don't panic

 

and HAPPY Mid-Autumn Festival

nothing's allowed through the chunnel at the moment, the authorities have it sealed :stunned:

 

True

 

Damn lorry fire closing the tunnel :(

You know, I've wondered about that some time ago - what happens when a vehicle catches on fire down in there?? So, now I know!:shocked2: Wow, that must be a mess - all the smoke stuck in the tunnel, and the air must get awfully fowled up.. What exactly caught fire??

'Big bang' experiment is hacked

 

 

Part of the computer system of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was hacked into as the world's most powerful physics experiment got under way.

 

A group calling itself the "Greek Security Team" hacked into a computer connected to the system last Wednesday. A spokesman for Cern, the lab that houses the LHC, said the hackers put up a message on the facility's website. No harm was done but the incident has highlighted the need for security in the LHC's network, the spokesman said.

 

The hackers had targeted the computer network of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS), a huge detector that analyses data from the particle accelerator. The LHC is attempting to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, in which the universe was created. With the world watching as the first particles began circulating in the LHC, engineers were searching the hacked computer for possible malicious damage.

 

The CMS website displayed a page with a mocking message, in Greek, which included the line: "We are 2600 - don't mess with us".

 

As a result of the attack, the CMS webpage http://www.cmsmon.cern.ch, can no longer be viewed. Cern spokesman James Gillies told the BBC that the compromised computer was not connected to the accelerator itself. "The computer is used to monitor one of the experiments at the LHC, it's nothing to do with the LHC accelerator itself or any of the control systems," he said. "It seems it was not a malicious hack and it was quickly detected and corrected but this sort of thing keeps you on your toes."

 

Mr Gillies said the LHC had a general access network and a more restricted access network which controls the sensitive systems.

 

Weakness introduced

 

He said that the experiment involved 10,000 scientists at 500 universities in 80 countries and that keeping on top of systems security was "not a trivial task". "As far as I understand there was one user somewhere - who wasn't a hacker - who uploaded something on to this machine and inadvertently introduced a weakness that allowed people to get in," he said.

 

"Our IT department is constantly reminding the experimental collaborators of security issues regarding the network and will continue to do so," he said. "This may have strengthened their message."

 

The number 2600 is often used by the hacking community. It is believed to have originated in the US in the 1960s with the discovery that a tone of 2600Hz played down the line could be used to access restricted parts of the national telephone system.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7616622.stm

visual of what is light..

 

Ian, what exactly does 2600 Hz sound like?? Is that the "bell" in the old Bell System??:P Do we get to talk to Lilly Tomlin if we send the 2600 Hz signal down the line??

My wave - matter idea wasn't far off; I used to think of basic particles as stationary waves, like a ripple from a pebble that keeps bouncing back in upon itself, or a super-imposing ball of energy.. But a wave must have a medium to travel through, so the strings do make sense. And yet if light is a wavicle, then if the electrical particle part is swishing back and forth through space as a point particle, does it have an opposite "ghost" particle that it keeps attracted to, so as to accelerate towards, never touch, and then fly past along a central line through space?? And is there a complimentary magnetic particle with it's "ghost" particle working at 90 degrees to the light particle?? I keep recalling all the ways light can be polarized, and how it can be in phase - it almost seems to have the shape of the Maltese cross, but then is this simply the Universes strings being "tugged" as it were..

Einstein preferred the particle approach to light, and I'm wondering if by doing so, he could see a side to light's character that we now lack by looking through the quantum lens..

Wow the hadron collider(website) hacked? Dr. Evil must be behind this, it's like the opening scene to an austin powers sequel. :P

 

It's both scary and funny at the same time. They create a machine that some people think might blow up the planet, and then a bunch of geeks...err, I mean greeks go and hack the system. no big.

(double post) a pun?

no! a palindrome!

:rolleyes:Apparently a particle - antiparticle pair by Tnspieler!:laugh3: "ESTIMATED PRODUCTION RATES of intermediate vector bosons and Higgs bosons by various collision processes vary as a function of the total energy of the colliding beams. See also: Production rate of charged Lepton-Antilepton Pairs.:inquisitive:

Higgs Boson Found!!!

 

In a cave with Bin Laden

Hadron Collider halted for months

 

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says.

 

Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.

 

But a Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.

 

The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.

 

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

 

On Friday, a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C.

 

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva.

 

Cern spokesman James Gillies said on Saturday that the sector that was damaged would have to be warmed up well above absolute zero so that repairs could be made.

 

While he said there was never any danger to the public, Mr Gillies admitted that the breakdown would be costly.

 

He said: "A full investigation is still under way but the most likely cause seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two of the magnets which probably melted, leading to a mechanical failure.

 

"We're investigating and we can't really say more than that now.

 

"But we do know that we will have to warm the machine up, make the repair, cool it down, and that's what brings you to two months of downtime for the LHC."

 

The first beams were fired successfully around the accelerator's 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring over a week ago.

 

The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. However, the fault appears to have ruled out any chance of these experiments taking place for the next two months at least.

 

The quench occurred during final testing of the last of the LHC's electrical circuits to be commissioned.

 

At 1127 (0927 GMT) on Friday, the LHC's online logbook recorded a quench in sector 3-4 of the accelerator, which lies between the Alice and CMS detectors.

 

The entry stated that helium had been lost to the tunnel and that vacuum conditions had also been lost.

 

The superconducting magnets in the LHC must be supercooled to 1.9 kelvin above absolute zero, to allow them to steer particle beams around the circuit.

 

As a result of the quench, the temperature of about 100 of the magnets in the machine's final sector rose by around 100C.

 

The setback came just a day after the LHC's beam was restored after engineers replaced a faulty transformer that had hindered progress for much of the past week.

The quench?