LHC Restarts This Week

A mere seven trillion electron volts could still find "God particle," collider scientists speculate.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is slated to be reawakened Thursday, at the earliest, LHC directors say. The reboot comes after a run at the highest energies yet for any particle accelerator—or atom smasher—and a scheduled winter break.


The Large Hadron Collider will be run at only half power, because equipment upgrades are needed before full-power operation is advisable, LHC scientists decided.

But the LHC should still be capable of some stunning discoveries, experts say—perhaps even the detection of extra dimensions or evidence of the Higgs boson, or "God particle."

Particle accelerators use electric fields to channel particles into extremely narrow, fast-moving beams. (Learn more about atom smashers.)

By colliding some of these beams, the physicists at the Large Hadron Collider hope to recreate the intense conditions just after the big bang and to solve other scientific riddles, such as the nature of dark matter, the invisible material that scientists think makes up most of the universe's mass.

Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the Large Hadron Collider is housed in an oval-shaped, 7-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border.


Large Hadron Collider: On Again, Off Again

After more than a year of repairs to fix electrical malfunctions that occurred during its initial run in September 2008, the Large Hadron Collider was restarted in November 2009.

In December scientists obtained the first scientific results from the LHC before a scheduled shutdown to save on electricity costs. (See "LHC Gets First Results; Step Toward 'God Particle'?")

Prior to the December shutdown, the Large Hadron Collider had set a new world record in high-energy physics by accelerating two beams of proton particles to 1.8 tera (trillion) electron volts (TeV) each and smashing them together, for a combined collision energy of 2.36 TeV.

Toward Full LHC Potential

Scientists have even more ambitious plans for the round beginning this week.

The current schedule calls for operating the machine at a level that would result in collisions with the energy of 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) until late 2011 or early 2012.

The Large Hadron Collider will then be shut down once again so superconducting hardware can be upgraded to support collisions of 14 TeV—the Large Hadron Collider's maximum operating energy.

The 2012 rest period should last about a year, though the LHC team is "still looking at the planning of this shutdown, to try to devise ways of reducing its length," said Paul Collier, head of the beams department at CERN.

"God Particle" Proof Possible, Even at Half Power?

Even though the Large Hadron Collider won't be operating at its full potential, there are still plenty of exciting scientific discoveries that could be made, said Dan Green, a particle physicist at Fermilab in Illinois and a member of the Large Hadron Collider's Compact Muon Solenoid experiment.

"The energy increase matters," Green said. "At 7 TeV we open up new physics searches at high masses."

Even at half power, the LHC could yield evidence backing up the theory of supersymmetry, which says all the particles we know have more massive, but as yet undetected, partners, Green said.

The collider, he said, could also uncover "states reflecting large extra dimensions" beyond the three we know: the first (often represented by a line), second (a plane), and third (a cube).

Extra dimensions are predicted by string theory, an unproven concept that suggests that subatomic particles operate like tiny vibrating cords.

Evidence for the Higgs boson, which physicists think is responsible for mass in the universe, might also be found at the Large Hadron Collider's lower energies, Green added.


That's a tall order for an apparently delicate machine, but so far the Large Hadron Collider has performed admirably during current systems checks, CERN's Collier said.

"I am very impressed with it," Collier said. "It has already proved to be very stable and reproducible," meaning that LHC-experiment results can be reproduced—a key tenet of the scientific method.

"The evidence is in the speed with which we managed to get the machine up and running for early physics runs" in late 2009.

www.news.nationalgeographic.com

Photograph courtesy Maximilien Brice, CERN

Laptop kills Canadian woman

VANCOUVER - In a freak incident, a young Canadian woman was killed by her laptop during an accident in the Indian-dominated city of Surrey near here, investigation reports said Thursday.


According to police, investigation has established that 25-year-old Heather Storey was killed when she was hit by her laptop while driving to work last month.

The unsecured laptop hit the woman’s head from behind when she had to brake hard to stop her vehicle suddenly.

Police said the impact of sudden braking sent the laptop flying and hit her in the head.

The force of the impact was so severe that it shattered the woman’s head, the laptop screen and bent its frame.

Investigators said the woman would have survived had she secured the laptop and warned people not to leave their belongings unsecured in the back of their vehicles.

Brit woman plans to marry laptop!

LONDON - A woman who plans to marry her laptop has become an internet sensation.

Hermione Way has posted a video on YouTube expressing her desire to walk down the aisle with her 17 inch MacBook Pro.


The clip shows the British technology entrepreneur take her laptop, which she calls ‘Alex,’ on a protest outside the House of Commons.

Then, the machine using typed text-to-voice converting software demands the legalisation of computer to human marriages.

The mini documentary reveals that the pair will exchange unofficial vows on January 31.

It adds that they have not spent a day apart in two years.

Also, Way’s mum Jane is present in the short film.

“We know Hermione will be happy and that’s all we ever want for her,” the Sun quoted her as saying in the video.

Way added: “The great thing is Alex doesn’t care what I look like and I can just be myself with him.

“We spend every minute together and as long as it’s not hurting anyone, why shouldn’t you be allowed to be happy?

“It is definitely love. I’ve never ever felt this way about someone. We spend a lot of time together in my bed. He’s one heck of a machine and his hard drive works perfectly.”

Way insists marriage to machine should be legalized just the same way civil partnerships for homosexuals have been made legal in the UK.

The video has attracted 30,000 views in the past week. (ANI)

Mysterious lake creature terrified kids

TERRIFIED locals in a South American town are running scared after a strange creature they describe as "Gollum" crawled out of a lake and charged schoolkids.

The beast — which has "sparked fear and confusion" in the small town of Cerro Azul, Panama — was spotted on Saturday when four 14 to 16-year-olds were playing by the waterfront.

According to their account, reported by Panamanian news service Telemetro, the youngsters "screamed" when the five-foot creature emerged from a cave and started clambouring over rocks towards them "as if to attack them".

In a "desperate bid to defend themselves" the four terrified boys said they hurled rocks at the strange creature to kill it, before throwing its corpse in the water and running away.

Their disbelieving parents returned to the lake the following day — and were stunned to discovered the beast's body washed up on the shore.

Experts have yet to examine the images — or make any statements regarding their discovery.

But locals told Panama news channels, who ran the story, that the water-monster was "Gollum from Lord of the Rings".

One said: "I have only seen that creature once before - and it was in the Tolkien film."

The fictional Gollum — originally known as Smeagol — was a hobbit whose later name was derived from the "disgusting gurgling, choking cough he made".

JRR Tolkien — who wrote the Middle Earth adventures — said of the character: "He had become deformed and twisted in both body and mind by the corruption of the Ring.

"His only desire was to possess the Ring which had enslaved him, and he pursued it for many years after he lost it."



www.thesun.co.uk

Breeding Ancient Cattle Back from Extinction

The only place to see an aurochs in nature these days? A cave painting. The enormous wild cattle that once roamed the European plains have been extinct since 1627, when the last survivor died in a Polish nature reserve. But this could soon change thanks to the work of European preservationists who are hoping they can make the great beast walk again. If they succeed — through a combination of modern genetic expertise and old-fashioned breeding — it would be the first time an animal has been brought back from extinction and released into the wild.

The aurochs was a massive creature, standing more than six feet tall at the shoulder and weighing more than a ton. It had forward-facing horns and a white stripe running down its spine. The prehistoric animal was domesticated about 8,000 years ago, but some aurochs also remained in the wild until the end of the Middle Ages, when scientists believe they became extinct due to overhunting and loss of habitat.


The hope for its resurrection now lies in its tame descendants, domesticated cattle. Here's how the process is expected to work: Scientists will first scour old aurochs bone and teeth fragments from museums in order to glean enough genetic material to be able to recreate its DNA. Researchers will then compare the DNA to that of modern European cattle to determine which breeds still carry the creature's genes and create a selective-breeding program to reverse thousands of years of evolution. If everything goes as planned, each passing generation will more closely resemble the ancient aurochs. "Everything will be put together in a genetic mosaic," says Donato Matassino, head of the Consortium for Experimental Biotechnology in Italy and one of the scientists involved in the project. "Once we have all the roads, we'll try to follow them back to Rome."

Stichting Taurus, the Dutch preservationist group leading the project, is hoping a reborn aurochs could help restore the European countryside to a more natural state. To that end, the group would eventually like to replace the domesticated cattle that currently graze in Holland's nature reserves with the recreated wild cattle. "The aurochs was part of an ecosystem," says Henri Kerkdijk, manager of the project. "If you want to recreate the flora of the ecosystem, you also have to recreate the fauna." The idea came to Kerkdijk during a trip to Africa, where he was struck by the abundance of giant herbivores, even in areas where people were living. "It just bothered me that we don't have that in Europe anymore," he says. His group has already introduced English Exmoor ponies — the closest living representatives of the wild horses painted alongside aurochs on cave walls — to the Netherlands' nature reserves. "You could also talk about recreating the giant deer," Kerkdijk says. "But there, we don't have a modern animal to work from."


The current effort isn't the first attempt to resurrect the ancient cattle. The aurochs played an important role in early German culture, and in the early 20th century the Nazi government funded an attempt to breed them back as part of its propaganda effort. The result, known as Heck cattle, may to some extent resemble the ancient aurochs, says Kerkdijk, but they're genetically quite different. "We want a breed that resembles the aurochs, not only in phenotype, but in genotype," he says. Heck cattle, for example, are more aggressive than aurochs because they were bred, in part, using Spanish fighting bulls. "They will attack without a prior threat display," says Kerkdijk. "When I'm in Africa, herbivores won't attack me. They give some type of warning: Back off, one step further or you're dead meat."


Other groups are also trying to bring different animals back from extinction through breeding. In South Africa, scientists are attempting to recreate the quagga, an extinct subspecies of the zebra, and in the U.S., breeders are trying to bring back a giant Galápagos tortoise that was killed off in the 1800s — a process that could take close to a century.


Back-breeding has an advantage over cloning in that it creates a whole population, rather than just an individual animal. Last year, Spanish scientists used cloning to successfully recreate an ibex that disappeared in 2000, and in Poland another group is trying to clone the aurochs using DNA from bone and teeth samples. But for a species to survive once it's brought back to life, it must have enough genetic variability to reproduce. "A population needs to be adaptive," says Johan van Arendonk, a professor of animal-breeding and genetics at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, adding that the Dutch project probably needs to produce at least 100 animals to succeed in the long term.


That's not the only obstacle. Recreating the aurochs from modern cattle won't work if any of its DNA was lost as breeds split apart, experts say. And it will take a lot of time. "The only way we can make recombinations is by having the animals produce a new generation," says van Arendonk. "It's still a very open question if it all can be done.

time.com By STEPHAN FARIS

Denmark Leads Europe's Electric-Car Race

An electric-car race is under way in Europe and countries are rushing out their plans for the future — each one more ambitious than the last — in an effort to prove who's the greenest of them all. Spain aims to have 1 million electric or hybrid cars on the road by 2014 (though it hasn't specified how many of each). Britain is trying to persuade Japanese automaker Nissan to make its Sunderland plant the European base for its little electric car the Leaf, and London plans to have 25,000 charging stations hooked up to the grid by 2015. France has put big money into building a countrywide network of charging stations, as well as a plant to produce electric-car batteries. Not to be left out, Portugal is gearing up to be one of the first markets for Renault-Nissan's electric cars in 2011.

Are all these plans feasible? Most of Europe's projects have hardly left the racing pits. Vehicle production by a major automaker won't start for at least a year or so. Renault looks set to be the first off the line, with plans to roll out four mass-market models in 2011 and 2012. And then there's the problem of the lack of a universal charging standard — European countries have yet to agree on a single plug and socket for electric cars, a process that could take years. And some analysts still question whether there will be enough demand for the vehicles — and if governments will pony up the necessary financial incentives to make them attractive to buyers.


One country, however, appears to be better prepared than the others: Denmark. The biggest Danish power company has partnered with a California start-up company, Better Place, to build a nationwide grid to support electric cars, composed of thousands of charging poles in towns and cities and service stations along highways where depleted batteries can be swapped for fresh ones on long trips. (They're called "switching stations.") This isn't pie-in-the-sky stuff, either — Better Place announced last week that it had raised $350 million to support the venture, one of the largest rounds of venture capital for a clean-tech company ever. (The company is also planning to build charging networks in Israel and Portugal, but its Danish project is a bit further along.)

Just as importantly, the Danish government is firmly behind the project. Late last year, it promised not to impose the normal vehicle-registration tax of 180% on electric cars until 2012 — a tax break of at least $40,000 for early buyers — and to provide drivers with free parking in downtown Copenhagen. Not only that, but the company has signed a deal with Renault to supply 100,000 cars — the company's new Fluence ZE model — to Denmark and Israel by 2016.


Jens Moberg, the head of Better Place Denmark, says the company is aiming to have the first cars on the road in Denmark by the second half of 2011. Within one year, he expects the number of vehicles to be "in the thousands," and by 2020, he believes there will be more electric cars sold in Denmark than combustion-engine cars. "We've managed our business in a responsible way and the Danish government has said we want to support this," he tells TIME. But he knows there's also an inherent risk in being first, particularly when it involves building an expensive infrastructure before any cars have been sold. "We think it's important to be ahead of the curve, but you don't want to put out charging spots in the thousands without any cars on the roads," he says.

Indeed, the chances of failure are high. Already, Better Place has run into problems with Renault over Denmark's promised tax exemptions. Last year, the former Climate and Energy Minister, Connie Hedegaard, suggested the government might extend the tax break until 2015, but months later, a decision on that has yet to be made. "If we don't get a clarification, then we at Renault want to focus on other countries for the first electric cars," head of Renault Denmark, Henrik Bang, told the Berlingske Tidende newspaper last month. Renault has since reaffirmed its commitment to the project, and Denmark's new Climate and Energy Minister has promised to resolve the issue quickly.

Still, the charging network is incredibly expensive to build. Better Place's system hinges on the switching stations, which make electric cars viable for long-distance trips and thus, more attractive to potential buyers. Here's how it works: after consumers buy their cars, the company provides them with batteries and charges them a fee to use them, based on the miles they drive. When the batteries run out of juice on long trips, drivers can replace them at switching stations in the amount of time it takes to fill a tank of gas. Better Place says the stations — which will reportedly cost about $500,000 apiece to build — will eventually stock several different batteries to accommodate all the various car models on the road.

And then there's the lack of a standardized European plug and socket. Germany, with Renault's support, is pushing its seven-point version to be the standard, but other countries have their own ideas of what the connectors should look like. "Because Europe is fragmented and countries are putting forth their cars, it's going to be more difficult to come to a federal conclusion," says Calum MacRae, an automotive expert with PricewaterhouseCoopers in London. "Obviously, if you standardize [the connectors], you bring the cost down." And when it comes to selling the public on electric cars, price will be crucial.


time.com By JUSTIN BERGMAN / LONDON

Banker caught on TV looking at topless girls instead of charts

I'm no banker but I'm pretty sure those pictures have nothing to do with endowment mortgages or bouncing cheques.

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