The last work I did in high energy physics was some classified fabrication of one of the detector structures for one of the detector strategies for the Superconducting Supercollider

http://www.hep.net/ssc/new/history/appendixa.html

shortly before the cancelation of the project 9 years ago. It was, at that time, to be the highest energy accelerator practicable on earth to yield practical data.

Has there been any other accelerator project completed outside the US of the energy potential of the SSC?



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SAMU on 2002-03-02 03:23 ]</font>

I don't know what the power levels are but the last one that I know of was at CERN in Switzerland about '94. As I recall, our SCSC was to be built to "beat" the Swiss at the collider power game.

__________________
It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

Nothing beats nature.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/ohmygodpart.html

Thanks for the link John. I'd been aware that atmospheric cosmic ray detection had been devised in the 50s but didn't know it had been developed so far by now.

SAMU

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I appologize for telling you wrong. At least I may have been wrong. But I might be wrong about that.

In the April issue of Astronomy Magazine, page 22, far left, first whole paragraph, I quote: "With the Tevatron accelerator (the world's most energetic particle accelerator) at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, the team generated billions of neutrinos...."

So, Assuming Astronomy is correct, the zing ring at Fermi Lab is the most powerful, not CERN. MY ERROR [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img]

__________________
It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

Fermilab's accelerator is capable of producing proton and anti-proton beams with an energy of 1 TeV (1000 GeV). If memory serves, the LHC that they are currently building at CERN will be capable of producing energies of 7TeV when it comes online. The SSC I believe was going to produce beams of 40TeV, obviously, way ahead of its time.

A new main injector was just commissioned at Fermilab. Although it didn't increase the energy of the beam, when it is fully calibrated, it shoud allow them to produce 10 times as many collisions as before, increasing the chances of detecting rare events.

When I was in college, a guy gave a talk on the construction of the SSC. With its high energy, he said it would be, "Powerful enough to produce God in pairs." (NOTE : Please don't start a religious flame war over this old joke [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Rob

Sounds like you've been on the tour more reciently than I. I use to live not far from Aurora in Lisle, IL. (78 to 92). I used to fish in the ring pond at Fermi Lab and feed corn to the bison babies. Do you ever go there?

__________________
It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

Yep...I go to Fermilab every day...I am a high school physics teacher on leave for a year with a fellowship at Fermilab. I am in the Experimental Astrophysics Group working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

You know how middle aged men go to baseball fantasy camps where they get to live like baseball players for a week? Well, this is my version of a fantasy camp...the ultimate astrogeek fantasy camp [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Rob

I don't doubt your description a bit. In the early 80's (can't remember exact yr.) I worked on the controls for the power utilities out there. I got to look at the ring and some of the test cells a little closer than the average guy. Fantasy camp for me too.

I don't know if he's still there but my next door neighbor (from Lisle) worked at Fermi. Dr. Freeman (first name stubbornly refuses to come out of long term memory). If you get a chance to look for him, he'd stand out a little as he's the dead spitting image of the old folk singer Paul Simon. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]

__________________
It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

Last summer the CERN director okayed the demolition of their collider to make room for the much more powerful Large Hadron Collider to be available in 2006. I believe this makes Fermilab the most powerful collider presently in use.
The CERN decision was a tough one. A group there thought they were getting data indicating discovery of the Higgs boson (the God particle) and they just needed a little more time. They were granted a couple of months but it wasn't enough and delay in starting construction was busting the budget, so they had to pull the plug.

Hi Russ,

I was wondering (from so far having read just the quote rather than the article,) how could neutrinos - which are ghostly neutral particles without a charge, and practically massless, be artificially generated in Illinois? The sun and other stars are massive neutrino sources. Cosmic rays can interact with them, yet they sail through the earth (and us) with "ease". I wonder how the people at Batavia can generate them by the "billions."

Chip

Well, Russ may be able to provide more details about neutrino production, but at Fermilab's MiniBOONE experiment, protons are fired from the main injector (energy about 150 GeV) into a target. Proton collisions with the target produce pions. Pions are short lived particles and one of the decay products is a neutrino.

That is a pretty quick explanation.

Rob

Thanks.
So could neutrinos also result naturally through random cosmic ray collisions, as well as deep within stars?

On a lighter note, I recall a Star Trek episode where one of the characters generated a "neutrino beam" from a lab on the ship. (Though I don't know what effect such a thing would actually have on any matter.)

Chip

The matter of successfully resolving an episode by ingenous use of new beams/particles/energies of course! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

__________________
N6MAA10816
'Forensic anthropologist! That's why no gun'
Are you a Bright?

LaForge can see neutrinos with his visor. He once found his way to a beam up point by seeing the neutrino beacon beamed down from The Enterprise.

If Riker were lost on one side of a planet, with special goggles for seeing neutrinos, and LaForge were lost directly opposite him on the other side - and the Enterprise was using a "neutrino beam" to first signal LaForge, Riker might get confused, as he'd see the beam on his side too. (Since neutrinos would go right through the planet without leaving a mark.) (Worf wouldn't get confused. He'd just fire a phaser up at the ship.) [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Lol! liked the way you got it back on topic too [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

__________________
N6MAA10816
'Forensic anthropologist! That's why no gun'
Are you a Bright?

Right. They do seem to solve a lot of their problems with "beams" on that show!

Anyway, here's another silly question from me. If they can create billions of neutrinos as described above, why do they need to still go down in mine shafts and wait a long while beside large tanks of Clorox for traces of a few neutrinos to zip by? Is there a difference between "solar neutrinos" and laboratory generated neutrinos?

Chip

They have to go deep to screen out other particles such as cosmic rays.

As a partial answer to the question regarding the difference between natural particles and laboratory particles. Using the "Oh my god" partical as an example. IT's collision with the upper aptmosphere was detected from a hundred miles or more through a telescope and its existence deduced from the observation (assuming the observers watched all their Ps and Qs). Imagine if it had occurred in a 72 inch thick pile of super sensitive photographic emulsion and the emulsion were sliced into .0001" thick slices and viewed through a microscope.

The byproducts of that collision and
that pile of emulsion would be studied for the next thousand years and would answer fundamental questions of physics for as long.

SAMU

Is one reason that they want to measure the amount/nature of the neutrinos coming from the sun etc?

__________________
N6MAA10816
'Forensic anthropologist! That's why no gun'
Are you a Bright?

I can't tell you as the article doesn't go into any detail. The article is actually about something else (cosmological kinks) and just happened to have that one little blurb about the Fermi Lab accelerator that proved me wrong about the CERN accelerator. So, at least in this case, ignorance prevales. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

__________________
It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker