LHC to gamble the whole planet in 24 hours.

[JoshuaMadoc]

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=9146156

I wouldn't be so nervous if failure of the LHC's activaton DIDN'T mean getting sucked into a man-made black hole.

[Uniform Two Six]

So in 24 hours, we all might be in the middle of a black hole... Hmmm. That would suck -- so to speak...

[Silent Hunter]

The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

[Kaebora]

Well, time to go out and buy a shotgun, in case of a resonance cascade.

[Aki]

Any credible physicist will tell you the LHC proves no threat to the world and that the kind of collisions it will produce tend to happen in the upper atmosphere a lot. The LHC is here to reproduce those so they can actually be studied.

And any credible source would tell you this is that particle-stream thing. The FIRING is on Oct. 21st. So set your doomsday clock for that date.

[Berserker]

Actually, any credible physicist would tell you that the probability of a world-ending disaster is incredibly small, but not impossible.

[RedEye]

In Quantum Physics...the world could end at any time; the likelyhood is quite small, however.
As to a man-made "black hole", the thing would be smaller than a proton (based on the amount of energy available to make one) and would have absolutely no danger value at all. Drat.
If we could make a slightly larger black hole, though, we could use it to power the entire planet...and no, it would still be too small to do any damage.
What the LHC might do is prove solidly that parallel universes exist. That has possibilities.
Having a Q.P. background, I personally see this as the biggest baddest toy on the PLANET!

[Midnight]

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

[Aki]

Actually, any credible physicist would tell you that the probability of a world-ending disaster is incredibly small, but not impossible.

Actually, no, he'd say it ain't gonna happen

[Berserker]

"no physicists I've spoken to take strangelets seriously" =/= "impossible."

[Scott Gardener]

We're still here!

Actually, the moment it was activated, something did go horribly wrong, and the world was destroyed. Dr. Huckley, the scientist who pulled the lever, was rescued at the last second by aliens known as Vorgies, who had destroyed their own world in a similar manner by mistake. They were at war with the Symbions, who aren't actually symbiotic with anything; they're just called that. For three TV seasons, the Vorgies and Symbions waged war in a dramatic series of plots and subplots with cool special effects, before Dr. Huckley and his Vorgie companions fell into a temporal causality phenomenon. Once inside, they discovered a way of creating a parallel universe and going back in time. The actor playing Huckley was leaving the show, so in the second part of the season finale, he was able to recreate the moment the Large Hadron Collider would be activated, and at that moment had his Vorgie ship fire a beam of arbitron particles into the reactor, thus reversing the polarity of the induced mechana array and causing the reaction for which he and his scientists had originally anticipated, thus saving the Earth.

We didn't notice any of this because we were destroyed and created instantly inside of the context of the causality phenomenon.

[Aki]

"no physicists I've spoken to take strangelets seriously" =/= "impossible."

True, but the point is the majority of physicists think it's bullcrap. I trust the guys whose entire job is the study of that kind of stuff to know what stuff we need to worry about and what we can say is bullcrap.

[Uniform Two Six]

We're still here!

Actually, the moment it was activated, something did go horribly wrong, and the world was destroyed. Dr. Huckley, the scientist who pulled the lever, was rescued at the last second by aliens known as Vorgies, who had destroyed their own world in a similar manner by mistake. They were at war with the Symbions, who aren't actually symbiotic with anything; they're just called that. For three TV seasons, the Vorgies and Symbions waged war in a dramatic series of plots and subplots with cool special effects, before Dr. Huckley and his Vorgie companions fell into a temporal causality phenomenon. Once inside, they discovered a way of creating a parallel universe and going back in time. The actor playing Huckley was leaving the show, so in the second part of the season finale, he was able to recreate the moment the Large Hadron Collider would be activated, and at that moment had his Vorgie ship fire a beam of arbitron particles into the reactor, thus reversing the polarity of the induced mechana array and causing the reaction for which he and his scientists had originally anticipated, thus saving the Earth.

Scott, just out of curiosity, does this stuff come to you as you're triaging people in the ER, or what?

We didn't notice any of this because we were destroyed and created instantly inside of the context of the causality phenomenon.

Or were we? -- Dum, dum, DUUUUM!

[Scott Gardener]

Just wait until mid-way through the next season, when the actor who plays Dr. Huckley gets the first of many occasional re-appearances. We'll soon learn that we weren't re-created exactly the same, since the humanoid group of Duplicators need to create a perfectly convincing environment in which to learn about the secrets for operating the Trigon Portal.

And, yes, I make this stuff up off the top of my head. Why can't my serious writing flow this easily?

[RedEye]

Because serious writing has to make sense and be sellable. Silly is easy and sadly, not sale-able in an election year.
The market is already glutted.

[Kaebora]

Actually, any credible physicist would tell you that the probability of a world-ending disaster is incredibly small, but not impossible.

Actually, no, he'd say it ain't gonna happen

Ah, Michio Kaku. One of my favorite physicists, and author of a very interesting book Physics of the Impossible. I'm currently reading his book Hyperspace, which inspired two movies and various Sci-Fi Novelists. I like how he explains physics conceptually, so that we can understand the fundamentals without being bothered with equations. I trust in his genius regarding the LHC.

I really hope the LHC can give us more insight into what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole. Theoretical physics in this area makes my brain hurt, and the proven answers are always more simple to understand conceptually.

For now, we only have mathmatical formulas that are correct "in theory" to explain things. Such as...
Unrah Effect

and Gravitational Redshift


Not to worry, I don't understand these equations entirely either, but they are directly linked to theories of the black hole event horizon. Descovering what's beyond this algebra could mean artificial wormholes.

[Terastas]

Actually, any credible physicist would tell you that the probability of a world-ending disaster is incredibly small, but not impossible.

Well, the last Earth-altering disaster was sixty-five million years ago give or take, so it's not like we should expect the next one to be coming any time soon.

[Kaebora]

Actually, any credible physicist would tell you that the probability of a world-ending disaster is incredibly small, but not impossible.

Well, the last Earth-altering disaster was sixty-five million years ago give or take, so it's not like we should expect the next one to be coming any time soon.

This goes beyond a rock smacking into the planet. World ending means the planet is destroyed, not altered. In Quantum Physics, there is a proboblility of the entire planet, or even parts of it (people, minerals, buildings) being instantaniously and randomly transported to another place in the universe due to the electron uncertaintly principle. Since it's descovered that some electrons are in two places at the same time, there is the possibility of masses of matter doing the same. However the amount of time we would have to wait for such a random phenomenon to occur is longer than the life of our universe. I'd hate to wake up one day to find myself on the edge of a star's corona.

[Terastas]

Actually, any credible physicist would tell you that the probability of a world-ending disaster is incredibly small, but not impossible.

Well, the last Earth-altering disaster was sixty-five million years ago give or take, so it's not like we should expect the next one to be coming any time soon.

This goes beyond a rock smacking into the planet. World ending means the planet is destroyed, not altered. In Quantum Physics, there is a proboblility of the entire planet, or even parts of it (people, minerals, buildings) being instantaniously and randomly transported to another place in the universe due to the electron uncertaintly principle. Since it's descovered that some electrons are in two places at the same time, there is the possibility of masses of matter doing the same. However the amount of time we would have to wait for such a random phenomenon to occur is longer than the life of our universe. I'd hate to wake up one day to find myself on the edge of a star's corona.

I know what the difference is. My point was that the odds of even just an Earth-altering event are well into the millions, so presumably the odds of an Earth-ending event are even less.

Personally, anything specified in quantum physics is the least of my worry. The problem with quantum physics is that they tend to work in reverse: while conventional science assumes that anything which cannot be proven or supported is not true, quantum physics often assumes that conventional science is automatically wrong and that anything which cannot be proven, or even has been disproved, is true. The whole "an electron in two places at the same time" argument really ticks me off; it might look like electrons are in blinking in and out of existence or in two places at once, but it could also just be that they're moving so fast it could appear that way.

No offense, but quantum physics is all too often a tool for people that just want to think themselves scientifically visionary, making quantum physics to science somewhat like what creationism is to evolution: a nice big crutch for people with huge egos and their heads up their (*ahem*). Mind you, it's possible that creationism / quantum physics could be closer to reality than conventional science, but just because it could be true doesn't mean it is true.

Conventional science: "Makes sense, so we'll go with that for now until somebody can prove otherwise."
Creationism / Quantum Physics: "You can't prove it isn't true, therefore it is true."

So please, lets keep our Armageddonist debates restricted towards stuff like meteorites, supernovas, and other stuff that we know happens from time to time. Even though the odds of such are still highly astronomical, they're still more likely than reality collapsing into an alternate universe (not quite as exciting to talk about thanks to Hollywood, but still more likely).

[Kaebora]

No offense, but quantum physics is all too often a tool for people that just want to think themselves scientifically visionary, making quantum physics to science somewhat like what creationism is to evolution: a nice big crutch for people with huge egos and their heads up their (*ahem*). Mind you, it's possible that creationism / quantum physics could be closer to reality than conventional science, but just because it could be true doesn't mean it is true.

You need to read some of the many books they have on the subject. They have proven in the lab that electrons behave in this way. Why they do is where the theories begin. A lot of the brightest physicists (some I have much respect for) take Quantum Mechanics seriously on this level and do remain sceptical at the same time. Failing to disprove the equations already discovered leaves us to beleive they are true, but must be proven as true, not as perfect math, so they remain as theories.

One of my favorite theories (but far-fetched) is the single electron theory in which the entire universe is just one electron existing everywhere in space-time seemingly simultaniously. Often the mathmatics support theories such as these (and I agree after reading their papers on the subject), but common sense doesn't. Mathmatics leads to lab testing. The testing make the theories into law, or puts them in the trash. Just because a physicist comes up with a new theory, doesn't mean he's trying to make it big. If it doesn't make sense anywhere they disprove it quickly, as I've read numerous reports on in the past. I've never seen an egotistic scientist get famous. Even Stephen Hawking was challenged and proven wrong about how he said time-travel was impossible. Now there is solid evidence supporting time-travel into the future, and theories about going to the past. Scientists know when to admit they are wrong. Hoaxers are discraced shortly after being published.

Your statements sound more like you're using common sense to make quick conclusions. In much of proven physics (particularly on the sub-atomic level) common sense is thrown out the window. I beleive all theories to be as possible as they are impossible.

[Uniform Two Six]

I think the problem is that scientists can't really agree on what is conventional theory and unconventional. I agree with Terastas that one should generally give more weight to "conventional" theories until the "unconventional" ones gain a bit more evidence in support. Now the big question: What the heck defines "conventional theory" with regard to sub-atomic physics? We've got General Relativity to describe gravitational forces on a macro-level and another set of theories to describe such forces at the sub-atomic level. The problem is that we know that neither of those theories can accurately describe the behavior of matter or gravitational attraction at all levels. Thus both of these "conventional" theories are clearly wrong. The scientific community still uses them for most applications since there's nothing to replace them (excluding String Theory -- whichever version you want to subscribe to). Now, I don't know about you guys, but I think there's something "unconventional" about continuing to use a theory that you know to be incorrect.

On an aside, I think it's a little unnerving that we've been picking apart atoms for nearly half a century and we still can't figure out how everything works.

[RedEye]

While it is true that we have been picking things apart for over half a century, understanding how the universe works by dissecting the atom is a bit like trying to understand Otto-cycle internal combustion by taking a car apart.
While we may examine the engine, we will still not understand how it works unless we can see it running.
Of course then, we can't take it apart, can we?