World's Largest Atom Smasher Nears Completion

evanwired writes "The last magnet was put in place this week at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. When the device is completed about a year from now it will be the world's largest particle accelerator, putting scientists in reach of new data and possible answers to questions dominated by theory over observation for the past two decades. Wired News recently visited the installation — awe-inspiring in its scale — as part of an in-depth, three-part series on the collider exploring the engineering, science and politics of high-end theoretical physics in the 21st century."

Comments

Linux

[tr1907]

Does it run Linux?

are they trying to kill us?

[penguinrevived]

While the evidence shows that a black hole the size of what they are planning to create wont even be sustainable, there is one thing that has proven itself, chance. There is a chance that a black hole will become self sustainable. There is a chance it will destroy us. Its a small chance, but it exists. While I am all for taking risks, especially scientifically (thats the reason we are here today) this one seems to be unnecessary. Why do we need to know what happened at the beginning of the universe? It has no bearing on our lives at all. We can not benefit from this knowledge in a any way, except perhaps figure out what will ultimately happen in the end of the universe, but not only will that not matter because of the fact that it will be inevitable, and the probability that we humans, or whatever we have evolved into by then, will not be around to see it happen, but I can tell you what will happen when we as a massive clump of atoms meet our fate. A black hole, maybe even the one we will more than likely create, will grow larger and larger until it sucks up most of the entire universe, resulting in it reaching critical mass, and creating another big bang, restarting the whole chain of events that we have observed so far. This theory also explains how our universe came into being, eliminating any need for further experimentation on this matter. Trying to look any farther back than the big bang is not only pointless, but also impossible, and therefore belongs only in religious explorations. So whats the point of me writing all this? Or better yet, why did you read all that? To hear this: THERE IS NO REASON TO TAKE EVEN THIS TINY RISK TO FIND OUT HOW WE CAME TO BE. We should have spent the money solving our more current and pressing issues, like poverty.