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Originally Posted by tomkinsr
Yes, it was my intent to be humorous and also to over simplify the whole effort.
As I said in my note, I did spend days reading, looking at pictures, movies and animations, so I am also aware that the machine will be hosting a number of different experiments. In fact, two of the experiments may prove to be useful in discovering Higgs Boson in addition to other things.
The amount of data to crunch will in fact be enormous. You suggest months, it could stretch into years. It is possible that they will end up using a cloud to process the large data sets, similar to the process used by SETI.
I'll bet though, that if I were a Nuclear Physicist, sitting on the edge of my seat, with baited breath, waiting for an announcement from the folks at CERN, well, I'd want to hear about Higss Boson first.
rtt
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Mostly physicists are busy baby sitting the beamline and reading outputs. If one feather touches the floor near the beamline, it will knock the beam off target and things will shut down. Most of the equipment is that delicate. Even professional astronomers cannot touch their telescopes at many observatories because the IR radiation from their bodies will upset the scope. Scientists move the scopes robotically for them.
Yet there are romantics among them as well as the pedantic type and often some are both.
Recently a British psychologist, Rita Frith, was quoted in the June 3 article of "Current Biology":
"Dr. Frankenstein is so incredibly courageous and ambitious as to want to find the secret of life. He works very hard and with great imagination, and he tragically fails...Sherlock Holmes is the opposite of romantic, and he never fails. He shows the dash of autism that may be as vital for the genius detective as it is for the genius scientist...The deeply romantic and the obsessively pedantic are both part of my image of a scientific hero".
I plucked that quote from Science News. My familiarity with particle physics comes from the study of the subject as a hobby and having physicists that have worked at Fermilab and Argonne in my astronomy club. We have been fortunate to take tours right down to the beamline at Argonne and have toured and listened to lectures at Fermilab.
http://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/~dgore/
I would think that the discovery of super particles will bring as much excitement as the Higgs. It is the surprises that will be interesting.