Just being a bit tongue and cheek, although I am aware that there are those who don't trust science (conservatives), and some of these scientific theories are disputable, but still-you've got to wonder just a little about the possibilties...right?
AP-The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August. But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump? Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN. "Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.
David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets. "If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said. The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near Chicago, has been debated for years. The physicist Martin Rees has estimated the chance of an accelerator producing a global catastrophe at one in 50 million - long odds, to be sure, but about the same as winning some lotteries.
By contrast, a CERN team this month issued a report concluding that there is "no conceivable danger" of a cataclysmic event. The report essentially confirmed the findings of a 2003 CERN safety report, and a panel of five prominent scientists not affiliated with CERN, including one Nobel laureate, endorsed its conclusions. Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet."
One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed. Check out the rest of the story here, if you dare...
UPDATE: Sept. 10, 2008: I thought this clip might settle a lot of nerves...or maybe not.
It is only anti science right wingers who are pedaling this bull hockey. This research poses no such threat and holds the promise of unimagined scientific knowledge that could solve the worlds energy issues, among other things. Corporations and the right wing want to impede scientific discovery to maintain the status quo, and they will use any kind of ruse to flimflam and hoodwink the dumb rubes who have seen one too many episodes of "Star Trek". Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteAfter working for several years in the CLEO project located at Cornell University, I can tell you, all they need to do to stop a reaction is "unplug" (turn off the power to)the machine. These reactions consume energy, not produce it.
ReplyDeleteI understand the possibility that this might be coming from conservative anti-science zealots, but the experiment itself, and what it can produce still sends a chill.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping it will be as easy as "unplugging" the machine.(I had to laugh at the ease of the solution offered above. He's right?)
I have seen way too many science fiction films. It didn't help to have National Geographic render it on film. You've eased my mind, a little.
Like these theoretical scientists, my lust for life and zest for creating chaos is thwarted by lack of raw material and a big question mark looming daddy-bear like and my T.V. eye has been blackened – it’s the unwatchable stuff of the many locust dreams in my head.
ReplyDeleteA hotter than lava snot (some say I have an exaggerated opinion of myself) troublemaker coughing up the baby teeth of my frustrations. That, and getting dry-gulched by some spazz in middle manglement, redolent of the foul B.O. of Satan's favorite gutter worm. You’ll always sense me when I'm nearby - a frost wind of steel stilettos hammered Christ-like into your spine. Insane merry-go-round nausea spinning, spewing forth and everything's a mess, a side of spit up included but not asked for, and you still got to pay the bill. Every possession you ever had – wrecked, stomped on - lying at your feet, and all you can think is how bad you want it, how your brain screams louder than you can ever take it, looking for that kiss.
Junk mailed advertisements that tell you God is dead piled high on the TV that fucks up on a regular basis. Yes, the incessant fucking TV. Burping. Unclear. A cheese-dick nun advertising 20 brands of diseased cow lemon shit in 60 different languages. A nicely coifed retard does the funky chicken for the hard of hearing. Subliminal criminals, phoney businessmen punks in thick rimmed glasses lifting the ever topped highball glass and toasting better absorption, bad comedians, laughing colonic bags aping the Hallelujah chorus - the forgotten version - out of key (slightly), just enough to annoy you.
My dream essence is cheap perfume on rotting Madonna market researched maggots! Dead but popular maggots. My dream taste is a wound re-opening to no surprise, the priest’s confessional eyes flowing out, wriggling little things, gelatinous, stillborn and screaming into the broken mike - out of key (slightly), just enough to annoy you. My dream delight is a plunging elevator full of screaming Hooter’s waitresses, a millisecond before it hits the cellar, a cellar with mustard and rats. Old – ancient in fact - lost teeth, abortions, garbage, so pungent it hums with hidden life - out of key (slightly), just enough to annoy you.
My dream is their dream, deep within me, hidden, waiting to get out.
You should read up more on science, astronomy in particular. A black hole is made my suns 50 or more times larger then our sun smashed into the size of a marble. you would have to smash things with more power then the entire planet could generate to even get close to that. Stranglets are a hypothesis, meaning there's almost no proof of it. If they did exist, we would have seen a "quark star" which we have not.
ReplyDeleteWhen they first detonated the atomic bomb, some thought it would set the atmosphere on fire. didn't happen. Just stories to scare people. To make them afraid, and if your afraid, you are willing to give them power. Over you.
So stop it.
Ha you all should read up on science more..
ReplyDeleteBlack holes DO NOT exist..
Anyone who says they do is wrong and stupid.
Why and How can I say that >???
Go do some research...
The "right wing" is not making these acusations.
ReplyDeleteTheir take is God will provide saftey for the earth.
This research poses no such threat and holds the promise of unimagined scientific knowledge that could solve the worlds energy issues, among other things.
Uhh, no. Don't throw around seen one too many episodes of "Star Trek" or you'll set yourself up.
People who worry about the LHC creating a black hole which might swallow the earth need to read up on cosmology and astrophysics. Even if a microscopic black hole were created by the collider, such a beast would be inherently unstable and evaporate in a burst of gamma radiation in a fragment of a nanosecond. Pity we don't spend more energy pushing science and technology in this country - we might be the ones firing up the next-generation particle accelerator instead of the Europeans, and gleaning the results(and profits) of any spin-offs which result. Instead, we are afraid of that which we do not understand. Well, some of us are, apparently.
ReplyDelete