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160 Comments
- RaynOfDarkness, on 09/07/2008, -1/+81I for one, am all for the operation of the LHC. If it works, great! Humanity will have a better understanding of the universe. If it kills us all it's no big deal. I can't say i'll care too much about it, being dead and all...
- S5S5S5, on 09/07/2008, -4/+73This sucks!
You know something is going to go wrong with this thing because some engineer mistakenly used the English system rather than metric. As a result, it's gonna turn the population of Switzerland into mutant X-Men. They're already neutral in wars, have the best chocolate, the best watches, best army knives... Now they get to have special abilities too? - egemenbor, on 09/07/2008, -5/+67people are just exaggerating the whole black hole thing..
- FutureisDubious, on 09/07/2008, -2/+36hopefully your last. ever.
- whiteguysamurai, on 09/07/2008, -5/+36Prepare for unforeseen consequences.
- LeviTheSmith, on 09/07/2008, -0/+26I'm happy to be young with something like this happening :D
- Talena, on 09/07/2008, -1/+22that would be a waste of money
- niczar, on 09/07/2008, -0/+16"black holes don't just vanish. they multiply their mass after sucking matter in and eventually get so massive not even light can escape."
No they don't. First small black holes can't even suck anything in. Their gravity is no stronger than a non black hole thing of the same mass.
Second, Hawking's radiation. Black holes evaporate. Small black hole evaporate VERY fast -- not even nanosecond, not even picosecond, but more like femtosecond and faster. - inactive, on 09/07/2008, -1/+16i would like to have my own black hole to throw some of my less favorite people in :)
- TheCatsPants, on 09/07/2008, -0/+15"If everything goes better than planned - nuclear fusion; an almost never ending source of energy. Energy crisis resolved."
There are many projects to develop nuclear fusion into a practical energy source, but the LHC isn't one of them. The LHC explores high-energy physics. - exscape, on 09/07/2008, -1/+16Well, yeah, except these would be *so* small, that they cannot swallow even a proton or a neutron. What are they supposed to feed on to begin with?
And yes, I do trust the thousands of physicists from ~80 countries who claim this is perfectly safe after lots of security reviews. - TheCatsPants, on 09/07/2008, -0/+13The LHC smacks two opposed beams of particles together to make high energy collisions that then produces a bunch of exotic particles that can only exist at those energies. Then there is a shed-load of various devices designed to observe this flood of particles.
A fusion reactor heats and compresses a plasma of hydrogen isotopes together to fuse them into helium, and the aim is to get a net output of energy.
The LHC is not a tokamak. - williamgauci, on 09/07/2008, -0/+13Funny.. BTW.. Isn't the English system Metric?? The Brits. have been Metric since 1965 haven't they? The only countries that don't use metric is the U.S. Liberia and Burma.
- medfreak, on 09/07/2008, -3/+16This the closest humans ever got to building a structure of an enormous spaceship proportions. Truly fantastic.
- allyant, on 09/07/2008, -0/+13For those of us who live in the UK (Or use a proxy) the BBC made a good documentary about it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dccnr/ - pineutrino, on 09/07/2008, -0/+12@Ne007 Scientists don't claim to have a complete understanding of black hole behaviour, but there's already quite a lot we know about them. Here's an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
Black holes do indeed vanish. - S68x, on 09/07/2008, -1/+13Excuse me, sir, but we don't do that around these parts.
- Akraz, on 09/07/2008, -1/+13You may want to ask the G-Man about that.
- exscape, on 09/07/2008, -2/+14Small (EXTREMELY extremely small; much smaller than a proton) black holes does not mean failure. On the contrary; that would pretty much prove that there are extra dimensions. They can VERY well be created without ever sucking even a proton in, so just creating them isn't a bad thing.
- exscape, on 09/07/2008, -0/+11Here ya go: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/asktheexpert.s ...
Don't believe me; believe them.
I quote: "If, however, we did, then the little black holes would bear no relation at all to the Black Holes created when stars collapse. [...] they would be so very tiny that matter would never get close enough to them to be sucked in!" - Amazetbm, on 09/07/2008, -0/+11You keep Gordon Freeman on stand-by.
- realgame84, on 09/07/2008, -7/+17Hope it will be ok and nothing would happen
- theOster, on 09/07/2008, -0/+10i'm reminded of the simpsons with teh "bottomless pit" out in the woods. they throw something in and after about a second you hear a loud "THUD"
- powatom, on 09/07/2008, -1/+11How, exactly, would you go about preparing for an event you cannot foresee?
- theOster, on 09/07/2008, -1/+11i would think that one would learn from experience that that was funny the first time it happened (prob even back on slashdot 5 years ago) but that now, you're just a douchebag.
- inactive, on 09/07/2008, -0/+9i like it
i like that the boys (and some girls) get to play at something else other than war that costs lots of $ and involves lots of (some very smart) people - cyberalpha, on 09/07/2008, -0/+9The thing will turn and go fine and several bases of the current physics will be changed, others confirmed and others replaced. That is simple, don't have all the black-hole paranoia. Why the people like to complicate the things?
- theOster, on 09/07/2008, -0/+9shouldn't Cern always be capped? CERN?
EDIT: i guess with typos like this, it was just the editors day off:
"the Cern council new it needed to perform an engineering miracle." - arjie, on 09/07/2008, -0/+9Would it? Absence of result is also a result, no?
- Katana, on 09/07/2008, -0/+9This whole black hole thing is stupid, one of the scientists said "you have more chance of completely vanishing into thin air while shaving this morning than a stable black hole being created."
In one word, impossible. - nick1971, on 09/07/2008, -0/+8I don't understand where the safety concerns come from. There have been numerous peer reviewed studies on the safety. The papers are frequently written in impenetrable mathematics but the management summary of these studies are yes some of the buzzwords may be true (black hole etc) but there is no more danger than in other previous particle experiments.
One of the more readable papers on the safety of the LHC can be found at
http://environmental-impact.web.cern.ch/environmen ... - electricsnakes, on 09/07/2008, -1/+9some q&a here for everyone who's scared, and who shouldn't be:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/asktheexpert.s ... - xb0xterr0rist, on 09/07/2008, -0/+8Hahahaha, dude you made me laugh, nice use of the mars orbiter mishap, lol :)
- exscape, on 09/07/2008, -1/+8There is a LOT of (completely unrelated) evidence for the big bang, and I can't see how the LHC can completely disprove it. After all, it can't recreate much of anything; what it can do is collide particles at high speeds, which creates very high temperatures - hopefully high enough to create a "quark-gluon plasma", meaning the protons more or less "melt" into their constituent parts. It's theorized that at these extreme temperatures, the laws of physics more or less unite into simpler forces.
A disclaimer, though: I'm only a hobby particle physicist (aka. geek). - asdfasdfasdfasd, on 09/07/2008, -0/+7http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet ...
- 2Deluxe, on 09/07/2008, -2/+9Quit trying so hard :P
- medfreak, on 09/07/2008, -0/+7There are people out there who still believe the Earth is flat... people who don't understand the concept of peer review do exist.
- inactive, on 09/07/2008, -2/+9And get really good at hiding Nazi Gold.
- dood, on 09/07/2008, -0/+6In that case, you're just trading one form of exploration for another.
I think the standard statement starts wth "instead of spending billions on war, ..." - punkcat, on 09/07/2008, -0/+6pfff, the exhaust port of the LHC is hardly bigger than a womprat. no fighter could hit it.
- crowbarred, on 09/07/2008, -0/+6see you next thursday ....*fingers crossed*
- Croaton, on 09/07/2008, -0/+6Evolution... really? Do you really think the theory of evolution in any way is studied at the LHC? If so then you need to reeducate yourself in biology.
The "'creating' 'building' 'designing' and 'planning'" are done for the sake of scientific experiments. The experiments are done to observe and measure -natural- phenomenons in -controlled- environments. - diabolicedict, on 09/07/2008, -0/+6"Proof" of a theory does not exist in science. Proof only exists in mathematics. Experimental observation of the predictions made by a hypothesis or theory is called validation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_a ... - TheCatsPants, on 09/07/2008, -1/+6"I'd love to know what they would do if their machine showed them there never was a Big Bang."
They'd have to come up with a better idea - that's the beauty of science. In the face of overwhelming evidence it changes. It would actually be very exciting and scientist would be overjoyed to see something as dramatic as this.
"but instead of thinking "perhaps we have it wrong" they pull a new kind of exotic matter out of their theoretical butts. That isn't science."
Actually there are competing theories. The one that fits the facts best is accepted - until it is disproved or improved by new data. So, that is science. And it works.
" The data should be leading you not the other way around."
Science *is* lead by data, why do you think the Big Bang is accepted? There's lots of evidence for it. Before red-shift and the CMB was observed most people thought the Steady State theory was the best explanation. - Croaton, on 09/07/2008, -0/+5Alternatives shouldn't be put forth just for the sake of argument. They should be put forth because they explain the whole or part of a theory better then the original one.
It isn't just the theory of evolution that neither can be proved or disproved. The same goes for the atomic theory, the theory of relativity and all other scientific theories. But supported by the heaps and mountains of evidence, predictions and observations they can be considered the best understanding we have of the world/universe we live in...
Competing theories do exist on a number of different areas of the theory of evolution. Some are excluded due to lack of evidence and some are accepted and the theory as a whole is modified. This process as been occurring ever since before Darwin put forth his ideas of natural selection... it is still occurring to this day... and it will be occurring in the future.
Your problem isn't that they aren't putting forth competing theories. Your problem is that they aren't putting forth the "theory" -you- want them to hold up as a "competing theory". - inactive, on 09/07/2008, -3/+8***** these people who are opposing this,do you guys really think they would have gone ahead without plan B incase something goes wrong.
- inactive, on 09/07/2008, -0/+5If this happens to ***** up everything, the first thing I will do is log in to digg and dugg all of you positive-thinking I-know-everything-is-gonna-be-alright users down.
- niczar, on 09/07/2008, -2/+7"I'd love to know what they would do if their machine showed them there never was a Big Bang."
A scientist who could prove that there was no Big Bang would get 10 Nobel prizes delivered to hid frontdoor the next day. - theOster, on 09/07/2008, -0/+5don't you mean "c" "u" nex...nm
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