Large Hadron Collider, Hell Yeah!

King Mob

Was listening to this today
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4109

According to some people it's the ultimate doomsday weapon!
http://www.lhcfacts.org/

Thoughts or opinions.
Is there a danger or is it just more ignorant scare mongers trying to slow science?

http://www.lhcountdown.com/

robindch

King Mob wrote: »

Is there a danger or is it just more ignorant scare mongers trying to slow science?

There's a chance that the LHC could create something dangerous, but the chances of that happening are similar to the chances of your desk suddenly morphing into a cow, and for much the same reasons.

Most of the doomsday talk has been by people who are unfamiliar with the strange world of quantum mechanics and can therefore be forgiven for being wrong, even if they cannot be forgiven for flapping their arms about, shouting and generally behaving in a panicky fashion.

The main thing to remember is that the earth's upper atmosphere has already been subject to cosmic rays which are tens of thousands of times more energetic than anything the LHC will be able to produce, and it has been subject to them since the earth was formed. The chances that the LHC's relatively low-energy gear will produce something that hasn't happened before are therefore minimal.

stabu

It's all about marketing, and though some of the words are comfortingly esoteric, Higg's Boson, etc., but I think "strangelet" was a bad choice. Bad branding.

If that thing is producing things called strangelets, what would you expect public reaction to be?

fitz0

Yeah strangelets sound too ambiguous. They should rename them explodelets! or Godlets or somesuch.

In all seriousness though Im very interested to see what the outcome of the experiments done with the LHC will be. What will they find? And if there is a giant catastrophic implosion that destroys the earth and sucks us all into a vortex of unimaginable horror then at least it will be interesting and (in my mind) filled with pretty swirling colours.

davros

I haven't been keeping up with physics lately so 'strangelet' is a new term for me. But I do remember that strange quarks were paired with charm quarks. So if anyone is concerned about strangelets just tell them that charmlets must be right around the corner.

Standman

Here's a short and very informative video on the subject:

It's one of the TED Talks series. If ye haven't heard of them before check them out! They are like the toy show for intelligent grown-ups! There's a couple hundred video's on their youtube channel. When I discovered it I spent hours watching the vid's, they are really amazing:

http://youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector

bus77

First run set for October 21 of this year.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_21
October 21 1879... Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb (it lasted 13½ hours before burning out).