Will atom smasher signal the end of the world?

[Bucko]

From the Daily Tele site :

SOUNDS like the premise of a bad sci-fi movie: Big-time physics experiment accidentally destroys the Earth.
Scientists really don't think that will happen when the Large Hadron Collider fires up at the Swiss-French border at about 6.30pm today, but the fact it's being debated tells you how unprecedented the new device is.
Seven times more powerful than Fermilab's main particle collider in Illinois, US, the new facility will smash together intense beams of subatomic protons, producing so much energy that some theories predict it could form tiny black holes.
The result will, for a split second, replicate the conditions that theoretically existed in the moments immediately after the birth of the universe, known as the Big Bang.
Blog with Monty: The world will end between 5-6pm. What to do?
However opponents fear it could spell disaster. This has led to two lawsuits - one filed in Europe, one in Hawaii - seeking to halt the project and save the planet.
The most far-out fear is that the device's little black holes could blossom into big ones, with gravity so strong that they swallow first the collider, then the Swiss-French countryside, then the Earth as a whole. Burp.
Still, don't quit your job expecting a physics-aided apocalypse in a few days. Even if the European collider gives birth to black holes - and that's only a theory - each one would be smaller than a subatomic proton, says Fermilab theorist Joe Lykken.
At that size, each black hole will evaporate almost as soon as it is created, in a shower of so-called Hawking radiation, named after famous black hole theorist Stephen Hawking.
Hawko: My money says it's a dud
If a black hole somehow survives for longer than an instant in the pipe that carries the proton beam, the immensely powerful magnets that steer the beam would also hold the black hole in place.
Experts also say that if powerful particle collisions really could spawn black holes, we probably would have seen one by now.
Fermilab scientists have not found any black holes in 25 years of running the world's most powerful collider. And the Earth receives a constant rain of cosmic rays from deep space, some of which carry far more energy than the beam in the new collider.
"In theory, the probability that the LHC will produce pink elephants is not zero," Lykken said.
He added the chances that the collider will spin off dangerous black holes is "in the pink elephant category".
If the collider does manage to produce tiny, short-lived black holes, most physicists think that would be . . . pretty sweet, actually.
That's because the black hole scenario rests on a theory that also predicts the existence of extra dimensions hidden in the subatomic realm. The same collisions that produce black holes also could provide insights into those hidden dimensions.
The Large Hadron Collider's main goal is to find the Higgs boson, a still-theoretical particle that may hold the key to what gives everyday objects their mass. But theorists also hope for a deeper understanding of gravity, which is surprisingly weak compared with the other fundamental forces of the universe, such as electromagnetism.
If the LHC churns out black holes, it might mean that gravity was much more intense when the universe began than it is now, and more in balance with the other basic forces. Lykken said it is even conceivable that the black holes could be harnessed as energy sources - but don't cut up that gas card just yet.
The new collider eventually will displace Fermilab's Tevatron as the world's most powerful particle accelerator. Engineers will take at least several months to ramp up the European collider's energy and surpass the Tevatron, and it will be a couple of years before researchers can publish papers based on the collider's findings.
That means that Fermilab researchers will continue their sprint to discover the Higgs boson, or at least give a better estimate of how heavy it is. If the Higgs has a low mass, the Tevatron may find the particle before the LHC can.
Fermilab will soldier on with other projects even after the Tevatron closes down, either next year or in 2010. But once the European facility starts up, the Tevatron's days are numbered.
The dream outcome of this science thriller for Fermilab would be a sequel: the International Linear Collider, an even bigger and more expensive device that would build on the European collider's findings.
There's no word yet on whether the proposed collider would pose a threat to life as we know it.

[Goreripper]

Falkor and I were talking about this earlier. It's infinitely cool.

[Falkor]

[Zen]

SCIENCE IS WITCHCRAFT! BURN THE HERETIC! THE WORLD IS FLAT!

[Rick]

I was going to pull over my car at 5.00 on the way home from work, i was disappointed. Where are the rips in space and time that i was hoping for?

[Celestial-Todd]

The actual "atom smashing" doesn't take place for a few weeks... all they did today was a test of the actual proton accelerator

[Pethical]

i'm excited

[Winmar]

Stephen Hawking said everything's gonna be ok. Awesome.

[Rick]

Fuck him. He has no right to stop hysteria.

[TheDenimRager]

So far, I've seen about 20 media stories about this thing. Every single story has at least mentioned this paranoia. I have not seen a single person appear on camera to even hint that this is dangerous. I have not seen a single person even willing to be quoted in a newspaper about this shit. What does that tell you?

[Goreripper]

That the papers are suppressing the truth?

[Lord Tim]

Any dyslexic people in the house?

[Goreripper]

[black_tooth_grin]

[sadisticsatyr]

LOL!!!!

[Bucko]

BWAHAHHAHA

[Goreripper]

I went to Phil Plait's site to see what he was saying about the LHC, and I found this entry about something infinitely more scary. If you can't be arsed reading it, it's about a gamma ray burst, an incalculably massive burst of energy from a dying star -- equal to the entire lifetime output of the Sun, apparently -- that would destroy the Earth instantly if we were close enough (say, within a galaxy or so).

[Goreripper]

And now this:

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdest...eworldyet.com/

[Bucko]

lol

[cro4eva]

Teen suicides over 'Big Bang' fear

A teenage girl in central India killed herself after being traumatised by media reports that a "Big Bang" experiment in Europe could bring about the end of the world, her father said.

The 16-year old girl from the state of Madhya Pradesh drank pesticide and was rushed to the hospital but later died, police said.

Her father, identified on local television as Biharilal, said that his daughter, Chayya, killed herself after watching doomsday predictions made on Indian news programmes.

"In the past two days, Chayya had asked me and other relatives about the world coming to an end on September 10," Biharilal was quoted as saying.

"We tried to divert her attention and told her she should not worry about such things, but to no avail," he said.

For the past two days, many Indian news channels held discussions airing doomsday predictions over a huge particle-smashing machine buried under the Swiss-French border.

The machine, called the Large Hadron Collider, was switched on on Wednesday, at the start of what experts say is the largest scientific experiment in human history.

The machine smashes particles together to achieve, on a small-scale, re-enactments of the "Big Bang" that created the universe.

Leading scientists and researchers at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, said the experiment was safe. They dismissed as "pure fiction" doomsday predictions that the experiment could create anti-matter, or black holes.

But in deeply religious and superstitious India, fears about the experiment and the minor risks associated with it spread rapidly through the media.

In east India, thousands of people rushed to temples to pray and fast while others savoured their favourite foods in anticipation of the world's end.

"There were a thousand more devotees yesterday as well as today compared to [any] other normal day," Benudhara Sahu, a temple official in Orissa state, told Reuters.

Many women and children rushed to temples and observed fasts as they prayed for deliverance, officials and witnesses said.

Assurances by scientists and the media that nothing would happen counted for nothing for housewife Rukmini Moharana.

"I visited temple, prayed to god," Moharana said. "I am observing the fast for safety because god can only save us."

[Celestial-Todd]

I've been listening to talkback radio the last couple of days and it's funny to see the correlation between the people saying this will destroy the world and those who are religious.

Seems like all the religious folks are certain this will kill us all by recreating the "big bang"... which in itself is ironic since they don't believe the big bang happened in the first place

[cro4eva]

Religious people contradicting them selfs? You speak lies Todd!

[Lord Tim]

Originally Posted by Goreripper

And now this:

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdest...eworldyet.com/

The best bit is the source code of the page:

<script type="text/javascript">
if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
document.write("YUP.");
} else {
document.write("NOPE.");
}
</script>


<!-- if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn't yet updated
please email mike@frantic.org to receive a full refund -->

[Goreripper]

Originally Posted by cro4eva

That article is even sadder because the actual colliding part of the experiment hasn't even started yet. Yesterday they just turned it on to see if it works, by firing all the particles in the same direction. Ergo, no collisions capable of doing anything. This is what happens when people who have no idea what they are talking about, talk about things like they know what they're talking about.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Celestial-Todd

I've been listening to talkback radio the last couple of days and it's funny to see the correlation between the people saying this will destroy the world and those who are religious.

Seems like all the religious folks are certain this will kill us all by recreating the "big bang"... which in itself is ironic since they don't believe the big bang happened in the first place

It wouldn't be that hard to see this a sign of the second coming for a lot of religious types.