Large Hadron Collider to be switched on 10th Sept

[petra10]

Doomsday starts on 10th September! or so all the scarmongers are afraid of.

In eight days time the power dial will be switch all the way up to 11 and smashed atoms will be flying around.
So will it answer all the questions be answered.

Will the existance of multi-dimentions be proven.

Will it show us how the universe came into being.

Will it help us understand Dark Matter.

Will they create a Black Hole.


Will they discover new forms of fuel.

Does anyone think any of these questions will be answered? I am hoping for something exciting to be discovered.

 

[CrikeyBobs]

I am definitely looking forward to the scientific results. I hope many things conclusive result from this incredible machine. I don't suppose I will understand much of it, but it is exciting to imagine that we may be on the cusp of a new understanding of our Universe.

BTW. When it gets switched on can everyone shout "Caboooom!!!" at the same time? Really put the wind up the naysayers!

"To the most beautiful moment in life. Better than the deed, better than the memory, the moment of anticipation. " - Jacques (Simpsons - Life on the Fast Lane)

 

[Arthur Denton]

Well, I think that despite the fact that it may cause this sort of mayhem, we ordinary people won't be able to postpone the use of such installation forever, and also, I think that it won't generate a black hole because the amounts of energy are great but the mass is too little, and it is far much more likely that it will lead to more discoveries than to disgrace.

If it ends as a disgrace, though, we are powerless. What can we do against a black hole? Sit back and watch ourselves get drained.

 

[Kuko 4000]

I've understood that ALICE can create supermicro black holes, but they will last only a few femtoseconds. Can anyone confirm this or give more details, is ALICE the only one that can / will generate black holes? What can "we" learn about them?

 

[sol invictus]

I've understood that ALICE can create supermicro black holes, but they will last only a few femtoseconds. Can anyone confirm this or give more details, is ALICE the only one that can / will generate black holes? What can "we" learn about them?

It is highly unlikely that either Alice or the main proton collider will create black holes. I'm not sure which is more likely to do so - I'd have to take a look at the numbers.

However it must be remembered that in the theories in which black hole production is possible, the holes will be so hot and so small that they will evaporate in a tiny fraction of a second, long before they have any chance of absorbing anything and growing. In fact they're so small that even if they didn't evaporate or escape into space, so that they fall down and oscillate back and forth through the center of the earth, it would take thousands of years before they interact with even a single atom.

 

[andyandy]

Given that the day for switch on has been pushed back again and again, I remain sceptical as to whether it will actually happen

expect some last-minute excuses as one of the magnets fail, and a new start date chalked up for the New Year. A little like those perpetual motion machines.

 

[dudalb]

I am scared. Remember what happened at Black Mesa.........

 

[Jontg]

That isn't even funny anymore. [SOME GROUP I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF] averages one LHC thread per week, and fifty Half-life jokes per thread.

 

[leon_heller]

BBC Radio 4 has called it "Big Bang Day" and has a lot of special programmes about the LHC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/

Leon

 

[Kuko 4000]

It is highly unlikely that either Alice or the main proton collider will create black holes. I'm not sure which is more likely to do so - I'd have to take a look at the numbers.

Thanks sol, I was going purely by this:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2884322&userid=98756

3) What did the universe look like a few femtoseconds after the big bang? ALICE will be smashing nature's elementary hambeasts together to answer this. In ALICE lead ions will collide at nearly the speed of light, unleashing so much energy in such a small space that temperatures and conditions close to the big bang will be brought about. This is where the blackholes come in. At these energies, temperatures, and pressures it may be possible to spontaneously create supermicro black holes. Will they absorb the earth? No. They will live for no more than femtoseconds, and the only way we'll be able to detect them is by the minute effects they will have on the surrounding particles they either decay into, or disrupt minutely in their path.

I looked it up again and found a bigger, more recent thread by the same guy where he now says in the first post:

The LHC is going to produce things physicists have never before seen, but in a lot of cases we hope it will produce things we've predicted. Recently a number of somewhat unsavoury attention whores have misled the media and general public with a campaign based on the possibility that we may produce something truly dangerous. There have been numerous arguments against these 'doomsday scenarios', all from physicists a good deal smarter than me. Here is my take on the subject though:

It was originally considered that the LHC may produce micro black holes. These would be black holes smaller than atoms. Of course, knowing that a black hole is not something you want to get too close to, this drew a lot of scaremongering. The truth is that black holes must be produced at a certain size before they are capable of growing on their own by attracting more matter. That size was estimated in a recent paper to be larger than the mass of our sun. Anything smaller and they just sit there evaporating until they are no more. The smaller the hole, the faster the evaporation. We expected anything the LHC could have produced to live for a few femtoseconds before disappearing. As it turns out, another recent paper provides convincing proof that black holes are not likely to be produced at the LHC at all....

There are other supposed dangers, namely magnetic monopoles and strangelets. In both cases the theory on which these exotic forms of matter have been based is a little crackpotish, and numerous conterarguments have been put forward. To paraphrase Prof. Frank Close of Oxford University's High Energy Physics dept, "The LHC isn't going to end the world. If it does, you can sue me."

Black Hole related:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.1938

 

[Pixel42]

BBC Radio 4 has called it "Big Bang Day" and has a lot of special programmes about the LHC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/

Leon

I particlularly enjoyed the Q&A by Professor Brian Fox: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/asktheexpert.shtml

The LHC has absolutely no chance of destroying anything bigger than a few protons, let alone the Earth. [...] I am in fact immensely irritated by the conspiracy theorists who spread this nonsense around and try to scare people. This non-story is symptomatic of a larger mistrust in science, particularly in the US, which includes intelligent design amongst other things. The only serious issue is why so many people who don't have the time or inclination to discover for themselves why this stuff is total crap have to be exposed to the opinions of these half-wits.

 

[linusrichard]

Here's what my friend told me to allay my fears: (He's a scientist, but by no means a physicist.) The LHC can't create matter, so if it creates a black hole, it does so by taking matter that's already there, and turning it into a black hole. Gravity is not a function of density, but a function of mass. Since the mass will be unchanged, the gravitational force will also be unchanged. So we don't have anything to worry about. Does this make sense?

 

[Cuddles]

Er, there's a rather important point people are missing here. 10th September is when they will first try to circulate a beam around the whole ring. There won't be any collisions, and the energy will be less than 1/10 of the final operating energy.

 

[GreyICE]

I, for one, welcome our new black hole overlords.

 

[sol invictus]

Given that the day for switch on has been pushed back again and again, I remain sceptical as to whether it will actually happen

That's not true at all. Why would you say that?

Way back in 2003 the schedule was that the machine would be ready in the last quarter of 2007. Instead, it was ready by July 2008. For a project of this scale that's remarkably little delay.

 

[Skwinty]

I think that the LHC will produce all the predicted particles because that is the nature of these endeavours.Particles tend to be predicted before actual observation.
It will also produce somethings that haven't been predicted and give the theoretical physicist's something to work on

 

[IXP]

I think that the LHC will produce all the predicted particles because that is the nature of these endeavours.Particles tend to be predicted before actual observation.
It will also produce somethings that haven't been predicted and give the theoretical physicist's something to work on

Highly unlikely that it will produce all predicted particles. The supersymmetric particles predicted by string theory and other supersymmetric theories should have shown up a long time ago, and they keep disappointing. I would not be surpised if none are found once again.

IXP

 

[Arthur Denton]

I am scared. Remember what happened at Black Mesa.........

That isn't even funny anymore. [SOME GROUP I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF] averages one LHC thread per week, and fifty Half-life jokes per thread.

Steam forums, anyone? I bet they're saying "LOL, dude, wtf, like lollz, there be stuff in some colidger thingie that will pop up like space invaderzzz loll OMG 111!!! and like we all become da freeman then LOLZ!" all over that place.

I think that the LHC will produce all the predicted particles because that is the nature of these endeavours.Particles tend to be predicted before actual observation.
It will also produce somethings that haven't been predicted and give the theoretical physicist's something to work on

Yes, as expected. But it is interesting to see how people get focused on disgraces rather than the scientific advancement. Pity.

 

[petra10]

I am looking forward to it, 7 days to go.Although I will probably not understand most of it.Professor Brain Fox is really good at making me understand it a bit better. He uses words that I can understand.I will certainly be on the his website to monitor whats going on.


Not a great deal is mentioned in the mainstream news at the moment, they will probably wait till the big switch on before getting all excited.

 

[dudalb]

Steam forums, anyone? I bet they're saying "LOL, dude, wtf, like lollz, there be stuff in some colidger thingie that will pop up like space invaderzzz loll OMG 111!!! and like we all become da freeman then LOLZ!" all over that place.

Sadly, that is the level of literacy at most Gaming sites.
I was trying to poke fun at the idiocy of some of paranoia about the LHC.