Liquid Nitrogen and Arthritic Digit

“LHC, The Universe and Everything” was the title of a lecture giving an update on the Large Hadron Collider and CERN. Dr David Evans of Birmingham University outlined the physics behind the LHC in an entertaining and comprehensive, but adequately basic manner for this non-academic would be physicist.

He illustrated his talk with fascinating PowerPoint and gratuitous use of volunteers who followed his instructions to manipulate magnets and demonstrate particles moving through tubes representing the collider. Then he explained about the cooling process needed for these particles which are superheated to many times the temperature of the sun. They need to be cooled to lower than the temperature of outer space.

He used liquid nitrogen and rubber tubing to discuss the type of cooling needed. Rubber tubing inserted into liquid nitrogen becomes friable and can be smashed easily against a table - a great effect during a lecture. In reality, CERN supercools with superfluid hellium. Liquid nitrogen is safer in a lecture room.

After questions, dominated as per usual by volubly egotistical elderly blokes who appeared to be even more wannabe physicists than me, Dr Evans offered the audience a chance to play with the liquid nitrogen. Yippee! I love to experiment, so I moved toward the front to stand in line to get a polystyrene cup of liquid nitrogen to pour over my palm. In order not to give yourself a freezer burn, it is best to hold your palm at an angle so that the liquid nitrogen can slide off onto the floor where it evaporates harmlessly (without damage to the flooring). I tried this a few times, expecting to feel whatever it was that caused some hulking great brutes who’d pushed ahead of me to squeal. I felt nothing; maybe my hot little palms were too superheated to allow the liquid to get close enough to do more than give a faint tingle.

In a corner of the room, some opportunistic student types had drawn back the curtains to expose a broad window ledge where they were engaged in their own experiment: throwing small amounts of liquid nitrogen along the ledge to watch it fizzle, pop and evaporate. Some reminiscences were shared about antics in labs by those of us a little older, but clearly not wiser.

I was left with the consequences of my own inadvised playing with the cup of liquid nitrogen; I stuck my rather arthritic forefinger into it and, while, again feeling nothing, was left with a persistent ache for the next day, as the joint swelled a little as a result of the low temperature. This is a warning to myself to think before doing this again and to remember that extreme cold is the wrong environment for arthritis.

For more scientific discussion look up CERN.

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightCool-en.html

CERN Again

I’ve kept track of the news about CERN all day today. I have to admit to a little anxiety over whether it would actually work when they switched it on. Probably I am too used to things not quite delivering what they promise, but in this case it was by all accounts prefect.

The best potential spin off from all the publicity is that more girls will see how exciting physics is and choose to take this as a subject at school and go on to have careers in science. Or at least I hope so!

Well done all these hard working folks at CERN for a job well done and now onto the next phase of discovery and new theories.

For each particle there is also an anti-particle

Or so I am reliably informed by the CERN website. My inner particle physicist is excited by the imminent LCH start-up due on September 10. This is what 20 years of international cooperation has been working towards and I for one, am delighted that it is almost here.

From the CERN website:
"The Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most complex scientific instrument ever built and the highest energy particle accelerator in the world. The accelerator is located 100 m underground and runs through both French and Swiss territory.
Year 2008 marks the culmination of 20 years of work by physicists, engineers, technicians and support staff from over 80 different countries."

I've previously discussed the value of art, but this is about the value of scientific progress, something I find easier to accept and assign a higher value than old paintings. Not that I am in favour of all scientific progress as I think this is so often derailed by big business skewing research for their own ends (a blog for another day).

What makes this so thrilling is not just the actual potential for new understanding of particle physics. "It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe," says the website.

I first heard of CERN years ago, probably from a Horizon programme on the BBC. This sparked excitement as I am a frustrated physicist, and when I studied physics in the 70's little of this was accessible at the level to which I studied. No one had yet discovered the "particle zoo" or named the elementary particles quarks and leptons. Physicists suspected there was dark matter and theorised that at the Big Bang there was anti matter, but these were fairly new theories at that time. I was lucky enough to have physics tutors who had worked in the nuclear and chemical industries and shared their fascination with cutting edge science. Now at CERN four experiments will push forward the science, but I'll stop here with the explanations as a visit to the CERN website will give you everything you could want to know about particles.

Their education pages are terrific and you don't need an in depth knowledge of physics to learn enough to generate your own excitement about this (well, unless you really, really don't like science).

There is also some fun stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html