The LHC

[Itachi Uchiha]

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE IN 50 MONTHS COME AUGUST!!!!!!

Or so some of my paranoid friends think we are anyway due to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. But after hearing this and reading up in more detail of what some people may fear happen, I still see it as a low possibility. Now I'm now super-smart physician but after hearing reports from two independent science groups that we are safe could making me feel any better. The fact 2000 scientists from around the world are working on this sole experiment makes me feel comfortable and why shouldn't it? It would be quite illogical for this many qualified people to be wrong not wouldn't it?

Like I said in the above though, I am not completely clear on the topic. I have read bits and pieces picked up and have a general idea. However because I have not studied this depth of physics I can't fully comprehend all that could happen with the LHC. But regardless of this, I have faith in science. Its theories made more relative sense than things such as religion (Now this is only my opinion, this shouldn't into a religious argument).

But now I waffle on, so I'll come to my point. I have expressed how I feel on this matter and so like usual, I will ask you all to express your opinions of this. If links to articles are required, I will edit this post and add them underneath this. So, discuss.

[addrew]

Well i read up on it a while back and i thought that they were a few options and a chance that we may all die. But to be hones i dont realy see what can be done about it now, if there was a massive campaign for it to be stopped billions of pounds would have been wasted on a science experiment that could be helpful to us.

[Unknown Entity]

Yeah, I've read about this, and its in that book by Dan Brown... Can't remember what book, but I remember it being in that book lol!

Quick link for those you aren't sure: Large Hadron Collider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't understand why we are going to die though... If I'm remembering correctly, this machine can create that tiny little bomb thing that needs to be suspended between magnets because its that unstable. This bit of information could be totally fictional, but like I said, I can't even remember the name of the book lol! Apparetly, this bomb (if I'm not talking sh*t) is barely even visable, yet can destroy everything in a couple of miles radious.

Actually, now that i've scared many of you, I really do think I'm talking sh*t lol! i'm sorry Itachi Uchiha, but could you tell me about what this machine is in very little words and less scientific knowledge than on Wiki? I'm thick lol...

I have no idea what the dangers are... I could be right or wrong...

[addrew]

This is waht i thought it was. Correct me if im rong though.

Underground in the france and switzlerland border. in Augest there going to fire some beams which will run around the circular tunnel they have built for 2 months before they collide. The idea (i think) is to collide the protons, which will have a force of 7 eV each so a collision force of 14 eV. The idea of the experiment is to try to unite the these three in a grand unifide theory. electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. Another thing they hope to do is to find the elusive 'Hoggs Boson' particle which is a huge part in particle physics.

Onto the safty parts ill leave wiki to explain:

Concerns have been raised regarding the operational safety of the Large Hadron Collider and the possibility that the high-energy particle collisions performed in the LHC might produce dangerous phenomena, including micro black holes, strangelets, vacuum bubbles and magnetic monopoles. In response to these concerns, the LHC Safety Study Group, a group of independent scientists, performed a safety analysis of the LHC and concluded in a report published in 2003 that there is no basis for any conceivable threat from such phenomena. In 2008, the LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG), a group of particle physicists not involved in the LHC experiments, published a report updating the 2003 safety review, in which they reaffirmed and extended its conclusions that LHC particle collisions present no danger, stating that "the LHC will do nothing that nature has not done a million times before".The LSAG report was reviewed and endorsed by CERN’s Scientific Policy Committee, a group of external scientists that advises CERN’s governing body, its Council.

[Unknown Entity]

Hey thankies for that addrew!

I found the book I was on about: Angels and Demons. There is a fact paragraph in the first few pages... Here we are:

FACT

The world's largest scientific research facility - Switzerland's Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) - recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter. Antimatter is indentical tp physical matter except that it is composed of particles whose electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter. [whisper whisper: I think thats what I ment about unstable bomb... Still could be talking BS though...]

Antimatter is the most powerfull energy source known to man. It releases energy with 100% efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5% efficient). Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation, and a droplet could power New York City for a full day. There is, however, one catch...

Antimatter is highly unstable [whisper whisper: My memory was RIGHT for once! Whos the genious? ]. It ignites when it comes into contact with anything... even air. A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb - the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima [whisper whisper: I was near enough...].

Until recently antimatter has been created only in very small amounts (a few at a time). But CERN has now broken ground on its new Antiproton Decelerator - an advanced animatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quantities.

One question looms: Will this highly volatile substance save the world, or will it be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made?

So what I was saying before wasn't total BS. But now that I know, I'm a little scared. What if antimatter does end up being used for destruction? I know accidents happen and stuff in Science, but there are some nasty f**kers in the world that will use this stuff to cause harm.

[addrew]

The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed, but would help explain how otherwise massless elementary particles still manage to construct mass in matter

To add on to what i perviously said, that is what the Higgs Boson particle is. So if they do find it in the LHC then it would be a great big step closer to proving the standard model theory and atoms. But we still cant prove that the sandard model is correct even if we do find the Higgs Boson.

Wiki doesnt say much but there is talk that after a few years of running they are going to upgrade the LHC to what they call the Super LHC in which they will increase the number of protons in the beam and the modification of 2 high luminosity interaction regions. This may/could mean a bigger risk but they should be able to predict what would happen so not much of a bigger risk.

[Unknown Entity]

Wiki doesnt say much but there is talk that after a few years of running they are going to upgrade the LHC to what they call the Super LHC in which they will increase the number of protons in the beam and the modification of 2 high luminosity interaction regions. This may/could mean a bigger risk but they should be able to predict what would happen so not much of a bigger risk.

It would depend on how much they increase the protons by. I think they should slowly increase the amount they use, so that they could spot any danger before they go and blow up the world.

Ever heard that if everyone in China jumps at the same time, it will send the planet out of orbit? Well, I'm guessing if they overload on protons, and that there is an "incident", this could happen.

"Look before you Leap" and stuff [whisper whisper: Ms Jones, lol, I remember! ]

[InfiniteRealms]

I don't think these scientists are so stupid as too just7 blow us up without some testing first

I don't think it would knowck us out of orbit though. If the meteor that made the Shiva Crater (if it was a meteor) didn't change our orbit, then an antimatter explosion shouldnt change it much, if at all, unless it was strong enough to destroy most of the planet anyway, in which case we will be too busy dieing to care.

[addrew]

I don't think these scientists are so stupid as too just7 blow us up without some testing first

You cant test the LHC as a smaller version first as it needs to be as big as it is.
We wont get pushed out of orbit by this experiment, infact im not realy sure that if everyone in china jumped at the same time it would push us out of orbit, unless their mass was bigger then the earths mass.

[Itachi Uchiha]

I like how this thread has turned out but that is off-topic. So back to the point. The primary purpose of the LHC is to recreate the moments just after the big bang occurred. By doing this, scientists would be able to prove or change their theories on the results. There are a lot of things that we are not certain of but by doing this we can gain a great understanding. Like I have mentioned, there are risks with all experiments but without taking some of these we might not understand some of the things we do now.

With what has been mentioned about anti-matter, I don’t know where this came from. Anti-matter is what it says it is, the opposite of matter. When the two meet, they cancel one another out and energy is released. Or so I’ve been told. Although I don’t know if it does have anything to do with the LHC’s risks but to shift the Earth’s orbit we would have to be hit/release something that would be greater than the sun’s gravitational pull on us.

With the super LHC as they’ve called it, they’ve only budgeted it for 2020 haven’t they? It says it is there to keep the project going. In time we will discover less and less from the LHC and so would need to improve it to obtain new results and perform different experiments through it. The LHC isn’t just for protons but also to use Heavy ions such as lead in similar experiments to discover other things (although this is something I have read in great detail).

[Doc Rocco]

*BUMP* Seeing as though this happened a few days ago, I think having this appear on page 1 is a good idea.

I'm guessing most of you know that the purpose of the LHC is to make atoms collide. This will create situations similar to the Big Bang or a black hole. This has caused some people to go "OH NOES! BLACK HOLE OR A GIANT BANG! WE IZ GOING TO DIE!" Well, the fact is nothing for the next few years or so will kill us. For now, only atoms are colliding which will only produce a black hole which is only the size of a small molecule. Not enough to move the hairs on your head.

As for energy created, the collisons of the atoms produces about 10 or so trillion electron volts. While this might sound like a whole lot, one electron volt is equal to about 1.6x10^-19 Joules. Or to put it into perspective, the cosmic rays from the Sun bombarding us have about 200 trillion electron volts of energy. So you can see nothing major is going to come from this. And for an explosion to move the Earth, it would have to have an absolutely astronomical amount of energy. To accelerate the Earth to even 1ms^-2, you would need to input around 6×10²⁴ Newtons. That's enough to make a person weighing 65 kilos accelerate to 92,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ms^-2. So yeah. HUGE energy. Though, it'd probably create a large dent in the Earth. Hehe.

So yeah. Thoughts now the first experiment has happened?

[winterborn86]

I never believed the world was in any danger from the beginning, scientists arnt stupid if there was a chance the experiments would destory the world they wouldnt of done it.
I was expecting like a tremble in the earth or something lol, but i read some where the actually collision isint ment to happen til 21st october but i don't know if i read that right (correct me if im wrong on that)

[Govinda]

I thought it would be kind of ironic, humanity destroying itself as part of its quest to understand all it can see, rather than dying in a hail of stupidity and greed as it expected.

But now that they've got it working, prepare yourselves for the new craze in weapons of mass destruction. If they could make a ball of antimatter the size of a marble stable somehow and then drop it or launch it into a particular area, breaking the stability, the destructive power would be huge. The Americans at least have been researching the idea for years; it smacks of money and poetry; a totally clean, tiny, efficient version of the nuclear bomb, the imagined zenith of mass weapons research since the Russians exploded their first bomb.

Oh well. There goes our chance to die in a hailstorm of horizon-expanding research.

[Aerif]

The press have mentioned that if the experiment succeeds that CERN will be able to create a minature black hole. Fair enough.

This black hole will be kept in a vacuum, and be completely harmless to those on the outside, however if something was to go horribly wrong (i.e. the vacuum is realesed to the air) then the black hole will suck everything in.

Assuming that this is true, I really hope that CERN has good security, if a Muslim extremist wanted to then they could probably wipe out everyone on the planet as easily as the 9/11 terrorist attacks came.

[Martin]

The press have mentioned that if the experiment succeeds that CERN will be able to create a minature black hole. Fair enough.

This black hole will be kept in a vacuum, and be completely harmless to those on the outside, however if something was to go horribly wrong (i.e. the vacuum is realesed to the air) then the black hole will suck everything in.

Assuming that this is true, I really hope that CERN has good security, if a Muslim extremist wanted to then they could probably wipe out everyone on the planet as easily as the 9/11 terrorist attacks came.

Quite true, however what the press has failed to mention is that this 'Black Hole' which could be created would be so minute, it would not be able to sustain itself, and there's a possibility (because regards this whole experiment, nothing is certain really) that it's mass would be so tiny it would likely sink into the Earth to the core, and growing at such a microscopic rate it would take thousands upon thousands of years to evolve to a mass big enough to actually cause a threat.

Of course I could be entirely wrong, or entirely right. Who knows? Going to be a whole lot of fun finding out eh!

[M16]

No. You're all wrong. What's going to happen when this thing runs properly is the collision of two subatomic particles. When these particles collide, they will potentially recreate the conditions that existed millionths of a second after the birth of the universe. What people are scared of is the possibility of a black hole forming. As far as that goes, you were correct.

However, the black hole is not going to sink to the core and start growing. Black holes don't work like that. Black holes evaporate with time. The black hole that would form, if it formed, would be so tiny that it would evaporate almost instantly without even getting the chance to "suck in" any matter. The black hole that MIGHT form wouldn't even have enough mass to suck up a proton. And once again, it wouldn't even exist long enough to try.