Higgs Boson Discovered

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by tw

The article does not mention what has changed...

About 27,000 copper wires were added in this "For want of a nail, a collider was lost..." syndrome.

Engineers fixed the damage, replacing magnets along nearly 2,000 feet of the accelerator ring. During the recent shutdown, they made a slew of upgrades, but the most important one was just to make sure nothing blows up again. It took a year and a half for 300 people to reinforce the 10,000 connections between magnets with 27,000 pieces of copper. Now, if electric current starts to build up, the beefed-up connections will give all that energy someplace to go. The engineers also replaced 18 magnets that had worn out, upgraded electronics to make them more resistant to radiation, and added a new coating to the inside of the vacuum tube carrying the protons that should prevent stray electrons from forming a cloud that would interfere with the beam.

[Lamplighter]

Dark matter: I know it's there ... because I can't see it.



Dark matter 'ghosts' through galactic smash-ups
BBC - 3/26/15

By observing multiple collisions between huge clusters of galaxies,
scientists have witnessed dark matter coasting straight through the turmoil.

Dark matter is the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up 85% of the matter in the cosmos
- and these results rule out several theoretical models put forward to explain it.
This is because it barely interacts with anything at all, including the dark matter in the oncoming galaxies.
…
"In all of these collisions that we've seen, it just seems to go straight through.
And now we've seen loads more of them, we would have been able to detect any deceleration
of this dark matter, if it had interacted in the ways that most theories predict," Dr Massey said.

So although some theories remain, many can now be ruled out.
This includes the idea that dark matter is some sort of "dark" version of ordinary matter, made of "dark atoms".

It must be more outlandish than that, Dr Massey said.
"Basically, we're saying: Back to the drawing board!
Let's come up with some more ideas."

[tw]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

About 27,000 copper wires were added in this

Upgrades were not for averting failure. Things done to avert failure were only done because it was convenient and learned after the first run.

I believe the LHC was upgraded from 4 tera electron volts to 14 tera electron volts. IOW to eventually do what the Supercollider in TX was suppose to do over a decade ago - before Congressmen thought an International Space Station (that does almost no science) was a better investment.

LHC is upgraded to answer a larger question - supersymmetry.

When I was going up, transistor clearly was the future. Today, Quantum Physics is the future for every kid. Back then, America was doing transistor work to become worldwide dominant 20 years later. Today, Quantum Physics is being done where and by whom? Who then will have a growing standard of living?