Cool photo.  Nobody needs that big of a particle accelerator! 

I had no clue what one of these does...had to wiki it.

Are there homeless people living in the LHC? 太舒服了! Tai4 shu1fu2 le5! Very cosy! Nice and dry (bit cold, though).

瑞士干净得不得了! Rui4shi4 gan1jing4 de bu4 de2 liao3! Switzerland's so clean! but there are beer bottles on the tunnel floor. Like the London Underground.

Very amusing.

Looks like the bottle incident was sabotage. Some people are worried about these attempts to explore the fabric of the universe and there was even an attempt to stop the LHC by taking action in the US courts. Could be disgruntled employees, though.

For the other side of the story: LHC Concerns

When does it start?

On the 10th?

"Accelerate a particle!" game, from CERN. Too hard for me. I made time run backwards, I think. Amusing for a couple of minutes:

Clicking here may destroy the Universe 

"CERN's largest accelerator ring is 100 meters (320 feet) under the ground and is 27 kilometers (16.7 miles) around. " 

I didn't expect that Hadron would be translated as "强子" in Chinese at all. Just out of curiousty, I've found a list of particle physics terms. As sebire said, some of them are very nicely translated. Red-colored ones are relatively frequently used terms .... perhaps.

Thanks Changye!

This is high-frequency vocab we haven't seen in any CPod lesson yet. What about a video "vocab tour"? With a fat arrow on the 希格斯玻色...

But maybe they just introduce it all in the space/scifi series they are preparing since quite a while now. I am really looking forward to the sound effects in this one

A word from John would be in order here

:)

Haha, baryon is a heavy particle, that has made my very geeky day.

Where did you find that vocab list, Changye?

And who gets to decide on the translation? Is there some kind of language academy?

I wonder if the baryon was discovered by someone call Barry hehe. If I discover one I could call it the Bazon. ;)

(According to wikipedia, baryon is derived from the Greek for heavy.

Imagine what they will learn from this thing. Now that would be a cool place to work. Thanks Changye for all the physics terms. Wish I could remember some of them.

Henning,  you are correct. The first attempt to circulate a beam of particles is scheduled for Sept 10.

Let me guess?

型强子 = Hadron 对撞 = Collider/Collision?

I'm gonna stick with LHC!

希格斯玻色子 = Higgs Boson (xi1 ge2 si1 bo1se4zi)

Not a bad transliteration!

Henning's right. Cpod could make some humorous movies about sub-atomic particles and call them the "Barry On" films.

(Sorry. UK reference.)

Hi guys,

I’ve looked into the etymology of some particle names and found that their Chinese counterparts are really nice interpretations based on their original meanings. In Japanese, those terms are usually transliterated, so people often use them even without knowing their grue meanings!

Hadron (from greek word “hadros” = strong) 强子
Baryon (“barys” = heavy) 重子
Lepton (“leptos” = light) 轻子

Gluon is translated as “胶子 (jiao1 zi3)” in Chinese, and it's a very exact translation, but I don’t think that ordinary Chinese people easily find that this is a physics term. On the contrary, it’s highly possible that a lot of people think that it’s a stupid typo of 饺子 (jiao3 zi). This is not a joke.

Another one:

Another good translation.

Startup happened to today and the Earth is still intact hehe. They haven't collided any protons yet though. ;)

Chinese news story

English news story

How do you say "to start a particle accelerator"? 开大型强子对撞器？

For a generic particle accelerator probably: 开粒子加速器

We could do with a lesson on this stuff. :)

Beer can save the universe! 谢谢啤酒！Well, that's what might have happened with the LHC's predecessor at CERN, LEP2.

This from New Scientist, 29th June 1996:

"When LEP2, as the upgraded machine is known, was switched on, beams of electrons and positrons were supposed to travel in opposite directions round the giant circuit, but neither beam made it. CERN's investigators soon homed in on the section of the ring causing the trouble. When they dismantled it, they found that the high-vacuum tube through which the beams travel had been blocked by two beer bottles."

(PS The Large Hadron Collider is still the Large Hadroff Collider. High energy collisions start next year.)

Hi eyux,

Haha, that's just hilarious. I know the mass of a particle is extraordinarily small, but I still can't believe that "beams" generated by such a huge collider can't even destroy beer bottles! Perhaps the bottles were coated with ultra-super-alloy "X" or made of extra-high density materials such as the core of a white dwarf-neutron star!

Hmm, don't think I would want to work for CERN. Hated experimental physics, and was terrible at phenomenology. Plus particle physics is such a mess. I can't remember all the particles and their properties in English, let alone Chinese!