Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Do we know anything about these guys in Hawaii?
Have they another axe to grind, for example?
Do we know anything about these guys in Hawaii?
Have they another axe to grind, for example?
That's not a particle accelerator...
- Thread starter Quokka
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Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Walter L. Wagner:
SciForums.com - Search Results
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I found that interesting - why they should feel so strongly - a quick Google search later...
Walter L. Wagner:
SciForums.com - Search Results
SciForums.com - View Profile: Walter L. Wagner
except that: www.coasttocoastam.com/guests/1515.html
and also:
Sephiroth
Causa Scientiae
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Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
But the thing is, the scientists do know a lot about what they are doing, Leish. And you can be sure that if they thought there was even a slim possibility of it destroying the world, it would be in their interests (and everyone else's) to cancel the research. The fact is that in their risk assessment, they have come to the conclusion that the chances of anything literally earth shattering happening is vanishingly small.
What they can learn from it might be earth shattering in terms of what it does for physics, though.
The whole question is a symptom of the current state of public detachment from, and lack of interest in, cutting-edge science. It's all quantum physics' fault. Up until then, the principles of 'science', and physics particularly, could be explained in ways that your average man on the street (or woman - woman on the street, I mean, not man on the woman) could understand. By using metaphors taken from the everyday world around them, for example.
With the rise of quantum physics, things got crazy, and, confronted with something that didn't seem to make sense (and couldn't possibly be the 'final answer', but rather seemed to thrive on uncertainty), people lost interest. It takes a concerted effort to get to grips with the current state of our knowledge, or even to catch a layman's glimpse, and some of it is really mind-bending stuff.
I do wish that people were more interested, and that more people were better informed, and had an opinion on these issues... But I don't think there's a huge appetite for it out there. It's not something that affects most people directly.
And when the media report their snappy, sound-bite snippets declaring that the world is at risk of being 'eaten by a giant black hole', well, it catches people's attention, but it doesn't necessarily bear much relation to the reality of the matter.
[edit] Wow. And he claims to have detected a magnetic monopole with his baloon-borne cosmic ray detector!
But the thing is, the scientists do know a lot about what they are doing, Leish. And you can be sure that if they thought there was even a slim possibility of it destroying the world, it would be in their interests (and everyone else's) to cancel the research. The fact is that in their risk assessment, they have come to the conclusion that the chances of anything literally earth shattering happening is vanishingly small.
What they can learn from it might be earth shattering in terms of what it does for physics, though.
The whole question is a symptom of the current state of public detachment from, and lack of interest in, cutting-edge science. It's all quantum physics' fault. Up until then, the principles of 'science', and physics particularly, could be explained in ways that your average man on the street (or woman - woman on the street, I mean, not man on the woman) could understand. By using metaphors taken from the everyday world around them, for example.
With the rise of quantum physics, things got crazy, and, confronted with something that didn't seem to make sense (and couldn't possibly be the 'final answer', but rather seemed to thrive on uncertainty), people lost interest. It takes a concerted effort to get to grips with the current state of our knowledge, or even to catch a layman's glimpse, and some of it is really mind-bending stuff.
I do wish that people were more interested, and that more people were better informed, and had an opinion on these issues... But I don't think there's a huge appetite for it out there. It's not something that affects most people directly.
And when the media report their snappy, sound-bite snippets declaring that the world is at risk of being 'eaten by a giant black hole', well, it catches people's attention, but it doesn't necessarily bear much relation to the reality of the matter.
[edit] Wow. And he claims to have detected a magnetic monopole with his baloon-borne cosmic ray detector!
Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Apparently, the BBC Horizon programme did a feature of 6 different end of the world scenarios, of which this was one:
Apparently, the BBC Horizon programme did a feature of 6 different end of the world scenarios, of which this was one:
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Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Go back, go back. Repent repent.
Go back, go back. Repent repent.
Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Now that's scary...Never mind the chances for a moment...that's possible?
Now that's scary...Never mind the chances for a moment...that's possible?
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Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Worry not, it will be over quicker than that, so we should be able to continue in blissfull ignorance till the end what is nigh.
Worry not, it will be over quicker than that, so we should be able to continue in blissfull ignorance till the end what is nigh.
Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
And aren't there some "beneficial" time effects?
And aren't there some "beneficial" time effects?
Tillane
Left-minded
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Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
However, on reading the reports, I couldn't help thinking of Dan Simmons' Hyperion, and the "Big Mistake of '08".
Absolutely right, Seph. I seem to remember reading a while back that, in order for there to be even a vaguely significant likelihood of a supercollider creating a black hole of a magnitude (and with a lifespan) that could endanger the Earth, that collider would have to be so massive that it would have to be in orbit, encircling the Earth. Even if we wanted to build such a machine, we can't - we can't even come close.
However, on reading the reports, I couldn't help thinking of Dan Simmons' Hyperion, and the "Big Mistake of '08".
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Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Ursa:
I hope your not referring to the supposed joy of having time slow down so that we can all enjoy the last few seconds stretching out for eternity as we watch various parts of our anatomy stretched to infinity and back in glorious Technicolor.
Together with the timeless pleasure of feeling every molecule of our frail, soft, unresiliant bodies ripped apart from now till doomsday.
There's still time repent repent.
Ursa:
I hope your not referring to the supposed joy of having time slow down so that we can all enjoy the last few seconds stretching out for eternity as we watch various parts of our anatomy stretched to infinity and back in glorious Technicolor.
Together with the timeless pleasure of feeling every molecule of our frail, soft, unresiliant bodies ripped apart from now till doomsday.
There's still time repent repent.
ktabic
Save punctuation!
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Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Of course not. Proper, professional scientist-type people that they are they can only be concerned with the proper science. They can't upset that they failed to get the courts to stop the RHIC (the current largest particle accelerator, at least for the next couple of months) from starting up, for exactly the same reasons they are trying to stop the LHC from starting up.
Basically one of the pair has a history of suing particle accelerator projects - probably because he doesn't get to play with them.
They can only really be doing it for publicity, since the LHC isn't exactly a small, unknown project that has just come to light, but a big, expensive project that is just nearing the end of construction point and has been ongoing since 1994 and has spent a decent chunk of the £2 billion budget. The right place to stop it was over ten years ago, and I'm sure that if any of the 28 countries involved in funding it thought for a moment that the LHC could destroy the world, they wouldn't have funded it.
Of course not. Proper, professional scientist-type people that they are they can only be concerned with the proper science. They can't upset that they failed to get the courts to stop the RHIC (the current largest particle accelerator, at least for the next couple of months) from starting up, for exactly the same reasons they are trying to stop the LHC from starting up.
Basically one of the pair has a history of suing particle accelerator projects - probably because he doesn't get to play with them.
They can only really be doing it for publicity, since the LHC isn't exactly a small, unknown project that has just come to light, but a big, expensive project that is just nearing the end of construction point and has been ongoing since 1994 and has spent a decent chunk of the £2 billion budget. The right place to stop it was over ten years ago, and I'm sure that if any of the 28 countries involved in funding it thought for a moment that the LHC could destroy the world, they wouldn't have funded it.
Re: Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Oh, if the end is only that nigh, I'm in no hurry to repent.
After all, the mass of the holes can't exceed the energy put in to generate them, plus the mass of the particles forced together. Micrograms at the most.
Taking the most pessimistic view, that Hawking was wrong and small black holes do not evaporate but continue to accrete any available mass/energy, and assuming it started its course directly down through the centre of the planet and had a statistically unlikely number of collisions in its first passage, an engineers' estimate (read "guess") gave two hundred thousand years before the first results are felt; and that was only earthquakes, not the Earth crumbling under our feet. More likely over a million.
Not that this is an excuse for damaging the planet even this far ahead; I might not need it then, but something might. But this is pessimistic figures everywhere; probably massively too pessimistic.
If the machine succeeds in producing pico black holes with a lifespan sufficient to let them get out of the tunnel I'll doubtless have them flying through me; and I don't expect them to do me any more harm than the cosmic rays coming the other way.
Oh, if the end is only that nigh, I'm in no hurry to repent.
After all, the mass of the holes can't exceed the energy put in to generate them, plus the mass of the particles forced together. Micrograms at the most.
Taking the most pessimistic view, that Hawking was wrong and small black holes do not evaporate but continue to accrete any available mass/energy, and assuming it started its course directly down through the centre of the planet and had a statistically unlikely number of collisions in its first passage, an engineers' estimate (read "guess") gave two hundred thousand years before the first results are felt; and that was only earthquakes, not the Earth crumbling under our feet. More likely over a million.
Not that this is an excuse for damaging the planet even this far ahead; I might not need it then, but something might. But this is pessimistic figures everywhere; probably massively too pessimistic.
If the machine succeeds in producing pico black holes with a lifespan sufficient to let them get out of the tunnel I'll doubtless have them flying through me; and I don't expect them to do me any more harm than the cosmic rays coming the other way.
Celeritas
the lovechild of logic
www.LHCountdown.com
when oh when will they turn the accelerator on!? OH When oh will it be?
i'm so excited about this! Show me the Higgs Boson!(long sought after particle that may or may not lead to verification of string theory)
I hear people are worried about the possibility of *uh-oh* the LHC starting up and creating a black hole. I don't think they'll do it if there's even the remotest risk of something dangerous happening.
my two cents...
when oh when will they turn the accelerator on!? OH When oh will it be?
i'm so excited about this! Show me the Higgs Boson!(long sought after particle that may or may not lead to verification of string theory)
I hear people are worried about the possibility of *uh-oh* the LHC starting up and creating a black hole. I don't think they'll do it if there's even the remotest risk of something dangerous happening.
my two cents...
I've merged together the three threads on this. I'm quite looking forward to the end of the world. At least we should get a big party.
LHC_Homepage
Could someone who knows expalin what ATLAS and ALICE and the other detectors detect?
LHC_Homepage
Could someone who knows expalin what ATLAS and ALICE and the other detectors detect?
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Dave.
Atlas detector -> This is the one that measures minute trembles in the earth attributed to a nervous twitch the titan is reportedly said to suffer from, first described in the Arcadian chronicles.
Alice detector -> This is a little easier to understand as it's meant to detect the small instantaneous changes in gravitation attraction resulting from the changes in mass experienced by drinking of the 'Drink me' bottle and the eating of the 'eat me' cake.
Atlas detector -> This is the one that measures minute trembles in the earth attributed to a nervous twitch the titan is reportedly said to suffer from, first described in the Arcadian chronicles.
Alice detector -> This is a little easier to understand as it's meant to detect the small instantaneous changes in gravitation attraction resulting from the changes in mass experienced by drinking of the 'Drink me' bottle and the eating of the 'eat me' cake.
Celeritas
the lovechild of logic
I've merged together the three threads on this. I'm quite looking forward to the end of the world. At least we should get a big party.
LHC_Homepage
Could someone who knows expalin what ATLAS and ALICE and the other detectors detect?
atlas is the experiment designed to observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators and might shed light on new theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model
alice is optimized to study heavy ion collisions. Pb-Pb nuclei collisions will be studied at a centre of mass energy of 5.5 TeV per nucleon. The resulting temperature and energy density are expected to be large enough to generate a quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter wherein quarks and gluons are deconfined.
Sephiroth
Causa Scientiae
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And...
CMS is the 'compact muon solenoid', which measures muons. Muons are elementary particles of the same 'family' as electrons (so they are leptons, not hadrons), and are produced in many high energy particle interactions. The CMS provides a different way of measuring the proton-proton collisions, and will look for many of the same things as the ATLAS detector by producing a different set of data for cross-comparison.
LHCb ('b' for 'bottom quark') is a targeted experiment designed to measure interactions between 'b-hadrons' (i.e. heavy hadrons -- either baryons or mesons -- which contain a bottom quark). Of the six types of quark, top and bottom are the heaviest, and are not common in nature, followed by strange and charm. 'Normal matter' made of protons and neutrons contains only up and down quarks, which are the lightest. The purpose of this experiment is to try and investigate CP violation, or particle-antiparticle asymmetry, in the results of the high energy collision of heavy particles.
CMS is the 'compact muon solenoid', which measures muons. Muons are elementary particles of the same 'family' as electrons (so they are leptons, not hadrons), and are produced in many high energy particle interactions. The CMS provides a different way of measuring the proton-proton collisions, and will look for many of the same things as the ATLAS detector by producing a different set of data for cross-comparison.
LHCb ('b' for 'bottom quark') is a targeted experiment designed to measure interactions between 'b-hadrons' (i.e. heavy hadrons -- either baryons or mesons -- which contain a bottom quark). Of the six types of quark, top and bottom are the heaviest, and are not common in nature, followed by strange and charm. 'Normal matter' made of protons and neutrons contains only up and down quarks, which are the lightest. The purpose of this experiment is to try and investigate CP violation, or particle-antiparticle asymmetry, in the results of the high energy collision of heavy particles.
Celeritas
the lovechild of logic
Celeritas
the lovechild of logic
this link:
http://www.bartleby.com/65/el/elementr-p.html
gives a fair description of the standard model if anybody's lost.
http://www.bartleby.com/65/el/elementr-p.html
gives a fair description of the standard model if anybody's lost.
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