“The most complicated thing that humans have ever built” describes the Large Hadron Collider ready to begin operations next month. Built underground, it runs 17 miles across the borders of two countries (Switzerland and France). The world’s largest particle accelerator will smash protons together to create conditions similar to the “Big Bang” and maybe warp the space-time continuum. Statistics on the size and possibilities of the collider’s work, as well as pictures to give you an idea of its size, can be found at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
(image credit: Michael Hoch, CERN)
..But things like this make me nervous. What if the black hole or 'big bang' isn't containable. what if it feeds on the nearby matter to grow much stronger and more permanent than predicted.
*sigh*
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays have hit the earth several times (several observed times - with limited instruments capable of detecting only in place since the mid-90's) with over 10 to the 8th TeV's.
Since the LHC can only get light weight particles to 14 TeV and heavy particles a few orders less then that, the possibility of causing the end of the world/universe is pretty much nill.
People need to stop watching cheesy SciFi channel flicks and reading Popular (Junk) Science Magazine and actually learn a bit about math and physics.
I applaud the audacity of CERN to devote so much resource to the process of discovery. The United States used to be the center of Science for Science's Sake. The Government supported academic research and discovery. Now our money and attention is being drawn to different activities.
I would like to believe that CERN's achievement can inspire us to go further and farther. We can only imagine what the future holds. But if we're lucky, the future will hold that which we are incapable of imagining.
So y'all can sleep easy with the Professor watching your back.
So basically there is only a 10% possibility that a Large Hadron will be ejected into a populated area, where death will be instantaneous. You would not suffer, you would be converted into an ionized plasma within nanoseconds. Those in a 6 km radius of the exit trajectory would be exposed to an effective radiation dose of 25 dental xrays - a lot, but by no means deadly.
So lay off the crazy talk and stay tuned for a new frontier in science: the biggest, baddest man-made black hole known to man!
Does it hurt pulling numbers like that out of your butt?
I'm all for science for science sake. And I know that the probability of catastrophy is 'pretty much nil'.
And I know plenty about math and physics, people's assumtions aside.
Of course, I don't speak for the other posters here, but...
Black holes just creep me out.
(And Stephen Hawking has criticized his own work as wrong before, BTW)
Personally, I am happy that Europe is building this sort of toy instead of trying to take over the world by attacking our dollar.
Magnets (really!).
ok nerd alert....
And don't worry about little black hole, we're not in a comic book (No, particles accelerators can't transform you into Sandman)
Relax, this sort of phenomena they're trying to produce happens in space quite frequently and we're still alive. It will be the same thing just a lot smaller in scale.
There wont be any black holes, there wont be any distortion of space-time continuum and there wont be any plasma storm of biblical proportion.
Chances are we wont even notice they did anything at all and the end result will be a particule that can have it's mass shaped and density shaped at will by man.
No more problem with ressources, isn't that cool?
(Actually, It’s thanks to fundamental physics that you can exist, atoms can form molecules, gravity works, and all sorts of fun things. Not just TV).
Tiny black holes 'in space' don't have matter nearby to eat to grow big and strong (like their fathers!). But, whatever.
It would be cool if particle accelerators COULD turn you into he Sandman. Then again, 'Spiderman' would be a crappy comic if it were about a kid dying of radiation poisoning. ;)
In order for there "theory of elements" they THINK exist they have come up with another theory called the "higgs" and w/o all the elements they basically pulled out of there ass could never exist. Now i wont go into further detail you can research it urself but supposedly these elements actually "talk" to eachother.....but light can pass without "talking"
Im serious just look it up on youtube and watch the scientist try to explain this...
But anyways, the black holes that alot of reputable scientist are worried about because of 1 man...and of course the smartest person that has ever lived Einstien...and his theory of relativity (which btw has stood up to all experiments disigned to test it) predicts that the black hole would occur and once somthing like that is started (probably w/o us even knowing at 1st) it is irreversible once its began.
But hey, we use to put groups of Amry Soldiers in the Wave of the Radiation of the 1st Nuke testing....when we know very little about something the human race always seems to do something very retarded!! Havent we learned anything from history?
If we end up dead, then we'll know it works.