The headline makes it sound like this is unintentional.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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It must be some sort of base pessimism thing. My automatic assumption was that it was benevolent and intentional.
It might be about general knowledge of how colliders work, the sentence structure does it no favours, but half way through I realised it had to be intentional/beneficial due to knowing the only possible way a collider generates heat as a byproduct.
Where as someone that doesn't know much about colliders might read that sentence and assume it's like radiative heat or something.
It was just comical to imagine the collider would heat up the residents directly like an enormous microwave oven. In the usual wording, households are warmed, and indirectly the residents.
All heat transfer is radiative if you zoom in enough.
Same.
Yeah like “the use of combustion engines will heat millions of French homes in the next ten years.”
They say if you stand in the middle of the LHC, you'll be warm for the rest of your life...
Amidala: Because they'll gain super powers right? Right?
Anakin: smiles
I know you mean in the centre of the beam, but you can stand in the middle of the loop of the LHC and be perfectly fine
We must stop the Organization, SERN.
El. Psy. Congroo.
Tuturu
This thing has been running for over 15 years and they just figured out they could use the waste heat?
It's not really the same thing today as it was 15 years ago. It also hasn't been running continuously that whole time. They regularly stop experimenting to build new extensions onto it.
I visited the LHC back in 2019 and at the time they were expanding it even then.
I doubt you can answer but did it just become economically viable?
I'd bet it was viable earlier and someone just figured this out.
Makes me wonder recycling the heat from AI data centers.
Datacenter heat is actually a very good source for local heating networks and a lot of European countries either already mandate to consider it when feasible, have introduced legislation that will make it mandatory over the next years or are at least supporting it financially.
It's actually fairly common to do so for a long time here - from waste incineration, steel mils, nuclear plants, etc.
Personally I heat my office from my server rack and my old job did heat one of their office buildings from the heat generated by the data center in the basement. (And funny enough also did partially cool it from that source)
I'm in the US so this is not a priority for the current admin.
recycling the heat from AI data centers
I'd say the govts should make it mandatory for anyone making a large enough data centre, to create a heat transfer infrastructure to nearby localities. The locals can then buy hot water (metered) via pipelines from the local govt and that can go towards paying for the power extension tax that the data centre has to pay.
Oh yes, there needs to be a power extension tax first, which is levied on anyone setting up data centres to use for wasteful stuff like AI, Crypto-mining etc. Of course, that only matters if they are taking power from the grid and/or building near populated areas (any amount of population).
I guess someone has to finance the infrastructure to connect towns, might be some new ecological regulations that pushed this
Better late than never
I know this is probably a mundane engineering thing, but it sounds like a ramp up to a Black Mirror episode. We just need some kind of social commentary. Maybe the waste energy secretly contain MacGuff-ons, a known chrono-hazard. Only the poorest people will use it, for lack of alternative?
You might want to play Psycho Patrol R.
So random French households have portals summoning demons? Damn, I wish I was French.
Joke, of course I didn't wish I was French. But a demon portal would be awesome in my house though.
(I'm referencing to the comspiracy of Cern using the hedron collider to summon Osiris from the underworld)
Sounds like Kvatch to me.
Wait until the people find out that the waste heat is contained in liquid hydrogen at 3 kelvin.
the waste heat comes from cryogenics system that keeps all of this helium at below 3K. turns out you need to spend a lot of energy to cool down things to temperatures this low
Yes, well Mr. Smartypants, did you consider that maybe Mr. Freeze and his family were living in Ferney-Voltaire instead of your 'technically correct' explanation?!
Real "But I don't want to cure cancer" pterodactyl to Spider-Man moment
Username checks out
Pretty sure they use celcius in France bruh
You can always freeze excess heat in case you need it later. Just microwave it, when needed!
I've been playing Steins;Gate while snowed in and now super apprehensive about anything CERN related lol
El Psy Kongroo...
THE LOOP MUST FLOW
Who let the worlds largest particle accelerator steal excess heat from the LHC??