dave_ant's comments

dave_ant | 9 years ago | on: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

Is there tectonics on that moon ? Isn't it too small for that ? The same goes for Europa... Is there real tectonics there ?

If there is no tectonics in place and you have a "closed" big bucket of water constantly filled up with chemicals from hydrothermal vents during billions of years, wouldn't the water become completely soaked and kind of slimy ? Not the best place for life, even for extremophiles...

I also found an interesting article on the probable high acidity of Europa ocean, that would make it not suitable for harboring life : http://www.space.com/14757-europa-moon-ocean-acidic.html

I guess it could also apply to Enceladus ocean. Can someone elaborate on that ?

P.S.: English is not my native language, sorry for any grammatical incoherence :)

dave_ant | 9 years ago | on: CERN experiment discovers five new particles

Well, I don't know if the LHC is a vital instrument but it will certainly decide were the community of particle physics will go after the plug is pulled on it.

The little I know about is that the LHC is an hadron collider (of course, duh), which means the collisions are not as "clean" as they were with the LEP collider, because the energy is not "deposited" on elementary particles like electrons but on composite hadrons. Which apparently makes things more complicated when it comes to know exactly how the energy is distributed inside the hadrons when they collide...

I'm not sure, I'm not an expert :) I've read that the next collider should use electrons again for collisions, up to 1 TeV or more. Maybe using linear accelerators...

Even if the analogy is not very good it's a little bit like the James Web space telescope, it will open new horizons and open the way for more precise exploration with 50m-class optically stabilized terrestrial telescopes... Just like actual 10m-class telescopes have studied Hubble discoveries in more details.

I see the LHC the same way. The results they will gather from it will decide what to explore next, with more a "precise" collider using leptons and "clean" high energy collisions.

Maybe I'm wrong though. On the political side of thing, sure, it's a costly adventure but I'd rather see money spent on those big scientific project than throwing money at military spendings and engage in useless and illegal wars.

That doesn't mean we can't debate big scientific project. ITER is also a monstrous one when it comes to budget and is even more risky because of the disruptions problem when it comes to confined unstable plasmas in a Tokamak chamber. An apparently 70 years old unsolved problem. Some physicists have warned about powerful disruptions, because of the size of ITER and induced currents in it, potentially harmful for the installation and the people that will work on it if the Tritium breeding blankets are destroyed...

Still, it will be made. And an even bigger experimental reactor is planned, DEMO, that will cost even more. I'm more sceptic about ITER than the LHC...