CERN's Large Hadron Collider: Are we doomed?

[Nadz1lla]

Just been reading about this on the BBC site, and further investigating it via Wiki and...facebook, lol.

They are saying the risk of creating a black hole on Earth in this experiment is something like 5billion to 1, but bloody hell if there are any odds I'd rather they just left it the hell alone, haha!

That said it is an impressive piece of kit and if it works I will be very interested in reading about their findings.

Of course one of the other things they are investigating is the possibility of different dimensions, so if they don't destroy the world they may just create an "Event Horizon" situation and create literally Hell on Earth.

I for one am ready to go into Doom mode if this happens. Who is with me?  :shock: :lol:

[EDIT - info links added]
More info here :

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

http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/god-particle/achenbach-text

[blue]

yeah, i heard about the artificial black hole scare mongering.  and we all thought nuclear war or runaway climate change would get us! at least a black hole would be quick.  well, actually i think we'd find ourselves stuck in exactly the same moment, but we'd be oblivious to it so i suppose it's a relatively nice kind of armageddon!

anyway, Doctor Who or someone would turn up to save us all, so that's okay  8)

[ToneMonkey]

or runaway climate change would get us!

Still might.

I was actually talking about this my old man last night.  Think we should be safe  :D

[dave_mc]

it's not gonna make a black hole. the problem with quantum mechanics etc. is that there's a minute chance that almost anything can happen, so they have to say that there's a small chance or they'd be lying (e.g. if you kick a ball often enough against a wall, it'll tunnel through it). but there's virtually no chance of it happening.

the thing is, what they hope to learn from running the hadron collider outweighs the minute risks of forming a black hole. granted, it's pretty catastrophic if it does happen, but we'll be extremely unlucky if it does. it'd be like not going outside in case a plane crashed on top of you (only probably much less likely than even that happening).

[nfe]

As Dave just said, it's all but impossible to crete a black hole, never mind a black hole that could stay in existance long enough to actually have any effect on anything, never mind one that could actually destroy Earth.

The problem is that the people who generally get asked if it might is that they're scientists. People with a habit of taking things horribly literally and as such, when presented with "Is this possible?" they say yes, cause everything is.

[38thBeatle]

Do they do holes of another colour cos black can be so dull-even if it is stylish.

[WezV]

i am desperately holding my tongue trying not to make a joke about pink or brown holes

[MrBump]

A quote from the CERN website...

Microscopic black holes
Nature forms black holes when certain stars, much larger than our Sun, collapse on themselves at the end of their lives. They concentrate a very large amount of matter in a very small space. Speculations about microscopic black holes at the LHC refer to particles produced in the collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable to that of a mosquito in flight. Astronomical black holes are much heavier than anything that could be produced at the LHC.

According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC. There are, however, some speculative theories that predict the production of such particles at the LHC. All these theories predict that these particles would disintegrate immediately. Black holes, therefore, would have no time to start accreting matter and to cause macroscopic effects.

Although stable microscopic black holes are not expected in theory, study of the consequences of their production by cosmic rays shows that they would be harmless. Collisions at the LHC differ from cosmic-ray collisions with astronomical bodies like the Earth in that new particles produced in LHC collisions tend to move more slowly than those produced by cosmic rays. Stable black holes could be either electrically charged or neutral.  If they had electric charge, they would interact with ordinary matter and be stopped while traversing the Earth, whether produced by cosmic rays or the LHC. The fact that the Earth is still here rules out the possibility that cosmic rays or the LHC could produce dangerous charged microscopic black holes. If stable microscopic black holes had no electric charge, their interactions with the Earth would be very weak. Those produced by cosmic rays would pass harmlessly through the Earth into space, whereas those produced by the LHC could remain on Earth. However, there are much larger and denser astronomical bodies than the Earth in the Universe. Black holes produced in cosmic-ray collisions with bodies such as neutron stars and white dwarf stars would be brought to rest. The continued existence of such dense bodies, as well as the Earth, rules out the possibility of the LHC producing any dangerous black holes.

I think that it's another example of the media running away with selective aspects of the real story.

I also suspect that the predicted advances in our knowledge may also be overstated...

 :?

Mark.

[dave_mc]

granted, it's pretty catastrophic if it does happen, but we'll be extremely unlucky if it does.

apparently judging by that quote posted by mr bump, even if it does happen, it's not necessarily going to be (even unlikely to be) catastrophic.

who cares, though, when you can sell more papers by telling people a black hole might form and eat the earth?

 :? :x

[ilÿti]

creating a black hole on Earth in this experiment

Big deal. John Petrucci did that back in 1987 while practicing chromatics.

[Davey]

no, we're not doomed because of that.

we're doomed, beacuse of the destructive nature of humanity.



besides, they've been doing experiments with this and smaler versions for years now and noone gave a flying $%&# about it, now just because they have a larger scale (known) test scheduled for sometime in 2012, everybody's gone batshite

[Sailor Charon]

[Private Frasier]
Black holes... forming...
The Earth... collapsing...
We're dooooomed...
[/Private Frasier]

[Roobubba]

(e.g. if you kick a ball often enough against a wall, it'll tunnel through it).

Sorry, Dave, I just can't let you get away with that one!! Maybe if you look at each atom of the ball and the wall individually, you could make some argument on a QM-scale, but the applied scale of the ball/wall scenario is so far out of quantum-mechanical remit that it's not only fair to say that it's completely Newtonian, it'd be incorrect to describe it in quantum-mechanical terms as an in-tact unit. At the energies required to describe non-classical effects of a reasonable-sized ball, the ball would most definitely not be in tact!

Sorry, that was really geeky :(

Roo

[Afghan Dave]

i am desperately holding my tongue trying not to make a joke about pink or brown holes

You're a stronger man than I Wez..

My tongue goes into over-drive when I see a close configuration of pink and brown holes!

Matter / Anti-matter...

Pink or brown, it don't matter to me  :P :P

[shobet]

My farts are more dangerous than a micro black hole.