Everytime our timeline gets that much worse, I can't help but think that maybe we should just start tossing things into the #LHC just to see if we can't find that pathway to a utopian timeline that we were obviously robbed of in 2016.
#LargeHadronCollider #Large_Hadron_Collider #weasel #ShamelesslyStolenFromTheOtherSite #Shitpost #Shitposting
The 27-km LHC has eight surface points. Point 8, home of the LHCb experiment, is located close to the French town of Ferney-Voltaire. (Image: CERN) What if the world’s largest particle accelerator could also heat homes? CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is doing just that, thanks to a new heat exchange system. Since mid-January, heat recovered from the LHC has been supplying a heating network for a new residential and commercial area in the nearby French town of Ferney-Voltaire. This network, inaugurated on 12 December, is expected to supply the equivalent of several thousand homes. By avoiding traditional energy sources, such as gas, the network prevents the emission of thousands of tonnes of CO2. The 27-km LHC has eight surface points and Point 8 is located close to Ferney-Voltaire. The installations at Point 8, particularly the cryogenics, need to be cooled with water. As water circulates through the equipment, the equipment cools and the water heats up. “Typically, hot water would then pass through a cooling tower, releasing heat into the atmosphere so that the cooled water could be reinjected into the equipment,” explains CERN’s energy coordinator, Nicolas Bellegarde. “In the new set-up, hot water initially passes through two 5-MW heat exchangers, which transfer thermal energy to the new heating network in Ferney-Voltaire.” As one of the new network’s heat sources, CERN provides heat whenever possible, as long as it does not impact its activities. At present, Ferney-Voltaire is only using up to 5 MW from CERN but, with two heat exchangers in the system, this could theoretically be doubled, especially when CERN’s accelerators are fully operational. In summer 2026, CERN will stop the LHC for several years of maintenance and upgrades, known as Long Shutdown 3 (LS3), to prepare for the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC. Some Point 8 installations will continue to be cooled, enabling CERN to supply between 1 and 5 MW to the network during LS3, with the exception of a total of five months spread over this multi-year period. Driven by a commitment to environmentally responsible research, CERN has implemented many initiatives to help reduce the impact of its activities on the environment. Energy recovery is a key part of CERN’s energy management strategy, in line with ISO 50001 requirements, alongside keeping energy consumption to a minimum and improving energy efficiency. Other projects include CERN’s Prévessin Data Centre, inaugurated in 2024, which is equipped with a heat-recovery system set to warm most site buildings from winter 2026/2027, and the future recovery of heat from LHC Point 1 cooling towers to supply buildings on CERN’s Meyrin site. Together, these initiatives will save 25–30 GWh per year as of 2027, marking significant progress in CERN’s responsible energy management.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be found at CERN in many contexts: embedded in devices, software products and cloud services procured by CERN, brought on-site by individuals or developed in-house. Following the approval of a CERN-wide AI strategy, these general principles are designed to promote the responsible and ethical use, development and deployment (collectively “use”) of AI at CERN. They are technology neutral and apply to all AI technologies as they become available. The principles apply across all areas of CERN’s activities, including: AI for scientific and technical research: data analysis, anomaly detection, simulation, predictive maintenance and optimisation of accelerator performance or detector operations, and AI for productivity and administrative use: document drafting, note taking, automated translation, language correction and enhancement, coding assistants, and workflow automation. General Principles CERN, members of its personnel, and anyone using CERN computing facilities shall ensure that AI is used in accordance with the following principles: Transparency and explainability: Document and communicate when and how AI is used, and how AI contributes to specific tasks or decisions. Responsibility and accountability: The use of AI, including its impact and resulting outputs throughout its lifecycle, must not displace ultimate human responsibility and accountability. Lawfulness and conduct: The use of AI must be lawful, compliant with CERN’s internal legal framework and respect third-party rights and CERN’s Code of Conduct. Fairness, non-discrimination, and “do no harm”: AI must be used in a way that promotes fairness and inclusiveness and prevents bias, discrimination and any other form of harm. Security and safety: AI must be adequately protected to reduce the likelihood and impact of cybersecurity incidents. AI must be used in a way that is safe, respects confidentiality, integrity and availability requirements, and prevents negative outcomes. Sustainability: The use of AI must be assessed with the goal of mitigating environmental and social risks and enhancing CERN's positive impact in relation to society and the environment. Human oversight: The use of AI must always remain under human control. Its functioning and outputs must be consistently and critically assessed and validated by a human. Data privacy: AI must be used in a manner that respects privacy and the protection of personal data. Non-military purposes: Any use of AI at CERN must be for non-military purposes only.
> CERN turns lead into gold in fleeting nuclear reaction
https://www.perplexity.ai/page/cern-turns-lead-into-gold-in-f-M2xS20qXTpO3Zxb0E1nuuQ
Wow! This is the next level.
#cern #Large_Hadron_Collider #science #gold
In a paper published in Physical Review Journals, the ALICE collaboration reports measurements that quantify the transmutation of lead into gold in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Transforming the base metal lead into the precious metal gold was a dream of medieval alchemists. This long-standing quest, known as chrysopoeia, may have been motivated by the observation that dull grey, relatively abundant lead is of a similar density to gold, which has long been coveted for its beautiful colour and rarity. It was only much later that it became clear that lead and gold are distinct chemical elements and that chemical methods are powerless to transmute one into the other. With the dawn of nuclear physics in the 20th century, it was discovered that heavy elements could transform into others, either naturally, by radioactive decay, or in the laboratory, under a bombardment of neutrons or protons. Though gold has been artificially produced in this way before, the ALICE collaboration has now measured the transmutation of lead into gold by a new mechanism involving near-miss collisions between lead nuclei at the LHC. Extremely high-energy collisions between lead nuclei at the LHC can create quark–gluon plasma, a hot and dense state of matter that is thought to have filled the universe around a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, giving rise to the matter we now know. However, in the far more frequent interactions where the nuclei just miss each other without “touching”, the intense electromagnetic fields surrounding them can induce photon–photon and photon–nucleus interactions that open further avenues of exploration. The electromagnetic field emanating from a lead nucleus is particularly strong because the nucleus contains 82 protons, each carrying one elementary charge. Moreover, the very high speed at which lead nuclei travel in the LHC (corresponding to 99.999993% of the speed of light) causes the electromagnetic field lines to be squashed into a thin pancake, transverse to the direction of motion, producing a short-lived pulse of photons. Often, this triggers a process called electromagnetic dissociation, whereby a photon interacting with a nucleus can excite oscillations of its internal structure, resulting in the ejection of small numbers of neutrons and protons. To create gold (a nucleus containing 79 protons), three protons must be removed from a lead nucleus in the LHC beams. “It is impressive to see that our detectors can handle head-on collisions producing thousands of particles, while also being sensitive to collisions where only a few particles are produced at a time, enabling the study of electromagnetic ‘nuclear transmutation’ processes,” says Marco Van Leeuwen, ALICE spokesperson. The ALICE team used the detector’s zero degree calorimeters (ZDC) to count the number of photon–nucleus interactions that resulted in the emission of zero, one, two and three protons accompanied by at least one neutron, which are associated with the production of lead, thallium, mercury and gold, respectively. While less frequent than the creation of thallium or mercury, the results show that the LHC currently produces gold at a maximum rate of about 89 000 nuclei per second from lead–lead collisions at the ALICE collision point. Gold nuclei emerge from the collision with very high energy and hit the LHC beam pipe or collimators at various points downstream, where they immediately fragment into single protons, neutrons and other particles. The gold exists for just a tiny fraction of a second. The ALICE analysis shows that, during Run 2 of the LHC (2015–2018), about 86 billion gold nuclei were created at the four major experiments. In terms of mass, this corresponds to just 29 picograms (2.9 ×10-11 g). Since the luminosity in the LHC is continually increasing thanks to regular upgrades to the machines, Run 3 has produced almost double the amount of gold that Run 2 did, but the total still amounts to trillions of times less than would be required to make a piece of jewellery. While the dream of medieval alchemists has technically come true, their hopes of riches have once again been dashed. “Thanks to the unique capabilities of the ALICE ZDCs, the present analysis is the first to systematically detect and analyse the signature of gold production at the LHC experimentally,” says Uliana Dmitrieva of the ALICE collaboration. “The results also test and improve theoretical models of electromagnetic dissociation which, beyond their intrinsic physics interest, are used to understand and predict beam losses that are a major limit on the performance of the LHC and future colliders,” adds John Jowett, also of the ALICE collaboration. Additional image: Illustration of an ultra-peripheral collision where the two lead (208Pb) ion beams at the LHC pass by close to each other without colliding. In the electromagnetic dissociation process, a photon interacting with a nucleus can excite oscillations of its internal structure and result in the ejection of small numbers of neutrons (two) and protons (three), leaving the gold (203Au) nucleus behind (Image: CERN)
The CERN flock of sheep on site in 2017. (Image: CERN) Quantum entanglement is a fascinating phenomenon where two particles’ states are tied to each other, no matter how far apart the particles are. In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for groundbreaking experiments involving entangled photons. These experiments confirmed the predictions for the manifestation of entanglement that had been made by the late CERN theorist John Bell. This phenomenon has so far been observed in a wide variety of systems, such as in top quarks at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2024. Entanglement has also found several important societal applications, such as quantum cryptography and quantum computing. Now, it also explains the famous herd mentality of sheep. A flock of sheep (ovis aries) has roamed the CERN site during the spring and summer months for over 40 years. Along with the CERN shepherd, they help to maintain the vast expanses of grassland around the LHC and are part of the Organization’s long-standing efforts to protect the site’s biodiversity. In addition, their flocking behaviour has been of great interest to CERN's physicists. It is well known that sheep behave like particles: their stochastic behaviour has been studied by zoologists and physicists alike, who noticed that a flock’s ability to quickly change phase is similar to that of atoms in a solid and a liquid. Known as the Lamb Shift, this can cause them to get themselves into bizarre situations, such as walking in a circle for days on end. Now, new research has shed light on the reason for these extraordinary abilities. Scientists at CERN have found evidence of quantum entanglement in sheep. Using sophisticated modelling techniques and specialised trackers, the findings show that the brains of individual sheep in a flock are quantum-entangled in such a way that the sheep can move and vocalise simultaneously, no matter how far apart they are. The evidence has several ramifications for ovine research and has set the baa for a new branch of quantum physics. “The fact that we were having our lunch next to the flock was a shear coincidence,” says Mary Little, leader of the HERD collaboration, describing how the project came about. “When we saw and herd their behaviour, we wanted to investigate the movement of the flock using the technology at our disposal at the Laboratory.” Observing the sheep’s ability to simultaneously move and vocalise together caused one main question to aries: since the sheep behave like subatomic particles, could quantum effects be the reason for their behaviour? “Obviously, we couldn’t put them all in a box and see if they were dead or alive,” said Beau Peep, a researcher on the project. “However, by assuming that the sheep were spherical, we were able to model their behaviour in almost the exact same way as we model subatomic particles.” Using sophisticated trackers, akin to those in the LHC experiments, the physicists were able to locate the precise particles in the sheep’s brains that might be the cause of this entanglement. Dubbed “moutons” and represented by the Greek letter lambda, l, these particles are leptons and are close relatives of the muon, but fluffier. The statistical significance of the findings is 4 sigma, which is enough to show evidence of the phenomenon. However, it does not quite pass the baa to be classed as an observation. “More research is needed to fully confirm that this was indeed an observation of ovine entanglement or a statistical fluctuation,” says Ewen Woolly, spokesperson for the HERD collaboration. “This may be difficult, as we have found that the research makes physicists become inexplicably drowsy.” “While entanglement is now the leading theory for this phenomenon, we have to take everything into account,” adds Dolly Shepherd, a CERN theorist. “Who knows, maybe further variables are hidden beneath their fleeces. Wolves, for example.” Theoretical physicist John Ellis, pioneer of the penguin diagram, with its updated sheep version. Scientists at CERN find evidence of quantum entanglement in sheep in 2025, the year declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. (Image: CERN)
Illustration of the production of antihyperhelium-4 (a bound state of two antiprotons, an antineutron and an antilambda) in lead–lead collisions. (Image: J. Ditzel with AI-assistance) Collisions between heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) create quark–gluon plasma, a hot and dense state of matter that is thought to have filled the Universe around one millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Heavy-ion collisions also create suitable conditions for the production of atomic nuclei and exotic hypernuclei, as well as their antimatter counterparts, antinuclei and antihypernuclei. Measurements of these forms of matter are important for various purposes, including helping to understand the formation of hadrons from the plasma’s constituent quarks and gluons and the matter–antimatter asymmetry seen in the present-day Universe. Hypernuclei are exotic nuclei formed by a mix of protons, neutrons and hyperons, the latter being unstable particles containing one or more quarks of the strange type. More than 70 years since their discovery in cosmic rays, hypernuclei remain a source of fascination for physicists because they are rarely found in nature and it’s challenging to create and study them in the laboratory. In heavy-ion collisions, hypernuclei are created in significant quantities, but until recently only the lightest hypernucleus, hypertriton, and its antimatter partner, antihypertriton, have been observed. A hypertriton is composed of a proton, a neutron and a lambda (a hyperon containing one strange quark). An antihypertriton is made up of an antiproton, an antineutron and an antilambda. Following hot on the heels of an observation of antihyperhydrogen-4 (a bound state of an antiproton, two antineutrons and an antilambda), reported earlier this year by the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the ALICE collaboration at the LHC has now seen the first ever evidence of antihyperhelium-4, which is composed of twoantiprotons, an antineutron and an antilambda. The result has a significance of 3.5 standard deviations and also represents the first evidence of the heaviest antimatter hypernucleus yet at the LHC. The ALICE measurement is based on lead–lead collision data taken in 2018 at an energy of 5.02 teraelectronvolts (TeV) for each colliding pair of nucleons (protons and neutrons). Using a machine-learning technique that outperforms conventional hypernuclei search techniques, the ALICE researchers looked at the data for signals of hyperhydrogen-4, hyperhelium-4 and their antimatter partners. Candidates for (anti)hyperhydrogen-4 were identified by looking for the (anti)helium-4 nucleus and the charged pion into which it decays, whereas candidates for (anti)hyperhelium-4 were identified via its decay into an (anti)helium-3 nucleus, an (anti)proton and a charged pion. In addition to finding evidence of antihyperhelium-4 with a significance of 3.5 standard deviations, as well as evidence of antihyperhydrogen-4 with a significance of 4.5 standard deviations, the ALICE team measured the production yields and masses of both hypernuclei. For both hypernuclei, the measured masses are compatible with the current world-average values. The measured production yields were compared with predictions from the statistical hadronisation model, which provides a good description of the formation of hadrons and nuclei in heavy-ion collisions. This comparison shows that the model’s predictions agree closely with the data if both excited hypernuclear states and ground states are included in the predictions. The results confirm that the statistical hadronisation model can also provide a good description of the production of hypernuclei, which are compact objects with sizes of around 2 femtometres (1 femtometre is 10-15 metres). The researchers also determined the antiparticle-to-particle yield ratios for both hypernuclei and found that they agree with unity within the experimental uncertainties. This agreement is consistent with ALICE’s observation of the equal production of matter and antimatter at LHC energies and adds to the ongoing research into the matter–antimatter imbalance in the Universe.
Illustration of the production of antihyperhelium-4 (a bound state of two antiprotons, an antineutron and an antilambda) in lead–lead collisions. (Image: J. Ditzel with AI-assistance) Collisions between heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) create quark–gluon plasma, a hot and dense state of matter that is thought to have filled the Universe around one millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Heavy-ion collisions also create suitable conditions for the production of atomic nuclei and exotic hypernuclei, as well as their antimatter counterparts, antinuclei and antihypernuclei. Measurements of these forms of matter are important for various purposes, including helping to understand the formation of hadrons from the plasma’s constituent quarks and gluons and the matter–antimatter asymmetry seen in the present-day Universe. Hypernuclei are exotic nuclei formed by a mix of protons, neutrons and hyperons, the latter being unstable particles containing one or more quarks of the strange type. More than 70 years since their discovery in cosmic rays, hypernuclei remain a source of fascination for physicists because they are rarely found in nature and it’s challenging to create and study them in the laboratory. In heavy-ion collisions, hypernuclei are created in significant quantities, but until recently only the lightest hypernucleus, hypertriton, and its antimatter partner, antihypertriton, have been observed. A hypertriton is composed of a proton, a neutron and a lambda (a hyperon containing one strange quark). An antihypertriton is made up of an antiproton, an antineutron and an antilambda. Following hot on the heels of an observation of antihyperhydrogen-4 (a bound state of an antiproton, two antineutrons and an antilambda), reported earlier this year by the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the ALICE collaboration at the LHC has now seen the first ever evidence of antihyperhelium-4, which is composed of twoantiprotons, an antineutron and an antilambda. The result has a significance of 3.5 standard deviations and also represents the first evidence of the heaviest antimatter hypernucleus yet at the LHC. The ALICE measurement is based on lead–lead collision data taken in 2018 at an energy of 5.02 teraelectronvolts (TeV) for each colliding pair of nucleons (protons and neutrons). Using a machine-learning technique that outperforms conventional hypernuclei search techniques, the ALICE researchers looked at the data for signals of hyperhydrogen-4, hyperhelium-4 and their antimatter partners. Candidates for (anti)hyperhydrogen-4 were identified by looking for the (anti)helium-4 nucleus and the charged pion into which it decays, whereas candidates for (anti)hyperhelium-4 were identified via its decay into an (anti)helium-3 nucleus, an (anti)proton and a charged pion. In addition to finding evidence of antihyperhelium-4 with a significance of 3.5 standard deviations, as well as evidence of antihyperhydrogen-4 with a significance of 4.5 standard deviations, the ALICE team measured the production yields and masses of both hypernuclei. For both hypernuclei, the measured masses are compatible with the current world-average values. The measured production yields were compared with predictions from the statistical hadronisation model, which provides a good description of the formation of hadrons and nuclei in heavy-ion collisions. This comparison shows that the model’s predictions agree closely with the data if both excited hypernuclear states and ground states are included in the predictions. The results confirm that the statistical hadronisation model can also provide a good description of the production of hypernuclei, which are compact objects with sizes of around 2 femtometres (1 femtometre is 10-15 metres). The researchers also determined the antiparticle-to-particle yield ratios for both hypernuclei and found that they agree with unity within the experimental uncertainties. This agreement is consistent with ALICE’s observation of the equal production of matter and antimatter at LHC energies and adds to the ongoing research into the matter–antimatter imbalance in the Universe.
Quantum entanglement is a fascinating feature of quantum physics – the theory of the very small. If two particles are quantum-entangled, the state of one particle is tied to that of the other, no matter how far apart the particles are. This mind-bending phenomenon, which has no analogue in classical physics, has been observed in a wide variety of systems and has found several important applications, such as quantum cryptography and quantum computing. In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for groundbreaking experiments with entangled photons. These experiments confirmed the predictions for the manifestation of entanglement made by the late CERN theorist John Bell and pioneered quantum information science. Entanglement has remained largely unexplored at the high energies accessible at particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In an article published today in Nature, the ATLAS collaboration reports how it succeeded in observing quantum entanglement at the LHC for the first time, between fundamental particles called top quarks and at the highest energies yet. First reported by ATLAS in September 2023 and since confirmed by a first and a second observation made by the CMS collaboration, this result has opened up a new perspective on the complex world of quantum physics. "While particle physics is deeply rooted in quantum mechanics, the observation of quantum entanglement in a new particle system and at much higher energy than previously possible is remarkable,” says ATLAS spokesperson Andreas Hoecker. “It paves the way for new investigations into this fascinating phenomenon, opening up a rich menu of exploration as our data samples continue to grow." The ATLAS and CMS teams observed quantum entanglement between a top quark and its antimatter counterpart. The observations are based on a recently proposed method to use pairs of top quarks produced at the LHC as a new system to study entanglement. The top quark is the heaviest known fundamental particle. It normally decays into other particles before it has time to combine with other quarks, transferring its spin and other quantum traits to its decay particles. Physicists observe and use these decay products to infer the top quark’s spin orientation. To observe entanglement between top quarks, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations selected pairs of top quarks from data from proton–proton collisions that took place at an energy of 13 teraelectronvolts during the second run of the LHC, between 2015 and 2018. In particular, they looked for pairs in which the two quarks are simultaneously produced with low particle momentum relative to each other. This is where the spins of the two quarks are expected to be strongly entangled. The existence and degree of spin entanglement can be inferred from the angle between the directions in which the electrically charged decay products of the two quarks are emitted. By measuring these angular separations and correcting for experimental effects that could alter the measured values, the ATLAS and CMS teams each observed spin entanglement between top quarks with a statistical significance larger than five standard deviations. In its second study, the CMS collaboration also looked for pairs of top quarks in which the two quarks are simultaneously produced with high momentum relative to each other. In this domain, for a large fraction of top quark pairs, the relative positions and times of the two top quark decays are predicted to be such that classical exchange of information by particles traveling at no more than the speed of light is excluded, and CMS observed spin entanglement between top quarks also in this case. “With measurements of entanglement and other quantum concepts in a new particle system and at an energy range beyond what was previously accessible, we can test the Standard Model of particle physics in new ways and look for signs of new physics that may lie beyond it.” says CMS spokesperson Patricia McBride. Read more: ATLAS Nature paper CMS first study CMS second study
Tim Hergert
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Dominik 