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Short Film About CERN's Large Hadron Collider
Lobster911 writes "Seedmagazine.com has posted a new film, Lords of the Ring, about CERN's Large Hadron Collider. NESTA fellow Alom Shaha takes us through the world's largest machine, as he lets the scientists who work at CERN explain the LHC and what they hope to accomplish with it. The highly-anticipated collider is set to start up in 2007, running at full speed by 2008."
Edward Teller had a concern about atmospheric nitrogen undergoing fusion, essentially igniting the entire atmosphere. He got together with a couple of other Manhattan Project physicists and showed that it was not just unlikely, but impossible. With this concern laid to rest, they knew that it was safe (so to speak) to detonate the bomb.
It was one of the other physicists (not the ones with whom Teller collaborated on the above report) who kept talking about it afterward, and allowed the story to live on, much to the annoyance of a number of Manhattan Project researchers.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
FWIW Cern is in Switzerland, just outside of Geneva. Although the LHC ring is large enough to cross the border into France.
these type of high energy particle collisions are happening all around us all the time. (esp. as you get into the upper atmosphere, as they rain down on us from space) surely if they could produce black holes that could destroy the earth they would have done so already.
this machine will only reproduce these collisions in very controlled conditions, letting us learn from them.
btw, this is not a concern i've ever heard an actual physicist raise. all theories of micro black holes predict they burn themselves out as fast as they are created, as there is a critical mass needed for self-sustainment. i have doubts regarding the reliability of your "science" blog.
http://kered.org