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Large Hadron Collider: could it defrost a pizza?

telegraph.co.uk — The hottest talking point among scientists preparing for the first collisions in the Large Hadron Collider is not the quest for the elusive "God particle" but how to defrost a pizza. To put the prevailing fear of doom-sayers into context - that the £4.4 billion machine will seed an Earth-engulfing black hole...

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  • americanpyscho, on 09/19/2008, -1/+5Has the earth stopped rotating yet?
  • Motherfuhrer, on 09/19/2008, -7/+1This title is totally kinky...
  • travbrack, on 09/19/2008, -0/+1430 nanoseconds?? I hope they have freschetta in Switzerland because I'm hopping the next flight!
  • LarianLeQuella, on 09/19/2008, -2/+7This still won't silence the dullards who buy into the "end of the earth" hysteria. They are as bad as the moon landing hoax people. Irrational to the last!
    • AmyVernon, on 09/19/2008, -0/+18But at least when the world ends, there will be pizza.
      • wonderchemist, on 09/19/2008, -1/+6Not if the black hole swallows the pizza first!
      • xptoast, on 09/19/2008, -0/+5***** blackhole always stealing my food. Damn it! That was the last pizza I had too :-(
      • gh0st3000, on 09/20/2008, -0/+2And sadly, the pizza will be the very first thing lost.
      • tkotam, on 09/24/2008, -0/+1I'm in your black hole, eating your pizzazzz...
    • Netizentalk, on 09/19/2008, -2/+4***** you, two of my friends died defrosting pizza (with the LHC)
    • 0tis, on 09/20/2008, -0/+6***** you, two of my pizzas died being defrosted by your friends with the LHC
  • oblique63, on 09/19/2008, -2/+50it's not Delivery, it de LHC!
  • yaddayaddayoda, on 09/19/2008, -2/+34FTA:
    "...they come in bunches, each some three inches long, and separated by a distance of 7.5 metres."

    Does anyone else remember what happened the last time they mixed metric and standard US measures?
    • jhnsnp, on 09/19/2008, -9/+0The only non-metric measurement I found in the article was "90 mph" which is how they measure distance in England, plus the LHC is in Switzerland where it would be unheard of to use anything other than the metric system.
      • alexforcefive, on 09/19/2008, -1/+12FTA:

        "... INCHES... METRES..."
      • jhnsnp, on 09/19/2008, -3/+1touché...
      • oli35, on 09/19/2008, -1/+7They measure distance in miles per hour? Really? I thought that's how us brits measure speed.

        Get it right :-P
      • jhnsnp, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1apparently I'm not supposed to be on digg when I have a fever.
    • wonderchemist, on 09/19/2008, -0/+5Yea, but Mars survived!
    • merrychristmass, on 09/20/2008, -3/+2"they?" . They did not crashland Mars. "they" were americans.
  • Umibozu, on 09/19/2008, -9/+1Defrost? At +2 degrees from Absolute Zero, it can definately freeze a pizza.
  • derrrface, on 09/19/2008, -6/+3I read that: hardon collider, 3x. fukcing dyxslecia.
  • octus, on 09/19/2008, -4/+3Can we please stop calling the Higgs Boson the "God particle"? It's a sensationalist, redundant name.
    • AngryBacon, on 09/19/2008, -1/+9Sensationalist, yes; but redundant?
    • youannoyme, on 09/20/2008, -1/+1It's what physicist call it, its not something the media made up. It's because according to theory, its everywhere, but can't (yet) be detected. Nothing really to do with god or even anything sensational...just a little bit of humor:)
    • lilhelper, on 09/20/2008, -1/+1The higgs boson particle that gives mass its mass.

      Not to mention a theory to explain EVERYTHING!!!!
  • AgmLauncher, on 09/19/2008, -1/+21I hope it can defrost a pizza, else that would be a tragic waste of a gajillion dollars :(
    • cliffzdude, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1My kitchen counter top can defrost a pizza. Please send me my gajillion dollars. ;-)
  • mearom, on 09/19/2008, -0/+15The real question among true intellectuals is can it blend
  • scabbers, on 09/19/2008, -1/+2If it wasn't for the black hole scaremongering, 94.67% less articles would have been written about the LHC in the press.
  • Oxygen, on 09/19/2008, -0/+1But can I play WoW on it?
    • watcht, on 09/19/2008, -1/+1play? pshh you could be in WoW literally with the LHC.
    • gh0st3000, on 09/20/2008, -0/+2I'm pretty sure you couldn't play WoW with it, but that proton beam sounds like it would be a nasty DPS.
    • lilhelper, on 09/20/2008, -0/+2I'm pretty sure the LHC can open a worm hole to another universe where you are in WoW.
  • lilcvbballfreak, on 09/19/2008, -1/+0dugg for "beam dump"
  • DeathMarcher, on 09/19/2008, -1/+1More interestingly: "Large Hadron Collider: Public chooses 'Halo' as its new name"
    Hooray for originality?
  • untitlednet, on 09/19/2008, -1/+2I like telling women about my Large Hadron Collider... oh yea ;)
    • EmperorPsiblade, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1You collide with... other hardons? o_O
  • damian7, on 09/19/2008, -5/+9But can it run Crysis?
  • alexforcefive, on 09/19/2008, -4/+2I think a lolcat wrote this article's captions:

    "Pizza: Could frozen pizza be used to as the LHC 'beam dump'"
  • Spoomeister, on 09/19/2008, -2/+1Of course not, not if it keeps blowing out its transformers.

    http://www.dailytech.com/Malfunction+Halts+LHC+Par ...
  • Disastorm, on 09/19/2008, -2/+1nice 30 nanoseconds. places should get these to defrost their food.
  • Me0wmix, on 09/19/2008, -0/+5Now thats my kind of science!
  • AlienMushroom, on 09/19/2008, -3/+3The question is, will it blend?
    • D5010, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1Thank you, I was hoping someone would slip that in...
  • TSK05, on 09/20/2008, -2/+1"Another estimate of beam energy is 10 trillion watts. That means, calculates Minkel, it will take just 30 nanoseconds (billionths of a second) to defrost a pizza with the LHC."

    This makes it sound like it's some sort of difficult calculation, we did it in class (astrophysics class, that is) in like 15 seconds: "I suspect the answer is roughly the same: 1000 W (avg microwave power) * 300 s = 3 x 10^5 J. (3x10^5 J)/(10^13 W) (power of the beam) = 3.0 × 10^-8 seconds. There you go - the difficult part is pulling the [pizza] out in time." That's 30 nanoseconds, exactly as the article says (and I also used 10 trillion watts as the power).

    Here's the link to the comment I made like a week ago (that's where the above quote came from): http://digg.com/general_sciences/CERN_LHC_Public_W ...

    Of course, we didn't account for the whole bunches thing :D
  • scoottie, on 09/20/2008, -4/+1does it blend?
  • Rubiksphere, on 09/20/2008, -0/+3Science is delicious!
  • destron, on 09/20/2008, -0/+2Pac-Man?!
  • VVCephei, on 09/20/2008, -1/+1God the whole black hole business is retarded as ***** :/. It's pretty much impossible, To create a black hole (Of ANY scale) you need something MASSIVE and astonishingly powerful, then somehow compress it all to a billionth of its original scale (Like a supermassive star). two particles flying into each other at light speed... it IS impossible. Infact, there is nothing on this earth that we can do to create a black hole.
    • youannoyme, on 09/20/2008, -0/+2Actually, it doesn't have to be massive at all, its just the density that matters. They actually would LOVE to make black holes with this, but if they do they will be tiny and unstable and deteriorate too fast to see anything but their aftermath...
  • zoydberg, on 09/20/2008, -1/+1Your mom: Can she suck my dick?
    Yes....very well
  • anononon, on 09/20/2008, -0/+4I bet it couldn't cook bacon fast enough though.
  • Br3ach, on 09/20/2008, -3/+1"At this rate, I calculate you would need five billion years to knock some sense into the guys who filed the law suit against the LHC, by which time the Sun would have exploded."

    Basically, if you dont have a P H and D at the end of your name in theoretical physics you really dont get to have an opinion.
    • palehorse864, on 09/20/2008, -0/+4Since you said that, I'll disregard your opinion and continue to form my own about it... oops, potential paradox.
  • palehorse864, on 09/20/2008, -0/+3I'm waiting on the mosquito collider now. That would be funny.
  • MasterThief117, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1I love this article. It is funny. It slightly touches on how people are terrified of the doom the machine could bring, but the main focus is whether it can cook a frozen pizza.

    I love it.
  • MWeather, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1The beams can melt a half ton of copper., or the equivalent energy of one ton of TNT. They use a 10 ton 8 meter long cylinder of graphite shielded by 1000 tons of concrete to stop it. So yes, it could defrost a pizza.
  • NeoNevermore, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1In before first OM NOM NOM NOM
  • rinote, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1Finally! A practical application for science!
  • lilhelper, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1Ah dont you know how they create the pope?

    Well, They get two of the biggest fattest cardinals who have molested the most boys and they smash them together at the speed of light. Then they use the detectors to see of the new mega cardinal has the GOD particle in them... and if it does, they are the new pope.
  • logotype702, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1the pizza is a lie.....
  • mikewill7seven, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1The LHC could defrost your moms cooch from 10,000 miles away
  • gojcaj, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1im about to beam dump right now
  • leland1, on 09/20/2008, -0/+1"Stacks of frozen pizza have never been considered for the LHC's beam dump."

    ...well, they should consider it because I'm not going to eat a "seven metre long segmented carbon cylinder of 700mm diameter, contained in a steel cylinder, which is water cooled, and surrounded by about 750 ton of concrete and iron shielding."-pizza!
    :-)
  • gkiltz, on 09/20/2008, -0/+0Why does this matter, and what if it did?
  •  

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