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Apocalypse avoided
Champagne flowed around the world today as scientists celebrated the first successful tests of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. The next step for the world’s largest particle collider is to fire a beam of protons in the opposite direction, setting the stage for the ultimate experiment of firing two opposing beams in an effort to recreate conditions like after the theoretical big bang.
In the months leading up to the historic test, skeptics had tried to stop the experiment, citing concerns it would lead to the creation of a black hole capable of swallowing the planet.
“It’s nonsense,” said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN, before Wednesday’s start.
CERN is backed by leading scientists like Britain’s Stephen Hawking in dismissing the fears and declaring the experiments to be absolutely safe.
Gillies told the AP that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel.
Nothing of the sort occurred Wednesday, though [the] accelerator is still probably a year away from full power.
Now we will just have to wait and see what new discoveries scientists glean from the LHC, and whether they uncover evidence of the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle (often called the “God Particle”) that is believed to give mass to all other particles.
back to top40 Comments to “Apocalypse avoided”
Yeah, but it’s still coming.
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How far into the rock? We could end up with black hole all the way to China.
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Eh…. Enough with the racists comments. Don’t you know it’s called a “Singularity” now?!!!!
In this day and age…
Sheesh!
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We missed this time, though that wasn’t the “full out” test.
In any case, I stick with my prediction that humans will destroy themselves by the end of the century, or at least drive ourselves into “Mad Max” barbarism.
We are like a retarded child (not PC, but I have to get your minds off “black” holes) playing in the attic with a loaded gun she found there.
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Didn’t they say in the 60’s that we would destroy ourselves by the end of the century. Of course, that was a different century.
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#2 Mark Roth,
There are two reasons why the huge cost was incurred to bury the acceleration ring 150 meters underground instead of putting it above ground at way less cost. The first reason is the cosmic rays would have play havoc and create interference with the hadrons they were trying to accelerate and if something went wrong and the packets of trillions of Hadrons escaped while near the speed of light, the explosion would take out about 100 meters of solid rock and earth without much sweat. Think of it as the latest bunker busting thermobaric bomb. They are taking a small mass and accelerating it at the speed of light (about 670 million miles an hour) and heating them to a temperature of several millions of times greater than the temperature of the sun. The exact energy released is quite easy to calculate using e=MC2. it’s nothing to wory about.
They actually hope to create mini black holes with these collisions along with dark matter, parallel universes, the Higgs boson and many other things that are quite unknown and unproven today. No these black holes won’t be the kind that eat up planets and such since they will be the size of one hadron (proton size) and way to tiny and puny energy wise to even eat a spec of dust. But, whack jobs tried to stop the construction of the LHC anyway just like they do anything worthwhile and necessary for mankind. Saner minds eventually believed scientists and their calculations that nothing really horrible could go wrong.
These same whack jobs did stop all nuclear power plants, most other power plants, oil refineries and drilling for oil and gas though because other, less honest scientists, told them insane things that were total fabrications and exaggerations that weak minded people like these easily believe. There were no sane minds to stop them then though but their power is nearly gone and everyone knows they are just plain nuts today. They be very dangerous whack jobs who have a cart with a wheel gone missing indeed and did manage to cause the entire the energy and oil crisis all by themselves when saner minds were not there to stop them.
We really should just shoot ourselves in the head next time rather than be pushed around by a bunch of insane whack jobs.
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Singularity — 4. the mathematical representation of a black hole.
Racism — 3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
Comment — 5. explanatory or critical matter added to a text.
Source: Dictionary.com
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Llama – again, you need to do some research. CERN itself asserts that the LHC was put underground because it was cheaper. Also, there is no risk of an “explosion” due to cosmic ray interference. Yes, the cosmic rays can interfere with the experiment, but since they are firing protons in a vaccum, there isn’t a chance of an explosion if they escape. Again, anyone with a modicum of knowledge realizes this.
Mark – a black hole retains the gravitational properties of its mass before it collapsed on itself. Therefore, if the moon were to turn into a black hole the size of a thimble, the earth is not in jeopardy. The moon doesn’t pull the earth into it now, and it wouldn’t do so if it were a thimble-sized black hole. Gravity doesn’t care about size, only mass, and it acts from the center of the mass.
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The universe space-time continuum has a GREAT DEAL OF INERTIA. This latest experiment was like throwing a switch on some incredibly huge piece of machinery – it takes a long time for the massive gears to begin to jam and grind and pieces of the Machine to begin to break and fling off.
Before you people celebrate our ‘dodging the bullet’ one more time, I should let you know that
1) I made a turkey sandwich last night for my lunch today. Today, as I opened my lunch (to sneak some crackers for an early snack), I noticed that I now have a ham sandwich! Or maybe it is ham – or maybe it is something we don’t even want to think about, some alien lunch food from some unspeakably inhuman Walmart located in some bizarre distant time-space frame full of creatures of incredible hideousity, alien lunch food popping inexplicably into existence inside my lunch bag – here in this universe.
2) As I came out of my house this morning, I got a cold chill down my spine – like the invisible skeletal hand of Doom running his bony fingers down my backbone. For the first time in thirty years, the dogs had not dug up the flowerbed during the night! And the dogs lay in the dirt looking at me strangely with unusual, inscrutable, not-dog expressions, like they were maybe measuring the distance from the ground to the jugular vein in my neck or wondering how I would taste grilled with some kind of mushroom-things from another dimension.
Things are beginning to unravel, people.
Have you noticed the sun seems strangely bloated and luminescent this morning?
Do the people you meet in the street let their weirdly unblinking eyes rest just a moment too long upon you?
Did you notice a sort of fruit or vegetable or something in one of the bins in the supermarket that you have never seen before?
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Lester, what would happen if LHC were to go crazy and Drill Here, Drill Now a BH (ie, Singularity) all the way to China?
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Actually we were all annihilated when the machine fired up, but part of the space time anomaly is that the illusion of our continued conscious existence persists and we are blissfully unaware that we are just random enery and particles.
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Random, you still there?
If so, are you feeling more random than you used to?
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My teenage daughter incorrectly read the headlines about this experiment in the paper and asked her father, “are they really going to recreate the Big Bang? Then what happens? Life begins again, only this time underground?”
God’s still in his heaven this morning; all’s right with the world–as far as I can see.
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Lester, what would happen if LHC were to go crazy and Drill Here, Drill Now a BH (ie, Singularity) all the way to China?
If the LHC “went crazy” and the magnets failed, the protons would simply go in all different directions, interacting with the atoms and molecules around them. In other words, they’d mess up the magnets and detectors of the LHC, but they wouldn’t drill a huge hole in the earth, ala the China Syndrome.
But let’s say the LHC experiment creates a proton-sized black hole. That black hole could pass though you a million times and probably never swallow an atom in your body.
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Mark,
sorry I was off topic, but I was referring to the politically correct outrage expressed by a couple of… er… persons with… er… uh… dark brown skin. Formerly people with this skin color could be described as negroes, or people of color, or blacks. Evidently we cannot do that anymore, and in addition we cannot refer to a “black hole” as a science term, and must use the term “singularity” in reference to them so that we will not offend sensitive people with dark skin color by refering to anything as “black”. Even if it is black.
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Oh. yeah. Forgot the link to the incident in question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20a-exAW6qc
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saw the video……..now I am truly convinced the Dallas commish is from another planet, because I could not come to the realization ANYBODY on earth can be that flippin stupid.
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BLACK HOLE is a scientific term………….
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Years ago I was teaching high school English in a multiracial school. Huckleberry Finn was required reading in our sophomore English classes. One day after class, a very pleasant and sweet black young lady asked me in a non-confrontational way why we were assigning a book with the word “ni**er” in it.
My explanation did not satisfy her, though she never became unpleasant about it.
How would you have explained it?
Next week most of my posts will be off topic to the thread topic. I am just getting warmed up this week.
Special credit if either Nick Peters or Night Train would answer this question.
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#9 LOL!!!
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Drill–Could the reason your turkey sandwich turned into a ham sandwich be the same reason the tortillas I froze in my tiny little freezer are not not there ?
I suppose it was rather a few days before the experiment, but I’d still need somewhere to place the blame ….
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Llama,
“The exact energy released is quite easy to calculate using e=MC2. it’s nothing to wory about.”
That’s quite accurate. Although the energies being used are in realms never before reached, and they are indeed huge, they are huge relative to the mass of things linke protons, neutrons, and electrons
On more mundane energy scales that we ordinary folks use to talk about everyday phenomenon, they are about as energetic as two mosquitoes colliding, or just enough to budge a speck of dust off a table.
The worst thing to fear from the LHC is that it moves the premier site for doing particle physics to Europe, and away from FermiLab in Batavia, IL. Although physics is truly an international endeavor, I had rather those people be working in our country. Oh, that we had had the foresight to build the SCSC.
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#8 Lester, Lester, Lester – What part of you should know better by know don’t you undertand?
Once again you #1 can’t read and #2 are quite incorrect. Now pay attention and listen carefully – it’s not that difficult or contravericial. I never said that comic rays will cause an explosion. No I didn’t and I never ever would either because they won’t I know better than to talk te about facts when I don’t know what they are – which is quite often. I said that the acceleration ring was buried underground 150 meters for two reasons #1 because comic rays would interfere with the Hadrons and PP’s can’t have that and it is also buried under ground for a separate but explosive reason #2, if the packet of Hadrons did escape while they were accelerating at the speed of light (in this cause probably due to a malfunction of the super cooled magnets that keep the Hadron packets in the ring and accelerate them for a reason, there would be, not might be mind you, a very nice explosion just like the one I described – in fact it is estimated to be exactly like the one I described by actual LHC scientists – probably all of them.
No it wasn’t me speaking – how would I know how big the explosion would be? I was just repeating what a real honest to goodness Particle Physicists at LHC told me. I possibly wouldn’t know otherwise if rthere wasn’t TV. Dr Brian Cox, not the one who told me by the way but a fine mind, unlike yours at only 30 years of age, is on the Atlas team with about a gazillion other Dr’s of all kinds. Atlas is the largest of the collider camera apparatuses. Anyway Dr. Cox is the one who calculated the potential energy released and the forces that would have be absorbed – should there be a magnet failure. His calculations were checked and rechecked many, many. many times by the finest Particle Physicists and mathematicians around the world, who all seem to be in CERN working on this project, to make sure that the ring was buried far enough underground to contain this explosion.
They also had to do this checking and rechecking to get the required buidling permit because whack jobs were concerned about black holes and other horrible things when they should have been worried about the real dangers. But, since I can tell you are a fine mind yourself that can hardly be contained by super cooled magnet of any size, you can just figure it out yourself using, who would have guessed, E=MC2 -just like a real Einstein. I have to admit, these calulations and other things are way over my pay grade, as some gods like to say. But my common sense tells me if these particles can create the same environment that existed a billionth (actually one tenth of a billionth) of a second after the big bang when they collide adncreate temperatures hoter than llama spit, then it is probably not totally as safe as putting peanut butter on the roof of a Lester’s mouth either.
No, it won’t create a black hole that would swallow a gihugic brain of a Lester size but it would blow his pieces back in time, (so to speak and not really since the LHC isn’t supposed to be a time machine – but might prove that there could be one), far enough to meet your maker or mother if either would claim you.
I have to admit that I kind of lied about there being two reasons for the ring burial because there are really at least 3 reasons, possibly more, it is buried. No, I didn’t make these reasons up but I belive those who did. I didn’t want to hold anything back in an evil way but my posts can get long, and I didn’t want people to know that I have been studying the LHC and researching it for many years. I didn’t want them to think that I was a know it all when I wasn’t and I’m not. I certainly didn’t want to tell anyone how many times I have actually visited the LHC either because I am sort of fascinated by it for religious reasons, I find it really cool adn I didn’t want to made fun of.
Few people know that if I am reincarnated i want to come back as a collisionist. I made that up, it’s not a real word or profession but it sure sounds like a worthwhile career in a world that doesn’t exist doesn’t it? But, when you go there, and I know you will, you will hear the canned sort of boring speech they give on its safety, how much it costs, Hpow much electricity it uses (glad i don’t get hat bill), how long it took to build, what the myths and truths are about LHC and other really cool facts like, oh no, why the rings are buried etc, etc, etc. It lasts about an hour if your attention span can accommodate it becsue afterwards you get to ask questions of a real Dr. of some kind that knows everyhting it seems except the stuff that the LHC will tell them of course.
But you don’t have to go there to hear it for yourself like I did. You could just hear it on TV like, oh my gosh, I did last night on the Science Channel. They presented their 3rd one hour special on the LHC. This was the best one so far adn I have ssen them all many times and cosider myself an expert on them.
I actually commented on this blog yesterday about how the particle scientists, who are usually atheists, have discovered GOD and know about Genisis on their own, even though they haven’t found the Higgs boson (god’s Particle) or, dark matter yet and that they would soon all be saved and we wouldn’t have to do anything to help them get to heaven – all because of the LHC. Isn’t that great? Like I said yesterday. God works in mysterious ways.
Now, since you are so into this even if you can’t read and don’t know anything worth knowing about the LHC (it’s not your fault you have no doubt been victimized by a Christian or something) what is the 3rd reason, of maybe many more reasons, that the rings are buried? To me it is the most frightening reason and the real reason I omitted it from my original post I dsidn’t want to scare anyone else. But now you can redeem yourself with this second chance.
I just love questions. Don’t you? I never heard a bad one yet and you should probably ask them more like I do I suspect. But heck I’m no psychiatrist either.
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Lester,
The first sentence was a liitle cludy but I figure you will ask about it if its meaning escapes you
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#18 Theo,
I can’t tell you how many people don’t believe me when I tell them that not only are there black holes but white ones in science too! I can also tell you not to use them in a pick up line at a bar either. Regardless of what color lady you are talking to, the next thing you know they will be trying to put lipstick on you. Most men hate that
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Lester, I feel just horrible. Since facts seem to not get in your way, I put one non fact into my post to you but left you all kinds of bread crumbs for you to to ferret it out. I sort of did this for a reason. I love brain teasers but have a very difficult time with them. I wanted to test if that mind you have is really good enough where you could be a collisionist with me in your next life too. I would hate not to have you around then
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Lest,
Can you explain the following I just took off the LHC website?
The main danger from these energy levels is to the LHC machine itself. The beam of particles has the energy of a Eurostar train travelling at full speed and should something happen to destabilise the particle beam there is a real danger that all of that energy will be deflected into the wall of the beam pipe and the magnets of the LHC, causing a great deal of damage. The LHC has several automatic safety systems in place that monitor all the critical parts of the LHC. Should anything unexpected happen (power or magnet failure for example) the beam is automatically ‘dumped’ by being squirted into a blind tunnel where its energy is safely dissipated. This all happens in milliseconds – the beam, which is travelling at 11,000 circuits of the LHC per second, will complete less than 3 circuits before the dump is complete.
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“Should anything unexpected happen (power or magnet failure for example) the beam is automatically ‘dumped’ by being squirted into a blind tunnel where its energy is safely dissipated.”
Yeah. Right. Except for the poor sap mopping the floor in the blind tunnel. HE gets zapped and turns into some sort of hideous creature from another dimension with fangs dripping bluish acid and fourteen tentacles and giant pickle-shaped protruding eyeballs (but still wearing his old custodian’s uniform with the little friendly nametag that says ‘Bob’).
I know this because I watch alot of documentaries about this sort of thing on really late-night TV. It is amazing all the scientific information you can pick up on late-night TV.
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llama post 6,
you and I appear to agree completely on this issue!!!
Any black holes created will be so hot that they evaporate completely. The temperature of a black hole is proortional to its size. As llama notes, these black holes will be tiny. Tiny black holes are very hot. They therefore quickly radiate away all their mass and disappear.
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Good thing the accelerator isn’t in the US, because Nancy Pelosi would oppose drilling. A black hole? Fine. Drilling? No.
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Ken (#11),
That one was great!
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I find the whole issue rather hilarious. Won’t the scientists involved with this be rather disappointed if/when they don’t find what they’re looking for? Oh well, 5 billion dollars is nothing.
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329 Musing,
Please do not say say that you agree with me when you go on to say silly things like ‘The temperature of a black hole is proportional to its size. As llama notes, these black holes will be tiny. Tiny black holes are very hot. They therefore quickly radiate away all their mass and disappear.’
Yes I said they would be tiny, yes I said they would be harmless. I said nothing about their temperature or ability to radiate away their mass. I don’t even know what radiating mass is no matter how cool it sounds.
While it is true, I hope Lester isn’t listening, that I personally radiate away more energy from my body than the same mass (about 200 pound worth) of our Sun with mass and energy being the same thing. But just because I give off more energy than the same amount of sun does not mean that I am hotter because I am smaller in size than the the 200 pounds of Sun. You can stannd next to me because I am cold and I don’t know you are there to spit on of course, but you can’t stand next to 200 pounds of the Sun because it is too hot.
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Congratulation to Drill,
He correctly knew the 3rd reason that the ring is buried underground. When this thing is running at 1200 mega watts or whatever, it is the most radioactive thing created by man next to a very large thermonuclear or birth control device for that matter. Anyone in the tunnel when it is operating, is instantly turned into virtual vapor, since there isn’t even any vapor and you will never be seen again – promise. But it is a completely green machine because if you were toasted by it, we wouldn’t even see a puff of smoke coming off you before you disappeared. So, no smoke detectors required either – another scientific Win Win. Smoke detectors are also radioactive but considered green anyway for some reason. So why aren’t nuke power plants considered green by whack jobs again? We will have to find a whack job to answer that. Where is Lester when you need him? i know he loves questions too. What a shame. I was counting on and looking forward to spending some time with him as a co-collisionists one day too.
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321 Kimberly,
I just found some tortillas in my frig but they were that right shade of green my frig seems to love nore than cooling beer quick. I don’t remember buying them and hope they weren’t yours cause I tossed them into what seemed to be a growing black hole that popped into veggie crisper out of the blue. They disappeared as the black hole got larger again. I have no idea where they went but I will send you my now greenish tinted black hole if you want to pay for shipping and handling.
You might want to look into some white holes and hope for the best instead. It’s up to you but to be on the safe side, I would make up my mind pretty quick if I were you while I can still lasso this cute little hole of a different color adn get the Post office to deliver it without causing a national postal strike or something even more sinsiter if there is something more sinister that that.
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I can’t believe I missed this conversation. I’m now afraid to look in my freezer.
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Does this mean I still have time to move to Alaska, the refugee of the chosen.
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For those who would actually like to learn something about black holes, a good jumping off point:
Black Hole
You will see that contra Llama at #33
by current theories micro black holes do have higher Hawking Temperatures. Therefor, they are expected to evaporate relatively quickly:
With of course the caveat that by “size” is really meant the mass of the black hole. They are of course theorized as being singularities or effectively points, of zero size (or as close to zero as quantum mechanics allows).
You can also read up on LHC Safety Concerns
Do note, and this is an important distinction, that these safety concerns get more play in the popular press. The bigger hazards, which Llama elucidates nicely, have to do with operational safety – magnet failure due to the very intense magnetic fields involved, and dissipating the energy of a beam dump are concerns. See here.
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llama post 33,
I am so glad we finally agree on something!
P.S. see Susskind’s “the Black Hole Wars” for more information on Black Hole size and temperature.
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Whack Jobs are new energy sources. They will solve our energy crisis and clean carpets as a by product.
#12
I feel more Random than I used to but a little more focused in the process.
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