Robin Wilton's esoterica

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the reported loss of personal data on a memory stick at PA Consulting. At the time, the Home Secretary unhesitatingly blamed PA for failing to process the data according to the terms of the agreement in place with them. The next step is reported today, as she has apparently cancelled the contract for the work PA were doing.

In one sense, I suppose it is commendable that data breaches are being taken seriously and that there are consequences when something goes wrong. On the other hand, there are some questions which the available reports leave unanswered...

For example, I have to wonder exactly how it became apparent that the data had been lost. Imagine you have been sent, say, a spreadsheet (NB - I have no information about what actually happened in the PA case... this is purely hypothetical), and you open it on your PC/laptop to work on it. You finish whatever it is you needed to do, and save the file.

I know in a lot of organisations, the default (and in some organisations the only) option would be that the file is saved on a server. In others the user would have the option of saving to disk or to removable media.

Now imagine you have saved the file to a USB stick, and you then delete the original (from email, server, temp file or wherever). Then you lose the stick. Hmm. Tricky. You might have to go back to the originator and admit that you've lost the file... and you would look a bit of a plonker.

On the other hand, imagine that the copy you wrote to the USB stick was only a backup... the original is still in your inbox as an email attachment, or on the server, or wherever. Under those circumstances, losing the USB stick, being aware that you had lost it, and owning up to having done so would look rather different. Indeed, it would suggest really quite good processes for tracking assets and for reporting their loss (despite the initial cock-up of losing the stick in question).

As I say, this is all entirely hypothetical. I have no idea which (if either) was the case at PA, where I bet some unfortunate people are having a pretty miserable time of it.

Well, the world hasn't been sucked inside out... yet. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN was finally switched on today for its first full-circuit test, though as it was just to fire a clump of protons in one direction, the experiment hasn't yet reached the stage where the much-feared "micro black hole" could theoretically appear and devour us all. Which is nice.

The BBC article on the subject hints at amazing powers on the part of Lyn Evans, the project leader. Apparently, shortly after the switch was flicked, Lyn remarked "There it is" as the proton beam completed its first lap. Wow. According to the same article, the proton beam ultimately goes round the circuit in about 1/11,000 of a second - so my initial thought was that Lyn must have amazingly fast reflexes.

Then I looked into it a little further on the excellent LHC Outreach site, here, and found this handy description of the various stages which would precede a full circuit of the collider:

How long does it take for a proton to go from zero to 14 TeV ?

When a proton leaves the source, it crosses the linac and reaches the PSB in a few microseconds. In the PSB it is accelerated from 50 MeV to 1.4 GeV in 530 ms, then after less than a microsecond it is injected in the PS where it can either:
- be accelerated/manipulated/extracted in 1025 ms
- or wait for 1.2 more seconds before being accelerated, if it's part of the first PSB batch to the PS.

Then it is sent to the SPS where it waits for 10.8, 7.2, 3.6, or zero seconds whether it's part of the first, second, third, or fourth PS batch to the SPS. The SPS accelerates it to 450 GeV in 4.3 seconds, and sends it to the LHC.

So the time it takes from the source to the exit of the SPS is between
0.53 + 1.025 + 4.3 = 5.86 seconds
and
0.53 + 1.2 + 1.025 + 10.8 + 4.3 = 17.86 seconds

Then our proton has to wait up to 20 minutes on the LHC 450 GeV injection plateau before the 25 minutes ramp to high energy, and these 45 minutes dominates [sic] the transit time.

The 450 GeV mentioned is, as it were, the 'entry speed' onto the collider. Thereafter, the 'ramp to high energy' consists of successive 'kicks' which bring the circulating proton beam up to its full close-to-light speed of 7 TeV. Through the wonders of the Web, I am able to tell you that TeV stands for Teraelectrion volts, and that

7 teraelectron volts = 1.12152352 × 10^-6 joules

If you need/want to know what electron volts are, I suggest you look on Wikipedia... I gave up Physics when I was 15 ;^)