Large Hadron Collider On; Earth Still Exists

[steveseguin]

The world's largest particle accelerator takes its first step to becoming fully operational

Large Hadron Collider On; Earth Still Exists : Read more

 

[hepotblatic]

well...we are all going to die!!!

 

[frozenlead]

Does anyone realize what makes black holes? Yes, that's right, STARS. Does a proton have anywhere near the mass or energy of a star?

That's what I thought.

 

[SirCrono]

And I thought we'll finally get rid of all the fanboys and politicians... sigh.

Well, we'll have to deal with them for now.

 

[Guest]

The Seven Hours War starts any day now...

 

[JonathanDeane]

I can hardly wait for them to start making micro black holes. I need one for my ZPM... You see the micro black hole also will lead to the creation of a micro white hole thus the tap into subspace is formed and one can draw forth the boundless energies contained with in. (please note I am half joking here lol)

 

[JonnyDough]

The top scientist overseeing the project has admitted that if a black hole were to open up, it is minutely possible that it could start sucking things into it and there would be no way to stop it. Black hole = matter eater. As it sucks in everything, including light, it grows faster. In other words, nobody knows what will happen but we're willing to pretend like we know and risk the whole damn earth to find out. If we knew, why would we need to speculate? These scientists are just curious and are willing to tell us whatever they can to go ahead with their exciting little experiment.

The black holes we "don't see" billions of light years away could indeed be caused by some intelligent beings reaching this very same place in science. Hmm.

 

[eklipz330]

I refuse to believe it will create a miniature black-hole, and I refuse to believe they will find any substantial information from this LHC.

 

[N19h7M4r3]

I belive that you dont know what the LHC does and what they can do with it... (and no "end the world" is not one of the possible options)(i think XD)

 

[mdillenbeck]

If your logic states that we should not do this research because the there is an infitessimally small probability that a stable micro-black hole is formed that will successively destroy the entire earth, then you might need a course in probability.

At a personal level, you should be much more concerned about heart disease or cancer. At a societal level, I think I'd be much more concerned about war. True, those may not wipe out the globe - but they are much more likely to wipe out human life. Which, after all, is what I assume most of the doom-sayers are concerned about... or do you think they are concerned about alga, slime molds, and mosquitoes or minerals, geological formations, and salt water?

If the LHC is a portent of doom, it is one of the US political will to engage in meaningful scientific research. Of course, knowing how well educated most US citizens are, its probably best we didn't build it...


Oh yeah, and as to the probability that black holes in space are the byproduct of other intelligent beings' failed experiments, that is a far more complicated explanation than what our current scientific understanding states as the cause. Thus, by using the principle of Ockham's Razor, when absolute uncertainty is not possible it is most probable that the simpler explanation is true.

 

[Guest]

I was reading about this discussion on a video game forum, and one poster (I don't remember his name) said the following(and it puts this into better perspective for me, the laymen.) " ): "Sep 10, 2008 2:07 pm PT
The Large Hadron Collider is a massive particle accelerator that smashes hadrons together close to the speed of light in almost absolute 0 conditions. The observation of this collision will be recorded and It will allow scientists to better understand the nature of matter and how the universe was cerated.

Some people using bad, illogical or just plain wrong science have scared alot of stupid people into thinking its possible for the LHC to cause Strangelets, Black Holes and nuclear explosions.

Lets assume I am wrong. Lets assume the impossible.

Lets assume a black hole the size of 1 quark was created (smaller than an atom, this is how big one would be ever if it was possible since thats the size of the colliding material), assuming Stephen Hawkins is wrong and Hawkin radiation does not exist, the black hole will fly directly to the center of the earth and start to absorb matter around it growing in size.

It would take over 10,000,000 years for this micro black hole to aborb 1/10,000th of a gram.

Even if every scientist who has every written anything thats been true about particulate, black holes and collision theories is wrong and a micro-black hole is created. The Earth will be long, long gone before any of its affects would be noticable.

This physics stuff interests me and I do it as full time education and as a job, I know my stuff.

Any risks thats are proposed are fear mongerers doomsaying to people who are uneducated in the relevant fields trying to scare them. Since History began "The end of the world" has been just around the corner for mankind according to the neighsayers.

Just like:
The splitting of the Atom
The Hales comet
The Y2K bug
Crashing nuclear powered probe into Saturn/Jupiter

The LHC will not destroy the world, the same way that a super giant planet were giant angels live called Nibiru will not collide with the earth in 2012.. Notrodamus has been wrong about the world ending for about 400 years now. When will people stop listening to his ambiguous and just plain wrong statements?

And just to touch on 2012 quickly. It signifies the dawn of the new star era, Aquarius, and the shift of the galactic plane, where our solar system shift from the X axis to the Y axis of the galaxy. The Mayan calender stops there ( depending on how you calculate it. ) Because thats when the age finishes, and the calender restarts. Nothing more. You should be more worried about exploding whilst shaving, or all matter ceasing to exist for no reason. They are more likely to happen than any of these BS theories."

 

[physx7]

Good article.... Will be very interesting to see the results.

 

[Guest]

The particle which accelerates approaching the speed of light will have infinitive mass. When they colide, i don't know...it's unpredictable.

Sometime even one particle is enough to cause the chaos, underlying principle of Chaos Theory...

 

[Guest]

Blackhole=massive amount of gravity.

Gravity is proportionate to mass. The amount of "mass" from a micro black hole is no where near strong enough to stay together. Other forces would rip it apart.

 

[Guest]

The basic idea of a micro black hole is that the inward gravitational force exerted upon itself is as strong if not stronger than the repulsive force caused by its own electric charge such that the particle would collapse in itself. So its a matter of Mass to Charge ratio.

If the mass of a particle is great enough to produce a gravitational force stronger than its own repulsive electric force, then its practically a black hole.

The Compton wavelength of the black hole is equal to its circumference, with an escape velocity of the speed of light at the circumference. Speaking of wavelength, the black hole has a quantum number of n=1. This makes the black hole to have quantum properties such that gravity at that scale is also quantum.

Anything quantum can essentially be "observed" or detected as particles. And since the gravitational field produced by the quantum black hole is also quantum, perhaps we might just find "Quantum Gravity?" or a gravitational elementary particle? the Higgs Boson?

 

[Guest]

weight is proportional to gravity. mass never change if you are on the earth or in a zero-gravity space, only weight does.

 

[Guest]

Sensationalist BS

Again I have to come here to express my disgust at TH "journalists" - it's not enough that your IT articles are lagging and poorly executed - but now you revert to cheap sensationalist headlines to attract uninformed people to read articles.

While the article itself is good and properly researched - you mention the fact that nothing has actually been collided yet yourself - so why do you feel the need to mention the "end of the earth" in the headline. Everyone is quick to mock and ridicule those who have a fear of the unknown, but in using your headline, you just prove that you are more ignorant than those you try to belittle. At least they understand that you need to collide something first before the possibility exists of something happening.

You should rather have spared your melodramatics for the actual first collision and then do a thorough report on the outcome.

 

[randomizer]

A good laugh there anon, I guess jokes are synonymous with sensationalism in your mind?

 

[Guest]

It is great to see how little most people know about most things!

 

[safcmanfr]

[citation][nom]JonnyDough[/nom]The top scientist overseeing the project has admitted that if a black hole were to open up, it is minutely possible that it could start sucking things into it and there would be no way to stop it.[/citation]

miss half the story why dont you.

Yes a micro black hole could be created. However, the mass will be so small that it will only exist for a fraction of a second. In fact, the fraction of the second is so small, that it no longer has any value and that fraction of time cannot, itself, exist under laws of quantum mechanics.

So if quantum mechanics are currently wrong (it's a developing field) and a blackhole does appear for a fraction of time (that is so small it cant exist)the only thing it would be able to suck into itself is, well, nothing.

So work out the chances of a black hole appearing, then take into account that actually it couldnt exist cos it wont last long enough for the amount of time it exists to actually exist.

we are looking at a 1 in 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 chance if not less.

In fact there is more chance of russia launching all its nuclear bombs, you getting hit by a meteroite, crushed by a flying boat or a block of frozen pea falling from an aeroplane tomorrow than there is of this experiment ending the world.

So by my calculations, you have much greater things to worry about than micro-black holes in Cern.