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Large Hadron Collider Goes Live September 10th

Naznarreb writes "CERN announced today that the first attempt to circulate a beam through the Large Hadron Collider will be on September 10th, 2008. You can read the press release here. They also announced the event will be webcast live. According to the release, they're just planning to run a few tests laps, not smash any particles, so the world won't be ending quite yet." And despite that September 10th date, according to the BBC, "On 9 August, protons will be piped through LHC magnets for the first time."

93 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. September 10th? by suso · · Score: 4, Funny

    And will take 1 day to warm up right?

    1. Re:September 10th? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      No. Cool down. The reason that everyone has been waiting for the last couple of months is for the system to cool to less than 2 K. That is what is limiting the operation of the complete LHC.

    2. Re:September 10th? by Red+Flayer · · Score: 4, Funny

      The reason that everyone has been waiting for the last couple of months is for the system to cool to less than 2 K.

      Less than 2K what? Two thousand Centigrade? Fahrenheit? Damn n00bs and their lack of units, don't you realize that's the kind of mistake that swallows worlds in a fit of microblackholish pique???

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    3. Re:September 10th? by Scotteh · · Score: 2, Informative

      The reason that everyone has been waiting for the last couple of months is for the system to cool to less than 2 K.

      Less than 2K what? Two thousand Centigrade? Fahrenheit? Damn n00bs and their lack of units, don't you realize that's the kind of mistake that swallows worlds in a fit of microblackholish pique???

      2 K is 2 Kelvin, not 2 thousand. The "damn n00b" was using the proper standard scientific units for temperature.

    4. Re:September 10th? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      And, like you, the "damn n00b" missed the joke.

    5. Re:September 10th? by Illbay · · Score: 3, Funny

      I got the 9/11 reference, even if the rest of the Nerds didn't.

      --
      Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
    6. Re:September 10th? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      September 10th? Damn, less than a month and I've still got 25 items on my 'things to do before you die' list.

    7. Re:September 10th? by Rycross · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Two degrees Kelvin" is actually improper terminology. Kelvin does not use the degree simple. You simply say "Two Kelvin."

      On another hope, I really hope you weren't joking with that. If so, then I just got whooshed!

    8. Re:September 10th? by hclewk · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, if it had the degree symbol between the 2 and the K.

      He didn't put the degree symbol between the 2 and the K because it isn't "2 degrees kelvin" it's "2 kelvin", like "2 kilograms" or "2 meters"

    9. Re:September 10th? by Grimbleton · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Such as yourself?

    10. Re:September 10th? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Giuliani? Is that you? I was wondering where you disappeared to.

    11. Re:September 10th? by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's cold. DAMN cold! How cold? Ask the guy with the frozen thumb!

      Yep, well the last time I caught someone installing a key logger his thumb wouldn't fit in the coffee afterwards. And I remember one winter in Montana where it was so cold it went quiet -- everybody's words froze as they left the mouth.You never heard such a ruckus at spring thaw, though.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
    12. Re:September 10th? by fishbowl · · Score: 5, Funny

      >Such as yourself?

      I slept through middle school, high school, undergrad chemistry and physics, slept through my masters, and am sleeping on the job at my university environmental research gig.

      Any questions?

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    13. Re:September 10th? by LionMage · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, to be even more anal, the plural form "kelvins" should only be used to indicate temperature intervals (differences between temperatures); when indicating specific temperatures, the singular form is used. Take a gander at this section of the Wikipedia article for examples.

      And remember, there's always a bigger pedant out there somewhere. :-)

    14. Re:September 10th? by rossdee · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "For those in the US, two degrees kelvin is roughly a bazillgian degrees below zero."

      Its actually about 456 degrees below 0 F

    15. Re:September 10th? by mobby_6kl · · Score: 5, Funny

      I slept through middle school, high school, undergrad chemistry and physics, slept through my masters, and am sleeping on the job at my university environmental research gig.

      Any questions?

      Yes, how can I be more like you?

    16. Re:September 10th? by tobiasly · · Score: 4, Funny

      And remember, there's always a bigger pedant out there somewhere. :-)

      Great, now I'm gonna have nightmares about pedant bear.

    17. Re:September 10th? by Johnny+Chinpo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's fucking *degrees* Kelvin you insensitive clod!

  2. Get your affairs in order, people by wattrlz · · Score: 3, Funny

    Did we ever reach an agreement about those micro-black-holes?

    1. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by suso · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Um, if the entire planet is zortched out of existence, people won't really have to *worry* about having their affairs in order, will they?

      The real question is, if one is created, will there be enough time for anyone to report it, or will the black hole swallow things almost instantly or will it grow faster than the information can travel?

    2. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by schklerg · · Score: 4, Funny

      Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. So I think we'd hear about it first.

      --
      Be Excellent To Each Other
    3. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by Gotung · · Score: 4, Informative

      There is virtually zero chance the LHC will produce micro-black holes.

      Even if it somehow does, they will very likely dissipate in fractions of a second.

      Even if they doe form, and are stable, they will be so small so as to sink to the center of the earth and star devouring it at the alarming pace of 1 atom a year.

      For frame of reference you have about 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in your body.

      So it would take billions of lifetimes (or more) for you to even notice the effects if one were stuck in you.

    4. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by clem · · Score: 4, Funny

      Easier to ask forgiveness that permission. Especially easy if there's no one left to ask forgiveness of.

      --
      Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
    5. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by SBacks · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sorry to self-reply, but even once it got going, it wouldn't destroy us immediately. A black hole with the mass of the Earth still only has Schwarzschild radius of 1.5cm.

      http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/blkhol.html

    6. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by pha7boy · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'll keep my towel handy

      --
      -- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
    7. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

      it would be destroyed almost immediately due to Hawking radiation.

      Awesome. I always knew Stephen Hawking was a badass, but now I find out he's a superhero with the power to destroy black holes!

      I can see it now: thousands of people panic through the streets, while Stephen Hawking slowly wheels himself into a phone booth, only to fly out a second later and fly to the black hole, destroying it instantly with his Hawking radiation eye-beams! That's going to be sooo cool!

      I must admit, his disguise is ingenious. I never suspected he was anything other than a mild-mannered physicist.

    8. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by eln · · Score: 2, Funny

      Only a completely wild guess I'd say more than a minute and less than an hour.I

      So probably not enough time to find the nearest woman and convince her you're a virgin and don't want to die that way. Unless it's closer to an hour, in which case I could probably pull that trick on two or three women.

    9. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by icebike · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh, thank heavens... So beach front property in Geneva is still a good investment then...?

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    10. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by Nos. · · Score: 4, Funny

      No way, I'm not getting sucked into that again.

    11. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by kungfugleek · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah. He looks totally different without his glasses. You can't even recognize him.

    12. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

      I can see it now: thousands of people panic through the streets, while Stephen Hawking slowly wheels himself into a phone booth, only to fly out a second later and fly to the black hole, destroying it instantly with his Hawking radiation eye-beams! That's going to be sooo cool!

      The image is funnier to me if he never gets out of his wheelchair. He slowly wheels up, has his machine say "Take this, you bastard", and then the Hawking Radiation spews forth!

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    13. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by Asztal_ · · Score: 5, Funny

      Kingons and Queons are believed to travel faster than the speed of light, but I hear it's quite difficult to harness their power.

    14. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by alexj33 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The bad news: The world might come to an end.

      The good news: Michael Bolton's going with us.

    15. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Funny

      For frame of reference you have about 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in your body.

      If I am mostly carbon, that'd make me around 300lbs. Are you assuming I am American?

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    16. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by corbettw · · Score: 4, Funny

      That makes me feel much better. Although, how did a micro-blackhole on Earth end up with the mass of Earth...?

      <panic mode on>

      --
      God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
    17. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by Orange+Crush · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And let's not forget that it would be forged by particle colisions at relativistic speeds, making it pretty likely to begin life with more than enough velocity to careen out into space, never to bother us again.

    18. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by ShibaInu · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Honest question about Hawking Radiation - how do we know it really exists? As far as I know we've never directly observed a black hole and we've certainly never created one in the lab, so where is the experimental evidence to support it? Shouldn't you say that we THINK Hawking Radiation would destroy said black hole?

    19. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by f1r3f0g · · Score: 4, Funny

      Screw the towel. Where's my crowbar?

    20. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by TheLostSamurai · · Score: 5, Funny

      So probably not enough time to find the nearest woman and convince her you're a virgin

      I'm sure you won't have to do much convincing.

      --
      I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
    21. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by porcupine8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Doesn't that just mean that once it swallows the whole earth it'll only be 1.5cm?

      --
      Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
    22. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by Joebert · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wait till you see those goddamn bats.

      --
      Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
    23. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by tenco · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why eat one proton? Since they're smashing protons, wouldn't the blackhole already have a positive electric charge?

      Stop growing at that point is clear enough for me: it has still only the gravitational pull of a few proton masses, hardly enough to be significant at these scales. Electromagnetism rules them big time.

    24. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by tenco · · Score: 4, Informative

      If I am mostly carbon, (...)

      You're not.

    25. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by david.given · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A black hole with the mass of the Earth has, at one Earth-radius, a gravitational attraction of 1g. (In other words, if you were on the far side of the moon, and the Earth suddenly turned into a black hole, you wouldn't notice.) Closer, it would be much higher. Half an earth radius from the black hole it'd be 4g, a quarter of an earth radius it'd be 8g, etc --- one kilometre away it'd be 4 million g, and one metre away it'd be 3x10^14 g. That's gonna hurt.

      So if somehow you were to magically create the 5x10^41 Joules of energy necessary to create a black hole the size of the Earth, on the Earth, I suspect we'd probably know immediately, subject to light speed limits, as the direction of down shifts abruptly followed a few seconds later by the disintegration of the planet and collapse into a accretion disc of white hot plasma. That is, those parts of the Earth that are not blasted outwards by the collapse event, which is what astrophysicists would call 'violent'.

      (Of course, *now* I realise that you were actually originally talking about the end result after the consumption of the earth by a tiny black hole, but I've done all the maths now, dammit. So I'm going to post anyway. Besides, once the tiny black hole reaches about .1 earth mass it's still going to be pretty spectacular.)

    26. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by Ogive17 · · Score: 2, Funny

      A black hole with the mass of the Earth still only has Schwarzschild radius of 1.5cm

      I see your Swhwarzschild is as big as mine.

      --
      "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
    27. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by qualidafial · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah. He looks totally different without his glasses. You can't even recognize him.

      That doesn't make any sense! He wouldn't be able to see.

    28. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by niteice · · Score: 2, Funny

      Creating micro black holes at the LHC is also a theory, and highly speculative at that.

      --
      ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
    29. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by Fuji+Kitakyusho · · Score: 2, Informative

      7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms (7E27) / 6.0221E23 atoms/mole = 11623.85214 moles of atoms. Using the oversimplification of the body being entirely water, you have a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen atoms to carbon. Thus, 11623.85214 / 3 = 3874.617382 moles of water molecules. 3874.617382 x 12.011 g / atom C (46538.02937 g C total), + (3874.617382 * 2 * 1.00797) g / atom H (7810.996164 g H total) = 54349.02553 grams, or 54.34902553 kilograms, or 119.8190911 pounds (* 2.20462262 lbs / kg) - approximately two-fifths of the weight of a 300 pound American. Stick that in your pipe and --induce high energy collisions with-- it.

    30. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by tftp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You have a nice way to explain things. However on my planet water is H(2)O, not H(2)C like on yours. Would such a molecule even exist? (IANAC)
      H-C---C-H

    31. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by UnHolier+than+ever · · Score: 2, Informative

      Following that point of view, we don't know that black holes exist either. However, we have observed (in cosmic rays) particles with more energy than the particles at LHC will create, and these particles did not destroy the earth.

    32. Re:Get your affairs in order, people by neonux · · Score: 2, Funny

      Titanium 0.000013%

      So if Morbo announces a mine disaster at the only supply of Titanium, my body will still be worth basically nothing... so disappointing!!

      --
      @neonux
  3. Aaaahhhhhhh !! by unity100 · · Score: 4, Funny

    It is a good day to die !!!!!

    1. Re:Aaaahhhhhhh !! by dgatwood · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If it disrupts time itself, perhaps it will have already happened by now. :-D

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    2. Re:Aaaahhhhhhh !! by shlompo · · Score: 2

      Glittering Prizes!!!!

  4. Obligatory LHC by psyclone · · Score: 4, Informative

    The other LHC

  5. Re:If the world turns into a stranglet by evwah · · Score: 2, Funny

    two bad nobody will even be able to care who called it.

  6. They start smashing particles the next day by Zordak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They actually start smashing particles the next day. Which is Sept. 11. Oh, wait...

    --

    Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
    1. Re:They start smashing particles the next day by tjstork · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yep... Bin Laden is about to be upstaged by a supercollider. The whole war on terror to avenge the destruction of the a few buildings in NYC will seem moot after a couple of european scientists accidentally suck the entire state into a black hole.

      --
      This is my sig.
    2. Re:They start smashing particles the next day by flyingsquid · · Score: 4, Funny
      Yep... Bin Laden is about to be upstaged by a supercollider. The whole war on terror to avenge the destruction of the a few buildings in NYC will seem moot after a couple of european scientists accidentally suck the entire state into a black hole.

      Maybe we've finally figured out why we haven't had any luck with SETI yet? Perhaps any civilization advanced enough to begin broadcasting in the radio spectrum will, within 100 years, start running scientific experiments that are sufficiently dangerous to cause the extinction of the species? Is that possible?

      On second thought... that's a silly theory, never mind! I'm going to go back to my very important medical experiments. It's pretty cool stuff, actually. I'm using virus-borne DNA to reanimate dead cells to help critically ill people. I think I'm on the verge of a breakthrough but they're going to cut off my funding if I don't get any results soon! Maybe I'll have to take a few shortcuts... use highly unstable, mutation-prone RNA instead of DNA... maybe skip straight to the human testing phase using this cadaver I have lying around my lab...

      Anyhow, have a good day everybody!

  7. Oops by Mr.Fork · · Score: 3, Funny

    I can see it now...
    Dr. Dieter Kriegstien: "Acceleratz protonz to maximumn speedz. Dr. Smitz, please pushz zat big ved button."
    Dr. Keron Smith: "Pushing big button... you meant the blue one didn't you Dr. Kriegstien?"
    Dr. Dieter: "Insolenze...vait... vat iz dat veading on zee scopz? Hmm.. it lookz like a microsopikz vack ol..."

    And at this point, the entire mass of the Earth is sucked into a minature black hole the size of a pinhead over a period of 2 microseconds. :)



    Of course, in reality, this is as likely as me winning a superball jackpot lottery, 10'000 timse in a row. But I just CAN'T HELP MYSELF!

    --
    Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
  8. The End is Nigh by itsybitsy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ok. Sept 10 plus one day to warm up. Sheeze couldn't they have picked another date for the end of the world?

    Ok, in the Naked Science episode which featured the Large Hadron gizmo they said that some people are concerned that "the micro black holes they create could consume an *entire* city..." then they paused for a short while and added "... and the entire earth!". Love that pause.

    Other than that I got nothing.

  9. Cern - by isotope23 · · Score: 3, Funny

    All yer antimatter is belong to us - Cern

    --
    Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
    1. Re:Cern - by jd · · Score: 2, Funny

      Press releases are aways written in really weird English, so I've found a converter to turn it into something more readable.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  10. Re:Timeline rewriting to begin shortly thereafter. by PC+and+Sony+Fanboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Unless, of course, we're finally in the timeline where the LHC never quite works.

    OR the timeline where you're the only non-cloned human left alive, surrounded by clones of your ex-girlfriend. Then you'll wish you didn't get on her bad side right before 'the accident'.

  11. OB Futurama by notnAP · · Score: 4, Funny

    FARNSWORTH: So what are you doing to protect my constitutional right to bear doomsday devices?

    N.R.A. MAN: Well, first off, we're gonna get rid of that three-day waiting period for mad scientists.

    FARNSWORTH: Damn straight! Today, the mad scientist can't get a doomsday device, tomorrow it's the mad grad student. Where will it end?

  12. Push the button, Dr. Freeman by wreave · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looks like 9 September will be a good day to charge up my HEV suit and sharpen my crowbar...

  13. Anyone else getting this error from that link? by ChangeOnInstall · · Score: 5, Funny

    HTTP 599
    Service Permanently Unavailable

    The server you are trying to contact has crossed the event horizon of a black hole.

    --
    What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
    1. Re:Anyone else getting this error from that link? by Darth_brooks · · Score: 3, Funny

      HTTP 599
      Service Permanently Unavailable

      The server you are trying to contact has crossed the event horizon of a black hole.

      You left out:

      "if this problem persists, please contact your Systems Administrator"

      --
      There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
    2. Re:Anyone else getting this error from that link? by Experiment+626 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That would be HTTP 410.

      "The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address." (RFC 2616)

      There's no excuse for such incorrect implementation of standard protocols, even if the catastrophic destruction of the earth is involved.

  14. Crowbar already sent to CERN by Xian97 · · Score: 5, Funny

    A red crowbar has been sent to CERN in anticipation of the LHC particle accelerator going online.

    http://www.destructoid.com/reddit-sends-crowbar-to-scientists-to-protect-against-headcrabs-98281.phtml

  15. Out of this world. by synth7 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Advice to the scientists: When you first get back up after the explosion, make sure to stay away from the lip of the pit one screen to your left.

  16. Re:Nostrdamus predicts the end by LHC!!! by Mascot · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yeees.. His predictions always seem to come true.

    Assuming you count people interpreting them to fit past events as coming true. I can't remember a single instance of someone interpreting Nostradamus as predicting something *before* it actually happens, and in fact having just that happen.

  17. Top 10 Ways to DESTROY the Earth!!! by itsybitsy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Darn the LHC is only number eight on the list. http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp-1.html

    Sucked into a microscopic black hole

    You will need: a microscopic black hole. Note that black holes are not eternal, they evaporate due to Hawking radiation. For your average black hole this takes an unimaginable amount of time, but for really small ones it could happen almost instantaneously, as evaporation time is dependent on mass. Therefore you microscopic black hole must have greater than a certain threshold mass, roughly equal to the mass of Mount Everest. Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since one needs a reasonable amount of neutronium, but may possibly be achievable by jamming large numbers of atomic nuclei together until they stick. This is left as an exercise to the reader. [I love that part].

    Method: simply place your black hole on the surface of the Earth and wait. Black holes are of such high density that they pass through ordinary matter like a stone through the air. [Yeah, so then how will I place it *on* the Earth. Lousy instructions.] The black hole will plummet through the ground, eating its way to the center of the Earth and all the way through to the other side: then, it'll oscillate back, over and over like a matter-absorbing pendulum. Eventually it will come to rest at the core, having absorbed enough matter to slow it down. Then you just need to wait, while it sits and consumes matter until the whole Earth is gone.

    Highly, highly unlikely. But not impossible.

    Earth's final resting place: a singularity of almost zero size, which will then proceed to happily orbit the Sun as normal.

    Source: "The Dark Side Of The Sun," by Terry Pratchett. It is true that the microscopic black hole idea is an age-old science fiction mainstay which predates Pratchett by a long time, he was my original source for the idea, so that's what I'm putting.

    1. Re:Top 10 Ways to DESTROY the Earth!!! by clone53421 · · Score: 3, Informative

      You don't know much about physics, do you? Gravitation acting alone would indeed cause it to oscillate forever. Think of it in terms of conservation of energy: potential energy varies with height, and since total energy must be conserved, every time the velocity is reduced to zero the height has to be the same.

      The only factor that will reduce its energy is when it physically impacts other particles, resulting in a net gain of mass and a conservation of momentum (velocity decreases proportionally). Since it would be microscopic in size, it wouldn't hit much matter anyway so the deceleration would be slow... it also wouldn't cause much damage because it wouldn't consume much matter for the same reason.

      --
      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
    2. Re:Top 10 Ways to DESTROY the Earth!!! by imsabbel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You, like most other people, just dont understand how fucking small the schwarzshild radius of such a black hole would be.

      If all the energy of both particles gets converted into mass, and all the matter end up in a tiny black hole, this will have an energy of 5TeV max, which is less than 10^-22 kg.
      Now the schwarzschild radius is 2*m*G/c^2.
      This results in about 10^-50m, about a billion trillion times less than the planck lenght (which already tells us that this aint you normal black hole anymore).
      Even if it could exist at that size, looking at the crossection it could travel all the way to the center of the earth and just missing every matter.
      In fact, taking this tiny size into account, i dont think a proton or neutron could even get into ...

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
  18. My 2 cents by electricbern · · Score: 5, Funny

    If nothing comes from this demonstration but a black hole it will definitely suck.

    --
    alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls /dev > il && tail daemon.log'
    1. Re:My 2 cents by CorporateSuit · · Score: 5, Funny

      I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation.

      --
      I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
  19. Re:Time to go on my spending spree by SBrach · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your statement is true even if they never turn on the LHC.

  20. NYTimes Prints Large HARDon Collider by itsybitsy · · Score: 2, Funny
  21. Ok, seriously... enough with the Sept. 11 crap by Kabuthunk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, I'll probably get modded troll or something for this, but it needs saying.

    There's many comments in here about "oh, what about Sept. 11... couldn't they pick a better day?" and the like.

    NEWS FLASH: The rest of the world does NOT come to a screeching halt every Sept. 11th. All points of business are NOT put on hold on that one day of the year. The rest of the world has moved on, if they even stopped to begin with. GET OVER IT!

    LHC isn't even located in the USA for christ sakes.

    Yes, the Sept. 11 events were sad, but seriously... stop criticizing all events taking place somewhere on earth on or around that date.

    --
    Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
    1. Re:Ok, seriously... enough with the Sept. 11 crap by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

      Are you saying that 9-11 didn't change everything?

      Because 9-11 changed everything.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    2. Re:Ok, seriously... enough with the Sept. 11 crap by D-Cypell · · Score: 4, Funny

      "The rest of the world does NOT come to a screeching halt every Sept. 11th."

      The rest of the world is still scratching it's head trying to figure out what significant event happened on the 9th of November.

    3. Re:Ok, seriously... enough with the Sept. 11 crap by 3waygeek · · Score: 2, Informative

      The rest of the world is still scratching it's head trying to figure out what significant event happened on the 9th of November.

      I was born.

    4. Re:Ok, seriously... enough with the Sept. 11 crap by MacAnkka · · Score: 2, Informative

      In the US, dates are written month first, day second. So 9/11 means 11th of september in the US. In pretty much the rest of the world, dates are written day first, month second. So 9/11 means 9th of November in the rest of the world. Thats the joke, if you didn't get it.

  22. Seeing it on the ISS by misterjava66 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could you imagine what it would be like to be on the ISS when the earth is destroyed by a LHC mbh.

    The earth would fold up, only a 1% consumption would be needed to make it impossible to land on the earth and survive, but if the earth all went in a few hours or less. wow. And with the angular momemtum of the earth, the mbh would have to rotate on the earth's axis and the mbh would send its radiation beams away from the iss so the iss could be survivable from that prospective. Also, the aero drag would be gone and so orbital reboost would not be needed. I wonder how long they could survive? Also, since the mass of the earth/mbh doesn't change, all those nasty time-drag effects won't happen at the orbital distance of the iss.

    It would make a nice sci-fi short story noir if a multi-year survival could be speculated.

    Regards.

  23. Obligatory... by Amorpheus_MMS · · Score: 2, Funny

    Prepare for unforseen consequences.

  24. Re:Notify the IEDAB by SamSim · · Score: 4, Funny

    If the Earth is completely destroyed, you will be the first to know.

  25. Re:its starcraft by LiquidFire_HK · · Score: 2, Informative

    No it's not. The Corsairs saying it is (very likely) in reference to the Warcraft II cheat code. Which, I'm guessing, is a reference to something else.

  26. Re:Timeline rewriting to begin shortly thereafter. by meringuoid · · Score: 2, Funny
    OR the timeline where you're the only non-cloned human left alive, surrounded by clones of your ex-girlfriend. Then you'll wish you didn't get on her bad side right before 'the accident'.

    OR the timeline where you're standing on the beach with one girl you never quite dared to ask out, watching bloody chunks of the 500-mile-tall version of the other girl you never quite dared to ask out fall back to earth, and everyone else has been dissolved into a global ocean of yellow goo.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  27. Was Brooke Shields a scientist? by wirefarm · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Want to know what gets between me and my Kelvins? Nothing"

    (I guess you will need to be an old fart like me to get that. Sorry.)

    --
    -- My Weblog.
  28. Seriously... by ESSBAND. · · Score: 2

    Can people here drop the inane "we're all gonna die" meme in regards to the LHC? It's not funny and it perpetuates some silly myth that the mainstream media can pick up on. I would like to think that /. is a little better than fark (is fark still around?); Isn't the readership here a bit more educated?

    Every LHC story has more "jokes" than any talk of potential new physics or any discussion on whether this beast will even work. It's a damn sight more complicated than any facility previously built, and even though I desperately want it to work, I have my doubts we'll see first collisions within the first year of operations.

    If the LHC is a failure, it essentially signals the end (in our lifetime, at least) of any more high-energy physics programs being pursued, especially in the US. The ILC has already been tabled pending first results from LHC.

  29. Sept. 10 is not really the starting date. by rasmack · · Score: 2, Informative

    That date is picked from the fact that the accelerator guys tell us they need two months from the end of the beam pipe bake-out (right about this weekend) to get "a circulating beam".

    Now, what does this mean?

    It means that there are good odds that they will be able to get at least one pilot bunch of protons in stable circulation by that date. We're not talking about the full ~3600 bunches and most important: There will be no beam in the other direction. IOW all we will be doing up until some time November is to do comissioning with beam-gas interactions (there is always residual gas in the beam pipe).

    If we're lucky we will have a few weeks of actual collisions this year. I don't want to think of the odds that they will be at anything approaching 10 TeV. 14 TeV is already out of the question due to a couple of bending magnets that can't sustain the current needed.

    This press release just shows that management want to report something big. In fact it would probably be better for the accelerator people to commision both beams at the same time but that would of course postpone the big party...

  30. what wories me most. by clone53421 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...is that you can't spell, and you're talking about antimatter and hydrogen bombs.

    --
    Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.