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The Next Big Particle Accelerator
Guinnessy writes "This year more than a thousand physicists gathered for three weeks at Snowmass Village, in the Colorado Rockies near Aspen, to talk about the future of particle physics in the US. Physics Today has a report on the meeting which says that the community should build a 500-GeV electron-positron linear collider. That's powerful enough to make mini black holes."
Cool. They can zap every remaining bit of power that California has left to make a black hole for a nanosecond.
This year more than a thousand physicists were sucked into a mini-blackhole.
it's a sig, wtf?
I bet a beowulf cluster of those would really suck.
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Homer Simpson gets sucked into a black hole and ends up in our world, so if we get sucked in, do we end up in Springfield?
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Building a high-luminosity linear electron- positron collider with a collision energy of 500 GeV--upgradable to 800 or 1000 GeV--was, for most participants, the obvious next big undertaking of the world particle-physics community.
After all, there's nothing cooler than overclocking a black hole.
The article talked about building it in CA or Japan. That seems really sensible to me: build a $5 billion particle accelerator in an earthquake zone! ;)
"I may not be a expert in particle physics"
Heavens! I find this statement absolutely shocking from someone named after a Dragon Ball Z character... I never would have guessed.
;-p
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
Physics: Allows research of Magnetism, Steam Engine and Atomic Theory.
Atomic Theory: Allows research of Nuclear Fission.
Nuclear Fission: Uranium becomes a comodity and allows research of Nuclear Power.
Nuclear Power: Increases ship movement and allows research of Fusion Power.
Fusion Power: Eliminates the threat of nuclear plant meltdown and allows for the research of Future Technology.
Future Technology: Adds to overall game score.
So in a nutshell, we're trying to add to our game score.
They want to build a machine that creates silly black holes but they cut funding to the Superconducting Monkey Collider.
We could have a much greater understanding of our universe by accelerating monkeys to near-light speeds and smashing them together. But congress cut funding the facility after some animal rights wackos said it wasn't nice. The expensive collider facility had allready been under construction since 1983 and taxpayer were spending 7.5 billion a year to finish construction.
To keep the 45 mile underground facility from going to waste, it has become a federally fundered drag-racing track. But great science could have come from the Monkey collider. But now we'll never know.