Re: Large Electron Positron Collider

From: EjP (nospam_at_hackers.are.bad)
Date: 01/19/05 

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:46:29 -0600

DavidBowman wrote:

> Well, THAT'S a relief!
>
> Is it it fair to say then, that modulo:
>
> -- increasing statistical certainty margins
>
> -- triaing students and operators, and
>
> -- turning lead into gold
>
> that once an accellerator has seen everything it can below it's GEv
> limit, that it really can't do any useful experiments?
>
> Thanx,
>
> =[ d
>
That's a bit too broad. There are often clever experiments
that can be devised to explore particular physics phenomena
even at well studied-energies.

However, in the case of LEP, these were precision
general purpose detectors. No one had any compelling
proposals for "niche" measurements, and no
one saw a way to increase the luminosity (rate
of particule collisions) sufficiently to
justify continued running.

It's also important to contrast the way these
detectors operate with the Hubble example you gave.
Traditionally, telescopes aim at a particular
part of the sky to look for a particular thing.
These particle detectors, on the other hand,
collect and store basically ALL the data about
as many events as they can, with experimental cuts
made afterwards. What this means is that the
science doesn't stop just because the accelerator
is turned off. There are still lots of analyses
going on using the data that was collected at
LEP during its operation.

N.B. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is an attempt to
apply this sort of technique to astronomy as
well.

-E