But they haven't collided anything yet. They only turned on the two beams independently of one another to see if it worked or not. So I think there is still hope for those who need to forget about the things that they don't understand the more they think about it.
The LHC safety report (http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html) makes the good point that whatever LHC will do, Nature has already been doing for billions of years. Cosmic ray collisions have far higher energy, and over the lifetime of the Earth, about a million LHC lifetimes of interactions have taken place. Si if the Universe should be destroyed, Nature should have taken care of that by itself a long time ago.
" I'm absolutely going to add their feed as a widget on my blog."
this is a great idea, the LHC is already very popular, why not instead of constantly blogging about the world ending, just add a widget to inform us if that happens.
I think you'll find the same guys that constantly blog about the world ending are the same ones that believe the government* is trying to steal our thoughts, so the only way to prevent that is by wearing tin foil hats.
I've read this same doom and gloom argument before, during the Manhattan Project when a physicist named Edward Teller raised concerns that a nuclear reaction could ignite the atmosphere, which was later disproven.
The adding of the widget is more or less a joke as I found the site amusing.
(*Government may refer to many different organisations, US gov, illuminati etc...)
I have a great idea for a new startup! Imagine what it would be like if you could consolidate all the "has the world ended" and "is it christmas" sites into one personalized page. You could even share it with your friends. Personally, I know my friends would truly love me for the remainder of their existence if I gave them a few seconds heads-up on the world ending. "Wow, thanks jro@#$(," they would say.
Anyway, can I have like $1_000_000 VC now? It's social!
How might the discoveries of the LHC experiment be applied? For instance, is it likely that the knowledge gained will allow the creation of new technology? None of the news articles I read touched on this point.
Particle physics tends to be pure research, but there's a chance that they might find something entirely unexpected that might bubble up into research into renewable energy or material science.
One of the most famous examples of course being the photoelectric effect, which kinda went dead for many decades until it started being applied in digital cameras.
The photoelectric effect was an important step along the way to quantum mechanics, without which there'd be no transistor, and probably no personal computer, or Hacker News.
> How might the discoveries of the LHC experiment be applied?
Why is this even a question?
The results of the LHC experiments will (hopefully) give us answers about assumptions in the Standard Model of physics and a load of theoretical speculations besides.
The results will allow us to interpret measurements already taken in a new light and will alter the means by which we measure (and/or interpret) things in the future.
The LHC experiment will not end the world, nor will it suddenly give us all flying jet cars.
It will (again, hopefully) advance our knowledge of the universe we live in.
Commercial interests are not a factor. Why do people keep moaning about the price tag and speculating on the industrial aspects when they're not busy predicting the end of the world?
"Why do people keep moaning about the price tag and speculating on the industrial aspects..."
Maybe because billions of dollars of taxpayer money are being used to fund this project. You can spend your own money however you want, but if you want public funding, you will have to put up with questions about whether this expenditure will actually make the world a better place for ordinary people.
"but if you want public funding, you will have to put up with questions about whether this expenditure will actually make the world a better place for ordinary people."
Strange how no one seemed to care how much money the War in Iraq would cost, or whether spending that many trillions is justified, but 4 billion to do what is vital for our existence, that of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, needs justification.
Careful, if you start comparing the spending for Iraq to pretty much anything, the opportunity cost of Iraq is enough to drive you insane. You can take some solace in the knowledge that even without Iraq, science would have been underfunded.
For the cost of Iraq we could have skipped a couple generations of particle accelerator. At this rate of Science funding it'll be 100 years until we build the planetary scale accelerator to test string theory.
Strange how no one seemed to care how much money the War in Iraq would cost
I cared; I think it's an absurd waste of money. I think all forms of governmental spending need justification. That's what fiscal responsibility is about.
Has anyone ever figured out (or even estimated) how long it would actually take to destroy the world if we did succeed in creating a black hole on the surface?
Assuming it didn't evaporate and started out at rest, it'd presumably fall straight through the floor, picking up mass as it went, but I'm not sure exactly how much. Once it got to the core it would overshoot, hollowing out a bit more of the core, but some kind of drag would eventually slow it down, leaving it in some kind of oddly-shaped cavity near the core. I have no idea whether this would wind up stable, but I'm guessing that eventually the core would collapse towards it, and once it started losing its structure the whole planet would collapse in.
But I have no idea how long all this would take. Minutes? Hours? Years?
We would probably die pretty fast, because all the atmosphere would be sucked in, plus the black hole would create a big shock wave while sucking the earths surface and probably the great amount of radiation would kill us instantly, im no physicist, all i know about black holes, i know from the discovery channel and wikipedia, if i am wrong, please tell me, im dieing to know :D
I've heard from some pretty reliable sources that a small black hole WAS created, but gravity pulled it towards the Earth core. It simply got away and now they are trying to ignore the incident. Who knows how long it will take it to eat Earth inside out?
I can't see that the atmosphere is likely to get sucked in -- not in the early stages. Until it becomes very massive (i.e. has absorbed a significant portion of the Earth's mass) it's only going to have a significant effect on things that are very close to it.
Why would it fall through the floor?
The LHC creates 100,000 times stronger gravity then the earth in a confined space. Would the black hole not be confined in a small spot that is no larger then a speck of dust with temperatures colder then space. With nothing to feed from and an environment unlike anywhere else, would it ever survive for longer then the short burst...
If that machine creates a black hole, it will be the mass of two protons, and have an effect only on other objects within a length of a few protons. It will cease to exist within seconds, the only evidence being a slight change in the speed of protons passing nearby.
If a black hole were created on earth, the earth would not collapse into it, rather, the earth would be pulled towards it, and because the entire matter of the earth could not be absorbed that quick, the earth would swing away from it, then go into orbit around it. A black hole is not that dangerous. It's about as dangerous as a mini earth.
Anyways, where would all the matter come from to make it have so much force?
Reminds me of my OS design final project, where we added a syscall for "IsComputerTurnedOn" that returned true if the computer was turned on, undefined otherwise. ;-)
55 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 68.9 ms ] threadI don't think that was covered in my college physics textbook.
Anywho, I'm absolutely going to add their feed as a widget on my blog.
I think you'll find the same guys that constantly blog about the world ending are the same ones that believe the government* is trying to steal our thoughts, so the only way to prevent that is by wearing tin foil hats.
I've read this same doom and gloom argument before, during the Manhattan Project when a physicist named Edward Teller raised concerns that a nuclear reaction could ignite the atmosphere, which was later disproven.
The adding of the widget is more or less a joke as I found the site amusing.
(*Government may refer to many different organisations, US gov, illuminati etc...)
Anyway, can I have like $1_000_000 VC now? It's social!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
http://madsci.org/posts/archives/mar2000/952639215.Ph.r.html
Why is this even a question?
The results of the LHC experiments will (hopefully) give us answers about assumptions in the Standard Model of physics and a load of theoretical speculations besides.
The results will allow us to interpret measurements already taken in a new light and will alter the means by which we measure (and/or interpret) things in the future.
The LHC experiment will not end the world, nor will it suddenly give us all flying jet cars.
It will (again, hopefully) advance our knowledge of the universe we live in.
Commercial interests are not a factor. Why do people keep moaning about the price tag and speculating on the industrial aspects when they're not busy predicting the end of the world?
Maybe because billions of dollars of taxpayer money are being used to fund this project. You can spend your own money however you want, but if you want public funding, you will have to put up with questions about whether this expenditure will actually make the world a better place for ordinary people.
Strange how no one seemed to care how much money the War in Iraq would cost, or whether spending that many trillions is justified, but 4 billion to do what is vital for our existence, that of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, needs justification.
For the cost of Iraq we could have skipped a couple generations of particle accelerator. At this rate of Science funding it'll be 100 years until we build the planetary scale accelerator to test string theory.
I cared; I think it's an absurd waste of money. I think all forms of governmental spending need justification. That's what fiscal responsibility is about.
Because not everyone is a physicist.
turns off javascript
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/70q4l/live_lhc_w...
LHC Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment Webcams
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
Assuming it didn't evaporate and started out at rest, it'd presumably fall straight through the floor, picking up mass as it went, but I'm not sure exactly how much. Once it got to the core it would overshoot, hollowing out a bit more of the core, but some kind of drag would eventually slow it down, leaving it in some kind of oddly-shaped cavity near the core. I have no idea whether this would wind up stable, but I'm guessing that eventually the core would collapse towards it, and once it started losing its structure the whole planet would collapse in.
But I have no idea how long all this would take. Minutes? Hours? Years?
Perhaps you could give it a charge (by firing electrons at it) and then confine it electrostatically or magnetically.
Anyways, where would all the matter come from to make it have so much force?
That site is just spreading FUD.