JPHiP Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: THUNDERDUCK on September 06, 2008, 05:30:06 PM
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From the flagellants of the Middle Ages to the doomsayers of Y2K, humanity has always been prone to good old-fashioned the-end-is-nigh hysteria. The latest cause for concern: that the earth will be destroyed and the galaxy gobbled up by an ever-increasing black hole next week.
On Sept. 10, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, will switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — a $6 billion particle accelerator that will send beams of protons careening around a 17-mile underground ring, crash them into each other to re-create the immediate aftereffects of the Big Bang, and then monitor the debris in the hope of learning more about the origins and workings of the universe. Next week marks a low-power run of the circuit, and scientists hope to start smashing atoms at full power by the end of the month.
Critics of the LHC say the high-energy experiment might create a mini black hole that could expand to dangerous, Earth-eating proportions. On Aug. 26, Professor Otto Rossler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karis University of Tubingen, filed a lawsuit against CERN with the European Court of Human Rights that argued, with no understatement, that such a scenario would violate the right to life of European citizens and pose a threat to the rule of law. Last March, two American environmentalists filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Honolulu seeking to force the U.S. government to withdraw its participation in the experiment. The lawsuits have in turn spawned several websites, chat rooms and petitions — and led to alarming headlines around the world (Britain's Sun newspaper on Sept. 1: "End of the World Due in 9 Days").
Should we be scared? No. In June, CERN published a safety report, reviewed by a group of external scientists, ruling out the possibility of dangerous black holes. It said that even if tiny black holes were to be formed at CERN — a big if — they would evaporate almost instantaneously due to Hawking Radiation, a phenomenon named for the British physicist Stephen Hawking, whose theories show that black holes not only swallow up the light, energy and matter around them, but also leak it all back out at an accelerating pace. According to Hawking, if tiny black holes occurred at CERN, they would evaporate before they got a chance to do any damage. (Even if Hawking's theories prove to be wrong — no one has yet witnessed black-hole evaporation — scientists at CERN say the LHC's collisions are already known to be harmless: an equivalent amount of energy is produced hundreds of thousands of times a day by cosmic rays colliding with the earth and other objects in the cosmos — always without incident.)
After taking in the results of CERN's report, the European Court rejected Rossler's request last week for an emergency injunction that would have stopped the LHC (it will still hear his lawsuit). The U.S. suit is pending, but CERN spokesman James Gillies said that even if it is successful the experiment will go ahead without U.S. participation.
"The U.S. court has no jurisdiction over our equipment. It could pull American scientists out of the experiment, but that would just be a great shame for them. The LHC presents no risk. What it does do is hold the promise of substantially enriching humanity by providing insight into the mysteries of the universe. It's a tremendously exciting time for physicists here and around the world," he said.
Scientists believe the LHC's results will help fill in gaps in the Standard Model, the far-reaching set of equations on the interaction of subatomic particles that is the closest that modern physics comes to a testable "theory of everything." For example, scientists believe the LHC will produce a particle, the Higgs Boson, that will end debate over how matter in the universe acquires mass. Or, it could even provide evidence for more ambitious theories of the universe, such as string theory, which unites quantum mechanics and general relativity, the previously known laws of the small and large that are currently incompatible in the Standard Model.
Despite these exciting prospects, however, physicists studying the cosmos at CERN and other accelerators still face a fundamental dilemma: to explain the awesome scale of their work while calming the public's inevitable trepidation. There remains a credibility gap surrounding high-profile physics, after all: The most tangible results of atomic research in the last 50 years have been bombs capable of ending all life on earth. CERN officials refer to the laboratory as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics because they feel "nuclear" in the literal translation carries negative implications, and tour guides at the LHC are quick to point out that the accelerator has no weapons applications.
But it's not just physicists whose work provokes strong and often irrational fear, according to Professor Robin Williams, director of the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh. He points out that the millennial anxiety about scientific and technological breakthroughs predates particle physics. When the locomotive was first conceived, for example, even some engineers predicted catastrophe resulting from the human body's inability to withstand the strains of high-speed travel. The word "vaccine" comes from the Latin word for cow, "vacca" — the first vaccinations, against smallpox, used bovine ingredients, leading to widespread fear that the injections would turn humans into cows.
But Williams also believes that the flip side of such fear is faith in the redemptive potential of science (there are equally irrational websites about CERN, for example, that predict the LHC will create wormholes to distant corners of the universe where humanity can escape to other inhabitable planets). Williams wrote in an e-mail: "I have come to see that in their early days, new technology and scientific breakthroughs often serve as Rorschach tests — a phenomenon about which we have little concrete understanding, onto which contemporary social anxieties (and dreams) can readily be projected. As a result we find (often polarized) utopian and dystopian visions being articulated." Humanity will certainly survive the LHC's experiment, Williams added, but so too will its darkest fears about its own destructive potential, and hope for its future.
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Reminds me of the people that feared that when the first atomic bomb went off, it might never stop reacting and would destroy the planet. Always something.
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Does anyone have an idea of how powerful a black hole can be? Because there's no point in worrying the Hadron collider bringing about the end of the world, as the black hole would just suck you in so fast that you wouldn't know what hit you.
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I misread the title as "Hardon Collider..."
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Does anyone have an idea of how powerful a black hole can be? Because there's no point in worrying the Hadron collider bringing about the end of the world, as the black hole would just suck you in so fast that you wouldn't know what hit you.
Well I think that was the main argument that was being made, the end of the world from a black hole. And we all know that the whole world wouldn't want to risk their existence for the sake of science. :P
But come on the two main people complaining in the article are a chemist and two environmentalists. Now if we had some of the world's greatest physicists against this, then I might be scared for my life.
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I was supposed to go visit the place a few months ago but school couldn't take us because my physics teacher is lazy. Now I won't get to see it which just...arg annoying.
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I remember the hysterics of Y2K, I was around ten years old and pretty scared about it! I remember being told at school to pray a lot because it could be the end at the end of the year...ha.
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Well at least your teachers didn't try to scare you or anything.
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Well I think that was the main argument that was being made, the end of the world from a black hole. And we all know that the whole world wouldn't want to risk their existence for the sake of science. :P
Yeh I know, and like you said if these fears came from a leading physicist working on the project, then I'd be slightly concerned. Even at that, I'm just saying that should the end of the world come about, it won't be a slow process, it'll probably be instantaneous so there's no point worrying about it :P
Besides, the end of the world won't come. From the Sunday Express today, a leading physicist working on the project, Brian Cox, has denounced these accusations:
You may also be worried because a few uninformed attention seekers have pebble-dashed the internet with claims that the LHC is dangerous.
This is drivel. The energies we command at the LHC are child's play compared to those generated by natural processes out in space and particles with energies far in excess of those created at the LHC are hitting our planet every day.
We are capable of impressive feats but we're amateurs when compared to nature. No scientist with any knowledge at all doubts the safety of the LHC. Full stop.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml
"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat." - Professor Brian Cox
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Dang, I'm preparing the popcorn for this thing!
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Well I think that was the main argument that was being made, the end of the world from a black hole. And we all know that the whole world wouldn't want to risk their existence for the sake of science. :P
Yeh I know, and like you said if these fears came from a leading physicist working on the project, then I'd be slightly concerned. Even at that, I'm just saying that should the end of the world come about, it won't be a slow process, it'll probably be instantaneous so there's no point worrying about it :P
But yeah going by that logic, it's like telling someone, "You and your loved ones might get killed while you sleep for a science experiment, you won't feel a thing, so don't worry." Their life is still in danger so they will not let that happen.
This whole thing is really just retarded. People are freakin retarded.
Anyways, if you want to know what exactly this thing is supposed to do, check this out :lol:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
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^ Just wanted to post that, saw it on Wired at the top of: 'Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos'
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/top-10-amazing.html
Warning Mad scientists on the lose :rofl:
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Well, the world is still here.
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Yep. Pretty soon people will start disbelieving scientists when they say the world is going to end.
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I hear today was just the switching on and testing part. The actual experiment will happen in mid-October, so there's some while to go yet of disaster theories I think.
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I hear today was just the switching on and testing part. The actual experiment will happen in mid-October, so there's some while to go yet of disaster theories I think.
Yeah that's right. They only switched it on today. They're not gonna collide any hardons for a few weeks yet.
We needn't worry. If there was any possibility of any risk, the military would have bombed it already!
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http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
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(http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/7240/1069848c7161254f4die8.jpg)
z0mG W3 GONN4 BE T3H Z0M3BIE5!!
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Sheesh, what a bust!
I'm gonna party like it's 1999...
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http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/7240/1069848c7161254f4die8.jpg
Someone give Gordon a crowbar, quick!! :lol:
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I have it seen called the 'LPC' now also: the Large Paranoia Collider :)
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Dang, I got SO drunk on that night of Sept 9th that I slept all day on Sept 10th, so if i did go I'd be asleep and so I'd wake up dead.
Wait...how do you wake up dead?.
j/k, got the idea from one of my favorite games GTA, "If we're all gonna die, I'm gonna get pissed :lol: XD"