I don’t know why everyone’s so busy talking about conventions & elections & Mick Foley in TNA. None of those things matter because in less than a week (or maybe in a little more than a month) the entire planet’s gonna be swallowed by a man-made black hole. Either that, or Geneva is going to turn into the Island from LOST and we’re going to have a planet full of Billy Pilgrims jumping around. Either way, the election doesn’t seem that important to me anymore. :-)
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of 7 TeV protons. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
Initial particle beam injections were successfully carried out on 8-11 August, 2008, the first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire LHC is scheduled for 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled, on 21 October 2008.
Concerns have been raised in the media and through the courts about the safety of the Large Hadron Collider on the grounds that high-energy particle collisions performed in the accelerator might cause disastrous events, including the production of dangerous micro black holes (mBHs) and strangelets.
The apocalypse is the price we all have to pay just so scientists can observe something called the Higgs boson. Yeah, that sounds fair.
The same things were whispered about Trinity in '45 (by the scientists involved; giant fireballs that filled the sky, et cetera) and we're all still here. Plus Bobby Oppenheimer got a hell of a gimmick out of it.
Originally posted by Mr ShhI don’t know why everyone’s so busy talking about conventions & elections & Mick Foley in TNA. None of those things matter because in less than a week (or maybe in a little more than a month) the entire planet’s gonna be swallowed by a man-made black hole. Either that, or Geneva is going to turn into the Island from LOST and we’re going to have a planet full of Billy Pilgrims jumping around. Either way, the election doesn’t seem that important to me anymore. :-)
...Well damn, it's Thursday. I guess those scientists realized that there was no profit in the end of the world and didn't do it. Oh, they did, and we're here. I love it when highly experimental science freaks people out. It's almost (almost) a modern day recreation of a witch burning. "Hay, those guys over there are smart and building a big machine!" "Must be to blow us all to smithereens!" "You're right! Grab a pitchfork, I'll get my torch!" The unknown; proving human nature for, uh, ever.
They don't actually start colliding the protons and creating strangelets, black-holes so small they vaporize in less than a millisecond, or anti-matter, a substance so unstable that 10 measly grams of the stuff could utterly destroy France until I believe the 21st of October. Again, I doubt the world ending, just a lot of money spent on technology that is not practical for day to day life yet.
"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Frown and the world laughs at you." -Me.
NPR did a story on this a few months ago, and interviewed one of the leading scientists. He said the most interesting result from the colliding particles would be if nothing happened - as that would essentially mean most everything they based their theories on was wrong.
Originally posted by LexusAgain, I doubt the world ending, just a lot of money spent on technology that is not practical for day to day life yet.
I see your point, but I think the knowledge gained from these sorts of experiments is not trivial. Frankly, we waste a lot more money on a lot less "practical" stuff that I am kind of relieved to see things like this happening. I wondered if they'd ever get it up and running, because it wasn't looking too good there for a while.
Originally posted by LexusThey don't actually start colliding the protons and creating strangelets, black-holes so small they vaporize in less than a millisecond, or anti-matter, a substance so unstable that 10 measly grams of the stuff could utterly destroy France until I believe the 21st of October.
Aw man, right before my birthday.
“How is it that I am a good actor? What I do is I... pretend to be the person I’m portraying. You’re confused. Case in point: in Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson comes to me and says ‘I would like you to be Gandalf the Wizard,’ and I said ‘You are aware that I am not really a wizard?’ and Peter Jackson said ‘I would like you to use your acting skills to portray a wizard for the duration of the show.’ So I said ‘Okay’ and then I said to myself ‘Mmm.. How do I do that?’ And this is what I did: I imagined that I was a wizard, and then I pretended, and acted, in that way on the stage. How did I know what to say? The words were written down for me in a script. How did I know where to stand? People told me where to stand." -- Sir Ian McKellen, Extras
I know this thread is old, but I came across a really good series of explanations for all this Higgs Boson jibbajabba. If anybody out there has the time and desire to read through them, they are very enlightening. Hearing this information from five different perspectives as allowed me to wrap my mind around it a little bit more than before (aka still not very much).
CNN is covering this, so I guess its news. Someone sent this to me at work. This is the 101 FWY, close to where the major mudslides occured (about 80 miles north of Los Angeles):