Worries about world's largest particle accelerator

one of the main goals i believe is to run tests that can hopefully prove/lead to a unified theory of physics that applies to the entire universe (which we currently don't have).
 
I don't mean to sound like a dick, but there has been an article and a couple different clips talking about it. You can just do a google search instead of having a bunch of people explain what it is.
 
i just watched that speech and im still 99 percent confused.
so if the figure out the properties of "H" and use it in their Newton's formula what will it conclude??
 
thank you I tried but this isn't the easiest stuff to understand also im taking physics next year so i have no background on it
 
Sorry for being a dick earlier but these topics are something that you can't just hear about and understand. Everything in this thread is pretty much theoretical physics. Something, if you do continue to take physics classes, you won't see till a 3rd or 4th year special physics class. I've only had 2 years of HS physics, luckily I was taught by a dude with a doctorate and basically a genius. Even after that I had to take an interest in it and do my own research on some of the subjects. That's the only reason I know even a remote amount on this subject.
 
All I took was grade 11 physics :P

its not hard to understand if you pay attention to the videos. The visual diagrams and the speakers themselves do a very good job at explaining the whole situation in normal terms.
 
They are trying to observe the theoretical partical "Higgs Boson". The exsistence of Higgs Boson will act as a link between the four fundamental properties of physics, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and gravity. Also it will somehow answer why things have mass? (which I dont understand how). And will explain why gravity is so weak compared to the other forces. (which is where relativity comes into play). This is what ive interpreted it the purpose to be. Im sure there is more to it and stuff im saying wrong or leaving out. I am not an expert in this I just like this kinda stuff and try to understand what I can.
 
shit we better start breaking every law we can cause wednesday we're not going to be here huh?
 
Basically, yeah. The Higgs Boson is basically a particle that is large, but basically does not interact with any other particle, though it influences the big four forces. It'll be cool to see this thing up and running!
 
I read an article about it today saying that there is a good possibility it could create black holes but they would be so small and weak that they wouldn't even do harm to the machine.
 
to prove the string theory. to prove it there needs to be 11 dimensions, and a shit ton of these small particles. the particles form when the atoms are smashed.

yeah so this is pretty fuckin sweet if you are going into the physics fields. one theory that would unify the quantum world and ours. it would set laws that could allow traveling through wormholes, or the ability to move through solid matter.

and its around geneva because thats where CERN is.
 
well why arent you working right now to make money to donate? why are you wasting your time on newschoolers. i mean every 5 seconds a child dies of hunger. you could be helping them but your sitting on ns

 
yeah but if they prove the string theory it would also create a way to make black holes.

now one single black hole is kinda bad, but two black holes connected would create wormholes. this could take people to lands that are light years away in an instant. think of the discoveries to be made.

yes you can say that this might be a waste of money, but back in the day some one had to front the cash to create the nets, or malaria shots. its all in the name of science and what could make the world a better place.
 
uh so does everyone else? last week i packed 8,760 meals to be sent to south america. each meal can feed 6 people for a day. you do the math.

the point is we do a lot for the charity cases. don't rag on people for not doing enough because then maybe they wont feel appreciated and wont do it again.

this particle accelerator is what will be written in physics text books for years to come and we will learn a lot about the world around us. its pretty cool dude.
 
So... this is probably gonna sound super fucked up, but its something I've really believed in for a while. Yeah AIDS and cancer and malaria are all bad, but dude, Population Control. If hundreds of thousands of people DIDN'T die every year from this shit, Earth would be one packed ass rock. There would be so much strain on every aspect of life. Its like asking why don't we spend billions of dollars to stop Lions from eating Water Buffalo. Face it, humans are animals just like anything else, and viruses/bacteria are our population controllers.
 
I see what you are saying with your other post but I think it's worthless because if you are going to start questioning why money is being spent on science instead of this or that, etc. then you might as well do that to every expensive project there is and I think there are a hell of a lot more things that you might want to consider wasteful spending before you start calling out scientific research (I personally don't consider it wasteful at all) for all we know these scientists are about to make a profound discovery that is truly invaluable to the human species
 
if i have to choose one way out of six million, the earth turning into a black hole and everyone dying would be the way i'd want to go out. that would be pretty fucking epic, let's be honest.

and whoever was bitching about the money spent on it... get over it. seriously, the money you're complaining about is pennies compared to the money blown on this stupid fucking war in Iraq and it was used to develop technology that could potentially help us gain a much greater understanding of the universe around us. hell, there are likely things we can't even predict at this time that it will reveal to us. the money was well-spent.
 
I've always felt that way. All those children that are dying each day, if they were all alive we would have to feed an exponential amount of people every day, there would be so much overpopulation that the cycle of hunger would start over again. I know that's like saying, "why have hospitals if people die anyway" but it's on a different level. The way i see it, we should be focusing on the deaths that are unnatural, like homicides and drunk driving. It sounds totally dickish, but i mean what can you do?

On another note, i think this LHC is pretty sweet, basically if we can recreate the conditions that were present at the time of the big bang, then we can begin to understand Higg's Particles, and solve that super ridiculously huge equation. We'd be able to decode the human genome, understand everything about life, and basically answer any scientific question ever to be raised. It depends on how you view it, but i see this as a good thing.
 
we can just toss the morbidly obese into the mini black hole and im sure that will clog it up real fast, people are so fat on earth that theyre prolly the only things that can end a black hole, theyll just need to have som 900 pound fuckers around the experiment area to toss into the black hole if it gets out of hand
 
And scientists on the Manhattan Project thought that the bomb they built would set the atmosphere on fire and kill all life on earth.

 
black holes don't work like that. there a single mass that is infinantly times big. meaning that it doesn't suck stuff in like a vacum, but its gravity attracts everything around it. and its black because it even pulls the light down with it, so it appears to be black.
 
ok bud i agree with most of the topics your debating, but the whole point of this 20 billion dollar 7km wide machine is to:

1 learn more about what could really happen with this machine.

2 if this thing work how we want it to then we wont need to be drilling for oil. this machine will provide us with alternate sources of energy.

3 if this goes through not every country is going to build one because of the time and money. i took 18 years to build this and collaborate it, and 20 billion dollars.

4 other countries who dont have this alternate power but want/need it will suck up to the countries who do have it forming some kind of peace/ a pact.

5 yes there is about a 10% chance thatt this machine will infact destroy the earth

6 a black can engulf the planet in seconds, minutes, hours months ect.....

Essencially you have nothing to worry about and how they spend there money should not effect us

thats just my 2 cents
 
i'm just excited for the possibilities. when particle accelerators where first used there was a mass discovery of unknown particles. there would several new ones discovered every week. no there looking for one specific one that could prove string theory. which would mean that everything is made up of little energy strings.

what if then some one found a way to control them. the impossible would become possible.

 
For a black hole to exist there has to be a singularity created... that is possible but remember that black holes are created from collapsing stars which are HUGE compared to anything that the LHC could produce, even if a black hole is created, with its size it would have no effect because of Hawkings radiation
 
haha do you have any idea what your talking about

my god a 1/10 chance hat it will blow up the planet, who'd have thought they would be letting this carry on? glad your hear to enlighten us though!

yeah the chances of that happening are massively minute nothing like that, and ye seconds is more likely, depending on the size of the hole! if we created one i guess it wouldnt have gathered much mass/graviatational pull yet so maybe our demise would take a tad longer.
 
Even if it did create a black hole, it would be intensely small. A black hole on the subatomic scale. Black holes that small are extremely unstable, and disappear right after they form. So even if they do create a black hole, which would be extraordinary, we dont really have anything to worry about.
 
I could talk about this for years and make no progress whatsoever, so I'll say this. Prometheus brought fire to the mortals, was that a good thing or a bad thing.
 
Lets look at some of your points here. First of all, do you think ANY of those things on your list would be possible without science? Sure, they may not quite be in the same category as the LHC and particle physics, but its still necessary.

So say it might have cost 20 billion dollars. If 80 countries helped build the LHC (I'm pretty sure it's 80..), then 20 billion over 80 countries is like nothing. It's pocket change. Look how much the US ALONE has spent on the war in Iraq. You're getting upset over the LHC that is a worldwide effort and is bringing nations together over science, and yet the war on Iraq is costing billions of dollars, taking innocent lives and doing alot less good than the LHC will do.

First you want to try and stop malaria and other mosquito borne illnesses. Where do you think people learned about these diseases? They've spent tons of money researching them, trying to figure out how they work and why they work. That sentence describes the LHC perfectly. We're trying to find out how the universe works and why it acts as it does. Sure it may not save as many lives right up front as stopping Malaria, but its potential for impacting the future is astronomical and who can say what might be discovered.

Your point on oil is a big one. There is no way we would ever find alternative fuel sources or be able to drill for oil without engineering. Engineering is all based on physics. A better understanding of physics and a more unified theory will only help us in the future.

And back to the money issue, 20 billion dollars really isn't that vast of a sum of money. The impact that the LHC could have is huge. Mind-numbing in fact. Sure it would be great to end world hunger, but at the same time, with this amount of money it's not going to happen and seeing as how our entire world revolves (no pun intended...) around physics, finding a unified theory is an incredibly important task.
 
so nothings happened. looks like the world won't end. or at least thats what the tests say. but we'll know for sure in the next couple of weeks.
 
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