Some fear debut of powerful atom-smasher

[gateley]

(I think this is fascinating -- and I'm hoping those science-savvy DUers will chime in with opinions and enlightenment. :hi:)



MEYRIN, Switzerland (AP) -- The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August. ~snip~

The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings.

Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass.

The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings.

The theory could resolve many of physics' unanswered questions, but requires about 10 dimensions -- far more than the three spatial dimensions our senses experience. ~snip~

more>>>> http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/30/doomsdaycollider.ap/index.html

[Asgaya Dihi]

1. It's not going to eat the world or anything

Scientists don't worry too much about it as far as I've seen due to Hawking radiation. The biggest fear seems to be the potential of miniature black holes being created and eating us. Black holes aren't eternal objects that always eat and grow, they actually evaporate over time and smaller ones faster than large ones. Quantum physics I won't pretend to understand is responsible but in the end it adds up to anything being created not surviving much longer than it would take to observe that it was there, then it's gone.

http://www.livescience.com/technology/080629-lhc-critics.html

[gateley]

2. I'm not alarmed that it'll eat up the world,

but rather excited at what we might discover. So, we'll see what they OBSERVE :7.

Thanks for the link and for the response!!

[SPQR]

11. Or perhaps the TechnoCore

really is orchestrating the Big Mistake of '08??

[Speck Tater]

3. I recall reading somewhere ...

that some physicists on the Manhattan project feared detonatin a nuclear weapon might start a chain reaction in the atmosphere and blow up the entire planet.

I guess we lucked out on that one.

As for the fear that the collider could spit out a mini-black hole, everything I've read says that mini-black holes are very unstable and evaporate (Hawking radiation) in a brief instant.

[poverlay]

4. They were actually taking bets on it, but were still fairly certain it wouldn't happen. nt

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. It was a gag.

probably to piss off Groves, IMO.

[poverlay]

15. No doubt that you are right. They had done so many test (Dragon's tail etc.), by then that

they had a very good idea what the yield would be. Of course there was always a possibility of something freakish and unknown happening and those scientists felt their facilities were poor, that they were rushed, understaffed, and unappreciated.

[Wiley50]

8. Black holes are real suckers for sure

and as long as they're hawking radiation some sucker will buy it

[Salviati]

6. There are higher energy events that happen naturally every day

When ultra high energy gamma rays hit the Earth's atmosphere. Imagine the kinetic energy of a fastball packed into a single atom. That sort of thing hits the Earth at a rate of 1 per 100 square miles per year. Those interactions are much more energetic than anything the LHC can make, so if something bad were to happen, it would have happened already...

[Speck Tater]

7. Excellent point.

Now that you mention it, I do remember reading about that somewhere, a long time ago.

[gateley]

12. Agree -- really good point.

I'm just so excited about this, though - as I said, maybe we'll discover something that we were unaware of. How cool would that be?

[Canuckistanian]

9. This guy trying to stop it has a history of doing this

Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet."

One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed.

~snip

Wagner and others filed a lawsuit to halt operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state in 1999. The courts dismissed the suit.

I don't know much about him, but it seems his predictions were wrong in the past (obviously).

[eppur_se_muova]

10. Sounds like an Irwin Allen production ... nt

[Indenturedebtor]

13. What I wanna know is: How fast can it cook a Turkey?

:shrug:

[Blarch]

14. Sounds good to me, lets flip it on already.

I was floored when the US canceled the SSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider

The ring for the SSC was 64 miles ...the ring for the collider in the article is 17 miles. Imagine that..