Last year at TED I gave an introduction to the LHC. And I promised to come back and give you an update on how that machine worked. So this is it. And for those of you that weren't there, the LHC is the largest scientific experiment ever attempted -- 27 kilometers in circumference. Its job is to recreate the conditions that were present less than a billionth of a second after the universe began, up to 600 million times a second. It's nothing if not ambitious.
Lani sem na TED-u predstavil veliki hadronski trkalnik (LHC) in takrat obljubil, da se vrnem z novicami o tem, kako naprava deluje. To je torej to. Za vse tiste, ki vas takrat ni bilo – LHC je največji znanstveni eksperiment vseh časov – z obsegom 27 kilometrov. Njegova naloga je poustvariti pogoje, kakršni so vladali v vesolju manj kot miljardinko sekunde po njegovem začetku, in to ponavljati do 600 milijonkrat na sekundo. To je zelo ambiciozno.
This is the machine below Geneva. We take the pictures of those mini-Big Bangs inside detectors. This is the one I work on. It's called the ATLAS detector -- 44 meters wide, 22 meters in diameter. Spectacular picture here of ATLAS under construction so you can see the scale.
Ta naprava stoji pod Ženevo. Znotraj detektorjev zajemamo slike teh mini "Velikih pokov". To je detektor, na katerem delam jaz. Imenuje se ATLAS – širok je 44 metrov s premerom 22 metrov. Spektakularna fotografija ATLASa v času gradnje, tako da lahko vidite skalo.
On the 10th of September last year we turned the machine on for the first time. And this picture was taken by ATLAS. It caused immense celebration in the control room. It's a picture of the first beam particle going all the way around the LHC, colliding with a piece of the LHC deliberately, and showering particles into the detector. In other words, when we saw that picture on September 10th we knew the machine worked, which is a great triumph. I don't know whether this got the biggest cheer, or this, when someone went onto Google and saw the front page was like that. It means we made cultural impact as well as scientific impact.
10. septembra lani smo napravo prvič zagnali in ATLAS je posnel tole sliko, kar je sprožilo val navdušenja v nadzorni sobi. To je slika prvega snopa žarkov ki naredi krog okrog LHC-ja, se namenoma zaleti v njegov del ter razprši novonastale delce v detektor. Drugače povedano – ko smo desetega septembra zagledali to sliko, smo vedeli, da naprava deluje, kar je bil izjemen dosežek. Ne vem, ali smo bili bolj navdušeni nad tem, ali tem, ko je nekdo šel na Google in opazil naslovno stran, ki je izgledala takole. To je pomenilo, da smo imeli tako kulturni vpliv kot tudi vpliv na znanost.
About a week later we had a problem with the machine, related actually to these bits of wire here -- these gold wires. Those wires carry 13 thousand amps when the machine is working in full power. Now the engineers amongst you will look at them and say, "No they don't. They're small wires." They can do that because when they are very cold they are what's called superconducting wire. So at minus 271 degrees, colder than the space between the stars, those wires can take that current.
Približno teden dni kasneje smo imeli težavo z napravo, povezano z deli teh žic – teh zlatih žic. Po teh kablih teče 13.000 amperov, ko naprava deluje s polno močjo. Tisti med vami, ki ste inženirji, boste ob pogledu nanje dejali: "Ne, to ne gre. To se vendar drobne žičke." Vendar to zmorejo, kajti kadar so zelo ohlajene, postanejo takoimenovane superprevodne žice. Torej pri 271-ih stopinjah pod ničlo, kar je hladneje od medzvezdnega prostora, ti kabli lahko prevajajo tolikšen tok.
In one of the joints between over 9,000 magnets in LHC, there was a manufacturing defect. So the wire heated up slightly, and its 13,000 amps suddenly encountered electrical resistance. This was the result. Now that's more impressive when you consider those magnets weigh over 20 tons, and they moved about a foot. So we damaged about 50 of the magnets. We had to take them out, which we did. We reconditioned them all, fixed them. They're all on their way back underground now. By the end of March the LHC will be intact again. We will switch it on, and we expect to take data in June or July, and continue with our quest to find out what the building blocks of the universe are.
Pri eni izmed povezav med več kot devet tisočimi magneti v LHC-ju je prišlo do napake pri izdelavi. Žica se je rahlo segrela in na njenih 13.000 amperov je nenadoma začel delovati električni upor. In to je bil rezultat. To je še bolj presunljivo, če pomislite, da ti magneti tehtajo preko 20 ton in da so se premaknili za približno 30 cm. Poškodovali smo približno 50 magnetov. Morali smo jih odstraniti, kar smo tudi storili. Prenovili smo jih, jih popravili. Zdaj so vsi na poti nazaj v podzemlje. Do konca marca bo LHC zopet v prvotnem stanju. Zagnali ga bomo in pričakujemo, da bomo od junija ali julija zajemali podatke in nadaljevali z iskanjem gradnikov vesolja.
Now of course, in a way those accidents reignite the debate about the value of science and engineering at the edge. It's easy to refute. I think that the fact that it's so difficult, the fact that we're overreaching, is the value of things like the LHC. I will leave the final word to an English scientist, Humphrey Davy, who, I suspect, when defending his protege's useless experiments -- his protege was Michael Faraday -- said this, "Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer." Thank you. (Applause)
Seveda se po eni strani ob takih nesrečah vnamejo debate o vrednosti znanosti in inženirstva na robu mogočega. To je enostavno izpodbijati. Po mojem prepričanju že samo dejstvo, da je tako težko, da presegamo meje, daje vrednost projektom, kakršen je LHC. Zadnjo besedo bom prepustil angleškemu znanstveniku, Humphreyju Davyju, ki je – sumim, da med zagovarjanjem neuporabnih poskusov svojega varovanca – njegov varovanec je bil Michael Faraday – rekel tole: "Nič ni tako nevarnega za napredek človeškega uma kot predpostavljati, da so naši pogledi na znanost ultimativni, da v naravi ni skrivnosti, da so naši dosežki popolni in da ni več novih svetov, ki bi jih lahko osvojili." Hvala. (aplavz)