does it justify the comparison with Mickey Mouse. --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I told you that in the face of >1500 articles on SPIRES with "quark-gluon plasma" in the title you have only 7 with "quark soup", and all of them try to be funny. What sort of proof do you want? Even if our article is not written for physicists we do not necessarily have to treat our readers like this... Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

We seem to be going around in cirles here. The general ghit ratio for the two terms is about 7:1, which suggest that despite the academic preference of a 1000:1 for "quark-gluon plasma", that "quark soup" is more accessible for most readers, who are not PhD'ed physicists. --Michael C. Price ^talk 18:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC).

It's a matter of taste, but I vote against "quark soup" in this article. I don't see how it is going to mean anything to the lay reader either way, but why help to fuddle them? Let's either define the concept properly (with a proper pompous "encyclopedic" name) in a sentence or two here, or else wikilink out to the full story if that is judged too much for this article to support. I put in a few words below here that might be a start, but it needs a good reference or two. Anyhow, you guys can do that better than I could. Wwheaton (talk) 20:21, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

My vote is to wikilink out the story, since quark soup already exists. --Michael C. Price ^talk 22:59, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I changed the text on Dark Matter but reverted the change after reading again your sentence. What do you mean by "include non-SUSY DM in the B-list"? Once DM gets an item of its own, it makes no sense to split it in "SUSY" and "non-SUSY". My proposal is supported by the sources I gave you, if you don't agree you will have to explain what's wrong with them. Ptrslv72 (talk) 23:04, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd rather hear from other people, instead of wasting my time debating with someone who simply can't understand how to write an article. --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm thinking it might be good to break off this very long section into separate new sections, focussed on the various sub-issues that are at stake. Then maybe we can try to collect consensus on them point by point. Besides the problem of locating the posts and following the chains of argument, who wants to keep fighting a diffuse edit war for weeks? I might propose a breakdown into separate issues, but I think y'all might like to take a crack at it first. I think I will start a new section on "Organizational issues" down below as a starting point, though. Thanks -- Wwheaton (talk) 20:32, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Fine for me, but you should do it. Last time I tried something similar I became Stalin ;-) Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree. It seems Ptrslv72 and myself can hardly agree about whether the sky is blue. Over to you, Wwheaton. --Michael C. Price ^talk 23:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've at least initiated the new section. But basically I started this line to save myself from having to sift through (and understand) the whole edit warring discussion. Also, you guys truly do understand the physics a lot better than I do (I bailed out of HE physics in 1969, and have been just a spectator since), and there's no substitute for that knowledge, even if you disagree about a lot. So let's see what we can do with a little help from our other friends here. Can we try to isolate and narrow down the points at issue? Without trying to win and argument, just to define the issues in 200 words or less, in the new section....  :) Thanks, I know this is not easy. Wwheaton (talk) 00:49, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I tried, I hope it will help. Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I appreciate the effort; let's see what others say. Wwheaton (talk) 17:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Power Supply

What's the point of the hyper-technical information on the power supply, with the exact geographical location of the generators? Ptrslv72 (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

None that I can see. I'm undoing both of the edits involved, assuming there will be consensus. May have been added by someone working on the CERN power system. Wwheaton (talk) 01:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Something that might gather more support would be a little info on the power consumption of the accelerator, whether (and how) the dipole magnet energy is recycled at the end of each major load-accelerate-collide-rampdown cycle, how much RF power is needed to makeup losses during the peak beam energy periods, etc. In the old days (1950s-1960s) we used to use motor/generator sets coupled to big flywheels, but I have no idea how it is done nowadays; maybe the energy is just returned to the grid during rampdown? The power in other parts of the complex (eg, linacs, PS, SPS) might also be interesting. It would probably be a good idea to try out any revision here if you (User:Zonk43) want sto upply more info, and some in-line references would be a good idea too. Wwheaton (talk) 01:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Has anyone written to CERN?

Has anyone written an email requesting photos for Wikipedia? If not, I would be happy to. --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I asked internally about this a year or so back and it seems CERN won't release into the public domain, here. By all means however try again, try here I would suggest Renilde as James is fielding questions left right and center with the start up. Good luck ^Khukri 11:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll do my best. It's a publicly funded org right? I'll bug Renilde. If he doesn't up some photos, I'll personally go over there an accelerate some of his particles. :} --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 11:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

she ;) ^Khukri 11:55, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

She? I see. Well then, all the more particles to accelerate. :) --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

On a related issue, I sent an inquiry to Cms Outreach <[email protected]> in the spring of 2008 about the interpretive details of the simulated event ("CMS Higgs-event.jpg", which we have had in the article for well over a year) in response to an old question someone had asked about it here on talk, and received a reply 7/3/2008 from one Dave Barney, CMS Outreach Coordinator, promising info to follow, but I have not received anything further so far. It would be very nice if we could get some GFDL images of events, real or simulated, with accompanying physics info re track and particle IDs, momenta, etc. The image we have is woefully lacking in that regard, and essentially meaningless without it. There are or were some additional views of the same simulated event on the CMS web site, from which some 3-dimensional guesses could be inferred, but nothing about what one is really seeing. Anyhow, I'm sure they are all very busy. But I do think placing such an image (of millions soon to come) in the public domain, with supporting information, would be very good for CERN & CMS outreach, and very useful for us here. Maybe you, ^Khukri, or Anna Frodesiak (talk), could give them a friendly nudge in that direction?  :) Thanks! Wwheaton (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, following Khukri's suggestion, I have written to Jame Gillies, w/ a cc to Renilde Vanden Broeck, asking that a small subset of LHC events be released as images under the GFDL, along with supporting physics information that we can use in our articles. I thought that in our pursuit of "reliable verifiable sources", it would be best if permissions and explanatory materials were posted on a CERN web site; was that right, is that what we need? I can post the letter here or on user talk pages if anyone likes. I told them I have no official status beyond being a registered editor, and cannot represent anyone. Wwheaton (talk) 01:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I received a nice reply from James Gillies lately, saying he hopes to be able to release some event and other images into public domain under GDL "in due course". Wwheaton (talk) 18:35, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Live data portal

A fan has created a portal web site for accessing live data from the LHC. It also includes the only exclusive LHC forum.

http://www.LHCPortal.com/

This has a listing and references in http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider and should be included in the external links section of the us version. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.106.248.113 (talk) 17:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

68.106.248.113 (talk) 11:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yay and we're off

10,000,000 turns on beam 1, beam 2 just starting. ^Khukri 21:19, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

The real question is how this abominable waste of money and other resources will actually benefit mankind. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.90.111.65 (talk) 05:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to Wikipedia? -- BenRG (talk) 22:52, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

No one can say what will come of it in the future, but read here things like advances in medical imagery, the world wide web are the big ones. here is where it is managed. So not including the net gains to science in general, I think CERN has already shown it's worth with it's additions to humanity. ^Khukri 14:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your question and criticism, which I take somewhat seriously. The real value of scientific investigation is cultural, in my opinion. From it we learn things about the nature of the great stage of the universe, who we are as small players on that stage, and perhaps something of what our parts in it all may mean. Reasonable people differ about what is valuable, culturally or otherwise, and what it truly means "to benefit mankind". But this encyclopedia is not really the place to discuss such matters. Feel free to bring your criticism to my talk page, if you like. Best, Wwheaton (talk) 19:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations to all concerned! Wwheaton (talk) 21:41, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Fingers crossed! --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Beam has now gone anti clockwise. over the moon ^Khukri 23:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Clockwise: is that counter-clockwise looking down on the LHC (for Beam 2), or looking up? What is the convention? Ordinarily we look down on maps, I guess? Wwheaton (talk) 01:44, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Looking down. Clockwise is injected before Pt2 and goes 3 ,4, 5 ..... and anti-clockwise is injected before Pt8 and goes 7, 6, 5 ...... ^Khukri 08:18, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Congrats to the LHC team. Pump them juicy press releases out so we can get our hands on some juicy WP:RS. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:22, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

First candidate collisions have been recorded at CMS (the link is semi-official but, for the moment, public and supposedly reliable). Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, here is the official press release. First low-energy collisions on November 23. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

560 GeV last night. ^Khukri 06:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Meaning we have successfully accelerated beam (by 110 GeV above the SPS injection energy), using the RF accelerator system in the main ring? Were both beams circulating? Wwheaton (talk) 23:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

LHC set a new world record[3]. Maybe we could add a few lines about (not being a scientific, I don't know how important this record is) )TAgad2 (talk) 20:20, 6 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.53.99.185 (talk)

The record itself is not particularly significant I think, but it means that they have been able to accelerate beam from the 450 GeV injection energy to 1180 GeV per proton, and that means they have increased the beam momentum by about a factor of 2.6, and the magnetic fields by the same factor (stored magnetic energy by the square of that factor, almost 7x). When you realize that the beam is around a mm in diameter and must be steered around that huge circle (~4 km in radius), and you notice that the particle energy and the magnetic field must therefore rise in step, to an accuracy probably better than 1 part in a million.... Well, it's impressive. We can hope that the rest of the way, from 1180 GeV to 3500 GeV, will be as smooth. Wwheaton (talk) 22:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Last press release (Nov 30, here) says. "Next on the schedule is a concentrated commissioning phase aimed at increasing the beam intensity before delivering good quantities of collision data to the experiments before Christmas. So far, all the LHC commissioning work has been carried out with a low intensity pilot beam." A plot here shows the history of operation during an acceleration (for Beam 1; click on the "more photos" link of the press release image for lots more of people, and some data at the bottom); I believe the green curve shows the number of protons in the beam, and the orange curve shows the energy per particle, which is 450 GeV for awhile until 0035 local time (as the intensity drops, due to losses), and then rises for about 8 min to the 1180 GeV max. The other two curves (no units) are mysterious to me; they are unitless and have the same scales (making me think they are likely something to do with the horizontal and vertical directions cross-beam?). Note how the intensity drops before the RF (accelerating field) is turned on, then drops some more during acceleration, but finally stabilizes (especially in the next image, Beam2), suggesting that the bunch of protons is stably trapped both transversely and longitudinally on the few-minute scale. (Note that I am definitely guilty of "over interpretation" here, just guessing about the commentary in the absence of any solid information, but the curves are interesting and fun to look at. Of course none of this can be posted in article space, but links may be appropriate.) Keep an eye out for the latest releases here. Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 18:30, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, an IP editor has reminded us (above) of a site here which has links to a lot of LHC pages showing current operations. This a commercial site (ie, has a few ads, etc) and there is no official CERN explanation for much of the material, but much of the material is fun to watch. See especially after "The Portal", in the left hand sidebar, LHC => **Progress** => "Page 1" shows both beams circulating at 450 GeV at the moment, w/ ~1e10 protons per beam in two bunches, intensity slowly decaying, and Beam 1 (blue) lost around 21:40 (local time), Beam 2 (red) then holding steady. This page shows the last 2 hours, so it will be different when anyone looks. Question is, is this commercial site appropriate to put on our article page? It is certainly quite nicely done and full of interesting stuff, but I'm in doubt. Wwheaton (talk) 21:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Mysterious numbers

In the Timeline table, for example on slot Early 2010:

The LHC expected to continue operation ramping energies up to 3.5 TeV, then later in the year up to 5 TeV per beam,

Well, but do those number have any significance, such as f.ex. "being the smallest expected energy level of the Higgs boson" (jsut an example), or "being a theorized state of matter just after the inflation epoch" (just another example)? ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 16:38, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I found a few numbers myself when reading the articles on the various experiments: ~2.76 TeV when colliding lead nuclei in ALICE, ~7 TeV when making a general research about the Standard Model in ATLAS, ~14 TeV for different experiments for the same purpose in the CMS experiment. 3.5 TeV is over the reqs for ALICE, the other levels still unknown w resp to significance (if any). ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 17:09, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with science (for that, higher is generally better), but is a practical limit, imposed by current magnet safety issues. Look at rigidity, in "Heavy ions or protons, what's the difference?" above; it is the limiting parameter that tells what the tunnel and magnets as built can support. It is 7 TeV per particle for protons, or 14 TeV in a head-on collision of two such. The 3.5 TeV figure is just half that, and is the maximum magnetic field that the magnet experts feel is safe with present experience, until additional safeguards are in place against a disastrous quench due to an electrical fault, such as occurred in September 2008. The same rigidity limit applies to lead. Wwheaton (talk) 02:07, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Status info in lead paragraph getting too long

I just brought the status up to date with the LHC press release about the shutdown 12/18/2009, but now I think that paragraph in the lead is getting overlong. What say we have a "Status & history" section down in the body of the article, with the current status first, and historical items in reverse time order underneath? Then we could have a one-sentence status at the end of the lead. If nobody objects or boldly beats me to it, I'll probably do something of this kind in the next few days. Wwheaton (talk) 23:54, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Fine for me. At some point we should also close the discussion on the "Purpose" paragraph and act accordingly (BTW, nobody commented on the "dark matter" issue yet). Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:59, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Right, I'm sure we have not forgotten. Time to think, & act, is the issue for me. More soon I hope. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds a good idea, Bill. --Michael C. Price ^talk 12:04, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Top Ten Ways the Large Hadron Collider Could Revolutionize the World of Science

This site: [Amazon] has these sentences writen: " Top Ten Ways the Large Hadron Collider Could Revolutionize the World of Science" (Content from Paul Halpern)

1. Solve the riddle of dark matter: the elusive invisible substance that helps steer the outer stars of galaxies and bind galaxies into clusters. The LHC could produce particles massive enough to explain this mystery.

2. Complete the puzzle of the Standard Model: the theory uniting two of the four known forces of nature, electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Based on what turns up in the LHC decay products, this model could be confirmed or need to be modified.

3. Identify the God Particle: more formally known as the Higgs boson. The Higgs is part of a mechanism that explains how the particles that make up matter acquired mass in the early universe, while photons, the carriers of light, remained massless. The mass of the Higgs, if it were found, would help indicate whether the Standard Model is fine as it stands or requires adjustment.

4. Reproduce some of the intense conditions of the Big Bang: the fiery, highly-compact state of the primordial cosmos. One of the specialized detectors at the LHC, called ALICE, will study quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that existed in the first microseconds of the universe. At that point its temperature was so high that the quarks and gluons that would later form elementary particles such as protons and neutrons were free to move.

5. Explain the universe’s shortage of antimatter: the oppositely-charged counterparts of electrons, protons and other particles. The LHCb, another specialized detector at the LHC, is designed to look for imbalances in certain types of decays that could elucidate how the balance of a harmonious early state of the universe came to tilt in the direction of far more matter than antimatter.

6. Generate miniature black holes: hypothetical incredibly dense states of matter analogous to some of the intense gravitational conditions of the collapsed cores of massive stars. No worries, however; these would decay almost immediately into various particles before presenting even the slimmest chance of harming the Earth.

7. Reveal gateways to higher dimensions: unseen paths beyond ordinary space and time. Certain theories justify why gravity is so much weaker than the other natural forces by positing that gravity particles leak into an extra dimension that ordinary matter and light cannot penetrate. Investigators at the LHC will search for evidence of such invisible channels.

8. Unify matter and forces through supersymmetry: a hypothesis asserting that each matter particle has a counterpart in the world of forces, and each force carrier, a companion in the realm of matter. The LHC will search for the least massive superpartners of conventional particles. The verification of supersymmetry would be an extraordinarily important step toward a theory of everything.

9. Predict the ultimate fate of the cosmos: Recent astronomical discoveries have indicated that space is accelerating in its expansion. The nature of any massive particles found at the LHC could help scientists unravel the properties of this dark energy and thereby determine what will ultimately happen to the universe.

10. Inspire new generations: to pursue careers in physics and carry on the search for the ultimate theory of nature. The shining example of discoveries at the LHC would illuminate a path for future scientists to follow.

Agre22 (talk) 14:13, 24 December 2009 (UTC) agre22

It's indeed an exhaustive list, and the ordering of the topics is quite interesting. Unfortunately the source (a reader review of a book on Amazon) seems unsuitable for direct quotation, but we might take inspiration from it when we finally get to rewrite the "Purpose" section. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:46, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

This bit from the NY Times may also have some use in the "Purpose" section, perhaps in the few general introductory sentences (which I still think we need) before getting more specific with the bullets. This is may be a good time for those of us who are not experts (like me, especially) to read or re-read the references we have (or perhaps suggest new ones) so we can be nearer to one mind when we get down to the re-writing. BTW, Happy New Year (& New Decade), everyone. Wwheaton (talk) 23:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

And here is another nice article, this one by Steve Giddings (an expert of black holes). Note again the ordering of the topics... Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Location?

The LHC facility not only crosses borders between two countries, but even the borders of the European Union. Has anyone found a (quotable) source that states the reason for this particular location? I'd expect all kinds of legal issues to arise from this, not in the least two possibly differing sets of (safety) standards that this single installation would need to adhere to. -- MiG (talk) 10:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Purpose section again

I have been thinking about this on the back burner of my brain. I would like to propose the general structure below, if we can just come to a settled compromise on the general layout. I am certainly not wedded to any of the choices I'm suggesting, except I do think we need three (or four?) separate sections: (1) an orientation that sets the stage for the lay readers, helps them understand a bit about where we are now, and the areas where we are struggling; (2) a bulletized list of key issues and questions we hope to make progress, with the most certain and "important" ones first, followed by others in something like importance order. Some of these may merit a short paragraph, some only a sentence and a wikilink, but each should have enough meat to stand alone, and not just be an incomprehensible jargon term that no one but a particle physicist is likely to find meaningful; and (3) a paragraph mentioning some of the less-likely or more speculative possibilities--things that we might find, but not so crucial or likely as to drive the motivation and design of the accelerator and experiments; & (4) a conclusion, likely not essential.

I would like it if we could maybe agree on this 3 (or 4) part layout, try to come up with the lead section, and maybe agree on the first one or two bullets in the second part. To make it easier to discuss them, I have numbered them, but i suppose they would be converted to bullets in the article, as I would really not want to suggest we are laying out a rigid ordering as to what is important and what is not. I still need to go back and read through the lengthy discussion we have had above, and also read some of the references that we have already or that have been suggested, so I am just throwing this general schema out (while I do my homework) to see if we can agree on the layout, and then negotiate the subsections one by one. I think we need to break the problem down into manageable pieces, and then focus all our energy on these one by one, so we can move on systematically and not go in circles too much.

Intro sentences

This would be to set the stage, of where we are in elementary particle physics, and why it is so important, for the educated/interested lay person. We want to know more about the structure of space and time, about the forces that act between the elementary particles, about possible new forces and new families of particles. Remind reader that relativity and QM completely turned physics on its head between 1895 and 1930. Since the 1930s, we have had great successes, first with QED, then the classification of with gauge theories, the unification of the EM & weak interactions, the acceptance of the reality of quarks and color confinement, quantum chromodynamics and the Standard Model; but many puzzles remain since the mid 1980s. Our two most successful theories, QM and General Relativity, appear to be incompatible at the highest energies and shortest distances.

Mmmmh, the development of theoretical physics since the 1930s sounds like a lot of stuff to cram into the introductory paragraph on the "Purpose of the LHC". We should focus on the goals specific to the LHC, which are 1) elucidate the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and 2) look for new particles beyond those predicted by the Standard Model. I do realize that those goals sound less flashy than reconciling quantum mechanics and gravity, but that's the way it is and we cannot change it. The odds that the LHC provides any info on quantum gravity are very very tiny, and the paragraph should not give the wrong impression about it. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I surely agree we cannot give it more than a few sentences, but I still think we need something before plunging cold-turkey into the icy waters of the bullets. And these sentences are not to give purposes, but rather to orient the naive reader (me, in particular, as a test case) about where we stand going in and what is at stake. For example, starting with a bullet "elucidate the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking" seems likely (to me) lose anyone not already fairly far into elementary particle physics. We have a pretty good theory, but it still has some significant shortcomings. It seems to me 150 words or less before the bullets would help to clarify the need for this huge effort. Needless to say, there would have to be many wikilinks out to the major articles, supporting references to the Big Concepts. Cheers, Bill Wwheaton (talk) 07:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Bulletized list

Here we have the truly major subtopics; selection and order TBD. Each might merit a short paragraph, or maybe just a sentence with a wikilink out. I am not committed to anything but the first one or two (which should perhaps be combined into one?)

1. Surely the Higgs boson and the confirmation that the Standard Model is on the right track, though incomplete
2. Give theorists hints in developing possible extensions of the standard model. Reduce the number of parameters that have to be put in externally by fiat.
3. Look for evidence for/against SUSY, and SUSY partners of known particles.
4. Search for clues about the nature of Dark Matter
5. In Pb-Pb collisions, study color confinement and its breakdwon to yield quark plasma
6. Study CP violation, and clues about the observed matter/antimatter asymmetry in the universe

Comments and addenda

List some other interesting but less central or less likely possibilities, such as uncompacted extra dimensions, BH production w/ verification or refutation of Hawking evaporation,....

BH production is a subproduct of large extra dimensions (which BTW can be either compact - with a large compactification radius - or "warped"). I would keep it uncomplicated and just add a bullet on extra dimensions to the main list (as is already the case in the present version). As I already mentioned, am not that hot about dividing the topics in "A-list" and "B-list". Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I am also not in favor of two bulletized lists, but I do think there may be purposes that need mention (likely with a wikilink) and can be lumped together in a paragraph following the list of primary candidates. But maybe when we've worked our way down the bullets to the lesser items, we will be in a better position to decide that. My impression is that the likelihood of large extra dimensions being observable is not such a hot possibility as to have been a driving motivation for building and specifying the LHC, but I would have to defer to you, Ptrslv72, and others actively in the field on matters such as that. There are a lot of deep questions that I'm not sure the LHC will clarify, but maybe it will: ie, should the almost-but-not-quite-exact equality of matter and antimatter in the first nanoseconds be listed? How about the nearly exact cancellation (? to 120 digits or something?) of the + & - terms in the cosmological constant? Do any of those deserve mention in the bullets? Are we happy with he first three items I've listed remaining in place, possibly with the first two merged into one? As soon as we are, I think we could start writing to those bullets, which that would be progress in my opinion. Anyhow, thanks for your input. Wwheaton (talk) 07:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW, how can we explain to the pedestrian (intelligent but non-expert) reader what the question "elucidate the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking" means? I believe it has to do with the spontaneous breaking of a symmetry that is exact at high energies, but I am very unclear about what the "mechanism" of that (? how the system finds its lowest energy states?) might look like. I need to go study our article on spontaneous symmetry breaking, surely, but I confess it gives me a clammy feeling, like I get when I wonder about trying to make the spin statistics theorem intuitively obvious to anyone. Wwheaton (talk)

We must accept the fact that this article is about the LHC, not about particle physics in general. Hence, the purpose section should describe the issues that are most likely to be addressed by the experimental program of the LHC, and not become a list of the open questions in particle physics. Also, we cannot devote entire paragraphs to the explanation of complicated physics concepts, this is what wikilinks are for. As to the specific issues: i) "Elucidate the mechanism of EWSB" means finding the particle(s) that give mass to the gauge bosons, be they elementary scalar(s) (i.e., one or more Higgs bosons) or composite states that, from a low-energy point of view, fulfill the role of the Higgs bosons. We can spend some words about this but I doubt that we can explain here what EWSB is. ii) I agree that large extra dimensions accessible at the TeV scale are a quite far-fetched possibility, and since they became popular only at the end of the nineties they certainly have not been a driving motivation for designing the LHC. However, by now there are extended plans to look for signals of large extra dimensions at the LHC, so I think that they should be mentioned in the main list. iii) Conversely, for cosmological issues such as the fine tuning in the cosmological constant or baryogenesis the LHC could provide only rather indirect information (e.g., by detecting other phenomena predicted by models that also address the cosmological constant problem) so their inclusion in the list does not seem mandatory to me. Now I apologize but in this period I am rather busy with other stuff and I might not be able to contribute as much as I wish. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think we can afford to take it fairly slow. It's not terrible as is, IHMO. I wish more editors would weigh in, which time might bring; though of course that might make things yet more confusing. On the matter of extra large dimensions, is that a separate issue from string theory? I believe the latter requires extra dimension to avoid anomalies, but if string theory turns out to be a wrong turn, is there any particular reason to expect extra dimensions? Or is that just another possible thing? Does anyone object to the first two items in the bullet list being written for the article soon? Should they be combined into one? Wwheaton (talk) 06:19, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem with string theory is that it will never "turn out to be a wrong turn" until they manage to get falsifiable predictions out of it. For example, string theory does predict the existence of extra dimensions, but they do not necessarily have to be large, they might be so small that they will never be accessible to experiment. The main justification for exploring the possibility of large extra dimensions is simply that they have not yet been ruled out experimentally (tests of gravity only get down to a tenth of millimeter, if I remember correctly). BTW, I am not aware that there are other theories of quantum gravity (apart from strings) that predict the existence of extra dimensions, but the concept itself has been around since long before string theory was invented. In summary, I think that the current formulation of the xdim bullet - with more emphasis on the experimental detection of extra dimensions than on string theory - is correct. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:27, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, a (rather technical) review article on extra dimensions at the LHC was published right today. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:33, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Concluding sentences ??

Not obvious anything is needed here, omit if not. It might be nice to suggest how the questions above drive the requirements for the LHC, compromise that it is.

I'm not clear either how to organize the discussion. (It is hard to keep things from getting tangled up when the material itself is so complex.) If this works at all, maybe comments should go first after the first two paragraphs above, and then if there is any agreement at all, We can move to the "Intro sentences", and work through the list. Maybe if we had a clean copy of our agreed-on text so far, we could keep that set aside from the current discussion. I suppose the article itself might be a logical place to keep that clean copy of the moment? Wwheaton (talk) 09:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Fantastic idea. I was in Linac2 yesterday and looking at how the beam starts it's life I was thinking it might not be a bad idea to add into the article, actually how it works as well, i.e. how the beam starts from a bottle of hydrogen, which is split apart, and goes through linac, etc into PS, the SPS, what this means energy wise. Then following it through it's life to what happens in the LHC, how the beam is given more energy via RF, which is different to speed etc, and then how the beam is eventually collided, explaining kicker magnets, septums, bending magnets, quad & setupoles and all that jazz, sure there might be some out there interested in actually how it works. But I'm in. ^Khukri 11:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I too would love to expand the "Design" section eventually, to give a more detailed account of the way it works, with wikilinks out for context to some historical accelerators like the Bevatron, the AGS & PS, SLAC, the Tevatron, the SPS, and the LEP. Then we could move the nice but unexplained lead figure down to that section, put a better lead image up, and .... etc, etc. The list just goes on and on. But, business before pleasure. I aim to get a good (acceptable) intro paragraph for the Design section up in a week or less, "Lawd willin' 'n iffn' it don' rain" (which it is, like in Genesis here in SoCal, maybe for 20+ days to come....) Wwheaton (talk) 16:29, 21 Jan 2010 (UTC)

Timeline update: two years at 3.5 TeV

Hi guys, can anybody take care of this? I am very busy at the moment. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:41, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Escellent. Plan clarity at last. --Michael C. Price ^talk 12:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Risk assesment

Nothing in the article mentions potential risks of this machine. A machine designed to simulate the first seconds of the bigbang. But that time period is dangerous as more then 97% of matter was lost in the big bang. For Unkown reasons a few % did not colide with antimatter, it happened but we dont know why. So i like to read why we are so sure this machine is safe. And that it wouldnt unlock somekind of antimater backdoor, or whatever people call it (naked singualarity etc..) Somehow it reminds of Madam Curry (died of radiation) cancer, and the "great" nuclear age. We where going to make nuclear rockets, blast mountains (nuke them) to build roads et etc. (think of the thunderbirds) Until we found out that radiation has also a big negative side. I'm not sure about how safe for example unified forces are (weak nuclear +strong + gravity +..)

I'm not against the science, but how can we be sure of safety of unknown processes? That question is verry fundamental i think and as of today not well addressed. (some scientist see no harm and others do) At least the article should point to debate, and political aspects of this machine. Even the warning above here seams afraid of debate, solve it create a debate page "safety of LHC", a site like wikipedia Its a fact that people have concerns.

Its allowed to create Wikipedia pages about various religion, and pholisopical topics, but apperently some people here seam to think that science is not for debate, that science is prooven, and thus the only valid way. In reality science doesnt work that way, its based on acceptense, and here i see safety talk is not accepted. So i hope this topig gets into wikipedia and is not banned by cencur of wikipedia writers. Dont worry i'm not edditing the main page, i leave it up to the cencors here to think about if the risk is widely accepted. This has been for long a topic in media, and its not mentioned on this site. 82.217.115.160 (talk) 17:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Before making sweeping generalisations or grandiose statements you may want to look a little further and read this article. ^Khukri 07:11, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

"World's largest machine"?

I have commented out a claim that the LHC is the world's largest machine, along with its supporting reference (inserted 22 Nov last). Although the BBC is normally acceptable as a reliable source, I think this is journalistic hype, and factually debatable. For example, the US western power intertie, linking hundreds of large power generators and countless thousands of synchronous 60 Hz motors, all rotating together in lockstep, and spread over thousands of miles from San Diego to Canada to Wyoming, is clearly geometrically larger, and involves much larger power levels. It has also been called "the world's largest machine", though I think systems of comparable size now exist in several places around the globe. I see no reason to call the LHC "one machine" and deny that status to other such candidates. None of them are mechanically tied together, but neither is the LHC. The reference is OK in itself, but really needs to be tied to other information not already present in the article, or it adds nothing substantive. Other opinions are welcome and solicited, of course. Wwheaton (talk) 08:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Could you not regard the tunnels as providing mechanical linkage? --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

You could of course, but then the very extensive HV distribution lines, switchyards, and transformer stations associated with the power networks seem equally valid to me as part of "the machine". It's a semantic issue, clearly. Wwheaton (talk) 16:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Wwheaton, "World's largest machine" is pure media hype and depends very much on the point of view. Let's wait and see if it gets into the "Guinness book of records" or something like that. Then we could add a mention to it in the "Popular Culture" section... Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The LHC certainly is mechanically tied together; the "tunnels" are filled with continuous systems of magnets and uninterrupted vacuum. It is also controlled from a single location, which I doubt is the case for power networks spread across multiple states and countries. That said, I don't think the claim is especially interesting or relevant, particularly for the lede. -David Schaich ^Talk/_Cont 17:15, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Surely the world's largest machine is entitled to be described as such, just as Everest is described as the world's highest mountain. Perhaps not in the lead, but somewhere in the article. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:07, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I still deny the claim is really true in any notably meaningful sense. The power grids are "mechanically tied together" with large cables, and tightly controlled to operate synchronously. There are no connecting rods clanking at the LHC, only a nanogram of protons moving on a magnetic track. The magnets are not continuous, any more than railroad tracks are; they are segmented into sectors of arcs, quadrupole "lenses", etc. Sure, it's big and it's impressive, but let's leave it at that--there's no need to stretch the point. I would have no problem with saying it is one of the largest machines, facilities, or equipment complexes in the world, but I maintain more is hype, not meaningful and not useful in helping lay readers understand the LHC. Of course we can take a straw vote, if you like. Wwheaton (talk) 07:37, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not just only a nanogram of protons moving on a magnetic track. First, it's a continuous evacuated tube. Second, as Schaich says, it is centrally controlled. It's a debatable claim, but that no reason not to report it, just report that it is debatable. We report that it is the most expensive scientific experiment in human history, so why not the largest? --Michael C. Price ^talk 08:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

PS another source for the claim: [4] .--Michael C. Price ^talk 09:28, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Both claims sound like trivia to me, but it's certainly not something to start another war about. If we have to mention it, can we do it somewhere else than in the lead? Also, a source more authoritative than "Wisegeek" might be preferable (I was thinking of something like the Guinness book). Anyway, CERN claims that Part of the LHC will be the world's largest fridge. It could hold 150 000 fridge full of sausages at a temperature colder than deep outer space. Should we report this as well? ;-) Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:34, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Let's let it sit for a week or two and see if we get any more opinions, since none of us own the article. Personally I hate it, but I guess I might be willing to accept putting it down in the article someplace out of the lead, as a compromise if we don't get a clear preference from more opinions. It does occur to me that since linear dimension is maybe not as significant as mass or volume, some of the larger hydro-electric plants, like the Three Gorges Dam or the Itaipu plant, might be additional rival candidates. Also, if it ever gets into the Guinness World Records as the "largest machine", I'd be happy to accept it as valid to that extent, and mention that as notable. I assume it is not there now, so it could take a while for it to gain that recognition however. Wwheaton (talk) 02:34, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd vote for the telephone system as being the worlds largest machine. It's not often thought of that way but it is phenomenal -- connecting all the phones of the world to each other and routing the signals between them and then the billing system whihc keeps track of all of those calls and all of those phones is mind-bogglingly complex. it would take something much bigger than the LHC just to hold all of the wires in the telephone system. 174.21.219.33 (talk) 22:38, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Which highlights the truth, I think, that "world's largest machine" is not a very useful or well-defined concept. The World Wide Web is physically essentially the same size, but if that is to be the criterion, why not include NASA's Deep Space Network, which is developing into an interplanetary Internet, and millions of time larger in spatial extent? (Although it is not exactly of this world.) Or, if mass and complexity are the key factors, then the Internet and the millions of computers attached to it must surely prevail. Of course we may have to exclude the mass of hydroelectric damns for that to work. I think the difficulty in defining the term "machine" unambiguously nowadays makes it not a very interesting notion, seriously. Maybe a machine ought to be something that clanks, chugs, and puffs?! Wwheaton (talk) 14:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Expected Results

While the Higgs Boson is expected by many theorists, there is a large minority of theorists who have proposed alternatives. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgsless_model

In addition, the Higgs Boson has been described as a "toilet particle" by at least one Nobel Prize winner because it is an effort to 'sweep the problems of the Standard Model down the toilet' by theorizing that toilet particle. http://www.fnal.gov/pub/ferminews/FermiNews98-01-23.pdf

So, it can be properly said that while some theorists expect to detect a 'Higgs Particle', others do not. Likewise, some theorists expect to detect microblackholes, while others do not. Indeed, there are lots of other articles showing the expectation of microblackholes. I only referenced the one that I believe is the best. Feel free to add others. Oldnoah (talk) 23:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)Oldnoah

As the name suggests, the subsection "Expected results" of the "test timeline" section is about the timeline for expected results. In the "Purpose" section we explain that the two main goals of the LHC are 1) clarifying the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking (= finding the Higgs boson or something else that does its job) and 2) looking for physics beyond the Standard Model (Supersymmetry, extra dimensions, and so on). The paragraph in the "Expected results" section gives the timeline for such discoveries (=how long will it take before we can unambiguously declare discovery of this or that particle?). Adding a reference to a paper about micro black holes in this section is incongruous (and BTW, P. Kanti is a woman). Micro black holes at the LHC are a particular manifestation of large extra dimensions, and as such they are already included in the corresponding bullet point of the Purpose section. BTW: as you can see a few threads above, the "Purpose" section is currently "frozen", because it is subject of a quite intense debate among some editors. Feel free to participate in the debate, but please do not proceed with unilateral changes on the section. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:32, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

"In the original timeline of the LHC commissioning" is how it reads in the 'Purpose' section. The timeline is for the COMMISSIONING, not for the 'Expected Results'!! This is clear from the actual dates in the chart of events as well, as they are all COMMISSIONING dates. Why are you inventing a fiction? The expected results is clearly about what theorists expect might happen at the LHC; NOT about what the expectations are for the commissioning. Where are you coming from with your assertion "As the name suggests, the subsection "Expected results" of the "test timeline" section is about the timeline for expected results". This is pure unadulterated BS and you know it. It is not even in the "Test Timeline" section, and is in a completely separate section below that Timeline and has existed for some time as a completely separate section. Please do not revert again unless you can post a valid reason for doing so. You are invalidating your image as a responsible editor. While I believe linking the Kanti reference in the 'Purpose' section for discovering extra dimensions (via MBH manifestations) is appropriate, it appears more appropriate in the 'Expected Results' section.Oldnoah (talk) 16:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)Oldnoah

Please learn wikipedia rules before going on with your rants. 1) the "expected results" is a subsection of the "Test Timeline" section. If you check the source, you will see that "expected results" is framed by three equality signs (===), while "Test timeline" is framed by two equality signs (==). Ergo, the former is a subsection of the latter. 2) even if you missed this piece of information, you could have imagined it from the context. The old paragraph in the "expected results" subsection reads:

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.

Can't you see that this is just about the timeline for discoveries? What we expect to discover at the LHC is discussed in the Purpose section. BTW, as I just argued in the talk page of the Safety article, you should explain why you think that Kanti's paper is the most authoritative reference on the subject. Meanwhile, I am reverting again your change. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:24, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I am aware of the Wikipedia rules (are you?), and was aware that there were only two equality signs (==), not three. The proper remedy is to add the third equality sign to the "expected results", since it is clearly in the context of the language of the "Expected Results" section a separate section not related to the timeline for the commissioning. However, so as not to offend your 'sensibilities', rather than doing that myself, I have instead removed the link from the expected results section (which is where it really belongs) and placed it in the 'Purpose' section. But I will wait for further comments, as I can see a strong need for an expansion of both the 'Expected Results' as a separate section (with a listing of various expected results other than merely the possibility of a Higgs particle, if such exists), with 'Current Results' as its subsection as further current results are manifested.Oldnoah (talk) 17:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)Oldnoah

Man, what are you talking about? Put on your reading glasses and check again the source of the article: "Test Timeline" appears as ==Test Timeline== (two equalities). Conversely, "Expected results" appears as ===Expected results=== (three equalities). If you still can't see it, have a look at the table of contents, where (again) is clear which one is the section and which one is the subsection. As to the language of the section, if you just read the sentence that I quoted above in italic you should be able to understand that the section is about how long it will take to find the Higgs and the hypothetical BSM particles. Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Kanti's paper

Please take responsibility for your own edits and don't misrepresent my position as you did in your edit summary. I never suggested that you add Kanti's paper to the "Purpose" section. Micro black holes are just one out of several possible manifestations of large extra dimensions at the LHC (others being: large missing energy when gravitons escape in the bulk, Kaluza-Klein replicas of the known particles, and so on), thus appending just this citation to the sentence can we detect them? is quite unsatisfactory. I am sure that there are more general reviews of the signatures of large extra dimensions at the LHC. However, this is not even the main point. As I wrote above, there is a longstanding debate going on about the "Purpose" section, at times degenerating into full edit war. I am myself quite dissatisfied with many aspects of the section, but I've been refraining from unilateral changes out of respect for the other editors involved (MichaelCPrice, Wwheaton, Khukri and, occasionally, Headbomb, BenRG and others). So please don't start making changes on your own without discussing them in advance on the talk page. I am not going to revert Kanti's reference now because I am tired of this discussion (and after all it is a legitimate scholarly paper, even if it is certainly not the most appropriate in this context) but I would like to hear other editors' opinion on the subject. BTW, in case you still don't get it, in this page "Kanti's paper" is a subsection of "Expected Results". Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:30, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

"Expected Results" Should be its Own Section

Sorry about my mistyping. It should have read "aware that there were three equality signs (===) not two." My apologies for the confusion. But the point is, it should be its own section, which is the point I was making. I have made this comment as a subsection (===) of Expected Results (==) above because I am suggesting that on the main page "Expected Results" should be its own section, not a subsection of the commissioning timeline. Also, I responded to Ptrslv72's discussion comment as to why the Kanti article ( http://arxiv.org/pdf/0802.2218v2 ) I find to be the "most authoritative", in the discussion section of the LHC Safety article. Clearly, there might be other manifestations of 'extra dimensions' other than MBHs, but this paper is a good explanation for the expectation of evaporative microblackholes as a means of detecting such 'extra dimensions'.Oldnoah (talk) 17:46, 3 March 2010 (UTC)Oldnoah

My position on this proposal is that the independent "Expected Results" section that Oldnoah has in mind would be just a useless duplicate of the already existing "Purpose" section. In its present form, the "Expected Results" section tells us how long it will take before the LHC can announce discovery of this or that phenomenon, and it fits very well as a subsection of "Test Timeline" section. Other opinions are welcome. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 18:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Popular culture?

This section claims that the LHC has been references in video games, but I don't know of any. Should we add a citation needed? Anybody know what games its referenced in? Jrtf83 (talk) 23:13, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware that Scribblenauts, a Nintendo DS game, has this object included among the various objects that can be created in the game. http://www.xkcd.com/637/ Mwace (talk) 03:59, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

History, negotiations and construction

This article would really benefit from some background about the project to build the LHC, its conception in the minds of particle physicists many years ago, all the work that must have gone in and the political battles fought to secure such enormous funding, and the long period of its design and construction. To illustrate what a lot of historical background we're missing, I'll refer you to Hypertext and CERN, a document written by Tim Berners-Lee as long ago as 1989, in which he makes reference to the coming "LHC era" and the challenges of managing the enormous quantities of information associated with the LHC as part of his grounds for proposing the Web. If people were talking about the LHC era in 1989 and it wasn't switched on until 2008, there must be quite a story to tell about it beyond this article's description of what it does. Old Man of Storr (talk) 21:21, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree, a review of the earliest proposals, and how it worked its way through 'the system' to fruition would be important. This might tie in well with a review of a 'parallel' program that was cancelled (the SSC). I believe the SSC was proposed first, but by only a few years. The demise of the SSC appears to have cleared the way for the LHC?Oldnoah (talk) 22:54, 5 March 2010 (UTC)Oldnoah

incomprehensible comparison

"Data produced by LHC as well as LHC-related simulation will produce a total data output of 15 petabytes per year.[50] For comparison, every word spoken worldwide in one year, converted into text, would amount to 2–3 petabytes of data"

This comparison is meaningless as it doesn't help a reader quantify the amount of data the LHC will produce. They will likely have no idea how many words are spoken throughout the world in one year, and no idea how much room a years worth of words from just one person would take up if it were converted to text. Why not use the tried and tested "if you wrote all this data to DVD's and stacked them on top of one another it would be X high" scenario? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.84.34 (talk) 09:04, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I really think the volume of spoken communication is more comprehensible than the height of a stack of DVDs. I also like ~2 KBytes as the content of a standard old-fashioned type-written page, or 1 MB for a 500-page ream (~1.5" thick), maybe 20 MB for a tightly packed file cabinet drawer, and 80 MB for a 4-drawer file cabinet. The volume expressed as the number of bits or bytes is surely the most quantitative measure of raw information, although in order to be fully meaningful, even that needs to be reduced (by removing redundancy) to "information content", which would be, roughly speaking, the length (in bytes, say) of the shortest reversibly compressed expression of the raw text. Wwheaton (talk) 20:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with WWheaton.Oldnoah (talk) 17:22, 10 March 2010 (UTC)Oldnoah

CERN 7 TeV collisions

19/03/2010 (DD/MM/YYYY) - http://public.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2010/PR05.10E.html Accelerates to 3.5 TeV per beam.

Today, 30th, they're colliding them for the first time. Edit will be needed afterwards, probably incorporating both records.

Live feed can be found here if you're interested: http://webcast.cern.ch/lhcfirstphysics/

-JakeyTheSnake —Preceding unsigned comment added by JakeyTheSnake (talk • contribs) 10:33, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Machine is back up to 3.5TeV after this mornings beam dump due to a power converter and the quench system kicking in. The first attempts at collisions should be very soon now. You can watch it here ^Khukri 10:53, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations to all! Wwheaton (talk) 14:20, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Alot of very excited physicists running around :) ^Khukri 14:50, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Lots of us laymen too. S'exciting.  Chzz  ►  20:34, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Ldlow, 30 March 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} In the Expected results section, please add:

Texas Tech University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Tech_University) has supplied many of the calorimeters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter) for this project which will be used to capture proof of the theoretical particles.

References: http://today.ttu.edu/2009/11/researchers-hope-to-solve-some-of-the-universe%E2%80%99s-most-mind-blowing-riddles/

Ldlow (talk) 20:32, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Deferring this to the good folks who I know are watching this page closely - to see if there is consensus. So, not done for now. Leaving the decision to the editors monitoring it. (But I will check back, of course)  Chzz  ►  20:35, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

There are literally thousands of institutions, companies and organisations that have had involvement and contributed to the construction of the LHC in one form or another. Without trying to create a list of contributors to the LHC I would think that inclusion of specific contributors would be on a notability basis, i.e. does the fact X contributed Y have its own inherent notability. An examples that spring to mind was the quadrapoles supplied by Fermilab that broke down three years back that caused some delays, though not a positive example it still is notable in the construction history of the LHC. So in short if the liaison is notable then shouldn't be a problem, if it's just to promote that X institution contributed then I would say no. See what others say. Cheers ^Khukri 20:50, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Black Mesa incident Similarities.

due to the similarties with the balck mesa incident from Half life, that has been refrenced throught the internet, i think it should be addeded to the popular culture section. Refrences: http://news.softpedia.com/news/LHC-Is-Dead-Long-Live-Black-Mesa-94281.shtml and http://gamersushi.com/2008/09/10/cern-is-black-mesa/ ~Tomm~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.222.82.169 (talk) 06:08, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, if you browse through the archives you will see that the "Popular Culture" section has been the subject of many debates among regular editors of the LHC article. Some (including myself) think that it does not add any relevant information to a science article and would remove it altogether, others are slightly more accommodating. Anyway, I think that the consensus can be summarized as follows: to make the cut for the section, a story must have had a significant and lasting exposure on mainstream media, possibly eliciting a response from CERN itself. In no way does the supposed analogy between CERN and an ingredient of some videogame satisfy that requirement. The fact that "it has been referenced through the internet" carries no weight by itself. The internet is big, and virtually everything has been referenced on some blog or another if you look deep enough. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Surely if this was the case, a 1998 game like Half Life would have been based on RHIC (which started operation in 2000, and has still failed to destroy the universe or teleport aliens to earth), rather than what at the time was the site of the LEPC which had been running a decade with very few people caring one way or the other (except for physicists and people that dislike taxes going to organisations like CERN). --86.179.186.239 (talk) 23:44, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

can non-protons be used?

CorvetteZ51 (talk) 11:12, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes; besides protons, lead nuclei are planned. In principle I suppose any lighter nuclei could be accelerated too, though I've not heard that any others are proposed. Wwheaton (talk) 22:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Organization of the "Purpose" section

I am starting this section not re. the organization of the article, but as a place to try to break the Edit warring section above [now in Archive 9, Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)] into more manageable chunks. It's probably not just a matter of listing them, but also of prioritizing a bit, since consensus reached on some issues may have implications for others, and help us to prune the tree of choices. Hoping I might actually learn some physics out of all this; we have qualified teachers here! Wwheaton (talk) 20:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Based on inputs below from Ptrslv72 (talk), we have a heading concerning the lead section of the article, two headings about the priorities and organization of the "Purpose" section, and "quark soup". Michael C. Price ^talk and others, what do you have to say? Is this a good enough breakdown to allow us to make progress? Wwheaton (talk) 07:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Opening paragraph

In the original version, the opening paragraph of the "Purpose" section pointed out that the two main broad goals of the LHC are 1) elucidate the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and 2) look for physics beyond the Standard Model. I think that this was valuable information on the physics, and opening the section with it was not redundant even if the more specific physics goals were subsequently enumerated in the bullet points. In the present version, however, this information has been replaced by somewhat vacuous (sorry, Wwheaton) sentences on the "fundamental questions", with an emphasis on quantum gravity that I find misplaced. Quantum gravity (think string theory) is indeed a fundamental issue, but the chances that the LHC will say something about it are rather slim. I would be in favour of restoring some sentences on the two main goals that I was mentioning above and of tuning down the lyrical flights on the fundamental questions. Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:42, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

If we detect, for example, SUSY that will be a boost for strings and hence quantum gravity. So I'm not clear that the LHC can't throw light on QG. Remove from initial paragraph and perhaps put in the B-list. --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I was hoping that the question of whether the discovery of SUSY at the LHC would "confirm" string theory was settled by the closing box of this article (with a quote from Witten, the Pope of strings). The real boost for strings will come if the LHC discovers extra dimensions, and this is already in the bullet list. Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:07, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I said, "boost" not "confirm". So you agree that the LHC can throw light on QG. So it should be mentioned. --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

In the context of what could be tested at the LHC through the observation of extra dimensions, quantum gravity basically overlaps with string theory, which is already mentioned in the bullet point. I might be wrong, but I am not aware that any of the very embryotic alternatives to string theory predicts the existence of extra dimensions. We could specify that string theory is a (some would say the only) consistent theory of quantum gravity, but that is already mentioned in the very first sentence of the string theory article (which is hyperlinked) and I don't see the need to weigh down the bullet point. Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if we should table the lead section re-work until we have better clarity about how the "Purpose" section is going to come out? My first impulse is that the lead section should have roughly three paragraphs, one defining a coarse-grained picture of what the LHC is and does (and why it matters, very broadly), one describing the physical machine, also in the broadest technical strokes, and one mentioning other matters, such as its current status, maybe some gee-whiz material, and other stuff of immediate interest culled from later sections of the article (where they presumably will be covered in more detail). That is, it should be a precis of the larger article. But it seems to me it should not be battled over too much until we have a better agreement about the key "Purpose" section, at least, and maybe even some of the following ones. Wwheaton (talk) 16:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I am referring here to the opening paragraph of the "Purpose" section, not to the lead. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Let's focus just on Purpose then. Wwheaton (talk) 22:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

"A-list" and "B-list" topics

I find the separation of issues into "fundamental questions" and "other questions" somewhat arbitrary. Some physicist's fundamental question is another's side issue. For example, I guess that some people (starting from those who work on LHCb) would have a hard time accepting that the concrete problems of flavour and CP are much less urgent than the question of whether there are extra dimensions at the TeV scale. I would regroup all the issues in one list, and convey an (inevitably subjective) estimate of their importance through their ordering. Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course people who work on a topic lack perspective in its relative importance, that's only natural. I say keep the distinction. Why make implicit what is obvious, namely that some topics are more important than others? --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

This is hard. We are going to have to list purposes somehow, and it seems to me that the order (and space devoted to each) inevitably says something about the editors' judgment about their relative importance. So there is no way we are going to be able to please everyone, yet we must do something. Also, I hate to have the key purposes just give undefined jargon if there is any way to present a little more information to the non-expert reader, a few clues as to what is meant. So the more important bullets may need a short paragraph to describe them. Then maybe we will just want to mention some less-crucial issues in an unbulleted paragraph, of undefined but wikilinked items. Whatever we do, it is going to seem arbitrary to some.

Is everyone agreed that there needs to be an introductory paragraph to the "Purpose" section (probably introducing the point we start fron, the standard model, as remarkably successful, yet incomplete), and that the first bullet ought to be devoted to something about completion of the standard model, which I imagine might have three main outcomes:

1. Most boring possibility: Higgs is found more or less as expected, confirming the SM with no big surprises; or
2. Higgs is found, but with enough surprises to imply significant modifications/extensions BSM; or
3. No Higgs found, with major upset of expectations about the SM, requiring rethinking everythings.

Is this anything like a satisfactory focus for the first bullet? It will surely need at least as much space as the two sentences it no has. Wwheaton (talk) 09:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

For what concerns the introductory paragraph of the section, the pre-edit-war version read:

It is anticipated that the collider will either demonstrate or rule out the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, the last unobserved particle among those predicted by the Standard Model. Experimentally verifying the existence of the Higgs boson would shed light on the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, through which the particles of the Standard Model are thought to acquire their mass. In addition to the Higgs boson, new particles predicted by possible extensions of the Standard Model might be produced at the LHC. More generally, physicists hope that the LHC will help answer key questions such as: [list of key questions].

This did not seem too bad to me. But we might as well rephrase it in a way that gives more emphasis to the EWSB mechanism, e.g.:

It is anticipated that the collider will shed light on the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, through which the elementary particles of the Standard Model are thought to acquire their mass. In particular, the collider will either demonstrate or rule out the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, the last unobserved particle among those predicted by the Standard Model. In addition, new particles predicted by possible extensions of the Standard Model might be produced at the LHC. More generally, physicists hope that the LHC will help answer key questions such as: [list of key questions].

Note that if we mention SM and EWSB in the introductory paragraph we should shorten the first bullet accordingly. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 18:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Having a long intro to bullet points is self-defeating. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Why? Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:24, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Quark soup issue

The wording "quark soup" (just like "particle smasher") is not used in the scientific literature, only in popularizing articles and children stories. I don't see why we should dumb down our language like this, especially when, as Wwheaton points out, "quark soup" and "quark-gluon plasma" are equally obscure to the real layman. Michael linked this website in support of his thesis, but I see a huge difference between using the word 'soup' (in quotation marks) in an extended sentence such as "ALICE will explore conditions in the first instants of the universe, a few microseconds after the Big Bang, when matter was in its primordial state, a 'soup' of quarks and gluons", and summarizing the topic in a bullet point such as "What was the nature of the quark soup in the early universe?". Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:42, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, note that in the Wiki article on QCD matter (to which both quark matter and quark soup redirect) the word 'soup' is never used. The same happens in the Wiki article on Quark gluon plasma. Obviously the authors of those articles did not share Michael's taste for soup (sorry, I could not resist this ;-). Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

"Quark soup" is more accessibe. And note that "quark-gloun plasma" is technically inaccurate; it should really be "leptoquark photon-gluon-X-Y-W-Z plamsa" or something depending which GUT you prefer. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:08, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea of what you are talking about, and neither do you, I suspect. Quark-gluon plasma is made of quarks and gluons, and this is what ALICE is going to study. A few microseconds after the big bang, as in the sentence quoted above, the temperature of the Universe was of the order of 100 MeV and the abundance of any heavy particle was negligible. See Quark epoch if you don't trust my judgment. However, if you really think that you are right I suggest that you write to CERN and to the rest of the scientific community and tell them that everybody but you is being "technically inaccurate". BTW, adding "quark soup" to the Quark gluon plasma article to counter the comment above seems quite pathetic to me. Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:38, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Where does the 100 MeV come from? ALICE is reaching 2.76 TeV per nucleon, which makes it around a TeV per quark plus associated qluons. Doesn't that imply ALICE is reaching back into the electroweak era? --Michael C. Price ^talk 17:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

~100 MeV (or, to be more precise, 173 MeV) is the temperature at which the quarks and gluons deconfine, and you have the phase transition between hadronic matter and quark-gluon plasma. It is roughly the temperature of the Universe 10^-6 seconds after the Big Bang, which is what is mentioned in the webpage I was referring to. The actual temperature of quark-gluon plasma at the LHC is ~700 MeV (see slide 5 of this talk), a bit higher but in the same ballpark. What you are missing is that 2.76 TeV per nucleon does not make 1 TeV per quark. A high-energy nucleon can be seen as a collection of many free partons (quarks and gluons) each of which may carry only a small fraction of the original momentum. Only few of these partons will be involved in each collision, and they will also split and emit other partons, further diluting their momentum. The temperature of the collision is roughly the average energy of each parton in the final state, and it can be much smaller than 1 TeV. Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Still unable to resist the assumption of technical incompetence, I see. FYI I understood all those terms, I just I got my GeV and MeV mixed up. Even at the lower energies photons and leptons are present, so it is still a quark-lepton-photon-gluon plasma, of course. And BTW, it's not pathetic to add a name to an article if a redirect points there. And since I didn't raise the matter here, I can't see what your complaint is about, or are you just trying to beef about everything I do? --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's a quark-lepton-photon-gluon plasma. The quarks and gluons interact strongly, while the leptons and photons interact only electromagnetically, so I guess that the properties of quark-gluon plasma are roughly independent of the presence or absence of the leptons and photons. In fact, to be more precise than I was above, even at T~100 MeV a few stable and heavy particles must have been present in the Universe, if they now make up Dark Matter. But the point is that they were "frozen out", they essentially did not interact with the other particles, therefore they were not part of the "plasma". We are getting quite far from my field of expertise, but as I wrote above there must be a reason if everybody in the scientific community calls it the way they do, and thinking that you are the only one who saw it right is quite bizarre... Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

E-M interactions can't be ignored in nuclei, why should they be negligible in the quark soup?--Michael C. Price ^talk 17:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Because what keeps nucleons together in nuclei is not the full strong interaction, but rather the so-called nuclear force or residual strong force, which is much weaker. Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

More accessible is not a Wikipedia guideline, or as Ptrslv72 put we're not here to dumb the article down, but make it technically correct. If the article on this subject is called Quark gluon plasma, then I suggest that is what we put, and when that article is renamed to soup or leptoquark photon-gluon-X-Y-W-Z plasma then we follow suit. ^Khukri 13:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

More accessible does not mean dumbing down, which is I think a major communication problem here. --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

But it's not a term used where it matters so making it more accessible as you put it, adding terminology that isn't used except to explain to those not in the know is dumbing it down. Much like calling the Higgs boson the god particle, it's seen around in the media but anyone of any note avoids the term. ^Khukri 13:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

"Quark soup" is not comparable with "god particle". --Michael C. Price ^talk 14:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about "God Particle" but it's certainly comparable with "particle smasher", which we don't use either. Anyway, I question the assertion that "quark soup" is more accessible than "quark-gluon plasma". For those who don't know what quarks and gluons are the two wordings are equally obscure, and I don't see what we gain in using the dumb one (see Wwheaton's comment in the Edit Warring section). For those who do know what quarks, gluons and plasma are the use of "quark soup" is positively irritating. This leaves us with the sliver of readers who know what quarks and gluons are but don't know what a plasma is. I think that this kind of semi-literate (scientifically speaking) readers would be more stimulated by the proper scientific term than by the dumb metaphor, and might be interested in looking it up. BTW, if you insist so much on the composition of the "soup" (see thread above), why are you comfortable with "quark soup"? Shouldn't it rather be "quark-gluon soup"? Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Re accessiblity: you forget about the readers who've heard of quarks but not gluons. Which answers your last question as well.--Michael C. Price ^talk 15:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me we might reasonably agree to table this terminology issue, which is I see as relatively minor and peripheral, but which seems to be generating more heat than light. I think at the moment we have one pro-soup and about three anti-soup, but maybe with more time others will weigh in? Assuming we get no consensus after we cool down and (I hope) clarify the organization of the "Purpose" section, maybe we can find a compromise that is acceptable to all. Wwheaton (talk) 16:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough about terminology. I've left a couple of questions I'd be interested in seeing the answer to. --Michael C. Price ^talk 17:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Done, I hope you'll appreciate my patience ;-) Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

No, but I appreciate your answers when they are clear - which for once they have been. :-) --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I can jump upon the scales unbalance a little: I'm anti-quark-soup with some desire for consessions. Quark–gluon plasma is something that the physicists discuss about, so it is encyclopedic, when clicking on a link with "Quark–gluon plasma", you go to the article with the same name, and that name is the term that the physicists use. However, to make it more accessible, one may write a subordinate clause "popularly also called 'quark soup'", in the beginning in order to introduce the popular science readers to the topic. My sausage soup is very good but has no relations to plasma. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 16:28, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Dark Matter Issue

Before the last round of changes, the nature of Dark Matter (DM) was listed as an independent bullet point in the list of "key questions" that the LHC might help answer. Now, instead, it appears as an aside comment in the bullet about supersymmetry. My point is that, while it is true that the lightest neutralino of the minimal supersymmetric standard model is a very popular DM candidate, there are many other (non-SUSY) models for BSM physics that provide DM candidates that could be detected at the LHC. Providing a DM candidate is indeed a prime criterion in model building. In other words, the LHC could elucidate the nature of DM even if it does not discover SUSY, thus the DM issue deserves a bullet of its own. In support of this point, I pointed Michael to two review articles on "Dark Matter at the LHC" written by experts of the topic: this (see the introduction) and this (see section 3). The latter is a very popular review with nearly 700 citations. After a quick perusal, even a non-expert can see that both sources confirm my point: SUSY is just one among many theories that provide a DM candidate, DM studies are not confined to SUSY.

Michael does not seem to dispute the content of the sources that I provided, but he got entrenched on the fact that, in the NYT article of Brian Greene cited at the beginning of the section, the issue of Dark Matter is mentioned only in connection with Supersymmetry. I tried to explain to him that a popularizing article on particle physics (even when it is good, such as the one of Brian Greene) is inevitably bound to give a partial and simplified account of the subject. I could always point (and I did) to other newspaper articles in which the various topics are weighted differently and Dark Matter is mentioned independently of SUSY, but I don't think that this approach would take us anywhere. We should rather rely on our knowledge of the wider picture - as long as it is supported by scientific sources - to agree in the talk page on how much weight we should give to this or that topic. And while it is true that the references in the article should not be technical, there is nothing wrong in referring to the scientific literature in a discussion behind the scenes among people who profess to know what they are talking about. Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:42, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I am just adding a comment to prevent the section from being archived. Incidentally, since there has been no reaction whatsoever on the dark matter issue (above) I am inclined to implement the change I was suggesting. Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:00, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

In the absence of any reaction, I am going to restore Dark Matter as an independent bullet point. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:21, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Good, thanks. We don't want to lose this thread. Maybe we should go to 90 days, or even 6 months for the archive interval? It really looks silly when the last comment on a thread is over a year old, but this one has several of us still very interested in it, just busy. Wwheaton (talk) 17:35, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Most expensive?

"With a 9 billion dollar budget, the LHC is the most expensive scientific experiment in human history" Does this take into account inflation? What about the Manhattan Project, which is $22 billion in today's money? --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:29, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The Manhattan Project was surely not a scientific experiment, it was a weapons development program. The International Space Station might be a better rival for the claim, though it is not a single experiment and (in my opinion) not primarily about science at all, any more than the Apollo Program was (which was also more expensive than LHC). The Hubble Space Telescope may be the closest rival, though it has had many instruments installed and replaced during its life. Wwheaton (talk) 03:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The LHC is not a 'single' experiment by your criteria. It is a group of experiments that use similar equipment. Each experiment uses a different set of detectors and a different materials that are being studied. I would agree that Apollo doesn't count, and neither does the Manhattan project; one was about exploration and the second about a weapon and science was secondary. On the other hand I would say the ISS DOES count at least until it is used for something other than science experiments, and the Hubble DEFINITELY counts. You say "though it has had many instruments installed and replaced during its life." Are you claiming this isn't true about the LHC?

I'm going to change it to read "the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific experiments in human history." I know its nit picky, but this an inaccuracy that has the potential to be quickly spread AND hurt wikipedia.--Tmckeage (talk) 20:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Cost

I disagree with this statement:

"With a budget of 9 billion US dollars (approx. €6300M or £5600M as of Jan 2010), the LHC is the most expensive scientific experiment in human history.[48]"

The use of the word experiment in the singular to refer to the 6 major detectors and dozens or hundreds of adjunct experiments is incorrect. The LHC is the most expensive particle accelerator ever built, but its cost is spread over many experiments, making the statement likely to be false.

However, I don't have time to research other, more expensive experiments, so I won't be making the edit. I'm sure someone will google something up.
198.207.0.5 (talk) 22:40, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

You are correct that the LHC is a collection of experiments, but without a source of individual costs we are left with this overall claim (the collider appears to be 4 times the cost of the detectors). It is sourced, via note [48], to Agence Science-Presse's 2009-12-09 post. The supporting quote is "« l’expérience » scientifique la plus coûteuse de l’histoire récente". Maybe reword it to

• "Press have referred to the LHC as the most expensive science experiment in history at a cost of 9 billion US dollars (approx. €6300M or £5600M as of Jan 2010)."

A google of "most expensive experiment -wikipedia" gives results almost all referring to the LHC (but this points to ITER). List of experiments omits the LHC but includes possible runners-up. -84user (talk) 15:12, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Ugh, I didn't notice there were two discussions on this page about this. I made a slight change without reading this section. I still think it's a good compromise change until some sort of consensus is built. I don't really like refering to the LHC as an 'experiment.' I see it more as a piece of equipment. A test tube isn't an experiment. --Tmckeage (talk) 17:10, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

It's really a facility, rather like a major telescope, at which various experimental investigations can be done. As with the earlier discussion of "largest machine", the real issue is the ambiguity of language: what is a "machine", or an "experiment"? I think we should avoid trying to resolve such issues, make our claims modest enough to be uncontroversial, and let Guinness deal with such arguments. Wwheaton (talk) 00:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Why is the headline cost in dollars with approxinmate conversion to euros and sterling? Shouldn't this be Euros or SFr (as it's actually in (under) France and Switzerland and then converted to dollars and sterling if necessary. Confusingly everything else is listed in SFr. I've removed the annoying repetition of million, billion and francs as per WP:MOS and converted the headline amounts to bn not 1,000M. I've used SFr and not CHE for Swiss Francs as it follows on from everything else. _{talk to}^{spy on} K^ae 12:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Reason for extra mesons

Has anyone come up with a theory that would explain why higher than expected numbers of mesons were produced? Perhaps there's some undiscovered particle out there that's somehow causing the production of excess mesons? Stonemason89 (talk) 01:09, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

What are you talking about exactly? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:42, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe this is the paper "Transverse-momentum and pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in pp collisions at √s=0.9 and 2.36 TeV", by the CMS collaboration, arXiv 1002.0621v2, which reports an excess of K⁰ meson production over expectations. The paper does not speculate as to the reason for the excess, as far a I can see. Wwheaton (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The paper does not report an excess of K⁰ mesons. It reports a moderate (~10%) excess in the production of charged hadrons (i.e. the combination of charged pions, charged kaons and protons) at 2.36 TeV with respect to the predictions of two Monte-Carlo programs used to simulate the results. However, a 10% discrepancy is really nothing to lose sleep about, since the calculations implemented in big Monte-Carlo codes are not exceedingly refined (in the interest of speed of calculation). Indeed, programs such as PYTHIA have free parameters whose values are not derived from theoretical calculations but are adjusted to fit the observations. Those parameters were tuned to the results obtained at lower energies, and they happened not to describe perfectly the results obtained at higher energies. They will be re-tuned to fit the results at 2.36 TeV and it will be interesting to see how well they predict the results obtained at 7 TeV.

I had a long discussion with the editor Oldnoah, who wanted to mention this paper in the safety article because he thought that the results (quote) "might actually suggest a plausible mechanism for strangelet production". Go figure. His reasoning is roughly: "some of those charged hadrons in excess are kaons, therefore strange quarks are produced more easily than previously thought, therefore strangelet production is more likely than previously thought". I argued that this is unsourced speculation, if you want the details you can check the thread that I linked above, as well as some portions of the subsequent thread. Eventually Oldnoah gave up - at least for the time being - characterizing this result as a safety issue, but he insisted to include it in the LHC article (the mention of kaons might be a residue of his strangelet agenda). In my opinion, we can leave it there as long as it is the first and only result from the LHC, but soon we will be swamped by little results like this and we will have to apply a selection. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 18:32, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

what is a 'large hadron'?

please be specific CorvetteZ51 (talk) 09:38, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

It is a large collider of hadrons, not a collider of large hadrons. ― ___A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 09:57, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Analogous to a large ant-eater. From an ancient BC comic strip:

First character, BC or Thor I guess, says, "I've discovered a new animal, but I don't know what to call it."

Second character says, "What does it do?"

First replies, "Eats ants."

Second speaker, "Well?"

First speaker (striking brow), "Of course! An eat-anter!"

Wwheaton (talk) 22:18, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed New Section?

Attempted vandalism

• Bread crumbs cause overheating: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49304173,00.htm
• Hackers: http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/818
• Man claims he's from the future to stop the LHC: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49305387,00.htm
• CERN compared to Black Mesa from the Games Half Life: http://gamersushi.com/2008/09/10/cern-is-black-mesa/

-Kylelovesyou (talk) 15:20, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

As for the third article, have you noticed its date? "the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening." Er... ― ___A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 13:20, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Simple Question

If the particles in the collider travel at 99.9999% the speed of light, what is that relative to? The only thing that ultimately makes sense to me is the CMB. And if any point on the surface of the earth is rotating at .45km/s and the earth is orbiting the sun at 281km/s, and the sun is orbiting the center of the galaxy at 550km/s, and the galaxy is moving at over 1,000km/s relative to the CMB then aren't the particles moving faster than the speed of light?98.221.254.154 (talk) 03:30, 24 April 2010 (UTC)kgb

The speed is relative to the earth (the measuring instruments, to be precise). Also, when dealing with very high velocities, you should use the velocity addition formula, by which no two velocities <c can add to give a velocity >c. SPat ^talk 04:31, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

And when both beams have the same energy and opposite directions in the "laboratory" frame of reference, then it's also the CoM frame, which is typically the one which makes most sense to use in these situations. ― ___A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 09:51, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

BTW, article talk pages are supposed to be for discussing improvements to articles; for questions like that, there's the Reference Desk. ― ___A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 09:54, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

OK then simply don't add them. Just take the frame of refernce of the CMB and then calculate the speed of the particles in the collider. that would be faster then the speed of light, no? by using the frame of reference of the earth you are ignoring the actual speed of the particles through real space. your explanations seem to not address my question, but rather skirt the issue. 98.221.254.154 (talk) 00:26, 26 April 2010 (UTC)kgb

No, it wouldn't. As SPat said, you have to use the velocity addition formula, and if the speed of the particles with respect to the lab and the speed of the lab w.r.t. the CMB are both less than c, the result will also be less than c. (The rapidities, defined as artanh(v/c), are additive – at least for parallel velocities, but the speeds aren't.) ― ___A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 09:19, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the speed of the particles with respect to the lab. I'm talking about the speed of the particles with respect to the CMB only. if you're travelling in a car going 50mph and you shoot a gun in the same direction you are travelling and the bullet leaves the gun at 1000mph, then wouldn't you add the two together, because the gun is already travelling at 50mph? if not why not?165.212.189.187 (talk) 15:28, 26 April 2010 (UTC)kgb

Again, read the article velocity addition formula which has already been pointed to you twice. If u and v are much less than c (e.g. 1000 mph and 50 mph), the resulting speed is very nearly u + v (about 1049.999999999883 mph in this case), but if u and/or v are close to c the result is significantly different (e.g. if u = 0.999999991111c and v = 400 km/s, the resulting speed is about 0.999999991134c). ― ___A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 15:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

OK so then the speed of the particles in the collider is 99.99999% the speed of light and the point in the earth where the collider is is moving at 0.6% the speed of light what would their speed be relative to the CMB? also, as the direction of the particles change their speeds also change becausethe galaxy is moving in a biasd direction, right?[Special:Contributions/165.212.189.187|165.212.189.187]] (talk) 17:50, 26 April 2010 (UTC)kgb

The purpose of this page is to discuss improvements to the article. Anonymous editor, please move the discussion to your talk page (or - better - read a textbook on special relativity). Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 07:38, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Figures when I ask a question that you cant answer you cop out. could you just answer the Qs and I wont bother you anymore, thanks.165.212.189.187 (talk) 14:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)kgb

I'm sorry the talk pages are not here to answer your personal questions. These pages are to discuss the article and it's content. If you wish to include content to the article you are more than welcome to discuss these additions here so long as they can be reliably sourced. You have already been pointed to both the article that explains your query and the reference desk, and the previous editors have been gracious enough to point you in the right direction, and it's ungracious to say they copped out when it seems you may not have understood the answer. As Ptrslv72 said above if you wish to have further discussion not related to this article please use yours or other editors talk pages, though I would suggest the reference desk personally as other editors are less obliged to answer your questions. Regards ^Khukri 14:53, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Is it so darn hard to take the formula in the article which has been repeatedly pointed out to you, to plug in 99.99999%c for u and 0.6%c for v, and compute the result? ― ___A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 14:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Not at all, I didn't realize it was that simple, thanks. 165.212.189.187 (talk) 18:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

New paragraph on Luminosity

An anonymous editor has added a paragraph to the Timeline section, mentioning that the LHC is still operating far below its design luminosity:

Although the LHC is now operating at half of its design energy, it is far from fully operational. In particular, it is still operating far below its design luminosity of 1034cm−2s−1;[46] as of April 2010[update] beams are made of 2 bunches of 10 billion protons each, and less tightly focused than the target of 2808 bunches of 115 billion each. This is expected to increase to 3 bunches per beam shortly,[47], with tighter focus, but progress to the "nominal" beam will still take well into 2011.[48]

While I think that it is definitely a good idea to mention the luminosity issue, I am a bit uneasy with the fact that two of the cited references, i.e. 46 and 47, appear to come from a private blog, and the correctness of the information that they contain is not verified. One might be excused for suspecting that the anonymous editor is using Wikipedia for promoting his own (or some friend's) blog, and anyway we should ask ourselves if a private blog can be considered a reliable source. What do the other editors think about this? Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 07:50, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:OR and I think the information on the number of current bunches is completely wrong, I'll ask here. ^Khukri 08:01, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Before this technical stop they had upto 10 bunches and had tried up to 1e11 protons, and higher luminosities etc. It's changing all the time, so to actually quantify here means it will be continually be being updated. I would just find a reliably sourced article that just says when they expect to have the designed beam characteristics or just state that it's under testing and building up to it's designed limit as would be expected with a new machine. I think saying something is fully operational would be a misnomer as it's operational and producing usable physics, and it's operational performance will always change, i.e. a car doesn't always drive at it's maximum speed, at the moment it's running in and tuning, this shouldn't infer that this is unexpected. ^Khukri 15:03, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice to find a good source on luminosity. Afaik the info with the blog source was correct and it's fairly important as the luminosity determines how soon they can find something. They've talked about trying to get 1 inverse femtobarn before the end of 2011; there should be some official source to this. 213.243.163.221 (talk) 14:41, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Map?

Can a scale be added to the map, please? I know the text says that the collider main ring is 27km across, but it'd be nice to see that on the maop. Also, the ring crosses and recrosses the French-Swiss border, but these borders aren't obvious on the map. (If one looks closely the border *is* there, just not labelled as such). PeterC (talk) 01:06, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Circumference about 27 km, diameter ~ 27/pi ~ 8.5 km, about 5 miles. Wwheaton (talk) 04:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Opening sentence energy units usage - seems to self contradict

Part of the introductory sentence seems to contradict itself when converting betwwen Tev and microjoules. i.e. "at an energy of 7 trillion electronvolts (1.12 microjoules) per particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 5.74 TeV (92.0 µJ) per nucleus" The ratio between 7 trillion elctronvolts to 1.12 microjoules is about 6.25 to 1. The ratio of 5.74 Tev to 92 microjoules is about 0.0624.

Based on the definition of the electron volt on another wikipedia page

the electron volt (symbol eV; also written electronvolt[1][2]) is a unit of energy equal to approximately 1.602×10−19 J.

i.e. 574 Tev = 574 * 10+12 * 1.602 × 10−19 J = 920 * 10-7 J = 92 microJoules, it looks as though 5.74 Tev is not 92 microJoules, but 0.92 .

While I am fairly sure it should read "at an energy of 7 trillion electronvolts (1.12 microjoules) per particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV (92.0 µJ) per nucleus" I thought it safer to raise this for discussion in case I have misunderstood which figure needs to be corrected to make the ratios consistent. 81.96.94.168 (talk) 09:00, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much for bringing this up, it was changed with this edit two days ago. I have reverted it back to the correct version. Regards ^Khukri 09:24, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Fear of LHC

You mention several books talking about the LHC in a fictional story. You don't seem to be aware of the initial story "thrice upon a time" by Robert Hogan that included a black hole forming super collider that was using Hg nuclei instead of the proposed Pb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrice_Upon_a_Time. My thought is if you are going to mention authors, Hogan beat all others by 30 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SparkyVA (talk • contribs) 04:16, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Any science results yet?

Does anyone know how much science has been done on the LHC? Are there any news/results worth mentioning yet?--Citedegg (talk) 09:32, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The machine has been running and producing data since November last year with 'big' collisions since March. The data will take along time to go through, but starting up a machine like this the physicists/operators will need to verify what has already been found before with previous experiments, things like W & Z bosons etc, basically running the machine through it's paces before they start looking for and announcing the news everyone wants to hear. Cheers ^Khukri 10:15, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, the different collaborations have already published a few articles (or contributions to conference proceedings) on physics results from the early data. You can browse among the papers from ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb. However, as Khukri writes, the current results mostly concern bread-and-butter physics that has already been probed by other experiments. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I see that an editor added to the section a sentence with the links to SPIRES that I gave above. I am inclined to remove it because 1) they are technical papers that do not fit the encyclopaedic standard of Wikipedia; 2) not all the papers shown concern physics results, most of them concern the performance of the various parts of the detectors (hence the wording "browse among" in my sentence above); 3) to shorten the list I put a arbitrary cut to show only papers from 2010. We can always give references to individual papers when we describe actual results (such as the much-hyped excess in charged-particle multiplicity in the paragraph immediately above that sentence). Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:32, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, when specific results are announced they should be directly linked. Readers come here to see if there's any results, not to browse through scientific paper, as you say not necessarily linked to the physics, in the hope of finding out for themselves. Maybe a line could be added that the only releases so far are of a technical nature and for existing science. Cheers ^Khukri 14:42, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Does the article say anywhere that W and Z bosons have been produced? I read it in the (much despised) media but not here. I read in the media that W' and Z' are hoped for "in a few months" (which probably means 2011?) but nothing about it here. --Michael C. Price ^talk 14:51, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I am skeptical about the feasibility of keeping up with all the small announcements that are being - and will be - made in the early phase of the LHC running, which is why I was not enthusiastic about the mention of the charged-hadron excess in the first place. But if you find a decent source for a sentence on the W and Z bosons, suit yourself. As to the W' and Z', the characterization that they are "hoped for" in a few months seems a bit over the top. The point with W' and Z' is that they would be very easy to see even with a limited amount of statistics, because they can decay in two very energetic leptons. That's why, if they exist, they could be seen in a few months. However, that is a gigantic if, as it requires that the gauge group of the SM be extended not far from the weak scale. In summary, W' and Z' are just one among many candidates for physics beyond the Standard Model. It would be great if they were found right now, but I don't think that many people really expect that. However, again if you find a decent source, it might be worth adding a sentence after

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.

to the effect that some extensions of the SM predict phenomena that could be seen much more quickly than the Higgs and the superpartners. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:31, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Since anything I add would no doubt not be acceptable to you (I speak from experience, sadly), perhaps you should add it? I can't be the only reader here who is frustrated by the lack of news in this article, which exists elsewhere scattered higgledy piggledy across the media. --Michael C. Price ^talk 15:47, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

After a quick search, the best source I found on the potential for early discoveries of new physics at the LHC is this blog. Incidentally, it says that most of the parameter space available for Z' discovery in the early run of the LHC is already ruled out by Tevatron... Anyway, I am not sure that a personal blog from a semi-anonymous physicist would be an appropriate source for WP. The technical papers 0909.1320 and 0909.5213 mentioned in the blog wouldn't be appropriate either. Where did you find your "hoped for in a few months" claim? Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:59, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Have a look at the 2nd link in Further Reading in W' and Z' bosons. --Michael C. Price ^talk 19:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I see. In principle the source would be good for Wikipedia, but I am reluctant to cite this story in view of the problem that I mentioned above, i.e. that only a very tiny sliver of the parameter space accessible to the early LHC is not already ruled out by previous experiments. I'll think about it (not now) and look for the elusive compromise between accessibility and correctness... Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:58, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Megaprojects and Les Horribles Cernettes

Do we really need the two Megaproject links in the "see also" section? I'm inclined to remove them as their connection to particle physics seems quite tenuous to me, but I would like to hear from other editors. Incidentally, I would remove also the link to Les Horribles Cernettes. They are indeed a funny band, but the information in that article does not further in any way the understanding of LHC-related issues. We might consider moving them to the "popular culture" section if some editor feels that they are notable enough not to be removed altogether. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I see that Khukri reacted faster-than-light ;-) What do you think of the Cernettes? Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It's a WP:SPA by the looks of it, but I don't have time to chase all of the megaproject edits etc, so I just reverted here. I've seen the cernettes a number of times and know a couple of the girls, but I hardly think the article or the link here is notable and won't scream if it's removed, and not sure if the article would survive an AFD to be honest. Cheers ^Khukri 13:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Multiple reviews; they're notable. --Michael C. Price ^talk 20:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes your idea of notability is a bit weird. Anyway, as I wrote above, if you really want to keep the link you should put it in "Popular culture" with appropriate context (good luck with that). Linking the page in "see also" is just lazy. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 00:36, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

No, my idea of notability follows directly from WP policy. You're using notability - incorrectly - to exclude stuff you don't like. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:57, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Although it was me who suggested yesterday to move the Cernettes to the "Popular Culture" section, I am having second thoughts about it. We don't need to discuss here whether the fact that the Cernettes were in a 1998 article on NYT (the rest is local stuff or blogs) makes them notable enough to warrant an article on Wikipedia. It depends on a somewhat subjective interpretation of notability (see above) and frankly I don't care. What we should discuss, however, is whether the article needs to be linked in the LHC article, and where.

There is no doubt in my mind that it was out of place in the "See also" section. That kind of section should link to articles on LHC-related topics that can further the understanding of the broader subject (particle physics, accelerators, etc). The link to the International Linear Collider fits perfectly the purpose, while the link to the Cernettes is just random trivia.

This takes us to the question of whether the link should be in the "Popular Culture" section. Precisely to avoid getting swamped by a collection of random trivia, we set the bar for inclusion in that section very high. If you look at the other stories mentioned, we have a movie and a TV show that attracted huge media attention as well as official reactions from CERN, and a Youtube video with over six million views. The Cernettes with their 1998 NYT article are clearly not in the same league, and I am concerned that - if we leave them there - a lot more editors will start again pushing their own book or song or videogame that they think was inspired by the LHC.

Another issue is how the Cernettes story is actually related to the Large Hadron Collider itself, beyond the acronym (I do get it Michael, you are not the only one who can read initials) and the fact that the ladies are CERN employees. Indeed, it seems to me that the story would be more at home in a collection of trivia about CERN, as its main interest is that it shows how CERN people like to have a good time after work. But again, CERN also has football tournaments (indoor and outdoor), the "Hardronic festival", the Christmas play, and so on. All of them must have been mentioned one time or another in the CERN courier or in the Geneva newspapers (which to my recollection publish front-page stories such as "A big dog ate a smaller dog in fronts of horrified owners" or "The mayor of Lausanne admits that he first had sex at the age of 40") but we don't feel the need to link them in the LHC article.

In summary, I think that the Cernettes link does not belong in the "Popular Culture" section either, and if it was up to me I would remove it altogether. As a matter of fact, the baguette bird incident was more relevant than this story (it was in the media as well, and at least it was about the LHC) but most of us agreed that it did not belong in the article. However, the issue is not really urgent and Michael for one appears to have different sensibilities, so I would rather hear what the other editors think before touching anything. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:21, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ptrslv72, I feel sorry for you, I really do. --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:59, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

huh? Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:10, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Let's keep the subject on topic without the ad hominums or judgement on the editors please Michael "Comment on content, not on the contributor." I struggle to see how it's note worthy in comparison to the LHC in general, and micheal's reversion comment of multiple sources I find slightly generous. The Wired source could be considered notable, but the others are CERN internal sources and do not imply notability. I believe if you think the subject of the LHC is enhanced by the addition on a paragraph of a staff band then so be it, but personally I think the article could do with improvements in so many other areas than antagonistic difference of positions on whether this article needs this section, but then again we all have our priorities. ^Khukri 14:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I can't believe we're having this conversation, but is the NYT notable enough? Or the Herald Tribune? --Michael C. Price ^talk 14:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

IHT reprints the articles of NYT (believe me, I am a subscriber) so I guess that we are still talking of one single article from 1998. Again, read what I wrote above: we are not discussing whether the Cernettes deserve their own WP article. We are discussing whether they belong in the "Popular Culture" section (or anywhere else) in the LHC article. I wrote down for the other editors the reasons why I don't think so, and so far the only argument that you provided is the acronym remark in your first edit summary. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:58, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Since the link to the LHC is clear, what you're really asking is whether a notable pop group is part of popular culture. --Michael C. Price ^talk 15:12, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

No, I am asking if it passes the threshold for the Popular Culture section of the LHC article. In my - and other editors' - opinion, a lot of pop stuff which is more or less tenuously linked to the LHC doesn't pass it (just browse through the archives for the many discussions on the topic). But it's clear that you don't share this point of view. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

You're right I don't share your view. But I am bored of talking to you, and listening to your verbose narrow-minded opinions on what should be here. Another, less talkative, editor has constructively updated the Cernettes entry, so that counts as a vote for retention. Over and out. --Michael C. Price ^talk 15:54, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ooooh, I'm sorry - I thought that discussing proposed changes before implementing them was a proper WP policy, I did not realize it would be considered boring... Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:06, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

It was discussed, and then you changed your mind. Remember? Such a waste of time. --Michael C. Price ^talk 16:11, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't recall you participating in the discussion before reverting my edit. And about changing my mind, well, Wikipedia is always a work-in-progress. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:15, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

You can add my (add any other italics highlights you feel necessary) POV, and following the relevant guidelines including consensus, reading the archives ptrslv32 with a number of other editors who have participated over the years in this article, this has been pretty much achieved and I think you are at odds with this. ^Khukri 17:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Khukri, please point me to the consensus about the Cernettes in the archives.--Michael C. Price ^talk 19:10, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Erm this paragraph, and this includes in popular discussions in general that you may find in the archives if you wish to look. ^Khukri 20:14, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

That's what I thought; so it's 2-2. --Michael C. Price ^talk 20:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

<edit conflict>Ah see this is where you are mistaken Michael, in your personal attacks on ptrslv72 you seem to think this is a point scoring exercise between the two of you. I was talking about concensus, at the moment it's 2 - 1 ptrslv72 and myself disagreeing with yourself, and if you care to look in the archives you will see in popular culture has been brought up numerous times by various editor as the popularity of the LHC has waxed and waned, and what constitutes a notable liaison or not, and those discussion are also pertinant here. Regards ^Khukri 20:25, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

No, that isn't what I meant, Khukri. 3-2 now, BTW (hint: how many people have made retentive edits to the Cernettes' entry? And how many have removed them?).--Michael C. Price ^talk 21:02, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, Michael has this rule that every editor who changes the article without removing his edits altogether agrees with him. I'll ask Headbomb to have a look at the discussion. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

No, just every editor that constructively edits the Cernettes' entry. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a good smear, eh? I'm quite happy with Headbomb's trimming. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I contacted Headbomb, hopefully he will read the discussion and let us know if he agrees with you. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:38, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

As I am sure you (Michael) understood by yourself, Khukri was not referring to the specific case of the Cernettes (in which BTW the "score" still appears to be 2-1) but, rather, to the consensus that has more or less emerged among the regular editors about what kind of material should make the cut for the Popular Culture section. You can check, e.g., these discussions: Videogames, "In popular culture" again, "In popular culture" AGAIN!!!", Black Mesa incident Similarities, and also these two which, although not related to the Popular Culture section, concern events that had some resonance in the media but little relevance to the LHC article: LHC being sabotaged by time travelers from the future and Bomber bird. I cite only cases posterior to my arrival in WP, but I am sure that there were others before. In all cases, it seems to me fair to say that a majority of the regular editors had a quite conservative approach to the issue of notability. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 20:56, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

If Khurki was talking generically, then it was irrelevant to the specific.--Michael C. Price ^talk 21:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

It is relevant to the specific: both Khukri and I are telling you that - when similar issues arose in the past - the majority of regular editors were opposed to including barely relevant stories in the "Popular Culture" section even if they happened to be mentioned in the press. But again, I think you understand what I mean. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:29, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

And I think they are more than barely relevant. I guess you don't understand that. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

In the spirit of compromise, we could spawn the section off into an article? --Michael C. Price ^talk 20:24, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

This has already been discussed in the past and apparently has even been tried briefly in July 2008. I think I remember somebody saying that articles such as "XY in Popular Culture" are frowned upon in Wikipedia, but I could not find the link to the relevant discussion. Personally I would not mind removing the section from the main LHC article and forgetting about it, but I am 100% sure that the spinoff article would very quickly become a dumpster unless somebody (not me) starts applying quality cuts, but then we would be back to the starting point. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 21:12, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Since I've been asked to comment here, here goes. First I didn't know there was an edit war over this stuff, and I don't care who said what to who and who's getting his/her panties all bunched up. I'm not reading through all that huff and puff and posturing that's taking place above. I can't figure what the deal is with the "megaprojects" debate is, but I don't see that linking to that article once in the see also section is out of place, but linking it twice is just stupid (unless you're talking about something different, and I'm miles off the track). Concerning the Cernettes I don't find them out of place in the IPC section and have a mild preference for having them there, but I could also live with them in the see also section as well. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:16, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

You are a few miles off the track, and perhaps devoting some of your precious time to reading the debate (or at least this edit) would have helped. Indeed, the whole huff and puff is not about the Megaprojects guy (somebody who combs through pages about big projects adding a link to his book, and was quickly dispatched). The debate is about the Cernettes and is in fact part of a long-standing issue (see the links above), i.e. what should make the cut for the "Popular Culture" section, and whether the section should be spun off the main article. Too bad that you don't want to contribute more constructively to the debate, but of course your mild preference for retention of the Cernettes counts and ties the "score". Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 09:48, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

No, not tied. 3-2. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:18, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Headbomb's case above is a prime example of the fact that people who edit a sentence on an article might not realize that it is a subject of controversy, and even if they do realize it they might not be bothered reading what the controversy is about. Therefore, assuming by default that they agree with you and counting their edit as a "vote" is disingenuous (to say the least). Please point us to an accepted WP policy supporting your claim or stop making it. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:33, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I knew you wouldn't be able to accept his statement at face value. :-) You are a very sad case. --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:27, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Read our edits again, I accepted his statement that the Cernettes belong in the Popular Culture section (hence the 2-2 tie), as well as his statements that 1) he did not realize there was a debate going on and 2) he did not want to read through the debate. Now please find an accepted WP policy supporting your claim that Phasma Felis's edit counts as a vote for you or stop claiming that the "score" is 3-2. Finally, I have to ask you to refrain from clearly uncivil statements such as "I feel sorry for you" and "you are a very sad case". Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:04, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:COMMONSENSE. --Michael C. Price ^talk 14:11, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Cheap try, you'll have to do better. If you want to break the tie with a procedural trick you must at least back it up. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

The violations of commonsense here: 1) the article was claimed to be non-notable (it actually was featured). 2) the sourcing was claimed deficient (multiple sources e.g. NYT) 3) Consensus for removal claimed (false claim). 4) grilling of supportive editors (then dismissal of said views as "not counting").

The last one is certainly the most comical. Did you really think that inquiring about whether someone really meant their edits was going to produce a negative? --Michael C. Price ^talk 14:40, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Again, what are you talking about? Your points 1-3 do not concern my edits or my statement that the Cernettes should not be linked in the LHC article. Point 4 is just your fantasy. Where did I write "not counting"? I counted Headbomb's "vote" as soon as he wrote explicitly that he supports the Cernettes in the Popular Culture section. On the other hand, I am challenging you to produce an accepted WP policy supporting your claim that a mere edit (such as Phasma Felis's) counts as a vote for you, and you keep evading the request. So far, the "score" remains 2-2. Now I must leave and - as it appears that no-one else is listening - I suggest that we adjourn the discussion. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:16, 25 September 2010 (UTC)