“the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.” - Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe (link)
The first attempt at beam injection is expected to take place at 9:30am (UTC/GMT+2) 10-Sep-2008
Yeah I'd like to know a time zone as well. Imagine watching the live stream and a black hole did get created. Then it like sucked up some shit, and you seen it all on Camera, then the camera went out. I wonder wtf I'd do in that situation other than think "Oh shit".
On September 09 2008 23:58 Krohm wrote: Yeah I'd like to know a time zone as well. Imagine watching the live stream and a black hole did get created. Then it like sucked up some shit, and you seen it all on Camera, then the camera went out. I wonder wtf I'd do in that situation other than think "Oh shit".
LIQUOR STORE, NOW GOGOOGOOoooooooOoooo
I really hope I'm not in class when this is on, cz I wanna watch it.
Wow thanks. i did not know that they will broadcast this live. I bet all the particle physics students will tremble in fear over the next years. If CERN just finds the Higgs Boson and nothing else, it will be quite difficult to find something worthwhile to do.
Nothing is actually going to happen, and if it did it wouldn't be until October 21, when the high energy collisions actually happen. Not sure why everyone is all worked up over them just running a beam through the LHC.
On September 09 2008 23:58 Krohm wrote: Yeah I'd like to know a time zone as well. Imagine watching the live stream and a black hole did get created. Then it like sucked up some shit, and you seen it all on Camera, then the camera went out. I wonder wtf I'd do in that situation other than think "Oh shit".
If a black hole was created you would be dead before you even realized what happened
Is there anyone that knows a ton about this that could put it in layman's terms for me? Like what do they plan on doing and why they are doing it and what they expect to happen?
in layman's terms they are recreating what they believe to be a smaller scale event like the "Big Bang." From there they can learn a lot about that event, the creation of earth and the particles involved.
On September 10 2008 03:13 {88}iNcontroL wrote: in layman's terms they are recreating what they believe to be a smaller scale event like the "Big Bang." From there they can learn a lot about that event, the creation of earth and the particles involved.
On September 09 2008 23:45 Elvin_vn wrote: “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.” - Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe (link)
That phrase was said in response to those ignorant writer and lawyer who alarmed the whole world meaninglessly about the chance of a black hole coming out of LHC. Anything like a black hole or dragons can come out of LHC as much as we could wake up tomorrow and discover the sun is gone forever.
On September 10 2008 03:11 BlackJack wrote: Is there anyone that knows a ton about this that could put it in layman's terms for me? Like what do they plan on doing and why they are doing it and what they expect to happen?
Accelerate subatomic particles to near the speed of light, smash them together, see what comes out. Rinse, repeat. After millions of repititions they hope that in the mess of smaller particles that come out of subatomic particles, they will see something that they haven't seen before. In this instance, they're hoping to see a Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson means a tremendous amount to particle physcists because it is the only particles predicted in the Standard Model that has not yet been seen.
If a black hole forms it would drop to the center of the earth. If it is very small it might not grow very fast and be hardly noticable in the beginning. We would accellerate towards it with the maximum of 1G. Closing in on it the acceleration would increase. The moon will continue its orbit around the earth black hole. Some matter might be ejected into space like the jets of a pulsar. It won't happen but thats how I imagine it.
Unless i'm wrong tomorow theyre just firing a laser to test it, the collision experiment will be in October, so we should all be fine for a good month !
On September 10 2008 06:58 KaasZerg wrote: If a black hole forms it would drop to the center of the earth. If it is very small it might not grow very fast and be hardly noticable in the beginning. We would accellerate towards it with the maximum of 1G. Closing in on it the acceleration would increase. The moon will continue its orbit around the earth black hole. Some matter might be ejected into space like the jets of a pulsar. It won't happen but thats how I imagine it.
If a certain physicist was right, any black hole created would disappear before it had the chance to damage anything. See "Hawking Radiation"
On September 10 2008 09:03 Fontong wrote: So basically it'll do something normal people hardly understand, but may be of immense import as to the people who understand what actually goes on.
wtf, i've read everyone's comments in this thread, and no one has any doubts about a possible black hole from LHC?
it's great that we are keep trying to find out the wonders of science and universe, but wtf? if it can be life threatening to entire earth, i do not see a point of actually risking it.
even though, like everyone else,i have had thoughts about death and whatnot, but i don't wanna die in a split second without knowing when my time's coming to an end. shit, man.
and why are we counting down for 9/10, even though the real one is going to take place on 10/21?
someone please bomb LHC. i'm pretty sure a majority of people would be against the LHC, if they actually knew about its potential risks.
On September 10 2008 10:05 CapO wrote: wtf, i've read everyone's comments in this thread, and no one has any doubts about a possible black hole from LHC?
it's great that we are keep trying to find out the wonders of science and universe, but wtf? if it can be life threatening to entire earth, i do not see a point of actually risking it.
even though, like everyone else,i have had thoughts about death and whatnot, but i don't wanna die in a split second without knowing when my time's coming to an end. shit, man.
and why are we counting down for 9/10, even though the real one is going to take place on 10/21?
someone please bomb LHC. i'm pretty sure a majority of people would be against the LHC, if they actually knew about its potential risks.
edit: YES, I AM SCARED.
You also believe that a comet could come and crush earth at any time?
On September 10 2008 10:16 CapO wrote: u guys are 100% confident that nothing's gonna go wrong for the man kinds?
You can't be 100% sure, but you can be pretty close to being 100% sure. It's like you can't be sure the next you get into a car that you won't die in a car crash. The chance of anything going wrong in the LHC experiments is much much less than the chance of you dieing in a car crash too.
On September 10 2008 10:16 CapO wrote: u guys are 100% confident that nothing's gonna go wrong for the man kinds?
You can't be 100% sure, but you can be pretty close to being 100% sure. It's like you can't be sure the next you get into a car that you won't die in a car crash. The chance of anything going wrong in the LHC experiments is much much less than the chance of you dieing in a car crash too.
alright, but im talking about the man-kind. if it has the slightest chance of destroying the earth, i'd say NO to LHC please!! :/
On September 10 2008 10:16 CapO wrote: u guys are 100% confident that nothing's gonna go wrong for the man kinds?
You can't be 100% sure, but you can be pretty close to being 100% sure. It's like you can't be sure the next you get into a car that you won't die in a car crash. The chance of anything going wrong in the LHC experiments is much much less than the chance of you dieing in a car crash too.
alright, but im talking about the man-kind. if it has the slightest chance of destroying the earth, i'd say NO to LHC please!! :/
I know I sound like I'm talking out of my ass but as far as I know there are many examples of things we do that have a far greater chance of destroying earth or at least everyone on it. LHC is nothing to worry about in comparison
On September 10 2008 10:16 CapO wrote: u guys are 100% confident that nothing's gonna go wrong for the man kinds?
You can't be 100% sure, but you can be pretty close to being 100% sure. It's like you can't be sure the next you get into a car that you won't die in a car crash. The chance of anything going wrong in the LHC experiments is much much less than the chance of you dieing in a car crash too.
alright, but im talking about the man-kind. if it has the slightest chance of destroying the earth, i'd say NO to LHC please!! :/
do you actually know how big the 'slightest chance' is in this case?
read the quote in the op, it could just as well cause dragons to be created. the fact that something 'could' happen does not mean its even worth consideration, given the probabilities involved.
On September 10 2008 11:08 Pads wrote: I'm probably going to get really drunk and watch this with dick in hand so I know I will be having a good time when I die, if that happens.
For all those who say "omg no to the LHC", You realize that when we tested Trinity out, the people working there were actually giving it a great chance to just ignite the atmosphere in a chain reaction and obliterating surface life in about an 800 mile radius. Science is science, fuck chances. At least it'll be on the other side of the Atlantic. Ho ho..
On September 10 2008 14:29 [Fin]Vittu wrote: what if instead of a black hole sucking us up, it spits out a new race called Ssotorp and our country becomes taken over with Pylons and Gateways?
then we will be ruled by a race called sstorp with their pylons and gateways
On September 10 2008 14:29 [Fin]Vittu wrote: what if instead of a black hole sucking us up, it spits out a new race called Ssotorp and our country becomes taken over with Pylons and Gateways?
I think we'd be better off, as long as no filthy Grez chase after 'em!
Well, seeing as it is now 9:10am GMT+2, and I am still here able to type, I would say that their test run didnt create a quantum singularity and devour the world after all.
You'd think an experiment of this magnitude would warrant servers which could handle everyone in the world connecting up and watching the live stream -_-
On September 10 2008 16:36 Dosed wrote: You'd think an experiment of this magnitude would warrant servers which could handle everyone in the world connecting up and watching the live stream -_-
I'm glad some of you have a healthy amount of skepticism of the safety of this thing, because I wouldn't trust these scientists at all. When you've got such large amounts of money around, do you seriously expect a new study to come out saying "sorry, we made a mistake".
Although, personally, I don't think anything substantial is going to happen, not even a substantial scientific discovery, other than the "thats really interesting that nothing happened" type of discovery.
Also, I kind of doubt that they will be going to full power the first day. You don't just unleash a bunch of protons around kilometers of tubes and expect everything to work. That is, unless they've already been running the thing at lower levels for a while.
I am yet to realize why is this test being done ? To prove that God dosnt exist ? Is it really worth of it :O.. Also I didnt die... So I skipped school for nothing. Also I masturbated and took few beers and its only morning here T_T
On September 10 2008 17:02 kroko wrote: I am yet to realize why is this test being done ? To prove that God dosnt exist ? Is it really worth of it :O..
Without that test, there's nothing that could be done to increase our knowledge of particle physics (and whether the current model of the elementary particles is accurate or not (which is kind of a mess, really... heard of the Higgs particle? It's just a *hypothetical* particle, i.e. it wasn't proven to exist yet (in the LHC it might be), it's just assumed that it's there because according to our standard model it should be there). So yeah this is pretty damn important. On a global scale, what good would life be anyway if humanity as a whole didn't make progress in science anymore? I'm glad that we don't live in the Middle Age anymore... :p
On September 10 2008 17:02 kroko wrote: I am yet to realize why is this test being done ? To prove that God dosnt exist ? Is it really worth of it :O..
Without that test, there's nothing that could be done to increase our knowledge of particle physics (and whether the current model of the elementary particles is accurate or not (which is kind of a mess, really... heard of the Higgs particle? It's just a *hypothetical* particle, i.e. it wasn't proven to exist yet (in the LHC it might be), it's just assumed that it's there because according to our standard model it should be there). So yeah this is pretty damn important. On a global scale, what good would life be anyway if humanity as a whole didn't make progress in science anymore? I'm glad that we don't live in the Middle Age anymore... :p
I agree with your point, but its not like theres other areas of science we cant improve, i mean, how long is it supposed to take for particle physics knowledge to start helping me at my home ? from all i know it can create a dragon that will consume it.
I am one of CERN's summer students this year and I am here in my lab at work. This is a very exciting day here! Everyone is talking about it, and I was in CERN's main auditorium where people were celebrating the first beam. If anyone has questions about physics or what is happening today, feel free to ask away! If you are watching the stream now, the young people with red shirts are my friends, wearing summer student shirts. Might see me later as well
On September 10 2008 18:26 D10 wrote: I agree with your point, but its not like there other areas of science we cant improve, i mean, how long is it supposed to take for particle physics knowledge to start helping me at my home ? from all i know it can create a dragon that will consume it.
Well here is the point. The people in CERN do something that is called basic research. That means that they don't exactly know what they will discover and if you don't know that, it is simply impossible to say how long it will take to develop some applications of your research. So, you might say, simply don't do basic research then . But there is actually a problem with that. Imagine two branches of Science, basic research and transitional research. Transitional researchers take the knowledge basic scientists did discover and try to make something useful out of it, but if there is no basic research going on then the poor transitional scientists will have nothing to do and they will be very sad. Surely you don't want that to happen.
In summary: basic research is risky and difficult. You don't know if you will discover something useful or even anything at all, but science just cannot work without it.
Oh and the End of the World stuff is of course just stupid and wrong. Don't listen to much to the media, reporters are basically idiots with a microphone
What is this thing and what does it do? They don't know what the likely results are, right?
I've been looking around online and all I can find is news articles about how great and important this is, but no explanation of what it is and what it does
Smashes bunches of protons together in opposite "beams" (head-on) at near the speed of light. Also smashes lead ions, which are obviously made up of many protons and many neutrons.
Then they sit and watch what happens by tracing what particles go where. It's sort of like observing crash-testing cars at several thousand frames per second and exactly tracking the path of each and every small part that flies away, a huge undertaking if you've ever seen what car crashes look like. Shit flying everywhere.
Oh, also: what they're dying for is to see the ions and protons fall apart in a multitude of uber-tiny sub-particles, some of which have not been "seen" before, only theorized about. Another analogy: killing your own turrets over and over again to see the man in the turret tossed out in the explosion. You know he's in there and should be seen flying around, but you never saw him.
On September 10 2008 21:12 alpskomleko wrote: Another analogy: killing your own turrets over and over again to see the man in the turret tossed out in the explosion. You know he's in there and should be seen flying around, but you never saw him.
Oooohhh now I finally understand it, why wasn't it explained in our language before?? lol <3
On September 10 2008 21:47 KOFgokuon wrote: good we're all alive
We may be right now...!!! I wonder if these scientists would tell us if something did occur that they couldn't stop. You know, the sorta thing like, 4 yrs from now in 2012 they're like,
"oh, you know when we used that Hadron collider thingermajig? Well, we forgot to mention we DID create a blackhole, we've been trying to stop it since we started this damn thing but thought we'd keep it under wraps...oops."
On September 10 2008 22:10 Piste wrote: yea but they will not use it's full capacity in years..
Years is an overstatement, but they will definitely not go much above 5 TeV this year.
Are you sitting at CERN in this historical moment and posting on TL? That seems a bit odd Btw, I'd love if you could read what I posted above and pointed out if I got anything wrong. You seem to be qualified to correct what's been said and elaborate on these matters.
On September 10 2008 22:10 Piste wrote: yea but they will not use it's full capacity in years..
Years is an overstatement, but they will definitely not go much above 5 TeV this year.
Are you sitting at CERN in this historical moment and posting on TL? That seems a bit odd Btw, I'd love if you could read what I posted above and pointed out if I got anything wrong. You seem to be qualified to correct what's been said and elaborate on these matters.
Yes I am. I have to work, and if I have time between measuring I can read TL
About what you said: It was very general and principally not wrong. Basically the LHC is a discovery machine. It is a proton+proton collider, that means that you can get to much higher energies than you could with electrons+positrons. Protons don't suffer from the synchroton radiation problem as much as electrons do. That's why you can get to higher momentum in the same tunnel as LEP was built in (LEP is an electron positron collider). The drawback is that protons are not elementary particles, but are instead made of 3 quarks (in fact it's even more complicated). The constituents share the momentum and the energy of the proton and it is the quarks that actually collide. But in these collisions you don't know the individual energy and momentum of the quarks. With hadron colliders you will also get a lot more mess in your detector because hadrons are more complicated than ie. electrons and positrons.
So what does it mean that the LHC is a "discovery machine"? The point is that the current model of the subatomic world, the Standard Model of Particle Physics has been confirmed to almost unbelievable precision. But it cannot explain a lot of things: - Why are the masses of the particles the way they are? Why is there a span of almost 12 orders of magnitude in the masses? In fact if you don't have the Higgs mechanism the mathematics of Quantum Field Theory deal with massless particles which is obviously wrong! So that's why there should be the Higgs particle! This particle is very heavy and has never been observed. If the Standard Model prediction is correct than the Higgs particle will be found with the LHC because of the huge ring and the fact that it is a proton proton collider you can reach the energy needed in order to produce the higgs. - We also don't have any idea what constitutes dark matter or dark energy in the universe. We know that it's there but we have no idea what it is. The current opinion is that none of the known particles can account for it. - We have no idea what is happening in the first seconds of the universe. Our current theories break down. But just as electricity and magnetism had been unified by Maxwell, electromagnetism and the weak interaction have been unified. There is further indication for a possible unification of Electroweak and Strong forces! This can be achieved particularly by adding heavy particles (which have not been observed so far). One of these particles is also a very good candidate for dark matter! LHC probably can see these particles and discover their mass spectrum and so on.
The particles are produced from the protons' energy and produce lots of secondary particles which can be observed in the huge detectors.
man imagine all those ppl that died of sudden causes during the first second of that experiment. just before they died they must be like oh shit. worm hole
I love how:the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.” - Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe
Implies that the dragons may be friendly and not eat us after all.
Pictures popping up: apparently this is one of the first events in the ATLAS detector. Though why it detected anything when there have been no collisions yet is beyond me. Perhaps Silence can elaborate on this part.
Oh, and here's what appears to be a detailed description of the image from science.slashdot.org:
The image is produced by an event display program, which provides a nice visual representation of the output of the whole detector (ATLAS in this case) for one event. One event here means one beam crossing, generally, which could include up to several proton-proton collisions, but generally only one interesting one.
Now, I'm not completely familiar with ATLAS (I'm a CDF guy), but I'm pretty sure the top left section is the muon chambers. These record, well, muons, which are the only thing which interacts poorly enough to consistently punch all the way through the detector and the layers of steel in front of the muon chambers, but strongly enough to be recorded all the way along its passage.
The top center shows a zoomed in view of the middle of the top left: the calorimeters. Calorimeters record the amount of energy that enters them, and are arranged radially, so that you can see just how much energy (in the form of both mass and kinetic energy) was carried away from the collision in a particular direction. This is accomplished by means of scintillator crystals, which tend to get ionized by the passage of high energy particles, thus absorbing some energy from the particles, and then they reemit that energy as photons, which are collected and measured in photomultiplier tubes. The calorimeters are used to look for most particles, particularly electrons and "jets" (which are a spray of particles resulting from the ejection of a quark from the collision), both of which leave clusters of energy over a significant area of the calorimeter.
The top right is again a zoomed in view of the middle of the top center: the tracking chambers. These act sort of like thousands and thousands of geiger counters; every time a charged particle passes through the vicinity of a wire in the tracking chamber, it records a hit. You can then piece all these hits together in a line to measure the track of a particle. The offcenter pink and blue line is almost certainly a cosmic ray, which will naturally leave a track in the chamber, but not appear to originate from the interaction point. In the lower left, you can see what is probably two different short track segments.
The first three images have been more or less slices out of the center of the detector, perpendicular to the beam line. The lower left is a side-on view, showing the somewhat less important parts of the detector that lie at small angles to the beam line, the so-called forward detectors.
The lower right is probably intended to be a flat plot of the calorimeter, as if you sliced it parallel to the beam line and unrolled it. The height of the bars would then indicate how much energy was deposited in each section. However, at the moment, that plot looks like it is having some sort of overflow problems.
They had beam shutters right in front of the Atlas detector. They stopped the protons there to apply corrections to the beam before going further. But loads of secondary particles (i.e. muons, pions,...) get produced in the process of stopping the primary protons. These secondary particles light up the detector which is sitting shortly after the beam shutter.
edit: the protons also collide with left over gas atoms, because of the not yet perfect vacuum in the beam pipe.
More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. LHC has been fixed and seem ready to become operational by the end of this week.
Various sources however claim that the Collider wont be started again before December. But will it actually work? A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
On November 19 2009 01:31 zatic wrote: This thing is just as bad as SC2. I predict there will be another delay, pushing the thing back to December 2012.
On November 19 2009 01:31 zatic wrote: This thing is just as bad as SC2. I predict there will be another delay, pushing the thing back to December 2012.
actually another theory is that if they start it now it will reach full capacity just for December 2012. Even if they start it now it must run flawlessly for years, which is nearly impossible
On November 18 2009 21:56 disciple wrote: More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. LHC has been fixed and seem ready to become operational by the end of this week.
Various sources however claim that the Collider wont be started again before December. But will it actually work? A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
Wow.
The funny thing is that reality is more crazy than science fiction. What you mentioned above doesn't sound impossible at all, try quantom physics for unexplainable and extremely weird stuff.
We are quite blind about the weirdness of reality, in our daily lives.
On November 18 2009 21:56 disciple wrote: More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. LHC has been fixed and seem ready to become operational by the end of this week.
Various sources however claim that the Collider wont be started again before December. But will it actually work? A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
Wow.
The funny thing is that reality is more crazy than science fiction. What you mentioned above doesn't sound impossible at all, try quantom physics for unexplainable and extremely weird stuff.
We are quite blind about the weirdness of reality, in our daily lives.
How awesome would it be if string theory could be proved in vivo? Go LCH!
maybe the same time travelling 'terminators' that are created by the LHC are coming back to delay SC2, due to its huge influence on the future of earth?