Energising the quest for 'big theory'

[Zelian]

Hey here is something interisting scientists are working on, the machine is starting in 2 days from now
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4524132.stm


But with that machine some people say we might die next Wednesday! but i dought it
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7600966.stm

[elysium]

Somehow, I doubt the world will end... After all, we have had many predictions of this event for thousands of years. And, also, there is no real scientific proof as to show what the effects of an accelerator of this size could be. So, best bet is to not make assumptions.

[Valerion]

The Manhattan Project was going to set the atmosphere alight when the first tests was carried out in 1945, destroying the planet.

Any black holes large enough or numerous to cause issues should be detected almost immediately, and strangelets as well. In any event, if the theories being tested is correct, the energy produced is higher than the upper limit where strangelets can form, and lower than the lower limit of where black holes can form. Lower-energy accelerators would already have caused these issues, if it was a possibility of danger. So no need to stress

[Rakuen Growlithe]

The world's not going to end because of this. People must stop with all their paranoia. The people that built that would have done a lot of thinking about whether it's safe or not.

[anoyomouse]

yay, blackholes

and what do you need for that ... a very dense mass.

well, let's say they put micrograms of stuff into that huge accellerator, it'll sustain something like a blackhole for .. about 1 nano second, if they're lucky

for all we know they've been making them in the smaller accelerators, but just never knew it

aaah, the wonders ..

oh well, if the scientists working on this thing don't know every aspect of how it's going to run, then we're going to get a nice boom, the magnets will explode and the whole experiment fails!

i for one am looking forward to the results!

[Zelian]

no idea what you guys really said or meant but yeah thumbs up!

[Valerion]

If you are worried about the safety of the LHC, I suggest you read the following:

http://cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf

This is the official result of the most recent safety study done. It describes all the various points that have been brought up before and what their impact is. And it's refreshingly non-scientific, so no need to be a particle physicist to read it, and short and to-the-point, being only 15 pages long. The summary states:

The safety of collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was studied in 2003 by the LHC Safety Study Group, who concluded that they presented no danger. Here we review their 2003 analysis in light of additional experimental results and theoretical understanding, which enable us to confirm, update and extend the conclusions of the LHC Safety Study Group. The LHC reproduces in the laboratory, under controlled conditions, collisions at centre-of-mass energies less than those reached in the atmosphere by some of the cosmic rays that have been bombarding the Earth for billions of years. We recall the rates for the collisions of cosmic rays with the Earth, Sun, neutron stars, white dwarfs and other astronomical bodies at energies higher than the LHC. The stability of astronomical bodies indicates that such collisions cannot be dangerous. Specifically, we study the possible production at the LHC of hypothetical objects such as vacuum bubbles, magnetic monopoles, microscopic black holes and strangelets, and find no associated risks. Any microscopic black holes produced at the LHC are expected to decay by Hawking radiation before they reach the detector walls. If some microscopic black holes were stable, those produced by cosmic rays would be stopped inside the Earth or other astronomical bodies. The stability of astronomical bodies constrains strongly the possible rate of accretion by any such microscopic black holes, so that they present no conceivable danger. In the case of strangelets, the good agreement of measurements of particle production at RHIC with simple thermodynamic models constrains severely the production of strangelets in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, which also present no danger.

That said, I agree with Anoyomouse. I am also looking forward to the results of the study. Humanity should not be afraid to explore new areas of research. And this will be a major step into determining how the universe works, and how it is constructed. This will give a much better understanding of this little playground we live in.

[WolfyDragon]

DOOM!!!, DOOOM, DOOOOOOOM!!!

and its tomorrow *hides*

[elysium]

Well... they fired it up at about 9:30AM... and we're still here...

If that was the end of the world... it sucks. Worst Armageddon ever.

[Valerion]

Today's tests involved just seeing if it actually starts up. The first collisions won't happen until the second half of October. And the LHC won't reach full power until more than a year from now.

Still, I say nothing will happen.

[elysium]

Ah, you see... just goes to show... everyone made out like the major experiments were today... Well, I agree. I'm not expecting the end of the world either.

[anoyomouse]

Cool they set up webcams for everyone to see the experiment

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

[Valerion]

Here's two relevant links as well. Just in case the doomsayers are correct. And they even come with their own convenient RSS feeds as well.

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdes ... ldyet.com/

(BTW, that last one also holds my personal record for the longest domain name I have yet seen registered).

[anoyomouse]

i still love the page source for the pages ...

<!-- oh shit bears -->

[Valerion]

The sad thing about this, is that it has been completely taken out of all decent proportions by the media. When the first actual collisions happen on 21 October, no-one will remember this any more. Nor will this be talked about in 2009 when the real thing starts to happen.

So far at least one death has been directly attributed to this. A teenage girl in India got so depressed after all the negative coverage she committed suicide. The media was completely irresponsible here, and I hope they realize they are directly responsible for this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7609631.stm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indi ... 467519.cms

[Dracius]

This is such an awesome experiment! I'm highly intrigued by this device and the possibilities, regarding research.

I'm hoping for anti-matter engines, food replicators, shielding systems, instant cures for diseases, just to mention a few. Of course, this is something like 30-50 years from now

I read somewhere that the particle, when accelerated to the speed of light, would circle the LHC at 11 000 times a second. O..o

[anoyomouse]

the test particles at 99.99995%C were detected at about 10 ms after they were injected, or somewere around there.

there's some astonishingly small numbers going around the whole LHC, i need to dig up a website i was linked to ... *digs*

right : How long would it take the LHC to defrost a pizza?

According to an old Cosmic Variance post, the power of one of the LHC's proton beams at full energy is 10 trillion watts (TW). (A watt is a joule of energy per second.) A household microwave produces 500 to 1000 watts of power. Let's call it 700 watts. And defrosting a frozen pizza takes about six minutes*. So that's

700 joules/sec x 360 sec = 252,000 joules of energy needed to defrost a pizza

Therefore:

252,000 joules / 10^13 joules per second = 3x10^-8 second for the LHC to defrost a pizza

That's 30 nanoseconds (billionths of a second).

Not that anyone would be impatient to scarf it down. "I'm getting nauseous thinking about anyone eating the thing," says Steinberg, who is in no way responsible for errors in my calculation

still an awesome fact

[elysium]

I've been thinking about this a little more in-depth over the last few days, and came to a conclusion. Well, a question actually... are we truly ready for such power?
I mean, yes, its a wonderful experiment... but, as it happens, world powers like to abuse such scientific discoveries and create immense-power WMDs or something... I mean, for example, Einstein's one discovery was totally abused and resulted in nuclear weaponry...
Just something to think about.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

People will always be like that. Doesn't mean you should stop progressing. We got nuclear power and nuclear weapons. the nuclear power is really good. Anything can be used for whatever. We make spears to kill people and javelins for the Olympics. Cars are a good way to get around but they also allow tanks and people to run others over. No one's made any weapons from what we have now and even if they do I doubt it'll make much of a difference to the world.

[anoyomouse]

They've already managed to make a Quark bomb, it makes the A-bomb look like a hand grenade, lucky they can't make quarks exist on their own for longer than a couple of nanoseconds.

in a way the millitary has advanced research to great levels, and then later the technology is nerfed and given to the public, so if it wasn't for gready people we wouldn't have massive super computers, and stuff, so meh.

let's see what they do with what they obtain, at least the LHC is owned by two "neutral" countries, so to get any important millitary use out of the LHC, everyone would then get it, since it's all public domain anyways, so yeah, that's good news.

[Valerion]

The very same theory (General Theory of Relativity) that led to nuclear weapons also directly enabled GPS to work. Without the relativistic corrections, the system would have been hundreds of metres off. GPS is also a purely military system, and these days it's used by a large amount of civilians.

Some of the fastest advaces in the sciences have been in times of war. Militaries needs to be the "best", and for that they want an edge, and they will pay for it, much more than the private sectors ever would. Without military spending a lot of science will be MAJORLY slowed down.

As a side-note, Albert Einstein wrote letters to US President Rooseveldt to urge him to develop a nuclear weapon before the Germans do. This led to the Manhattan Project. He later regretted, this, according to Pauling. But by the same token, Germany, the US and the USSR were all three trying to be the first to have such a weapon. We are lucky, it has only been used twice so far, with how things were in the 60's it could have been MUCH worse.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

You know I just realised this should have been in the sci-tech forum, not discussion. Oh well, a bit late for moving it now. Just for future reference, science doesn't go here.

I think it's Russia is developing it's own positioning system for civilian use so we can move away from GPS (which can be turned off in military zones for civilians).

Also I'm surprised no one's mentioned it but the LHC had a problem last week I think. There was a problem with the cooling systems for the magnets or something like that. They're somewhere around -256 degrees. It might be for the magnets, I know some other magnets have to be kept cold, but also for superconductivity.

[Sticky_Fingers]

LOL and I'm supposed to be very nerdy. I loose big time now compared to all the scientific stuff flying around here...

:<

[elysium]

I see what you're all saying. I'm afraid that I just see it as a potential weapon because, for the most part, I'm quite negative. But, anyway... we'll just have to see what can be (and is) done with this development.

[anoyomouse]

i went on a research trip last night ...

couple of hours ... umm, about 4 ... on BBC
Hawking is really an interesting man, especially his theories about black holes, and hawking radiation.
According to him they won't even have enough energy in the LHC to even prove his theories, so yeah, he's got a $100 bet they won't even prove the Higgs-Boson exists.

He says the most interesting result would be one that's completely unexpected, and well, everyone is waiting for it to happen

[WolfyDragon]

Doom! Doom!