Archive for the ‘Large Hadron Collider’ Category.
July 21, 2011
The race to assemble supercomputers that are over a hundred times faster than the current record holder is heating up. Japan’s K computer is presently the top machine in the world, benchmarked at 8 petaflops. One thousand petaflop/s (1 exaflop/s) systems are expected to become operational by the end of this decade. There are enormous challenges to constructing these behemoths that may be difficult to circumvent. However, the promise of this much raw power has numerous governments working intensely to make it a reality. The Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing Program (SciDAC) had a meeting to discuss the engineering obstacles to obtaining this level of brute computational strength. Read More »
July 20, 2011
The Large Hadron Collider may be on the verge discovering new particles. Enormous amounts of protons are currently zipping along the 17 mile accelerator and smashing into one another. As they annihilate, they generate an intricate shower of subatomic matter. Many physicists have been fairly modest when predicting the exact number that the machine may actually uncover. The higgs boson is the leading contender that is expected to be seen at the energy levels being probed. Other light supersymmetric particles are possible as well. The neutralino, for instance, might help explain dark matter that can normally only be detected only due gravitational effects. While the LHC is an engineering marvel that surpasses almost any other thing that man has ever built, it is still not powerful enough to solve as many mysteries as physicists would like. Quite a few theoreticians expect to see physics that doesn’t conform to the standard model at the LHC. However, ever higher energies will be needed in the future to rule out many of the vacua that are inherent to the leading contender for a TOE i.e. string theory. There are limitations to how fast protons (or anything else) can be accelerated using existing technology. A novel way of speeding up specific types of matter in less space is known as laser wakefield acceleration. Future particle accelerators may take advantage of this method in order to attain a higher velocity. Read More »
The race to assemble supercomputers that are over a hundred times faster than the current record holder is heating up. Japan’s K computer is presently the top machine in the world, benchmarked at 8 petaflops. One thousand petaflop/s (1 exaflop/s) systems are expected to become operational by the end of this decade. There are enormous challenges to constructing these behemoths that may be difficult to circumvent. However, the promise of this much raw power has numerous governments working intensely to make it a reality. The Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing Program (SciDAC) had a meeting to discuss the engineering obstacles to obtaining this level of brute computational strength. Read More »
