blonde poker forum

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gallery/0007/nov/20/cern?picture=330365576

Some amazing photos and brief overview of CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and what it hopes to achieve.

The sheer scale of this thing is amazing.

(http://image.guim.co.uk/Guardian/science/gallery/2007/aug/06/internationalnews/0107014_01-A4-at-144-dpi-3341.jpg)

(http://image.guim.co.uk/Guardian/news/gallery/2007/aug/06/internationalnews/0607006_02-8879.jpg)

There was a documentary on the BBC a week or so ago about it, and I missed it.  Hopefully it's on the iPlayer.

CERN is amazing..those guys are shit hot.

Without CERN this forum may not have existed.

Absolutely.

I'm not sure that's one of it's crowning glories though.

A hardon collinder?!    ;gobsmacked;

just the tunnel itself is pretty amazing, the channel tunnel's pretty cool but anyone can dig in a straight line. a 27 km perfect circle's awesome

This LHC malarky is BY FAR the coolest thing I know they have done/ are doing though. When this was first reported as being worked on a while ago it blew me away.

The tolerances are within millimetres as well.  Incredible. 

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

Cooling thousands of tonnes of the machine to within two degrees of absolute zero is a massive feat on its own.

FYP

Going to read it now. Looks interesting :)

Maybe they just get the Machine to tell MrsB she can't watch Lost...

lol, or just half the size.

Alternatively, they could have just built it in Aberdeen.

true...not much for common sense them CERN boys, are they?

Foreigners. 

yeah...loads smarter than us British and MUCH better looking than us British..but no common sense.

Inferior eyesight as well, obv.

Must be one of the most amazing feats of Civil Engineering & Science ever conceived & constructed.

Awesome, a thing of wonder.

going in your top 10?

that's why they all wear glasses. Bet ya they have exotic accents as well though...drives the ladies wild, I bet.

Yes, I think it must.

from: http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/LHC/Facts-en.html

Facts and figures

The largest machine in the world...

The precise circumference of the LHC accelerator is 26 659 m, with a total of 9300 magnets inside. Not only is the LHC the world’s largest particle accelerator, just one-eighth of its cryogenic distribution system would qualify as the world’s largest fridge. All the magnets will be pre‑cooled to -193.2°C (80 K) using 10 080 tonnes of liquid nitrogen, before they are filled with nearly 60 tonnes of liquid helium to bring them down to -271.3°C (1.9 K).

The fastest racetrack on the planet...

At full power, trillions of protons will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11 245 times a second, travelling at 99.99% the speed of light. Two beams of protons will each travel at a maximum energy of 7 TeV (tera-electronvolt), corresponding to head-to-head collisions of 14 TeV. Altogether some 600 million collisions will take place every second.

The emptiest space in the Solar System...

To avoid colliding with gas molecules inside the accelerator, the beams of particles travel in an ultra-high vacuum – a cavity as empty as interplanetary space. The internal pressure of the LHC is 10-13 atm, ten times less than the pressure on the Moon!

The hottest spots in the galaxy, but even colder than outer space...

The LHC is a machine of extreme hot and cold. When two beams of protons collide, they will generate temperatures more than 100 000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun, concentrated within a minuscule space. By contrast, the 'cryogenic distribution system', which circulates superfluid helium around the accelerator ring, keeps the LHC at a super cool temperature of -271.3°C (1.9 K) – even colder than outer space!

The biggest and most sophisticated detectors ever built...

To sample and record the results of up to 600 million proton collisions per second, physicists and engineers have built gargantuan devices that measure particles with micron precision. The LHC's detectors have sophisticated electronic trigger systems that precisely measure the passage time of a particle to accuracies in the region of a few billionths of a second. The trigger system also registers the location of the particles to millionths of a metre. This incredibly quick and precise response is essential for ensuring that the particle recorded in successive layers of a detector is one and the same.
The most powerful supercomputer system in the world...

The data recorded by each of the big experiments at the LHC will fill around 100 000 dual layer DVDs every year. To allow the thousands of scientists scattered around the globe to collaborate on the analysis over the next 15 years (the estimated lifetime of the LHC), tens of thousands of computers located around the world are being harnessed in a distributed computing network called the Grid.

If boshi gets any more excited, this could be worryingly prophetic.

I may be wrong as it has been a while since i read it, I am sure the LHC featured in "angels & demons" by dan brown.

the tunnel at cern certainly did but whether it was the lhc in it or the previous machine I can't remember.

was that Angels and Demons?  I thought it was one of his other books.

The film of A&D should be out sooner or later, we'll get to see it without having to visit Switzerland (or watch the iplayer)

yep, you're right, just had a quick flick through it, definitely lhc

I just read the FAQ on the Cern website rearding the errors in the book relating to antimatter the LHC & its storage and so on, Dan Brown should really have telephoned these guys at CERN for the correct info.

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

This question and answer hgas got to make the next BB quiz.

Does one gram of antimatter contain the energy of a 20 kilotonne nuclear bomb?

Twenty kilotonnes of TNT is the equivalent of the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The explosion of a kilotonne (=1000 tonnes) of TNT corresponds to a energy release of 4.2x1012 joules (1012  is a 1 followed by 12 zeros, i.e. a million million).  For comparison, a 60 watt light bulb consumes 60 J per second.

You are probably asking for the explosive release of energy by the sudden annihilation of one gram of antimatter with one gram of matter. Let's calculate it.

To calculate the energy released in the annihilation of 1 g of antimatter with 1 g of matter (which makes 2 g = 0.002 kg), we have to use the formula E=mc2, where c is the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s):

E= 0.002 x (300,000,000)2 kg m2/s2 = 1.8 x 1014 J = 180 x 1012 J. Since 4.2x1012 J corresponds to a kilotonne of TNT, then 2 g of matter-antimatter annihilation correspond to 180/4.2 = 42.8 kilotonnes, about double the 20 kt of TNT.

This means that you ‘only’ need half a gram of antimatter to be equally destructive as the Hiroshima bomb, since the other half gram of (normal) matter is easy enough to find.

At CERN we make quantities of the order of 107 antiprotons per second and there are 6x1023 of them in a single gram of antihydrogen. You can easily calculate how long it would take to get one gram:  we would need 6x1023/107=6x1016 seconds. There are only 365 (days) x 24 (h) x 60 (min) x 60 (sec) = around 3x107 seconds in a year, so it would take roughly 6x1016 / 3x107 = 2x109 = two billion years!  It is quite unlikely that anyone wants to wait that long.

I'm guessing you'll have no input to the next quiz

QFT

watched a great documentary on this once.

In theory it could be used to time travel by carry a wormhole. Only trouble is it would have to be built in space becasue it would have to be hewge!

In fact this machine does prove to a high degree of certainty that time travel is possible/attainable in the not so distant future.

I dont know if anybody has already said this as just saw the pic on the front page then went staright to post this.

Not so sure about the possibility of time-travel being attainable.  It's not simply an issue of sending matter through a worm-hole, it's being able to reorganise the matter into what it was at the start that would be very problematic.

Especially as you have to make sure the worm hole doesn't have a fly in it.

depends what direction we're talking about. time travel backwards is the problematic one and the one that is theoretically possible using the lhc.

time travel forwards is much easier and a large section of the scientific community already believe it's been achieved through experiments with short half life particles. It's also likely that astro/cosmonauts have experienced forward time travel to the smallest degree as they've accelerated away from the Earth although the effects are currently immeasurable.

I'm constantly moving forward in time at a rate of one second per second.

I'm sitting on my arse at the same rate :)

I'm talking out of mine at a similar rate.

FYP

*insert 'black hole' joke here*

lol..everybody was thinking it but probably thought it was too easy. Well done Bongo for having no shame! ;)

On March 27, 2007, there was an incident during a pressure test involving one of the LHC's inner triplet magnet assemblies provided by Fermilab and KEK. No people were injured, but a cryogenic magnet support broke. Fermilab director Pier Oddone stated 'In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces.' This fault had been present in the original design, and remained during four engineering reviews over the following years.[40] Analysis revealed that its design, made as thin as possible for better insulation, was not strong enough to withstand the forces generated during pressure testing.

As a lay person not understanding what exactly this whole thing will achieve I immediately focussed in on the potential dangers. This thing could possibly make a black hole which we could all disappear into or similar but they won't know until it happens but they think it probably wont???

Also (see above) when making it they 'missed some simple balance of forces' in other words it broke under the pressure.....someone tell me when this goes live please - I'll be jumping on the spot hoping when it all goes off I won't be connected to the earth....

Too much spiderman.

At least if it creates a black hole, we won't know much about it.

Next month. I read a couple of weeks ago a paper by one group of scientists, i didn't understand much of it but they disagreed with the linear expectation of the mini blackholes and gave the planet a life expectancy of 50 months when the thing goes live.

That's ok then - shall we all just jump off a cliff then so save time later?? I no like this....

The likelihood of an asteroid colliding with the earth and wiping out every human on the planet is millions of times more likely than the LHC creating a black hole that will destroy the earth.  Both are 'possible' and the scientists at CERN won't rule it out because theoretically it's possible. 

During the Manhattan Project, some scientists said that the Hiroshima bomb could potentially ignite the atmosphere of the whole planet.  It obviously didn't.

Ah - I understand - they have to say it's possible even though very unlikely because there is a chance, even very remote, that this could happen. A bit like M3boy posting about his car and people having sympathy - it's possible but very unlikely - that sort of scale??

If so I'm more comfortable with the odds now....  ;D

If the thing does create a black hole which annihilates us all, at least we can take comfort from the fact that the French will be sucked in and crushed before we will.

I Lol'd

I  ;hattip; to you sir

We'll wait till the thing hits Calais then we'll unplug it, or something.

A foolproof plan.

Trace, probably the biggest physical problem to them developing backward time travel with the lhc is that the wormholes they'll create are unlikely to be big enough to allow even a single atom to pass through so it's highly unlikely they'll be able to create a black hole that destroys the earth. try not to lose any sleep over it.

that's debatable.

your impression is that that's what's happening, the reality is probably somewhat different.

Bruce Willis will save us all anyway. 

No, he'll be playing the new unlimited rebuys at dtd.

has he not been sectioned though?

No, you're thinking of someone else.  Different snooker player.

I'mageddingon with my chores now, enough of this frivolity.

As far as I'm aware it would not be able to sustain a black hole for more than a second or even less simply because there will be nothing for it to feed on. As you can imagine a black hole has a big appetite and they believe the supermassive black hole in the centre of our galxay is in a state of fasting due to their being less and less gas ciculating to the area. I dont think we have much to worry about.

I'm a die hard fan of your puns. 

I knew you were going to say that, I've got a kind of sixth sense about these things

will gazza help him???

I watch LOST: The answers earlier, recorded on the Sky+, and the creators were on about this contraption!!

Among the many things I don't understand is whether anyone has actually proven whether time exists other than as a relationship between events i.e. things happen more slowly in some parts of the universe than others.  My main problem with the concept of time travel as depicted is that the "time machine" doesn't actually go back in time, the whole universe goes back in time and the area inside the time machine doesn't. 

What I don't understand is why there are no findings from this thing........oh and why the maintenance teams use bicycles to get round the structure itself

Time exists but only as long as humans exist (I refer to Stephen Hawkins "Brief history of time" on this one) Afterall, if humans stop existing "time" becomes irrelevant. We all agree that time is relative..if there's nothing/noone it relates to that's the end of time.

It's not fully up and running yet, and they don't expect to start finding any answers to any questions until later in the year.

If you read the information about it on this PDF (http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1092437/files/CERN-Brochure-2008-001-Eng.pdf), it will tell you more.

Lost Horizons - The Big Bang
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dcbqm/

The Big Bang Machine
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dccnr/

This Wednesday baby!!...wooohooo.

Hold on to your hadrons!!

Had a quick look through the thread and as far as I can see this hasn't been posted yet.  Apologies if I'm wrong.

The LHC rap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

Decent explanation of the science, as well.

Cheers,

12bb

cool :D  I get it now!

Brilliant!

It will take less than 90 microseconds for a proton to travel once around the main ring (a speed of about 11,000 revolutions per second)

How can that be possible? Each circuit of the ring is 17 miles if I've understood it correctly - that's seriously fast.

How big is a proton?

It's absolutely huge.












When compared with an electron.

It's approaching the speed of light (a speed that is impossible for anything with mass to travel at). 


http://www.buyyourcar.co.uk/used-car/proton/gen-2/jtk_9495_406416.aspx 

It should fit in most garages no problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton

1,836 times bigger than an electron apparently.  Which is why the accelerator is so huge and needs so much power to accelerate the protons to that speed.

1. So is that why it may implode because it can't travel at that speed?

2. FO.  ;nana;

No it won't implode.  What they are doing is sending round two 'streams' of protons (they are also firing other stuff round as well in different experiments) so that when they reach the very high speeds they can collide them into each other.  Some of the energy created in these impacts will be converted into matter, 'exotic' particles that don't normally exist in our universe.  These particles would have existed immediately after the big bang, when the temperature was extremely high, but as the universe has cooled these particles don't have the right conditions to exist.  The LHC will recreate these conditions.

They are also looking at other stuff as well, this is just one thing they are looking at.

However, even though the energy at the sub-atomic level will be huge, in general terms the amount of energy created in the collision will be similar to the that created when you clap your hands.


;D

With you so far - but why are they cooling everything to extreme temperatures if the partices can't exist in colder temperatures?

dont be too affraid people i can asure you there are plenty of Brits working at cern overseeing johnny foreigner and his pals.

With all of this I can't help but think of the football chant

"you don't know what you're doing"

You seem to be a little suspicious of science.  Am I right?

The world's top physicists and scientific minds are involved in this.  I don't know why you'd think they don't know what they're doing?

The extremely low temperatures are required for the superconducting magnets to work effectively.

The heat from the early universe gave the particles the energy to exist. Instead, the LHC is creating the energy by smacking protons together.

It's like if your hands are cold, you would prefer to put a pair of gloves on. But if you don't have gloves, you'll rub them together to make them hot instead.

The reason for making it so cold is because the magnets they use to control where the protons go won't work at a temperature much above absolute zero.

Is this what they are talking about on 5Live now?  I can only hear bits of it but they are talking about matter and particles etc.

what are they doing tomorrow anyway?

They're switching it on.

Blowing up Earth.  Spend mad, eat what ya like and don't bother paying any bills today.  No need to thank me.

Let Professor Otto Rossler put your mind at ease.

They've not pressed the on button yet?  Uh oh, teething troubles could be a bitch on this baby


If it's true, I won't be happy!

They have already had some trial runs though.

Initial particle beam injections were successfully carried out on 8-11 August 2008

Well he's fucking ruined the ending now

As long as they fix it so the rays of light come out of Elland Road and Stamford Bridge, I'll die happy.

Don't worry - Bruce Willis will sort it all out.

I once collided with a bloke called big Adrian.

Rossler the bio-chemist?  A chemist talking about particle-physics.  He's not really qualified to make these claims to be honest.  That's like having a rugby coach try and manage a football team.  We know how well that worked out.

I believe the team in question were doing slightly better then............but my memory may be going

That's where the weight is going from then?

That and the fact that I have been slowly chopping off bits of my right leg

Not just a biochemist, but a retired biochemist...

I can't wait to see how this goes...this is seriously exciting stuff and whatever they get from this could be on a par with the biggest scientific ideas and discoveries of the past centuries..

I am soo happy being a nerd :)

I'm with you boldie, I'm getting quite excited about the whole thing.

For me, this is what mankind should be doing..exploring space, building concordes, Millau Bridges and Buggatti Veyrons..scaling K2 and Everest and all that sort of thing.

this is what it should be all about....

edit...to any sceptics that say "but the world might end, we shouldn't attempt it"...yeah it could end tomorrow..but it would end because we are attempting something truly astonishing..something amazing (not like building a big nuclear bomb or getting hit by an asteroid)...if there is a good way to go out, then that's it for me :)

I agree it's an exciting time - and I'm looking forward to watching the bbc science correspondent try and explain it in a way we/I can understand.

But, I for one though would be happier if old professor Rossler had kept his mouth shut. I don't want to be worrying for the next four years that I'm about to die everytime it goes a bit darker when the sun gets hidden behind a cloud.

It's more likely that a large body (such as an asteroid) is going to crash into the earth and kill every one on it.

In fact, unless mankind finds another way to do that or something else 'goes wrong' first, then the chance that an asteroid will hit the earth and wipe out all or most of mankind is pretty much 100%. It's just a matter of when.

Which is nice.

http://webcast.cern.ch/index.html

It is much easier to get the funding if the technology will cross over to military applications (cf Nuclear Fission).
Specially now that we hate the Russians again and President Obama will be using that magnet ring thing to keep the baddies out of Georgia. I'm conCerned.

Errr just in case it all goes tits up, bye all xxx

been nice knowing you xxx

Why do I keep reading the title of this thread as " Large Hardon Collider"?

wishful thinking?

Whats the ETA on that?

I think it hit the ipoker offices about an hour ago.

Don't worry about it we'll just hire in some off-shore oil workers to save the day.

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2008/les-horribles-cernettes-lhc-p1.php

 rotflmfao rotflmfao

http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/08/cern-rap-video-about-the-large-hadron-collider-creates-a-black-h/

What time is kick off tomorrow?

8.30am I believe.

Indeed.

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

what's the Today program?  Where can one find that?  Shame it's at school dropping off time, wonder if they'd mind delaying 20 mins for me :D

surely they have atleast tried it before and this isnt going to be the first time they have turned it on so to speak?

:)

Not the first time they have turned it on but due to previous issues this will be the first Hadron, hopefully. This happens to all large colliders, it's nothing to worry about.

Oh yes, it would be silly not to, they had a very small one and switched that on first, my what a fkg crater that was.

OK,

How much did it cost?

Who paid for it?

If it does not work,    do we get a refund

If it does work, will it make petrol cheaper

If they built it wrong,  will it blow up, space shuttle Challenger did, experts make mistakes too

Today pot odds, particle physics tomorrow perhaps?

Ok, it cost 5 billion pounds sterling took 12 years to build, is 2 years late , and way over budget, sound familiar ?

Wembley Stadium , the Woolwich Dome, why don't they build cancer research hospitals instead

For the same reason that Galileo didn't work at a charity shop....

I get nervous when nerds mess about with Atoms, some sort of weapon will come of this experiment.   I only hope they can contain the er..the matter anti-matter chambers.  All hell will break loose if there's a breach.  O'Brien just said so.

This is far more important.

They've already identified the cells that cause cancer, and I am sure with that recent development the money will start coming in for them to make that final furlong and rid us of it at last.

This is massive. It's so good that there's a probability (so remotely slim that you shouldn't worry about it. If you couldn't win the EuroMillions with all those bloody lines you took then you really shouldn't care about this) it might actually destroy us.

But in all seriousness, this is effectively going to answer many unanswered questions about the Universe and science as a whole. I am looking forward to the results, for there's no fail here. So long as it works, we learn a lot even if we do not find what we hoped to find.

Cheers Andrew :D

It'll all be fine as long as they watch don't watch what they're doing..

Brilliant post.

No, they haven't run it already.  The reason is that it takes months to get it ready to run.  The cooling of the superconductors and the preliminary testing takes so long that they decided not to do a dry run.

They've got the beam 6.7Km round the ring so far.  Chance of a collision today - which will be good.

+1

Even if you cure cancer, people are going to still die of something.

9:24am BST - the beam has completed a full circuit.

:)up

Well the Beeb is saying the first circuit has been a success and no black hole disasters have occured.Damn,i wish i hadn't sent those texts now.

They aren't colliding any particles for quite a while yet - so the end of the world will come then.  At the moment they're just firing them round the circuit for fun.

Quote from the BBC site:

hopefully they can use the results of this experiment to solve the timeless chicken/egg conundrum

I don't think the tube is wide enough for them to fit a chicken in.

It'd be interesting to see what happened if they fired a chicken round it one way, and an egg the other.  Wonder what the result would be.  Probably an omelette.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGqroT1FZ5Y


is it???

The actually main collision is October sometime. This is just a test run to see if they have the conditions right for a collision to take place.

Scheduled for the 21st October - or something like that. 

But they're running well ahead of schedule just on getting it running today, so I wonder if they'd bring it forward at all - but I guess that the processes too rigid and changing them now would involve disrupting too many plans for too many people who are involved.

Has it all gone horribly wrong?

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

Well, I laughed anyway :).

(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/turn-on.png)

Vision of one of the scientists getting over excited & sneaking in over night, to switch it on ahead of schedule..... & booooooooooooom........disaster, he broke it  ;D

Add this to it........................ T YET

you can fire handhistories in it and it will give you the most profitable longterm solution, taking metagame into account

They've got the anti-clockwise beam to go all the way round now... and soon they'll do it in one go.  That means that the thing is up and running and it works!

In fact they only expected to get one beam all the way round today, so they're way ahead of schedule.

As ''The World will End Today'''s actually go, it's been pretty unexciting.

I haven't seen any devil's spawn, or even an imploding 'hoard of evil', or two would have been nice.

Although a cat did get run over earlier.

Has anyone spotted any decent signs of impending doom ?

You know, god appearing to the masses and talking about taking advantage of the autumn sales sharpish, or anything ?

Even if protons colliding could create a world-consuming black hole, that was never going to happen today as the protons aren't being collided for a number of weeks yet.

Apparently, when the first nuclear bombs were tested, some people were worried that the chain reaction in the bomb would continue into the atmosphere and ignite the whole planet.  No science behind why they thought that, but it just sounded like an interesting idea.  Much like this impending doom from man-made black holes scenario put forward by a retired bio-chemist.

Just found something on that:


I bet it still didn't stop people worrying about it though.

I'm hoping that there is a translation issue going on here but these scientists can't be that bright if it's called European Organisation for Nuclear Research but the intials are CERN.

I'm guessing it's Central XX Research Nuclear?

Am I the only one to wonder about that??

Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (European Center for Particle Physics)

So that means it got funding from most european countries I'm guessing, so that means me, and doing the maths that equals $9,200,000,000/24,000,000 x sqrt x/pi =15 quid.

So what do I get for my 15 quid? Will this actually improve my life? I've already had a bad nights sleep waiting for another Big Bang...

Did the earth not move for u wysinwyg then?

;D Ok maybe there was a small whimper around 3 am ..

It gets you a certificate that says "I was there when history was made" :)

Awesome! I want a Tshirt too!

It's cool that there are people watching now that the events like the Big Bang are replicated, but won't people watching it change the outcome?

Tikay witnessed the first one...

Ok, I have done some research.

This is the fastest Proton so far,but underground it can approach the speed of light,    I doubt it

So Teller thought a thermonuclear explosion would destroy the earth.  And Konopinski pooh poohed the idea, proving it wouldn't.

But thermonuclear explosions caused loads more lasting damage than was ever expected, even then.  And there have been times over the last 50 years not that far away from wars that would have destroyed the planet.

So maybe a little fear is a good thing?   :dontask:

Someone has to lower the tone  ::)

What's wrong with Rachel anyway ?

They knew the damage they'd do - that was the whole point of making them.   The issue is with people being unscientific.  Science makes predictions based on theories, and then validates or disproves them through experimentation and observation. 

It's when scientists claim something or argue a case without any evidence or logical theory behind it.  They should know better, but often they have an agenda.  The other problem is that if it sounds plausible enough to a lay person, then the false theory seems believable and propagates. 

(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_difference.png)

I hope to God you're wrong about that.

If they knew it would effect the unborn children for several generations, and would contaminate the earth for miles around as it did.  And that pogressively more powerful versions would be made so that within a few years life over the whole planet could easily be destroyed at the touch of a button.

If they knew that, and decided it was still a good idea to continue, then maybe we should stop scientists before they go one better and manage to totally destroy the planet for good

Of course they knew what they'd do.

Stop scientists?  Which ones?  The ones who discover medical cures (such as smallpox), those that are looking for alternative fuel sources, those that are at the LHC?

Science has always been perverted by warmongers.  Stop the politicians and the power-greedy, not the scientists.

So they knew they could be bringing forward the end of the planet ?  But they put out propaganda suggesting there was no danger ?

So yesterday I was quite happy that these black hole experiments are totally safe.  Are you suggesting that I should now start getting worried in case these guys have been lying to us, and that there is potentially a grave danger to all this ?

Scary. 

You say stop the power greedy not the scientists.  Are the two mutually exclusive , then ?

No, I think you've misunderstood.  Some people were saying that one nuclear bomb being detonated would set fire to the whole atmosphere of the planet.  This was the bit they got wrong, this was where the science showed they were wrong.

Of course they new that a bomb would kill people.  That's what they were created for.  Bullets have killed more people.  As has famine.  As has the lack of basic medical supplies.


The LHC isn't a bomb.  It isn't designed to explode over a city and kill hundreds and thousands of people.  That's exactly what atom bomb was intended to do.



What is?


Guns don’t kill people, people do.

They put out propoganda suggesting there was no danger? Try the opposite.

Wake up and smell the PR bullshit.

Who do you think started the whole, "this hadron collider experiment might mean the end of the world" thing?

• A scientist wanting to promote the collider and raise awareness, making it's switching on a global media event?
• A plucky invistigative journalist with a pocket calculator who felt we all deserved to know the truth?

I feel safe now.

(http://i34.tinypic.com/21o3aqb.jpg)

Is that the G-Man from Half-Life?

Yer, good point. Good on em though, the whole experiment is largely about increasing our collective knowledge, broadcasting it is good.
I suppose the whole earth going down with the experiment isn't total fantasy, they're probably making new fundamental particles, maybe dark matter/energy. It's unlikely to make us all disappear, but not impossible.

He's just a friend, Gordon. :( Brings back memories, huh?

ps. If you turn noclip on, you can see what's in his briefcase.

That's the thing with science and scientists.  Although the world isn't going to vanish into a man-made black hole they won't say it won't definitely happen unless they can produce 'evidence' for it.  That's why a risk analysis was carried out, and this said it was highly, highly unlikely.  To many lay people that means it 'could' happen.  But the probability of it happening is probably along the lines of being dealt AA and flopping quads thousands and thousands of times in a row.  So about evens then...

Taking the last point first.  I knew someone would use this line, but for some reason I didn't expect it to be you.  So I expect I'm missing a gag/jibe aimed somewhere about my skull  8).

People kill each other.  So you've got two people standing 6 yards apart that hate each others guts, and actively wish the other one dead.  Give one a gun and bullets , and the other a squeaky rubber duck and a toilet brush.   Somehow I believe that the guy with the rubber duck is more easily influenced about the sanctity of life.

Back to the other.  I know I overstated my argument.  Deliberately, to show an extreme and the potential consequences of taking science to that extreme.  

I'm sure when people first started thinking about splitting the atom, the did so for the purest scientific reasons.

Then a scientist talked to a politician about the potential to harness that power.
 
The guys responsible for making the atom bomb knew they were making the worlds best life ender. Ever.  Some probably hoped it would be used to end the war and therefore future wars.  Others knew that it's power was only the beginning of world domination ( cue MUAHAHAHAHA's from the audience ).  

They also knew t'other guy was scaremongering and talking rubbish about it bringing forward the end of the world ( crash of thunder, please ).

The poor saps reading the paper only wanted the war to end, so their surviving loved ones could return home to a brave new world.

BUT

Looking back at that point from less than a feeble 50 years in the future, say the mid 80's, there was genuine belief from some people that the atom bomb was possibly the worst invention ever in the history of the world, because ( as you rightly say ) politicians can't be trusted with power.  And mankind now had the skills and the power to destroy itself with one touch of a button.  It was just a matter of time before some idiot tried it.

Ok so splitting the atom was a great scientific advance.  But when it was being researched was it ever thought it would be to further medicine, and save lives, or just to see how many Japs we could kill at one throw.  Like I said earlier, I don't believe the consequences were ever really considered.  And they were a darn site worse than the scientists could have foretold.

Of course this current experiment is being carried out for pure scientific reasons, that might well help our world in many ways.  However, one thing they will eventually try to recreate,on a much smaller scale,  is the big bang

And I fully expect there are already politicians hovering about waiting for the first big bang.  Coz once we have controlled that, we've invented a weapon that will be immeasurably more powerful than any thermonuclear explosion.

It's just a matter of time.  And the politician with the Big Bang Bomb will rule the world.  For a while, at least.

That's scary.  To me, anyway.

But then I'm too fickle to be seriously worried, coz I can always get pissed and ignore it, and we'll probably all be dead anyway before anything nasty happens, anyway.

Quick half down the pub, anyone  :cheers:

The line seemed appropriate.  The science isn't the problem, it's how it's used.  Planes are a pretty good invention (I think so anyway).  But they've been used to drop bombs, fire missiles and even as weapons themselves (think this day in 2001).  So you think it would be better not to have planes, because some people might do bad things with them?


I think the one with the duck will soon be dead.


OK.


Same as planes.
 

Best life ender ever?  Nah.  Viruses, bacteria and protozoan parasites are far more effective killers.  Might not be as instantly impressive in terms of their wow factor, but their capacity to kill is far more impressive.


No, you are talking about something different here. 


No one really knew about the Manhattan project outside the people who were involved in it.  The public's perception and opinion of it has been based on information provided after the events.  The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a totally different debate, and one I'm happy to talk about, but on another thread.


We're destroying mankind in many ways.  The population of the earth is unsustainable.  Whether it takes years or is over in a few bangs doesn't really make much of a difference, does it?


My Dad's life was saved because of this research.  He had a scan at a hospital using a radioactive isotope of barium that showed he needed a quadruple bypass. 


The energy created when protons collide is less than the energy created when you clap your hands.  That's not a useful weapon.

Here's an analogous situation.  Heating a swimming pool takes a lot of energy.  Heating a kettle full of water doesn't take much energy (compared to the pool).  But after a minute of heating the water in the kettle is very hot (maybe about 100 degrees C), this is a higher temperature than the water in the pool.  However, the water in the pool might only be heated to 25 degrees C - but the heat energy required to do this is far higher.

Temperature is not the same as heat. 

The very high temperatures created in the collisions are contained within a very, very small amount of space.  High temperatures, but on a macro level, not a great deal of energy.  All the energy is concentrated into a minute space.


Are you really scared about it?  Honestly?


So you're not scared?


Mine's a pint.  :cheers:

Oh no - it's a beer arms race.

Some interesting links:
What are the odds of it all going Pete Tong? (http://askanexpert.web.cern.ch/AskAnExpert/en/Accelerators/LHCblackholes-en.html#7)
Now I'm not shaving any more.

Gamma Burst (http://www.physorg.com/news140268133.html)
Higher energy, and vastly more particles than involved at the LHC.

8 days time (http://talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html)
Just in case anyone had forgotten. Arggghhhh.

I find it easier to learn from other people than read lots of books.  They use big words I don't understand and give me a headache.

But then, people do that as well.  So I wander round life with a headache, and a confused look.

I generally believe scientists are pretty cool in a nerdy kind of way ( I haven't done any research to prove this, it's just one of my many bigotted beliefs ).

But there have been some pretty major cock ups.  The bombs stored around the world 'just in case the nasty man over there chucks one at us' are one of the biggest.  But they were always going to happen because that's what mankind is like.  Someone invents something good.  Then someone twists it for their own grredy selfish purpose.

I do happen to believe that there will one day be something like a Big Bang Bomb.  But it won't be in my lifetime, and there's nothing I can do to uninvent it, coz I'm pretty sure that once someone even thought many years ago about the good that this current experiment could do in the future, there was someone else on the same day ( probably a US presidential aide, if Hollywood has it's way ) having thoughts on how to abuse it.

Your plane analogy.  Pretty much spot on.  

Where we differ is in your view : Whether it takes years or is over in a few bangs doesn't really make much of a difference, does it?

I'd rather like it to take as long as possible.  This is a rather nice planet, and short of the babelfish mentioned somewhere else has pretty much all we need for a good while yet.

I totally understand your comment about your Dad.  Scientific advancement saved his life.  I'll see that and raise it purely for selfish reasons - I had Leukemia several years ago, and it was spotted and treated before it had even started showing physical symptoms.  If the treatment was the same at it had been even 7 or 8 years earlier - I'm dead meat speaking.

But looking at these things for a scientific viewpoint, and taking your statement about the speed of the decline of the human race into account.  Then, objectively, he and I are unimportant.  And maybe, to prolong mankind's stay on this planet, maybe we should minimise the benefits we bring to the world.  As individuals we all live much longer than previous generations.  But will our grandchildren's grandchildren have much of a planet left to look after ?

Stupid question, I know, coz trying to get man not to think, is like telling him not to breath.  We are what we are, and we must suffer the consequences, good and bad.  I just wish decent people had more influence over the future of the planet, rather than the evil, selfish ones.

So I'll keep on being contrary, coz it helps me work out what I think, and hopefully it helps others see the flip side of the coin.

Another pint , please.  (http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies/party/party0016.gif)
 

Books are cool.  Especially ones that are well written.


Me too.  Poker does that to me.


Geeks rule the world.  Well they should, it'd be a better place (on the whole and in my opinion only of course).


Yep, without science we'd still be killing each other by hand.


Mankind is in for an extinction-level event sometime in the not too distant future.  I do wonder if it will be man-made, or if a natural phenomenon will get there first.


Man didn't invent fire.  He discovered it. It's essential for survival, but it can also be used to destroy.  Again, it's not the science that's the problem - it's the application of the science.


To us as individuals it might make a difference, but as part of the 'bigger picture' - we're insignificant.


Glad you're still with us.  Science is brilliant isn't it?


We are insignificant.  Not just me and you, but everyone on earth, everyone who's ever lived.  We're only one species, on one planet, in one galaxy amongst the millions out there in the universe.  The universe as we can observe it has been here for 13.7 billion years.  Humans have been here for 200,000 years.

13,700,000,000
           200,000

Pretty insignficant really.
 

To quote the Stereophonics "It only takes one tree to make a thousand matches; it only takes one match to burn a thousand trees."


Beer is always good.  :cheers:
 

[  ] I read the last two pages of this thread.

[  ] I'm glad that I read the last two pages of this thread.

[ ] Me too.

[ ] Me too

As far as my understanding of this topic goes, then for something to go wrong, it would have to prove what had previously been only a theoretical hypothesis, such as the existence of stranglets.  Whilst that seems unlikely, let us not forget how many theories have been proved in the past.  Were this particular theory to be proved correct then it is highly likely that it could cause a chain reaction where any normal matter that comes into contact with these dark matter particles would be instantly changed into dark matter, and the world would end up like a neutron star, most definitely destroying all life.  Very unlikely, yes, it sounds very far-fetched.  Impossible, most definitely not.

I often lie awake at night wondering how/when we'll all manage to destroy each other.  It's not the pessimist in me, it just seems inevitable.  It's like the explosion of the Buncefield Fuel Depot.  It was an accident, and an unlikely one at that.  I bet they had a lot of safety precautions in place there, not as much as at somewhere like a nuclear power station or the place where this equipment is kept, but sooner or later someone somewhere will make a mistake.  To Err Is Human etc etc.  It's in our nature, and quite often it's how we learn.  It's also in our nature to explore and discover and learn, and we do, and this is how we do it.  But eventually something will go wrong, maybe not for 500 years.  But until then we will continue to discover, so I don't worry about it.

[ x ] I read the Pete Tong link
[  ] I feel much safer now.

Yeah ok it may produce a black hole yeah which may end up acreting mass in the earth's core but it's nothing to worry about.

[  ] You can reassure Joe Bloggs about the safety of a process which he doesn't fundamentally understand.

Very true but it doesnt give the public the right to veto those things they dont understand. If that was the case there would be not a lot left allowed.

;D POTW

(http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/5281/largehardoncolliderme5uo4.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

rotflmfao

I was really cool about this big hardon thing, didn't see a problem until I found this pic :

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3208/2845861422_80becc3bf2.jpg)

Yes that is Gordon Freeman.. Just wait for the portals to open and we're all screwed :9

P.S. I apologize if this goes over people's heads I am a geek.

Hang on.

If this thing is meant to be 17 miles wide, then how frickin big must these Sci - geeks be?

One way for the scientists to take over the world. 

It's 17 miles in circumference.

(http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc43/kinboshi/lhc-scale.png)

gogogogo Gordon!

[ x ] Cost $18B to manufacture
[ x ] You start it up by belting it with a wrench
[ x ] I feel that the experiment is going to be safe
[ x ] Until I saw the 'scientist' on the left. Wasn't he in Dad's army?

Gluon gun FTW! (There are still people out there that haven't played HalfLife?)

 ;applause; :)up

Great spot

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080924/twl-big-bang-machine-breaks-down-3fd0ae9.html

Er, nice letdown...

I'm sure unplugging it and plugging it back in again will help

Not if it's the 13A fuse. I'll check in my tool box to see if I have one and drop them a line.

Sorry, I think it actually caused the end of the world, but i had a bit too much to drink last night, and missed it.

For anyone interested in this sort of stuff, if you missed Horizon tonight, make sure you watch it on the iPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hr6bk/b00hr5fr/Horizon_20082009_Can_We_Make_a_Star_on_Earth/

It's not there yet, but I'm sure it will be tomorrow. 

Is it about the Hadron Collider thingy?

I was only thinking about it the other day and wondering what had happened to it. I think I was reading an interview with a random physicist in FHM and he mentioned it.

Did it ever work?

Was it just a big waste of money?

Are they still using it?

He said that if it worked it would solve/prove loads of theories and be really good and all that.

Sounds like a loads of bollox to me.

Is it about the Hadron Collider thingy?

No

I was only thinking about it the other day and wondering what had happened to it. I think I was reading an interview with a random physicist in FHM and he mentioned it.

A publication of proven scientific worth

Did it ever work?

Define "work"?

Was it just a big waste of money?

It was "big" on money, nothing yet proven, any discovery may or may not be of use, but could be sort of interesting.

Are they still using it?

Fucking better be at that price

He said that if it worked it would solve/prove loads of theories and be really good and all that.

He's a scientist so he must be right.

Sounds like a loads of bollox to me.

You have discovered more than the geeks at CERN.

arnt we all dead yet?

Possibly, when was the last time you went out to see? Still waiting for the Stellas to run out? There is nothing out there. Nothing I tell you. This forum is run by bots to give the impression of a large and vibrant community. The bots start threads and talk amongst themselves. Until recently they made updates just for you to read and believe that there were still live comps going on. Effective aren't we they.












This message was brought to you by Bot Autoresponder

I always knew the world revolved around me ;D

No - it's about nuclear fusion - the stuff that powers stars, and humans trying to get it to happen on earth (not in a hydrogen bomb ldo) so that we'll solve our energy problems.

I'll give it a watch. Sounds interesting.

just save yourself an hour imo and wait til they summarise it in october's fhm

either that or wait for friday's sun when becky, 21 from middlesex, says 'it's great news that we're building a star on earth, it could solve all our energy problems'.

Just watched it and thought it was a great program.   Amazing to see these huge projects that are obviously going on all over the world and we (I) generally know very little about them.  Got to love the guys at the head of the projects they showed, all pretty cool people. 

The race for fusion is on, going to be interesting to see how things develop over the years.

Some behind the scenes photos at CERN

http://www.oobject.com/category/oobject-search-for-web-birthplace-at-cern

a great website btw worth a look around

Has the world collapsed yet?

[ ] Large Hadron Collider http://www.oobject.com/category/10-anti-masturbation-devices/  Loving Number One LOL

hopefully not as i've just booked tickets for Shrek 3D tomorrow afternoon

pm me if it does b4 tomorrow

Breaking news

The collider has started making Big Bangs as part of the Alice experiment

Has Alice escaped from Raccoon City

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18702455

;mexicanwave;

Heard the news this morning, could be quite exciting.

If anybody needs a hand understanding the theory, this was in the Metro the other day   :) - if you open the image in a new tab you'll be able to zoom in and read it.

(http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/04/article-1341394901032-13EB5D55000005DC-598402_466x1823.jpg)

This is another pretty good explanation of what it is and why they need to make lots of measurements. In cartoon form.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120501.html

That's all well and good but how long til I can teleport to work or at least own a flying car!?

Great excuse to post this.


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

Genius

I reckon this Higgs Boson thing is a bit of a modern day Phlogiston.

 ;topofclass;

Question: What's Brian Cox's favourite drink?
Answer: A large piña collider.

;marks;

Huge news.

Quality moment this morning on Chris moyles's show. They couldn't get hold of Professor Brian Cox so they contacted professor green instead.

We're a very long way from teleporting more than single atoms. Well, we can do more but the transporter would break it into atoms and send all the atoms individually, so you'd look a bit of a mess!

Wow, this is right up there with my first shag

My first shag was a bit of a let down and I didn't really know what was going on.

Oh hang on......... Me too!!

My first shag (maybe): to this day i'm still not sure if i actually got it. with this stuff i'm struggling to even try.

Are people actually interested in this shite or are they just trying to pretend to be intelligent? (http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww249/mikill_thomas/unsure.gif)

I'm interested but far too stupid to understand.

The more you understand it the more interesting it gets.

If the scientists at CERN have an understanding of 10
Then most people have an understanding of about 0.1 - and aren't that fussed

Some of the people who have commented in this thread might have understanding of about 1, maybe 1.5 - and that's why think it's worth commenting on  :)

tbf, people who have some understanding and interest in the subject also post jokes like this - a pretty clear argument in favour of not becoming interested

I'm interested.

I don't think it's shite.

I don't understand it.

I'm not pretending to be intelligent.

I'm not even "Trying to pretend to be intelligent".

If intelligence is measured against understanding of the Large Hadron Collider I'm in trouble.

If intelligence is measured against understanding my first shag I'm also in trouble.

If intelligence is measured against understanding women we're all in trouble.

If you don't understand it how do u know if its shite or not then?  :P

I didn't say know. I said think.  :P :P

Ok, so hey, what about those neutrinos ?

Fuckin splitters

 :D

so this does sound like what could become quite a big breakthrough for POSSIBLE understanding of  how parts of particles like quarks acquire their huge mass, and what makes up dark matter. i have been reading up, and alot of theoretical physicists still believe this isnt the actual 'higgs' that they have found. there is so many other things it could be like Neutrino oscillation and super symmetry. the higgs boson is just a theoretical answer to what invisible force collects particles together to give particles their variable mass

Because atoms have so many more particles inside, we only know the findings of this possible HIGGS LIKE 'force' to be a undiscovered breakthrough yet. The LHC will bet shut down at the end of this year and then tuned up to create a higher energy so the scientists can futher understand the decay of colliding protons together.

if these undiscovered forces like Higgs were not here to be discovered to essentially create the mass of particles then everything would be these non atomic particles in space that are just flying around at lightyear speed which is what is believed to be the likes of dark matter and dark energy. interesting stuff yah ^_^


(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/CMS_Higgs-event.jpg/650px-CMS_Higgs-event.jpg)

^ thats the discovery what they are all going crazy about... LOLWTF?

It's definitely (within the number of standard deviations) A Higgs, it's just not definitely THE Higgs.

Also, the Higgs only accounts for 1% of the mass observed. Gluon interactions account for the majority of mass as we know it.

sigh I just came on to post that.  beaten to it.

Some of the crowd are on the pitch...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23265-mystery-boson-earns-higgs-status-thanks-to-w-particle.html