TED2009
Brian Cox: What went wrong at the LHC
Brian Cox: Què va passar a l'LHC?
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En aquesta breu xerrada de TED U 2009, en Brian Cox ens parla de les novetats del supercol·lisionador. Ens parla de les reparacions en curs i sobretot d'allò que el futur reserva a l'experiment científic més gran mai provat.
Brian Cox - Physicist
Physicist Brian Cox has two jobs: working with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and explaining big science to the general public. He's a professor at the University of Manchester. Full bio
Physicist Brian Cox has two jobs: working with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and explaining big science to the general public. He's a professor at the University of Manchester. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
Last year at TED I gave an introduction to the LHC.
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L'any passat aquí, a TED, vaig fer una presentació del LHC.
00:16
And I promised to come back and give you an update
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I vaig prometre que tornaria i us informaria dels avenços
00:18
on how that machine worked.
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del funcionament de la màquina.
00:20
So this is it. And for those of you that weren't there,
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I aquí som. I per a aquells qui no vau ser-hi,
00:22
the LHC is the largest scientific experiment ever attempted --
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dir-vos que el LHC és l'experiment científic més gran mai provat
00:25
27 kilometers in circumference.
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fa 27 kilòmetres de circumferència.
00:27
Its job is to recreate the conditions
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S'encarrega de reproduir les condicions
00:29
that were present less than a billionth of a second after the universe began,
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que hi havia menys d'una mil milionèsima part de segon després del naixement de l'univers --
00:32
up to 600 million times a second.
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multipliqueu-ho per 600 milions de vegades per tenir un segon.
00:35
It's nothing if not ambitious.
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No és res, tret d'ambiciós.
00:37
This is the machine below Geneva.
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Aquesta és la màquina que hi ha sota Ginebra.
00:39
We take the pictures of those mini-Big Bangs inside detectors.
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Fem fotos dels petits Big Bangs de dintre els detectors.
00:42
This is the one I work on. It's called the ATLAS detector --
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Jo estic treballant en aquest. És el detector ATLAS --
00:45
44 meters wide, 22 meters in diameter.
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fa 44 metres d'amplada i 22 de diàmetre.
00:48
Spectacular picture here of ATLAS under construction
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Aquí teniu una imatge espectacular de l'ATLAS quan s'estava construïnt
00:51
so you can see the scale.
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així podeu veure'n la mida.
00:53
On the 10th of September last year we turned the machine on for the first time.
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El 10 de setembre de l'any passat vam engegar la màquina per primera vegada.
00:56
And this picture was taken by ATLAS.
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I aquesta foto la va treure l'ATLAS:
00:59
It caused immense celebration in the control room.
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A la sala de control ho vam celebrar molt.
01:02
It's a picture of the first beam particle
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És una foto del primer feix de partícules
01:04
going all the way around the LHC,
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fent la volta al LHC
01:06
colliding with a piece of the LHC deliberately,
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i col·lisionant deliberadament amb una peça de l'LHC,
01:09
and showering particles into the detector.
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i escampant partícules vers el detector.
01:11
In other words, when we saw that picture on September 10th
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És a dir, quan vam veure la foto el 10 de setembre
01:13
we knew the machine worked,
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sabíem que l'aparell funcionava,
01:15
which is a great triumph.
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i això ja és un gran triomf.
01:17
I don't know whether this got the biggest cheer,
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No estic segur de si va ser això el que va aconseguir l'ovació més gran,
01:19
or this, when someone went onto Google
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o si va ser quan algú va entrar a Google
01:21
and saw the front page was like that.
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i va veure que la pàgina d'inici era així.
01:23
It means we made cultural impact
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Això volia dir que vam impactar culturalment
01:25
as well as scientific impact.
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a banda de científicament.
01:27
About a week later we had a problem with the machine,
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Una setmana més tard vam tenir un problema amb l'aparell
01:30
related actually to these bits of wire here -- these gold wires.
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relacionat amb aquests trossos de cable -- els daurats.
01:34
Those wires carry 13 thousand amps
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Aquests cables porten 13 mil amperes
01:37
when the machine is working in full power.
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quan l'aparell està funcionant a la capacitat màxima.
01:39
Now the engineers amongst you will look at them and say,
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Ara, els que sou enginyers d'aquí els mirareu i direu,
01:41
"No they don't. They're small wires."
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"No, no porten això. Són cables petits."
01:43
They can do that because
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Ho poden fer perquè
01:45
when they are very cold they are what's called superconducting wire.
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quan estan molt freds esdevenen el que s'anomena cables superconductors.
01:47
So at minus 271 degrees,
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Així que a menys 271 graus,
01:50
colder than the space between the stars,
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més fred que l'espai entre els estels,
01:52
those wires can take that current.
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aquests cables són capaços de portar aquest corrent.
01:54
In one of the joints between over 9,000 magnets in LHC,
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A una de les juntes d'entre els aproximadament nou mil imants al LHC,
01:58
there was a manufacturing defect.
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vam trobar un defecte de fabricació.
02:00
So the wire heated up slightly,
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I el cable s'escalfà una mica,
02:02
and its 13,000 amps suddenly encountered electrical resistance.
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i els 13 mil amperes de sobte van trobar resistència elèctrica.
02:06
This was the result.
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Aquest va ser-ne el resultat.
02:08
Now that's more impressive
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Això impressiona més
02:11
when you consider those magnets weigh over 20 tons,
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si tenim en compte que aquests imants pesen més de 20 tones,
02:13
and they moved about a foot.
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i es van moure uns 30 centímetres.
02:15
So we damaged about 50 of the magnets.
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Es van danyar uns 50 imants.
02:18
We had to take them out, which we did.
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Havíem de treure'ls, i ho vam fer.
02:21
We reconditioned them all, fixed them.
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Els vam reparar tots, els vam arreglar.
02:23
They're all on their way back underground now.
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Ara són tots un altre cop sota terra.
02:25
By the end of March the LHC will be intact again.
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A finals de març el LHC estarà intacte un altre cop.
02:27
We will switch it on,
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L'engegarem,
02:29
and we expect to take data in June or July,
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i esperem tenir dades pel juny o el juliol,
02:32
and continue with our quest to find out
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i continuar la nostra empresa per esbrinar
02:35
what the building blocks of the universe are.
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quines són les parets mestres de l'univers.
02:37
Now of course, in a way
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Ara, d'alguna manera
02:40
those accidents reignite the debate
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aquests accidents han reobert el debat
02:42
about the value of science and engineering at the edge. It's easy to refute.
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sobre el valor de la ciència i l'enginyeria al límit. És fàcil de refutar.
02:48
I think that the fact that it's so difficult,
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Trobo que el fet que sigui tan difícil,
02:50
the fact that we're overreaching, is the value of things like the LHC.
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el fet que anem més enllà dels límits, és el valor de coses com el LHC.
02:54
I will leave the final word to an English scientist, Humphrey Davy,
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Us deixo amb les paraules d'un científic anglès, Humphrey Davy,
02:58
who, I suspect,
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qui, em sembla,
03:00
when defending his protege's useless experiments --
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quan va defensar els experiments inútils del seu protegit,
03:03
his protege was Michael Faraday --
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que era Michael Faraday,
03:05
said this, "Nothing is so dangerous
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va dir això: "Res no és tan perillós
03:08
to the progress of the human mind
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per al progrés de la ment humana
03:10
than to assume that our views of science are ultimate,
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que assumir que les nostres conclusions científiques son les definitives,
03:14
that there are no mysteries in nature,
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que no hi ha més misteris a la natura,
03:16
that our triumphs are complete, and that
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que els nostres triomfs són finals, i que
03:18
there are no new worlds to conquer."
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no hi ha nous mons a conquerir."
03:20
Thank you.
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Gràcies.
03:22
(Applause)
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(Aplaudiments)
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Brian Cox - PhysicistPhysicist Brian Cox has two jobs: working with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and explaining big science to the general public. He's a professor at the University of Manchester.
Why you should listen
Based at the University of Manchester, Brian Cox works at CERN in Geneva on the ATLAS experiment, studying the forward proton detectors for the Large Hadron Collider there. He's a professor at the University of Manchester, working in the High Energy Physics group, and is a research fellow of the Royal Society.
He's also become a vital voice in the UK media for explaining physics to the public. With his rockstar hair and accessible charm, he's the go-to physicist for explaining heady concepts on British TV and radio. (If you're in the UK, watch him on The Big Bang Machine.) He was the science advisor for the 2007 film Sunshine. He answers science questions every Friday on BBC6 radio's Breakfast Show.
Brian Cox | Speaker | TED.com