Friday, September 19, 2008

The Large Hadron collider, and SEC college football?

Last week I attended the physics event at the University of Oregon--of course, about the Hadron collider in Europe. One of the questions was, "what is the worst thing that could happen at the LHC?". Jim Brau's response was to the point: if the collider doesn't work, that will be the worst thing.

I wonder if we got a taste of it. Apparently a "30-ton transformer used to power cooling stations for portions of the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) gigantic superconducting magnets failed last Thursday, just one day after the LHC went online."

So, why the college football piece in the title of the post? Bizarre as it sounds, a headline that I read was "Auburn vs. LSU: SEC's early version of the Hadron Collider". It gets even stranger--the analysis employs more physics stuff:
The “Big Bang” you will hear rumble through the night air around 7:45 EST this Saturday will resonate from the epicenter of Jordan-Hare Stadium, not from Switzerland and France.
I’m not a physicist and I know very little about protons, particles, and kinetic energy but if they’re anything like these Tigers, collision is a very appropriate term to describe these two teams when they meet.

BTW, what is a hadron? Here is the explanation.

And, here is a rappin' explanation of the LHC :-)

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