Is there a black box recorder at the LHC?

[BrianL]

Is there a "black box recorder" at the LHC?

To explain the question further: are there real-time records of exactly what's going on and/or voice recorders, analogous to what there are in commercial jets? If there were to be a major catastrophe at the LHC, they would need to know precisely what was being done at the time, to try to find out what had caused it. Otherwise it would probably put a stop to research using colliders, worldwide and for a long time.
Presumably it would have to be remote from CERN and would need high volume data transfer for all the trace information.

 

[Vanadium 50]

What kind of "major catastrophe" are you thinking of that would destroy the control center - which is a good 2km from the LHC?

 

[Blenton]

A Resonance Cascade.

 

[humanino]

A Resonance Cascade.

 

[Borek]

 

[BrianL]

It looks like I haven't expressed my question properly, so I'll see if I can do that.
At some time when the LHC was being designed (and independent of the controversy), it seems to me that it would have been a reasonable for someone to think something like this -

"Temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the Sun, possible production of Higgs particle of unknown characteristics, possible interaction with the extra dimensions envisaged by String Theory, possible interaction with dark matter/dark energy - there's
a lot of unknowns. We can't see how where any of them will cause a problem and/or we don't expect any of them will cause a problem. But we don't one hundred percent know how they will behave, so, just in case, we'll have a 'black box' function"​

So my question is - did anyone think this or do this?

 

[MotoH]

If something catastrophic happened. I don't think a black box would survive it.

 

[humanino]

So my question is - did anyone think this or do this?

My opinion : more people than you think thought about the problem more deeply than you think.

It is difficult to make a comparison, but as a first guess, the amount of monitoring on LHC is far more detailed than on a commercial jet. Literally several thousands, maybe tens of thousands of diagnostic signals are recorded at about one Hertz (this frequency depends on the exact signal). How many signals are recorded by an airline black box ?

 

[Borek]

If something catastrophic happened. I don't think a black box would survive it.

You mean black hole won't choke on black box?

 

[Borek]

How many signals are recorded by an airline black box ?

If memory serves me well - hundreds.

 

[Frame Dragger]

At this point, being accreted by a black hole would be preferable to saaaaay, watching even 10 seconds of news.

All kidding aside, why is it that people worry about this, but not our upper atmosphere? Anything that went so spectacularly wrong that it destroyed the LHC, woudl be new to physics. What would a "black box" be recording, that the datastreams from the collider isn't already sending around the world?

More importantly, if the LHC DID experience a star trek disaster (resonance cascade lol), does ANYONE think that the public would just say, "Ah, well, recover the BB and we'll try again!"? Hell, no, people would probably lynch everyone with more than a grade school education!

 

[BrianL]

Anything that went so spectacularly wrong that it destroyed the LHC, woudl be new to physics.

"new to physics" was what got me thinking about this originally. I suppose you can't rule that out, among all the unknowns. (I'm not going to say "unknown unknowns")

At this point, being accreted by a black hole would be preferable to saaaaay, watching even 10 seconds of news.

The news programs are worse for us in the UK - we've got a general election in a few weeks time. Fortunately the volcano pushed the politics into second place for a few days.

On a lighter note, look here to see why it's in Switzerland not Vanuatu
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-%26-technology/switzerland-to-be-devoured-by-black-hole-200806251047/"
And a similar one:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/everyone-dead-by-teatime-200809091242/"
Note these two links are to a site with 'adult humour' (bad language), which may offend.

 

[Frame Dragger]

"new to physics" was what got me thinking about this originally. I suppose you can't rule that out, among all the unknowns. (I'm not going to say "unknown unknowns")


The news programs are worse for us in the UK - we've got a general election in a few weeks time. Fortunately the volcano pushed the politics into second place for a few days.
On a lighter note, look here to see why it's in Switzerland not Vanuatu
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-%26-technology/switzerland-to-be-devoured-by-black-hole-200806251047/"
And a similar one:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/everyone-dead-by-teatime-200809091242/"
Note these two links are to a site with 'adult humour' (bad language), which may offend.

Ha! Welcome to PF BrianL! Great post, I am laughing as I write this.