Large Hadron Collider

[Drizzt Do'urden]

End of all civilization....or Stephen King's the Mist made real?

I'm sure everyone has heard of the super collider they built under Geeneva (SP). Basically it propells Protons at speeds just under light speed smashing them into each other. Decectors record images/data from these and we're going to be able (well not us but the select few) to see possibly other dimensions, black holes, and what happened one-millioneth of a second after the big bang....I want to know what happened before myself but I don't get a say.

Not with the possibilty of black holes, opening rips in the space time continum and all that jazz what do you think? I personally think it's only going to give scientists a smaller view of subatomic particles, but I do know doomsday theorists who swear up and down this is the end for humanity and we need to stock up on ammo and food incase monsters from another dimension invade, or spend all your money because the nearest bank is going to be sucked into a black hole anyway.

I'm interested to find out if anyone has been following this, knows anything from the first day of "tests", and who out there is a doomsday sayer and thinks by the time this thing gets to full power (if it makes it) what do you expect will/could happen.

[Gelgoog Pilot]

I think it may also give scientists a new look at theoretical particles and mass, but will they see glimpses of alternate dimensions, I doubt it sadly.

I also doubt doomsday is upon us, everyone knows that the Mayan calendar ends at 2012, not 2008. I do have a few friends that want to get smashed or live it up just in case we do all go down in a blaze of glorious discovery.

[Andrew]

[size=1]All I really know aside from what's already mentioned above is that the project manager/head scientist (or something like that) is from Aberdare, which is a small town about 7 miles up the road from me. Small world after all.

I'm not really sure what it'll do for us. I'm just trying not to concern myself with it really. It's just another thing we're never going to see in real life and just have facts, figures, half-truths and lies shoved in our faces like with everything else and then say what we've heard like it's our own opinion. ¬_¬[/size]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Gelgoog Pilot']I also doubt doomsday is upon us, everyone knows that the Mayan calendar ends at 2012, not 2008.[/quote] [FONT=Arial]That . . .


. . . wow. I just . . . wow. [I]*facepalm*[/I]


Also:

[CENTER][YOUTUBE]zeo0_3gN190[/YOUTUBE][/CENTER][/FONT] Edited November 21, 2010 by Allamorph

[The13thMan]

[quote name='Andrew'][size=1]It's just another thing we're never going to see in real life and just have facts, figures, half-truths and lies shoved in our faces like with everything else and then say what we've heard like it's our own opinion. ¬_¬[/size][/QUOTE]

[FONT="Trebuchet MS"]This to me is very very sad. I'm a huge supporter of science education and the reforming of it in our public schools. Let's face it, science education is crap today. There are those few teachers out there that do their job well, but for the most part, it's total crap. The text books are absolutely abysmal. Kids often times just don't care. The large majority of people that come out of highschool have little to know scientific or critical thinking skills. And it's just sad! But i'll end rant right now since it's completely off topic.

I have been following the lhc. I've only looked into it a little tiny bit. It's truly incredible, though. The protons that are shot around the rings reach speeds of up to 99.9999991% of the speed of light (i don't know if i got the amount of 9's right or not, but it's something like that). That's absolutely insane! I think most of all i'm interested in seeing if they find the Higg's boson, or the awkwardly named "god particle." Also, they're trying to understand why matter dominates over anti-matter, which i think ought to be interesting to know. There are just too many things that physicists are going to learn from this. I'm envious of those physicists that get to be there. It's practically my dream job.

[/FONT]

[Rachmaninoff]

I didn't bother to really follow it since I don't consider it a serious issue or actual threat to the stability of our planet. There are a number of reasons why and I think this article here states it best: [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/cern.particlephysics1"][U]Article in full[/U][/URL] I'll quote the parts I consider relevant.

[quote]the media conveniently downplay, or even omit, giving the full picture. First of all, mother nature can produce subatomic particles of greater energy than the puny LHC in the form of cosmic rays. These high-energy particles, which are accelerated to astronomical energies by huge magnetic and electric fields in space, have been raining down on Earth for billions of years, plenty of time to swallow up the planet - yet we are still here to write about it.

Secondly, these mini black holes are not just small black holes; they are actually subatomic in size, comparable to electrons or protons. The entire energy created by these particles would not even light up a light bulb if the LHC were running for a hundred years. Although the subatomic particles produced by the LHC can have trillions of electron volts, the LHC is expected, at best, to create mini black holes at the rate of one per second, which is much too small to cause any appreciable danger to anyone.

//snip//

Thirdly, these mini black holes are unstable, and quickly decay. Instead of gobbling up matter and becoming big enough to eat up the Earth, they go in the opposite direction, emitting radiation so that they eventually disappear into nothing, a process proposed by the renowned Cambridge physicist, Stephen Hawking. So these subatomic black holes naturally self-destruct.[/quote]
I'm going to trust that those who understand physics far better than I do, actually know what they are talking about. That and I find it hard to believe that with our limited understanding or rather capacity to create these collisions. I just don't see them as actually being powerful enough to really do all that much.

[OMNOMNOMALY]

[quote name='Rachmaninoff']
I'm going to trust that those who understand physics far better than I do, actually know what they are talking about. That and I find it hard to believe that with our limited understanding or rather capacity to create these collisions. I just don't see them as actually being powerful enough to really do all that much.[/QUOTE]

[FONT="Garamond"]That's exactly it - I trust the people doing the math behind the LHC that if there were risks as serious as destruction of everything we know, they wouldn't do it. I am also of the opinion that mankind does not know enough nor have the skills to create anything even near the level of things like this that naturally occur.[/FONT]

[Sabrina]

[FONT="Tahoma"][quote name='Rachmaninoff']I'm going to trust that those who understand physics far better than I do, actually know what they are talking about. That and I find it hard to believe that with our limited understanding or rather capacity to create these collisions. I just don't see them as actually being powerful enough to really do all that much.[/quote]That sums up what I think as well Darren. I don't really know a whole lot since I've never really studied physics, but it just seems that even with a machine like this, we lack the ability to destroy the planet with it.

At worse it might damage the actual device, but I'm not worried about it adversely affecting the planet as a whole. I think we have a long way to go before we can manage that feat.[/FONT]

[XeEmO]

There are a number of bad things that could happen. The chances of them happening are just extremely low. It's been said by some of the professionals working on the device that the chances of something extremely bad happening are about the chances of one person winning the lottery three consecutive weeks in a row.

Besides the theory that states it could create a black hole stable enough to consume the earth, there's also a theory involving a particle called a "stranglet". This stranglet could convert all matter it comes in contact with to itself therefore turning the universe into a glob of "strange matter".

There's a much higher probability that it will create microscopic black holes that evaporate almost instantly. This would actually be a good thing because it would give the scientists a chance to study it. For obvious reasons we've never been able to directly observe a black hole before.

As many of you I've been keeping up with this thing for a few years now. I'm quite excited for October when the real fun begins.

We already know a great deal about what to expect because there are devices very similar to this one that work on a smaller scale. This will be the last particle collider of it's type, because if we get the full set of elementary particles in the standard model the next thing to look for would be strings. In order to build a particle excellerator powerful enough to detect a string (as in string theory) it would have to be the size of a galaxy.

[Mr. Maul]

[URL="http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/"]www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com[/URL]

[Drizzt Do'urden]

I don't know who bought that URL just to do that but props for it. It did give me a little laugh.

[Aaryanna_Mom]

In all honesty, after so many times of hearing how the "latest" research has the potential to destroy the world, you start to tune it out. Not that I don't find this interesting and all that, it's just not the first time I've heard it. Plus, based on my limited understand of this project, it's not going to happen, or rather it's almost beyond unlikely. I do think it's a nifty idea though. I was kind of disappointed when the one being built here in the US back in the 90's fell through. So I'm glad to see it finally being done.

[DeLarge]

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[SIZE=1]'Nuff said.[/SIZE]

[The13thMan]

[FONT="Trebuchet MS"]That video kicks ***.

That link's pretty bomb diggity too. [/FONT]

[Pleiades Rising]

The strangest thing I've heard so far was when it kept malfunctioning for various reasons. Some theoretical physicists formulated a mathematical theory that more or less implied time travel was the cause of its failures. It was somehow undermining itself from the future, according to that interpretation. I guess the Higgs boson is a shy little fella and wants to be left alone.

The latest I heard from CERN was their experiment involving constructing and capturing antihydrogen. They actually had time to study the stuff before it went poof (they had it for one-10th of a second, which is a fairly long time when it comes to antimatter). Maybe now they can figure out how the properties of antimatter differ from regular matter. Is there nothing a magnet trap can't do?

[James]

[font="Palatino Linotype"]I know very little about physics, but the attempt to find the Higgs boson is exciting and it's absolutely relevant to everybody on Earth.

I remember watching a video on YouTube a few months ago, which featured a talk by a famous American physicist (although right now I can't recall his name). He's a fascinating speaker, mostly because he can convey astrophysics into everyday layman language.

He speaks about the kind of physics that really bends the mind - everything from discussing how black holes work (and how they can literally [i]bend light and time[/i]) to the very plausible theory as to the origins of mass.

The latter is particularly important in regard to the Higgs boson. There are a number of theories that exist at the moment as to how mass could have appeared in the universe and it seems to me that many of these theories are consistent with current knowledge of advanced physics. Again, I refer to this talk - I really must try to remember the professor's name, it's well worth watching.

At the crux of his very detailed - and incredibly interesting - talk, was the concept that mass can in fact come about "from nowhere". Even as I watched this fantastic talk, which guided me along relatively well, I still struggled to keep up. So of course, I'm definitely not going to remember very much of what was actually said. But I remember being absolutely stunned at a very plausible explanation for this idea that mass may very well have, quite literally, "originated from nothing".

In such a discussion you literally get into the meaning of nothing - what exactly is "nothing", from a physics point of view? It was really fascinating.

I guess that, from a layman point of view, the LHC is essentially trying to replicate conditions that were similar to - or present just after - the Big Bang. In doing so, scientists are attempting to learn something of how mass came into existence. And if that secret could be unlocked, then potentially we would know a great deal more about how exactly the Universe came into existence in the first place.

Much of what happened [i]after[/i] this moment seems to be relatively well understood by physicists and evolutionary biologists. At any rate, very accurate theories can be derived from existing knowledge and observation. But to get some sort of glimpse - however fleeting - of the moment of creation (and to be able to physically replicate it with the LHC, even on a tiny scale) would be truly incredible. I think it could potentially change our view of existence forever.

Or, at the very least, it will confirm what many scientists probably already think about the period at (or prior to) the initial growth of the Universe. I am sure that no matter what discoveries are made, there are many people who will not immediately - or maybe ever - appreciate the meaning of such discoveries (see evolution).

I agree with The13thMan, in the sense that we are living in a very exciting time in terms of scientific discovery and yet so many people seem completely disinterested and disengaged from this. It [i]is[/i] sad, because those people are missing out on so much.

I guess it's hard to convey - and to even understand - the implications of the LHC's research program. While I can form some kind of basic idea of what CERN is looking for, I really can't begin to understand the complex detail involved. But I absolutely think the research is exciting and potentially groundbreaking. I'm very much in support of it - even in the face of the occasional black hole. [/font]

[Lyndy]

...WELL. I wish I would've saw this thread before... Because I totally just gave a speech about the God Particle in my Physics class. .__. But I still got a 100 on it. But the Higgs is pretty interesting. One scientist studying the Higgs says this about it: "The Higgs boson is interesting because it is the only reasonable explanation we have for the origin of mass. Without the Higgs, all fundamental particles would be massless, and the universe would be very different. The weak nuclear forces wouldn't be weak at all, for instance, so the elemental composition of the cosmos would be radically different, stars would shine differently, and we probably wouldn't exist."

If someone already said that, sorry. D: I didn't read all the posts. But the possibility of a Black Hole is kind of frightening. And if the Higgs was actually found, it could rock the foundation of Physics and bring forth a new set of laws. But as it's name suggests, "God" Particle, it might not even be there.

And there is this one article about a philosopher talking about how in the future a black hole would be caused because of something like this. Lesse if I can find it. . .
Ah, found it. [url="http://newskf.com/nostradamus-end-of-the-world-will-be-in-2016/12482/"]Nostradamus predicts the end of the world in 2016[/url].

Okay, really... First 2012 (from what I remember) and now 2016. The world is [i]not[/i] going to end, people. At least not for awhile.

[Starwind]

I understand a desire to solve the greatest mysteries of the universe, but something about this whole thing seems more then a little dangerous. I'm just as curious about the creation of the universe as the next guy, but maybe there are simpler things we could be looking into first. Jumping straight into seems a little reckless is all I'm saying.

[Pleiades Rising]

Okay, the latest science nerd hype is...have they actually found evidence of the Higgs Boson? The headlines are already bellowing: "Have They Found 'God'?" There's a memo circulating that the researchers at CERN have discovered evidence of the Higgs, but there's mixed opinions about the memo: it might be simply a hoax, or it might be real. If it's the latter, doubt still remains: the results might just be an anomaly, an error. Fabiola Gianotti, spokeswoman for the LHC facility, said "Only ... results that have undergone all the necessary scientific checks by the [ATLAS] Collaboration should be taken seriously...." For now, I'll look at this with a dose of scepticism, and wait for more solid results to come in.

Another related item is Fermilab's Tevatron collider and it's mysterious results: they have fairly strong statistical evidence of an entirely new particle - but it's not the Higgs. This one, if correct, is more interesting that the previous item I mentioned. Finding the Higgs would substantially strengthen the Standard Model, but Tevatron's possible discovery would actually [i]cast doubts on the Standard Model.[/i] And that means rethinking substantial foundational areas of physics itself. If that were the case, then we'd actually be witnessing a good ol' paradigm shift in physics, something we don't see everyday or even in a lifetime. Of course, Fermilab's results could also be a statistical anomaly (something that exists only as a number). As far as I know, the results are still being confirmed. In any case, the memo is interesting, but it's only a questionable memo; Tevatron's findings are more interesting, since they've got some substance behind it.

[Shinmaru]

[img]http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/full/280507846.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJF3XCCKACR3QDMOA&Expires=1303804486&Signature=EuAK5uuE2kmcYUbAiUfOEdrKKnw%3D[/img]

[Pleiades Rising]

The fun continues in the adventures of CERN and the LHC.

Well, now it seems like CERN's most recent findings (along with some of Tevatron's earlier work) have further cast doubts on the Higgs boson's existence. After searching for the Higgs within certain energy ranges, they've ruled out a significant range of masses where the Higgs might be found. That could mean two things:

1. Supersymmetry in its simpler theoretical version could be wrong, and a more complicated version of the theory might still be right. So, the Higgs could still exist, but it needs a more complicated theory and more energy to explain and find it.

2. Supersymmetry is wrong altogether, and physics has to scrap it and look for another theory that has both explanatory power and predictability.

If the Higgs doesn't exist, then that more or less spells the end for Supersymmetry (which is an extension of the Standard Model, our best theory in particle physics). And if that theory goes, then that casts doubts on the Standard Model as well. Of course, this would also signal the end of some of the more exotic theories in physics, e.g. String Theory, which is a candidate for a Theory of Everything.

But, scientists haven't ruled out the Higgs or Supersymmetry just yet, since the LHC has operated at only half its power so far. Perhaps as close as December of 2012 the LHC might be operating at full output, and then they might find the Higgs lurking in those unexplored areas. (In nerd-speak, they've[i] [/i]operated its beams[i] only [/i]at 3.5 TeV (tera-electron volts) each, producing a 7 TeV event (particle collision). The full power is two beams at 7 TeV for a combined event of 14 TeV).

Concerning my previous comments on Tevatron's experiment, well, it turned out to be a statistical anomaly, a fluke and nothing more. However, they did find another particle, but that was in another experiment. That one didn't exactly shake the foundations of physics. To sum it all up so far, physics might have to start revising some of its fundamental theories in the near future. Personally, I think this is when science is at its best when its forced to change. Fun times, indeed. Edited September 2, 2011 by Pleiades Rising