It's not a "fib." We're talking about the difference between tera-electronvolts and... what, zeta-electronvolts? They're not even comparable. Either the collisions can cause a stable black hole that will destroy the earth, or they can't. If they can, the cosmic rays bombarding the earth easily would have created one by now - they're at extremely high energy levels. We haven't even approached them yet.
The kind of things we're colliding is more or less irrelevant in this discussion. I don't know what makes you think an ion is more likely to destroy the world than a proton - particularly when the ions will be at lower energies due to greater mass - or why antiparticles are somehow special here. They're not. They have the same mass and will reach the same maximum energy in the LHC as "normal" particles.
And what would happen if a stable black hole was generated? The damn thing would be traveling so fast that it would escape the earth's gravity entirely and fly off into space. And because of its tiny size it would take it hundreds of hours just to grab another particle. The risk of it hurting us in any way is about as near-zero as we could hope for. The LHC and its experiments are a hell of a lot safer for mankind than the pollution created as a result of generating the electricity needed to run it.
If all this is true, then what's the point of building a nifty new accelerator at all? If these things are happening at ridiculously high energy levels millions of times per day in the upper atmosphere, why not just build something to observe the collisions that are already occuring, rather than spending billions to create sad imitations thereof?
Because its kinda hard to observe something thats happening on such an incredibly small scale unless you know exactly where its going to happen.
Didn't they prove the existence of cosmic rays way down in old mines?
edit: nope.
Then, in 1912, Victor Hess carried three Wulf electrometers (a device to measure the rate of ion production inside a hermetically sealed container) to an altitude of 5300 meters in a free balloon flight. He found the ionization rate increased approximately fourfold over the rate at ground level. He concluded "The results of my observation are best explained by the assumption that a radiation of very great penetrating power enters our atmosphere from above." Hess received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936 for his discovery of what came to be called "cosmic rays".
Agem, I agree with the sentiment that the experiment is harmless. Back when the fundamentalists were protesting RHIC being built for the same reasons, I checked the stuff out.
Phew, thanks for checking it out for us. What are these fundamentalists you speak of fundamentalist.. in?
Agem, I agree with the sentiment that the experiment is harmless. Back when the fundamentalists were protesting RHIC being built for the same reasons, I checked the stuff out.
However, despite the higher energies in isolated cosmic ray collisions, they intend to get results in the lab these collisions won't produce.
RHIC and LHC are both trying to produce copious quark-gluon plasmas that don't occur in our atmosphere. Nor do cosmic rays cause particles to condense from the Higgs field (if it exists/ possible/ whatever).
Which are still going to be overall lower energy per particle. The LHC - large HADRON collider - is intended to collide protons. Protons contain 3 quarks so each individual fundamental particle is only going to pick up about a 1/3 of that energy when it's accelerated.
Your other points don't actually prove much, because you're talking about collisions we can't observe. Cosmic rays might be producing the Higgs particle all the damn time - we have no idea what it would look like but we do know that it's probably pretty short lived (like just about everything else coming out of a particle accelerator). Seeing as these things happen a couple of kilometers up in the atmosphere, we don't know what happens but it is a lot more problematic when the collision involves at least one pair which is a fundamental particle because all that energy is focussed onto one point and thus energy / particle increases.
I also enjoy the fact that one of the Wikipedia searches that redirects to the original page is a search for the Large HARDON Collider. Sounds like a good film.
Agem, I agree with the sentiment that the experiment is harmless. Back when the fundamentalists were protesting RHIC being built for the same reasons, I checked the stuff out.
However, despite the higher energies in isolated cosmic ray collisions, they intend to get results in the lab these collisions won't produce.
RHIC and LHC are both trying to produce copious quark-gluon plasmas that don't occur in our atmosphere. Nor do cosmic rays cause particles to condense from the Higgs field (if it exists/ possible/ whatever).
Which are still going to be overall lower energy per particle. The LHC - large HADRON collider - is intended to collide protons. Protons contain 3 quarks so each individual fundamental particle is only going to pick up about a 1/3 of that energy when it's accelerated.
Your other points don't actually prove much, because you're talking about collisions we can't observe. Cosmic rays might be producing the Higgs particle all the damn time - we have no idea what it would look like but we do know that it's probably pretty short lived (like just about everything else coming out of a particle accelerator). Seeing as these things happen a couple of kilometers up in the atmosphere, we don't know what happens but it is a lot more problematic when the collision involves at least one pair which is a fundamental particle because all that energy is focussed onto one point and thus energy / particle increases.
We need the higher energy density in a lab to get these effects.
Regarding higher Kinetic Energies: A fundamental particle like a lepton receiving the energy from a collison will slough it off as EM or spit out a couple pions, which will just do their thing for a minute and decay.
Physicist think the most promising routes for Higgs detection are observing quark interactions from large hadrons, and not protons or leptons which are most constituents of cosmic rays. But I don't know if that's because of accelerator design limitations.
My 1997 copy of Microsoft Works actually has the Millennium Bug; if you enter a date like 27th May 07 then it turns it into 1907. No plane-crashing though..
Of course, we'll be hit by the UNIX time problem in 2038, just two years after the 2036 NTP one.
Guys, guys...im from the future. This thing works. I was just chilling in the future when this son of a bitch sucked me back in time.
ABC already has the rights to a sitcom based on my story. It was strange watching this sitcom in the future thinking "hey that guy looks like me, wierd. This show is dumb, that could never happen." I can tell you already, its a terrible show.
Also, Lost doesnt ever go anywhere. And Spiderman 4 rocks.
The reason why we cant just use cosmic rays is because...
a) Cosmic rays do not have a defined energy, or one which can be tested before they interact. So we don't know enough about starting conditions.
b) Cosmic rays do not hit other cosmic rays travelling in the opposite direction. Rather than creating huge amounts of mass and particles in an experiment, they just send the other particles flying off really quickly (admittedly they make some mass, but not as much as the LHC will)
c) Fact b) also means cosmic ray interactions are hard to observe, the products have a huge amount of KE in the lab frame and effectively just zoom straight out of any detector. A particle moving that fast is almost impossible to identify, since you cant steer it with a magnetic field.
d) Cosmic rays, although producing an enormous total flux through the earth, produce a comparatively low flux per unit area compared to the beam from the LHC, since the LHC beam is a pulsed beam focused onto a few nm of space.
The concern here is not truly that a mini black hole will be created, mini black holes are created an evaporate all the time in all kinds of interactions. The concern is that if enough QGP (quark gluon plasma) can be created its core will become more stable than normal matter. This means it will begin to convert normal matter into itself, i.e. quarks as protons and nuetrons will be heavier than quarks as the QGP and will turn into more QGP. This is thought to be possible since long range colour nuetrality (like in a QGP) is thought to possibly be more favourable for the quarks than short range colour neutrality.
However this is clearly a pile of horse manure. The only way a QGP can be more stable is if it is totally non-interacting, i.e. it is infinate in size. Otherwise the edge regions are continually hadronizing since they can 'realise' they are colour charged and must decay. There is also no evidence of changing quark mass in the QGP unbound state from RHIC.
The reason why we cant just use cosmic rays is because...
a) Cosmic rays do not have a defined energy, or one which can be tested before they interact. So we don't know enough about starting conditions.
b) Cosmic rays do not hit other cosmic rays travelling in the opposite direction. Rather than creating huge amounts of mass and particles in an experiment, they just send the other particles flying off really quickly (admittedly they make some mass, but not as much as the LHC will)
c) Fact b) also means cosmic ray interactions are hard to observe, the products have a huge amount of KE in the lab frame and effectively just zoom straight out of any detector. A particle moving that fast is almost impossible to identify, since you cant steer it with a magnetic field.
d) Cosmic rays, although producing an enormous total flux through the earth, produce a comparatively low flux per unit area compared to the beam from the LHC, since the LHC beam is a pulsed beam focused onto a few nm of space.
The concern here is not truly that a mini black hole will be created, mini black holes are created an evaporate all the time in all kinds of interactions. The concern is that if enough QGP (quark gluon plasma) can be created its core will become more stable than normal matter. This means it will begin to convert normal matter into itself, i.e. quarks as protons and nuetrons will be heavier than quarks as the QGP and will turn into more QGP. This is thought to be possible since long range colour nuetrality (like in a QGP) is thought to possibly be more favourable for the quarks than short range colour neutrality.
However this is clearly a pile of horse manure. The only way a QGP can be more stable is if it is totally non-interacting, i.e. it is infinate in size. Otherwise the edge regions are continually hadronizing since they can 'realise' they are colour charged and must decay. There is also no evidence of changing quark mass in the QGP unbound state from RHIC.
The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.
20 times in a row.
So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.
The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.
20 times in a row.
So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.
The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!
The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.
20 times in a row.
So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.
The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!
We didn't know that there were planets outside our solar system back in the '80s. We were pretty sure they were there, and had a good way of detecting them. Now we know of hundreds, and are on the brink of getting a clear look at an earthlike planet.
The nice thing about science is that we can know enough to say "Yeah, it's probably true, and here are some likely possibilities ordered by probability..." without actually knowing for sure.
I'm not saying it's likely to happen, but it is possible to come up with chances for different possibilities by understanding the science behind the theory(ies).
The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.
20 times in a row.
So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.
The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!
It's "possible" in almost the same way it's "possible" that you could spontaneously disappear in a shower of subatomic particles at any moment.
The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.
20 times in a row.
So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.
The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!
It's "possible" in almost the same way it's "possible" that you could spontaneously disappear in a shower of subatomic particles at any moment.
The statistic i heard regarding the chance of this happening is somewhre in the range of winning the lottery.
20 times in a row.
So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.
The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!
It's "possible" in almost the same way it's "possible" that you could spontaneously disappear in a shower of subatomic particles at any moment.
Posts
I imagine it would be more like trying to study the acoustics of a single human voice in the middle of Grand Central Station.
Not that I know a damn thing about quantum physics that I didn't read in a John Gribbin book.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Pretty much. There's a reason most physics labs are in the basement.
edit: nope.
Yes. You missed it. We're all dead.
The general fear-mongering kind.
And you're welcome.
Your other points don't actually prove much, because you're talking about collisions we can't observe. Cosmic rays might be producing the Higgs particle all the damn time - we have no idea what it would look like but we do know that it's probably pretty short lived (like just about everything else coming out of a particle accelerator). Seeing as these things happen a couple of kilometers up in the atmosphere, we don't know what happens but it is a lot more problematic when the collision involves at least one pair which is a fundamental particle because all that energy is focussed onto one point and thus energy / particle increases.
In a parallel universe
Y2K never happened because doomsdayers warned us it would happen. It's a type of paradox the name of which I forget.
Obviously the people building this thing don't think it will destroy all matter as we know it, because they're already planning to make it bigger.
This reminds me of the atom bomb - there was a contingent that though the a-bomb would ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life as we know it.
Incidentally, the iPhone will destroy all life as we know it.
So we'll move to Gliese 581 c
(Incidentally, does anybody else find it infuriatingly difficult to find articles on that? Google News provided almost nothing but editorials. )
Y2k was a very real problem. Just like 2036 is a real problem.
What's 2036? It's when NTP time goes "whoops, 1900" and we get to panic again.
Or octuple-penetration.
We need the higher energy density in a lab to get these effects.
Regarding higher Kinetic Energies: A fundamental particle like a lepton receiving the energy from a collison will slough it off as EM or spit out a couple pions, which will just do their thing for a minute and decay.
Physicist think the most promising routes for Higgs detection are observing quark interactions from large hadrons, and not protons or leptons which are most constituents of cosmic rays. But I don't know if that's because of accelerator design limitations.
So what provisions are in place for this one?
Of course, we'll be hit by the UNIX time problem in 2038, just two years after the 2036 NTP one.
I don't understand what you mean here.
There are other ways to accomplish this.
Anyways... I'm not too afraid of the LHC destroying anything. They would have to actually get it to work first.
ABC already has the rights to a sitcom based on my story. It was strange watching this sitcom in the future thinking "hey that guy looks like me, wierd. This show is dumb, that could never happen." I can tell you already, its a terrible show.
Also, Lost doesnt ever go anywhere. And Spiderman 4 rocks.
I missed I was out for a meal with the misses.
Any pointers to the program on youtube or something?
Shit, you have a point there.
Oh well it gets them viewers.
"Death is a primitive concept. I prefer to think of them as battling evil..."
"In another dimension!!!"
a) Cosmic rays do not have a defined energy, or one which can be tested before they interact. So we don't know enough about starting conditions.
b) Cosmic rays do not hit other cosmic rays travelling in the opposite direction. Rather than creating huge amounts of mass and particles in an experiment, they just send the other particles flying off really quickly (admittedly they make some mass, but not as much as the LHC will)
c) Fact b) also means cosmic ray interactions are hard to observe, the products have a huge amount of KE in the lab frame and effectively just zoom straight out of any detector. A particle moving that fast is almost impossible to identify, since you cant steer it with a magnetic field.
d) Cosmic rays, although producing an enormous total flux through the earth, produce a comparatively low flux per unit area compared to the beam from the LHC, since the LHC beam is a pulsed beam focused onto a few nm of space.
The concern here is not truly that a mini black hole will be created, mini black holes are created an evaporate all the time in all kinds of interactions. The concern is that if enough QGP (quark gluon plasma) can be created its core will become more stable than normal matter. This means it will begin to convert normal matter into itself, i.e. quarks as protons and nuetrons will be heavier than quarks as the QGP and will turn into more QGP. This is thought to be possible since long range colour nuetrality (like in a QGP) is thought to possibly be more favourable for the quarks than short range colour neutrality.
However this is clearly a pile of horse manure. The only way a QGP can be more stable is if it is totally non-interacting, i.e. it is infinate in size. Otherwise the edge regions are continually hadronizing since they can 'realise' they are colour charged and must decay. There is also no evidence of changing quark mass in the QGP unbound state from RHIC.
Seriously, this is not something to worry about.
But there is still possibility it might happen?
20 times in a row.
So pretty much its not going to happen. The human race has a much better chance of being wiped out by a meteorite, volcanic upheaval, alien invasion, nuclear war, disease, or even a nearby galactic event then being killed of by a strangelet.
The thing is how can you give something like this a statistic? They DONT KNOW what can happen because it has not been done before!!??!!
We didn't know that there were planets outside our solar system back in the '80s. We were pretty sure they were there, and had a good way of detecting them. Now we know of hundreds, and are on the brink of getting a clear look at an earthlike planet.
The nice thing about science is that we can know enough to say "Yeah, it's probably true, and here are some likely possibilities ordered by probability..." without actually knowing for sure.
I'm not saying it's likely to happen, but it is possible to come up with chances for different possibilities by understanding the science behind the theory(ies).
It's "possible" in almost the same way it's "possible" that you could spontaneously disappear in a shower of subatomic particles at any moment.
Spontanious combustion?
Spontaneous disintegration.
Combustion leaves leftovers. :P