If CERN Kills Us All, Would We Notice?

[malbui]

Oh, good God... sorry to send the thread off at a tangent, but did you know the LHC is really going to be Satan's stargate?





Well, if Satan can get in, so can Loki, right? We can have an all Personification-of-Entropy Showdown! Who else is invited?

[/woo]



Okay, look, all joking aside, the man in that video is just bloody wacko. Where the hell to these folks get these delusions? He asks "How have I reached such an incredible conclusion"? Well, it's because you're flippin' insane!!! And OMG... his misunderstanding of black holes is just so far off, it's painful. I'm not a physicist and even I see where he's getting it wrong.

Speaking of collapsars, this man is sort of an intellectual black hole himself - once past his event horizon, no discernible intelligence ever comes back out.

Oi. Anyway, if you had some brain cells you wanted to get rid of, feel free to watch the video.

I live in the same village as a major part of the CERN infrastructure and I know a lot of guys who work there. I'll ask them to keep their eyes open for a guy with horns and a cape and call security if they see him. On my side, I'll keep alert for the smell of sulphur when I pop around to the boulangerie.

 

[shadron]

Slow moving micro black hole - yes compared to c
The creating particles move faster than .99c, so only only .01 % of that speed is much faster than escape velocity.
Interaction area of a black hole of 2 proton masses is really small.
Gravity has to go against strong nuclear force to pull a nucleon from a nucleus.
The strong force is about 10 e36 times stronger than gravity.
Therefore the only chance for such a small black hole to grow is to directly hit a nucleon. This is the reason i wrote that the sun becoming a red giant is faster than the growth of a micro black hole. See also BAUT discussion.

If black holes don't evaporate then it would basically be the same as the scenario I outlined in my last post. To start with, a black hole is not going to orbit, at least not for very long. It will be created with a certain amount of momentum, but everything it eats will be essentially stationary, so the bigger the black hole gets, the smaller its orbit will be. Since the hole will only be a subatomic mass to start with, it will only take eating a few atoms to increase its mass so much that it no longer orbits and simply sinks to the centre of the Earth, at which point it's not eating cavities you need to worry about, it's the Earth collapsing in on itself.

Thanks, gents, that helps. Some previous thread left me with all those questions, and didn't resolve them, which you did. I appreciate it. Highways Highways edtState edtRoute edtstartX edtEndX edtSortkey edtRemarks chkTollway chkFound NC I-40 0 219 I-040 x000 0 -1

 

[Tubbythin]

The LHC throws things around at the speed of light, but the collisions have zero momentum since they involve two things of equal mass and velocity colliding head on. This has to be the case, since otherwise the products of the collision would carry on travelling at high speed and be very difficult to measure.

This last sentence isn't true. Particle detectors have to be able to measure things travelling at very high speed (essentially c). LEP for example determined the number of light neutrino types by firing electrons and positrons at ~45 GeV each at each other to resonantly produce the Z0. In order to determine the number of neutrinos they had to measure the decay cross-sections for all non-neutrino decays consistent with the conservation laws. This includes e+e-. Conservation of E and p thus requires the e+ and e- also have 45GeV each. Remember the electron rest mass energy is less than 1 MeV, so they are clearly ultra-relativistic.

 

[dann]

and the whole world devolves into hedonism, looting, and smacking CERN scientists around while we wait for the ultimate absorption.

But I'm a'scared anyway! And I have my hedonism suit in my closet just waiting...hm...

Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants to experience a slow armageddon and still not get any?

I understand the smacking around of CERN scientists (revenge) and maybe even the looting (even capital punishment would lose any preventive effect if we're all gonna die anyway), but why hedonism and in particular getting some? Is the idea that the end of the world makes people hornier? Or that people tend to abstain from sex if there is another day tomorrow? Or is it because people associate the end of civilization with the end of prudishness? (the fall of the Roman Empire ...) Or is it just another male fantasy of all (attractive) women actually wanting to sleep with you but holding back for some inexplicable reason?

 

[CFLarsen]

"You don't want to die a virgin, do you?"

Oldest trick in the book.

 

[Dragoonster]

I understand the smacking around of CERN scientists (revenge) and maybe even the looting (even capital punishment would lose any preventive effect if we're all gonna die anyway), but why hedonism and in particular getting some? Is the idea that the end of the world makes people hornier? Or that people tend to abstain from sex if there is another day tomorrow? Or is it because people associate the end of civilization with the end of prudishness? (the fall of the Roman Empire ...) Or is it just another male fantasy of all (attractive) women actually wanting to sleep with you but holding back for some inexplicable reason?

Yes to all of the above. (although I didn't specify attractiveness at all)

Sex is generally considered the most pleasurable experience, and if we know we'll have a day left we'll tend to want to enjoy that day the most. Some might enjoy time spent with family and friends more, or going to church to pray, or eating a lot of expensive food, but a whole lot will tend to want to have sex.

 

[krelnius]

since I clearly dont know enough about the science behind the LHC I am gonna make my decision based on what I have read here and a few things I consider standard laws of nature.

First, everyone makes mistakes. You can plan something to the smallest detail, make sure a bottle is air tight a thousand times but eventually an accident will happen someone will slip, its just a matter of time.

Two, look at how many people dissagree just in the first 20 posts of this thread? I mean sure maybe one of them is right and the others are wrong. It is also possible that we are all wrong and none of us has enough knowledge of what will happen. Personally I like this idea. I mean given that we have never done what the LHC is doing I think its safe to say nobody can stick their nose in the air and claim that it is safe and sound and nothing bad can POSSIBLY HAPPEN. I dont care if its combing your hair or building a bomb, no matter how safe a task seems SOMETHING BAD CAN ALWAYS HAPPEN.

I am just throwin' that out there...also gambling_cruiser has pointed out that none of us are nearly as "close" to cern as he is so he is clearly bias as his words lead me to believe he works for cern and is currently trying to use the LHC for portal technology at their base on mars where he is known by his formal title of Dr. Betruger.

That is all