GRID OF 100,000 COMPUTERS HERALDS NEW INTERNET ERA

This is definitely something we should be watching because this is some extraordinary work they are attempting and any mistakes could cause a virtual black out. If what they are saying is true this will change how we use the internet forever.

A network of supercomputers called the Grid will allow information to be downloaded quicker than ever. Tasks that took hours will now take seconds

via Times Online UK

A network of 100,000 computers providing the greatest data processing capacity yet unleashed has been created to cope with information pouring from the world’s largest machine.

The Grid is the latest evolution of the internet and the world wide web and computer scientists will announce on Friday that it is ready to be connected to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

It is designed for schemes where huge quantities of data need crunching, such as large research and engineering projects. The Grid has the kind of power required to download movies in seconds, and the ability to make high-definition video phone calls for the same price as a local call. More importantly, it should help to narrow the search for cures for diseases. However, it is unlikely to be directly available to most internet users until telecoms providers build the fibre-optic network required to use it.

The Grid allows scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to get access to the unemployed processing power of thousands of computers n 33 countries to deal with the data created by the LHC.

Scientists at CERN, where the world wide web was invented, created the €500 million Grid because they realised that a single computer would not be able to cope with the amount of data the LHC is expected to produce each year – 15 petabytes, or 15 million gigabytes, which would fill 20 million CDs.

They said that it was an extra facility laid on top of the internet, which originally linked computers around the world in the Seventies.

Dr Bob Jones, a CERN scientist, said: “The [world wide] web allows you to access information on other computers. What the Grid allows you to do is not only access the information, but make use of their computing resources and power.”

He likened it to the National Grid. Users would be able to tap into massive amounts of processing power, but the source of the power would change, depending on availability.

Processing tasks will be distributed between 11 gateway computer centres in ten countries, including Britain, which will share them out between more than 140 sites.

One of the first jobs the Grid will tackle is handling the raw data for CERN’s experiments into finding proof of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle.

Its uses, however, extend well beyond particle physics and it has already been used on a smaller scale in research into diseases such as malaria and bird flu. “The Grid cannot find a cure for cancer, but what it can do is make it quicker,” said Dr Jones, explaining that what might have taken a decade could now be done in weeks.

David Britton, Professor of Physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the Grid project, said: “The old traditional way to find cures for diseases is that you would go to the lab and try mixing various drugs and see how they work.”

With the Grid, he said, scientists could run hundreds of thousands of simulations to create a shortlist of the drugs that are most likely to offer the potential for a cure. Researchers can then get to work testing the drugs singled out as promising.

The Grid has also already been used to save lives in the immediate aftermath of earthquakes. Using the seismic data, scientists can use the Grid for simulations that pinpoint which areas are most affected, allowing rescue teams to direct their efforts where they are most needed.

Many believe the world wide web and the internet are the same thing, but the internet is actually a massive network of networks, which connects millions of computers together globally, and the web is an information-sharing model built on top of the internet, which allows information to be accessed over the medium of the internet.

THE 6 BILLION DOLLAR LHC CIRCUS

10 September 2008 Science has become an international circus. And opening day for "The Greatest Show on Earth" has arrived. In the 27 km main circus ring we have the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, starting up after $6 billion dollars and thirty years of development. Before the show the clowns have warmed up the audience with fantastic stories of what we might see. But why should we take clowns seriously?

>> Professor Higgs, seen here at the LHC, is one of the eminent scientists responsible for perhaps the most expensive circus in science today.

The BBC Horizon program, “The $6 billion Dollar Experiment,” documents the LHC experiment. The LHC accelerates beams of protons in opposite directions around a circular 27 km underground racetrack and then smashes them together head-on. The expense comes from the need to reach particle energies seven times that of earlier particle colliders and to construct a massive particle detector ‘cathedral’ underground. The energy density reached in the experiment is thought to mimic the earliest moments of the big bang – the origin of the universe. Most of the experimenters involved are looking for the ‘God particle’. The Times Online reported on April 8: The mysterious boson postulated by Professor Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, has become so fundamental to physics that it is often nicknamed the ‘God particle’. After more than 40 years of research, and billions of pounds, scientists have yet to prove that it is real. But Professor Higgs, 78, now believes the search is nearly over. The "God Particle" or Higgs boson was invented by Peter Higgs to explain why other particles exhibit mass. He starts with assuming the existence of a particle that has only mass and no other characteristics, such as charge. So the Higgs particle is like no other in our experience, since all normal matter is composed of electric charges that respond to electromagnetic influences. (Dark matter falls into the same category.) However, we observe that the mass of a charged subatomic particle is altered by the application of electromagnetic forces. At its simplest (and Nature is economical in our experience) it indicates that mass is related to the storage of energy within a system of electric charges inside the particle. That’s what E = mc2 is telling us. So how can a massive particle be constructed without electric charge? It shows the problem inherent in leaving physics to mathematicians — there is a disconnect between mathematical concepts and reality. The notion that subatomic particles exhibit mass as a result of their interaction with imaginary Higgs particles occupying all of empty space like some form of treacle should have caused a sceptical uproar, if it weren’t for the appalling apathy of the public toward such nonsense. The ‘annihilation’ and ‘creation’ of matter is invoked when particles at particular points arise from ‘fields’ spread over space and time. Higgs found that parameters in the equations for the field associated with his hypothetical particle can be chosen in such a way that the lowest energy state of that field (empty space) is not zero. With the field energy non-zero in empty space, all particles that can interact with the Higgs particle gain mass from the interaction. This explanation for the phenomenon of mass should have been stillborn if common sense was used. To begin, the annihilation and creation of matter is forbidden by a principle of physics. It is tantamount to magic. Second, field theory is a purely imaginary construct, which may or may not have physical significance. And third, it is not explained how the Higgs particle can have intrinsic mass but no charge and yet interact with normal matter, which has charge but is said to have no intrinsic mass. Rather than explain the phenomenon of mass, the theory serves to complicate and confuse the issue. The most amazing feature of this $6 billion experiment is the confused and illogical thinking behind it. At the heart of the thinking behind the Higgs boson is quantum mechanics, which has a fundamental flaw — it allows effects without a cause. For example, radioactive decay is unpredictable. We do not know what causes an atom to ‘spontaneously’ decay. Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote, “ ...I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” [The Character of Physical Law, 1965] Quantum mechanics is not physics, whose aim is understanding. Particle physicists would be well advised to study chemistry and the ‘London force’ between electrically neutral systems of atoms. It is a weak force, sufficient to form solids and liquids, and is always attractive. In other words, it is like gravity. The extreme feebleness of gravity can be understood as the result of tiny distortions of orbiting systems of charge within the proton, neutron, electron and neutrino. Of course, particle physicists operate by smashing atoms in violent collisions. But if normal matter is composed of subunits of charge in some resonant state of equilibrium (the simplest picture), then smashing particles together will merely generate new unstable (short lived) resonant systems of charge, which will be interpreted as members of a weird zoo of new particles. The LHC can do no more than that. No matter can be created or annihilated. And since the big bang and black holes are the result of the illogical or incorrect application of mathematics to a gravity driven model of the universe, nothing will be learned about either. Other circus ‘Big Tops’ have been erected over Gravity Wave Telescopes, built to see waves that don’t exist, and over research establishments of astrophysics and particle physics where it is supposed that 95% of the universe is made of invisible "dark matter" and is powered by undetectable "dark energy."

To Hannes Alfvén, the Big Bang was a fable - a fable devised to explain creation. “I was there when Abbé Georges Lemaitre first proposed this theory,” he recalled. Lemaitre was, at the time, both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist. He said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas’ theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing. — Anthony L. Peratt, ‘Dean of the Plasma Dissidents’, The World & I, May 1988, pp. 190-197.

Image Credit: ScienceCartoonsPlus.com

There is no physics to explain a creation event. Creation is a metaphysical concept. The big bang is a theory created out of nothing. And there is plenty of evidence contrary to the big bang — that shows the universe is not expanding. It is irrational to ignore the evidence or to explain it away, as is being done with dark matter, dark energy, and black holes. Earlier scary performances by circus clowns about black holes gobbling stars frightened the public. Now the public is being assured there’s nothing to worry about if a ‘mini black hole’ happens to be created by the LHC. What seems to be forgotten is that cosmic rays routinely exceed the energy expected from the LHC.

>> From the Sunday Telegraph.

But it is the search for the "God Particle" to explain gravity that reveals the irrationality of the enterprise. The equation of gravity with "God" comes from the belief that gravity controls the universe. It is no more than that — a belief. Plasma cosmology shows the belief is mistaken. It is an Electric Universe, not a gravitational universe. Clearly, the scientists involved in the LHC experiment have no real idea of what they are doing. We are told by one of the participants with a fatuous grin, “science is what you do when you don’t know what you are doing.” The LHC is a mammoth engineering and technological undertaking that I predict will serve in future as a monument to human lunacy. In 1852, Charles Mackay wrote in the preface to his classic work, Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” Without a doubt, the modern era of physics will soon be deemed a "dark age of science." The very language of ‘black hole,’ ‘dark matter,’ and ‘dark energy,’ portends the end of this mad and dismal era. Scientists today are herded into large institutions. The ones to watch are those leaving or excluded from the herd. A few of them have recovered their senses and are raising a clamor to acknowledge a crisis in cosmology and to return to real physics. Each group of specialists urges the other to ever more preposterous performances based on their cherished beliefs, while the public pays dearly. But the audience is becoming bored and restless. There is growing doubt that the circus clowns know what they are doing when they talk about "creation" and the "God particle." When the LHC finds nothing, it will be time to sweep the fertilizer from the main ring and close the circus.

WHAT IS THE HIGGS BOSON??

Billions of Euros have been ploughed into the construction of the largest experiment known in the history of mankind. The Large Hadron Collider (officially due to be “switched on” September 10th 2008) will eventually accelerate hadrons to energies near the 1 TeV mark by the end of this decade. This is all highly impressive; already the applications of the LHC appear to be endless, probing smaller and smaller scales with bigger and bigger energies. But how did the LHC secure all that funding? After all, the most expensive piece of lab equipment must be built with a purpose? Although the aims are varied and far-reaching, the LHC has one key task to achieve: Discover the Higgs Boson, the world’s most sought-after particle. If discovered, key theories in particle physics and quantum dynamics will be proven. If it isn’t found by the LHC, perhaps our theories are wrong, and our view of the Universe needs to be revolutionized… or the LHC needs to be more powerful.

Either way, the LHC will revolutionize all facets of physics. But what is the Higgs boson? And why in the hell is it so important?

Related articles:

• Will the LHC Peel Open Some New Dimensions?


• Channel 4 Report About LHC Safety


• Poll: In Your Opinion, What Will be the First LHC Landmark Discovery?


• LHC Worries are Based on Fear of the Unknown, not Science

I’ve read many very interesting articles about the Higgs boson and what its discovery will do for mankind. However, many of these texts are very hard to understand by non-specialists, particularly by the guys-at-the-top (i.e. the politicians who approve vast amounts of funding for physics experiments). The LHC physicists obviously did a very good job on Europe’s leaders so this gargantuan particle accelerator could secure billions of euros/dollars/pounds to be built.

There is a classic physics-politics outreach example that has become synonymous with LHC funding. On trying to acquire UK funding for the LHC project in 1993, physicists had to derive a way of explaining what the Higgs boson was to the UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave. This quasi-political example is wonderfully described by David J. Miller; Bryan Cox also discusses the same occasion in this outstanding TED lecture.

What is the Higgs boson? The Short Answer
Predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs boson is a particle that carries the Higgs field. The Higgs field is theorized to permeate through the entire Universe. As a massless particle passes through the Higgs field, it accumulates it, and the particle gains mass. Therefore, should the Higgs boson be discovered, we’ll know why matter has mass.

What is the Higgs boson? The Long Answer
Firstly we must know what the “Standard Model” is. In quantum physics, there are basically six types of quarks, six types of leptons (all 12 are collectively known as “fermions”) and four bosons. Quarks are the building blocks of all hadrons in the Universe (they are contained inside common hadrons like protons and neutrons) and they can never exist as a single entity in nature. The “glue” that holds hadrons together (thus bonding quarks together) is governed by the “strong force,” a powerful force which acts over very small distances (nucleon-scales). The strong force is delivered by one of the four bosons called the “gluon.” When two quarks combine to form a hadron, the resulting particle is called a “meson“; when three combine, the resulting particle is called a “baryon.”

http://tinyurl.com/6z3tb3"

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MissMJ

In addition to six quarks in the Standard Model, we have six leptons. The electron, muon and tau particles plus their neutrinos; the electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino. Add to this the four bosons: photon (electromagnetic force), W and Z bosons (weak force) and gluons (strong force), we have all the components of the Standard Model.

However, there’s something missing. What about gravity? Although very weak on quantum scales, this fundamental force cannot be explained by the Standard Model. The gravitational force is mediated by the hypothetical particle, the graviton.

The Higgs Field
The Standard Model has its shortcomings (such as the non-inclusion of the graviton) but ultimately it has elegantly described many fundamental properties of the quantum and cosmological universe. However, we need to find a way of describing how these Standard Model particles have (and indeed, have no) mass.

Permeating through all the theoretical calculations of the Standard Model is the “Higgs field.” It is predicted to exist, giving quarks and gluons their large masses; but also giving photons and neutrinos little or no mass. The Higgs field forms the basic underlying structure of the Universe; it has to, otherwise “mass” would not exist (if the Universe is indeed governed by the Standard Model).

People evenly distributed in a room, akin to the Higgs field (CERN)

As a particle travels through the Higgs field (which can be thought of as a 3D lattice filling the Universe, from the vacuum of space to the centre of stars), it causes a distortion in the field. As it moves, the particle will cause the Higgs field to cluster around the particle. The more clustering there is, the more mass the particle will accumulate. Going back to David J. Miller’s 1993 quasi-political description of the Higgs field, his analogy of the number of people attracted to a powerful politician rings very similar to what actually happens in the Higgs field as a particle passes through it (see the cartoon left and below).

Using the cartoon of Margaret Thatcher, ex-UK Prime Minister, entering a crowded room, suddenly makes sense. As Thatcher enters the room, although the people are evenly distributed across the floor, Thatcher will soon start accumulating delegates wanting to talk to her as she tries to walk. This effect is seen all the time when paparazzi accumulate around a celebrity here in Los Angeles; the longer the celeb walks within the “paparazzi field,” more photographers and reporters accumulate.

Then Thatcher enters the room, people gather, mass increases (CERN)

Pretty obvious so far. The Thatcher analogy worked really well in 1993 and the paparazzi analogy works well today. But, critically, what happens when the individual accumulates all these people (i.e. increase mass)? If they are able to travel at the same speed across the room, the whole ensemble will have greater momentum, thus will be harder to slow down.

The Higgs Boson
So going back to our otherwise massless particle travelling through the Higgs field, as it does so, it distorts the surrounding field, causing it to bunch up around the particle, thus giving it mass and therefore momentum. Observations of the weak force (exchanged by the W and Z particles) cannot be explained without the inclusion of the Higgs field.

OK, so we have a “Higgs field,” where does the “Higgs boson” come into it? The Higgs particle is simply the boson that carries the Higgs field. So if we were to dissect a particle (like colliding it inside a particle accelerator), we’d see a Higgs boson carrying the Higgs field. This boson can be called a Higgs particle. If the Higgs particle is just an enhancement in the Higgs field, there could be many different “types” of Higgs particles, of varying energies.

British particle physicist Peter Higgs (as seen in the 1960s), Higgs boson namesake and lead researcher on the Higgs mechanism (Peter Tuffy)

This is where the LHC comes in. We know that the Higgs boson governs the amount of mass a particle can have. It is therefore by definition “massive.” The more massive a particle, the more energy it has (i.e. E = mc²), so in an effort to isolate the Higgs particle, we need a highly energetic collision. Previous particle accelerator experiments have not turned up evidence for the Higgs boson, but this null result sets a lower limit on the mass of the Higgs boson. This currently holds at a rest-mass energy of 114 GeV (meaning the lower limit for the Higgs boson will be greater than 114 GeV). It is hoped that the high energy 1 TeV collisions possible by the LHC will confirm that the Higgs exists at higher masses.

So why is the Higgs boson important?
The Higgs boson is the last remaining particle of the Standard Model that has not been observed; all the other fermions and bosons have been proven to exist through experiment. If the LHC does focus enough energy to generate an observable Higgs boson with a mass over 114 GeV, the Standard Model will be complete and we’ll know why matter has mass. Then we will be working on validating the possibility of supersymmetry and string theory… but we’ll leave that for another day…

But does the Higgs boson give hadrons the ability to feel pain? I doubt it…