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Good point Josch. I agree that it is important to allow all ideas to come through, even if they are wild. Even though I am pretty convinced the cause of the hump is in the tunnel (otherwise it would influence both beams, for example, not just one), I find it important to get as many ideas as possibl...

This is basic physics. The magnets are inductors. The main property of an inductor is that if you apply a voltage to them the current goes up or down. The higher the voltage, the fast the current goes up; the bigger the inductor, the slower. The arc magnets are very large inductors, and you cannot a...

Hi, I just found this cool link explaining how all the procedures (setup, commisioning, and so on) are developed: It is a programming language, adapted from a language called pnuts (which looks like Java). http://icalepcs2009.spring8.or.jp/abstract/pdf/THC003_TALK.PDF I imagine that the operators wr...

Although I think we mustn't immediately reject strange proposals, I find it unlikely that the ELF or LF has the behaviour of the hump: 2.6 to 3.7 kHz, slowly sweeping in frequency between the two in a time of 7 to 10 minutes. Also, I find it hard to believe the source would come from so far away, bu...

Good idea, maybe TIM http://www.cernlove.org/blog/2010/01/monorails/ has a microphone on it already.

In a brief conversation with PCatom I found out that the hump is still bothering the operators, and that they're working hard to find it. :? My idea was to use our collective knowledge to help the CERN people to "hunt the hump". So, if you have an idea on what the hump could be, on how the cause of ...

I like the idea; I am still a believer in democracy, just because all other systems are worse. From the experience of Wikipedia, we see that although indeed there can be a lot of controversy, it will stabilize eventually. And indeed, we do need the concept of "operator", in order to stabilize things...

It might be useful to observe this paragraph in context. - Wittgenstein had (how can I say this respectfully) problems with seeing the importance of math in relation to other facts of life. - Math indeed is not prefect, but there is no application of math (in the sense of bridges and so on) in real ...

For cool movies of collimators in action and sounds of particles hitting them, see
http://lhc-collimation-project.web.cern ... movies.htm

I love the apparent simplicity of the experiment: just use plastic foil as wallpaper, and watch closely.
You cannot see how brilliant it is until you spend some time figuring out what they are doing.

The short answer is: there are different ways to measure intensities (which is obviously hard in the first place). They have built several different instruments to do that, and these are not completely calibrated towards each other.
It was actually worse last year.

Yeah!
We can now hope for a few "accidental" collisions, but maybe they will delay the news for a good publicity moment.

A am not a physicist, but I'll try to clarilfy with what I know. If I understand it correctly, the pressure differences between the different parts of the accelerator complex will probably not cause as much "wind" as intuition would suggest. I see two reasons for that: With so little molecules, ther...

That means in plain English: "Fixing the fridge" That's all: "cryo" is short for "cryogenic system". You can imagine that it takes quite a lot of machinery to cool so much material to 1.9K. Most of the machines have to be close to the magnets: underground, that is. Since you can't go down when the m...

The 14 TeV delay was news five weeks ago:
http://ow.ly/1grwX
It amazes me how slow the newspapers can be, sometimes.