LHC Flips On Tomorrow

BTJunkie writes "The Large Hadron Collider, the worlds most expensive science experiment, is set to be turned on tomorrow. We've discussed this multiple times already. A small group of people believe our world will be sucked into extinction (some have even sent death threats). The majority of us, however, won't be losing any sleep tonight." Reader WillRobinson notes that CERN researchers declared the final synchronization test a success and says, "The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made this Wednesday, Sept. 10 at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV). The start up time will be between (9:00 to 18:00 Zurich Time) (2:00 to 10:00 CDT) with live webcasts provided at webcast.cern.ch."

Comments

Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Drakin020]

I thought tomorrow was when they turned it on. I thought the end of the world was to happen when the first collision is made right?

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[AKAImBatman]

Correct. No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Paul Pierce]

The LHC won't be doing anything that isn't already happening in the upper atmosphere due to cosmic rays anyway.

This is true, but what if watching what is going on - changes what happens? Isn't this one of the mysteries of quantum physics?

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[g0bshiTe]

Clearly this should be a larger event than the Blackhole of Goatse

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

...but what if watching what is going on - changes what happens?

Only if the LHC is propelling cats.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[nawcom]

Microscopic black holes would evaporate in a very small amount of time due to Hawking radiation...they would leave a detectable energy signature so that we could tell they were there, but that's about it.

I'm sorry, I can't stop laughing when someone references Hawking radiation; I immediately think of Stephen ripping a cute sounding fart and everyone running out of the room due to the overwhelming odor - and then speaking in his computer synthesized voice, "Pardon me. I never can control those unexpected SbDs."

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[CorSci81]

The Large Hairball Collider?

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Directrix1]

With any luck these tests will finally let Schrodinger's cat rest in peace. Never again having to exist in the zombirific dead and alive state.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

...I immediately think of Stephen ripping a cute sounding fart...

...

...Wow, I think this is the first time I've genuinely been weirded out by someone on Slashdot... Um, congrats?

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[chihowa]

If *that* were a problem we'd already be

Oh crap, it was a problem!

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[sexconker]

No - the scientists would poke at it and huddle around it and such like idiots.

Let's poke it with tiny probes and see what happens.

It grows.

Let's spray some water at it and watch the mist get sucked in.

It grows.

Let's put our faces near it and watch it stretch our lips and ears out.

It swallows a scientist, and grows.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[flosofl]

With any luck these tests will finally let Schrodinger's cat rest in peace. Never again having to exist in the zombirific dead and alive state.

With the speeds involved I think it's safe to say it will exist as a thin film of... cat. 27km long.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[atlastiamborn]

Well, it's true what they say: "longcat is long".

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[7 digits]

The guy in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt1Yo610lG0 explains it all.

Yes, it is a STARGATE TO HELL ! Doom fans, rejoice ! Happy ! Happy !

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics is always more fun when cats are involved. /me readies his catapult

FOR SCIENCE!!!

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

From what I've read, any debate with Rossler quickly leads to him promoting his own pet theories, rather than any rational examination of the risks.

No, no, you don't understand. Nutcases like this know that a thorough understanding of their enlightened pseudoscience is fundamental to any rational examination of the risks. They're trying to help you. Really.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Linker3000]

Big ba-da-boom

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[RDW]

I like Terry Pratchett's take on this sort of 'low risk' experiment (from 'The Science of Discworld'):

"Well ... in the unlikely event of it going seriously wrong, it ... wouldn't just blow up the university, sir."

"What would it blow up, pray?"

"Er ... everything, sir."

"Everything there is, you mean?"

"Within a radius of about fifty thousand miles out into space, sir, yes. According to Hex it'd happen instantaneously. We wouldn't even know about it."

"And the odds of this are...?"

"About fifty to one, sir."

The wizards relaxed.

"That's pretty safe. I wouldn't bet on a horse at those odds," said the Senior Wrangler.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[TheNarrator]

I kind of like this LHC doom.

It's not the kind of doom where people tell you the best thing you can do about it is to buy MREs, take a gun out into the mountains, bug out and prepare to defend your MREs from hungry zombies for the next six months.

Personally, I think the best response is probably PANIC SEX!!!

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Metasquares]

No, that one was using 32 bit variables for Unix timestamps.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[c6gunner]

Moderation sucks. This should be moderated.

Moderate: +5: Quoted Susan Ivanova. or +5: Babylon 5 reference.

The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

"'Scuse me Egon? You said crossing the streams was bad!"

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Khyber]

Even I have had some crackpot ideas, some probably more fu*ked than this video. Like how we can explain past lives by analyzing the energy memory.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[tambo]

Packed into a single proton?? Yep, a little scared.

No, no, it's perfectly safe. They're just going to have Gordon move the sample into the test chamber...

- David Stein

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[tambo]

I didn't know that one person could have so many crackpot ideas.

Presumably you've never visited Time Cube before... it's a whole 'nother level of crazy. Just one visit will permanently destroy your ability to be surprised by anyone's level of insanity.

- David Stein

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[JosKarith]

Right. So, cockroaches plus immense levels of gamma radiation is no cause for alarm..? Man I'm sure glad Stan never hired you.

Uh oh

[FauxPasIII]

Everyone out of the universe... QUICK!

Re:Uh oh

[somersault]

Reader WillRobinson notes.. 450 GeV (0.45 TeV) .. Zurich .. live webcasts ..

Someone should inform him of the DANGER!

Death threats

[Hatta]

Why would you send death threats to someone you think is going to destroy the world? If he was afraid of dying, he wouldn't be destroying the world, right?

Re:Death threats

[xstonedogx]

No kidding. We should be saving our death threats for where they matter: idle.slashdot.org.

End Of The World Party

[realisticradical]

You're all invited to my end of the world party tonight. LSD and hookers will be served.

Re:End Of The World Party

[moderatorrater]

So, since I am neither a hooker nor LSD, I'll have to get my own drinks?

Re:End Of The World Party

[budgenator]

I'll chip in towards that, here's a check.

It's going to be OK they said

[atari2600]

No possibility of a resonance cascade they said. Put the crystal thing into the spectrometer they said. The whole thing blew up my place of employment and I started Unforeseen Consequences with nothing but a crowbar for a while.

Moral: Keep your crowbars close and your guns closer and don't trust the scientists.

Re:It's going to be OK they said

[EvanED]

You say that as a joke, but it may be more likely than you think.

Re:It's going to be OK they said

[Anachragnome]

I like how the guy seems to be regarding the "instructions" taped to the LHC with some amusement.

You know, the ones that were taped over some OTHER scientists note(and with seemingly opposite instructions, note the opposing arrows), and with "danger" tape to make it more "official".

Re:It's going to be OK they said

[kramulous]

But you know these crazy scientists ... they're all having a snigger because they swapped the instructions when he wasn't looking.

warping reality already

[Onymous Coward]

The weirdness has already begun if 9:00 to 18:00 Zurich Time is 2:00 to 10:00 CDT.

Am I the only one hoping for...

[Paul Pierce]

A superhero or two coming out of this. I just hope it isn't someone from that LHC Rap.

Groundhog's day

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is off topic, but...

Jeez, you know I'm tired of seeing the same set of stories over and over again.

It's as if some catastrophic event happened that causes the same day to repeat over and over-- does anybody have any idea what could have caused this?

IMPENDING DOOM!!

[4D6963]

We're doomed!! Oh God, I can't die a virgin! Virgins may all go to heaven, but only to get screwed by Muslim terrorists!

Re:IMPENDING DOOM!!

[BlackSnake112]

I just got a picture of a terrorist entering heaven and 100 male geeks are there waiting for the terrorist.

Terrorist: "These are not the virgins I was thinking of"

"They're waiting for, Gordon, in the test chamber.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intercom 1: (feedback)"Testing, testing. (coughs) Everything seems to
be in order."
Intercom 2: "All right, Gordon. your suit should keep you comfortable
through all this. The specimen will be delivered to you in a few
moments. If you would be so good as to climb up and start the rotors,
we can bring the anti-mass spectrometer to 80 percent and hold it there
until the carrier arrives.
Intercom 2: "Gordon, are you not hearing me? Climb up and start the
rotors, please.
Intercom 2: "Very good. We'll take it from here."
Intercom 1: "Power to stage 1 emitters in 3,2,1. I'm seeing predictable
phase arrays."
Intercom 1: "Stage 2 emitters activating...now."
Intercom 2: "Gordon, we cannot predict how long the system can operate
at this level, nor how long the readings will take. Please, work as
quickly as you can."
Intercom 1: "Overhead capacitors to one oh five percent. Uh, it's
probably not a problem, probably, but I'm showing a small discrepancy
in... well, no, it's well within acceptable bounds again. Sustaining
sequence."
Intercom 2: "I've just been informed that the sample is ready, Gordon.
It should be coming up to you any moment now. Look to the delivery
system for your specimen."

Time to get to work...

[Pedrito]

I need to hurry up and finish work on my black-hole shelter...

the world is not going to end

[JeanBaptiste]

I owe far too much money for that to ever happen.

0.45 TeV

[swillden]

Shouldn't that be 0.439 TeV? (450 GeV / 1024)

Explains the silence, they all did it before...

[4D6963]

Coming to think of it, maybe that's why it's so hard to detect alien civilisations similar to us in the universe. We only have the tiny window of time between when they discover radio transmission and until they make their LHC and wipe themselves out.

Remember what we were taught?

[No2Gates]

Back in the old days of the cold war, in the schools,for preparation of a nuclear bomb falling, we would get under our desks because they are obviously made of some kind of material that can withstand radiation and a giant percussion wave. I'll bet those desks can withstand the LHC black hole too. Only school children and teachers will be left.

Re:Remember what we were taught?

[c6gunner]

It could also be argued that the aim was to get everyone used to living in constant fear/panic...

Yes, it could. It could also be argued that the aim was to prepare future interns for service under the desk of Bill Clinton.

Just because an argument COULD be made, doesn't mean it should. If you truly think that your suggestion is a rational one, I'm willing to bet you'd feel right at home with those weirdos from ANSWER.

Come on scientists, seriously...

[Tetsujin]

You guys can't blow up the Earth! It's where I keep all my stuff!

Re:Come on scientists, seriously...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complains and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now.

Let's make another bang

[GreggBz]

Quick, who wants to get laid? My standards have dropped considerably, given the circumstances.

Re:Let's make another bang

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you bring the shovels, I'll pick you up in my car, say, midnight?

Re:Let's make another bang

[fireforadrymouth]

Now you just have to wait for a substantial drop in their standards (and hope they aren't already too busy getting it on).

The best laid plans...

In the precious words of C for Dummies

[nategoose]

Goodbye cruel world!

More likely it will punch a hole in the

[BitterOldGUy]

Universe and we'll be in an alternate reality.

You'll know it too. You'll wake up one day with a Black President or with an old geezer and a MILF for a VP.

Then, and only then, will I worry!

Re:More likely it will punch a hole in the

[RubberChainsaw]

At least I'll get to have a cool goatee.

Regular status updates can be found here:

[garethw]

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

Re:Regular status updates can be found here:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

Don't forget the RSS feed:
http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/rss.xml

Re:Regular status updates can be found here:

[martinw89]

The source for that page is hilarious:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <title>Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet?</title>
  <!-- the first person to ask for an RSS feed gets a free black hole in their junk

ok FINE here
-->

<link rel="alternate" title="Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet?" href="http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" />
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
</head>

<body style="text-align: center; padding-top: 200px;">

  <span style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 120pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-decoration: none; color: black;"  >NO</span>

<!-- oh shit bears -->

<!--
[ddrucker@scatter ~]$ host -t txt freon.3e.org
freon.3e.org descriptive text "Anesthetized monkeys exposed to 25,000
ppm or 50,000 ppm [of freon] for 5 minutes had [cardiac] [arrhythmia]s
including [tachycardia] and decreased contractility (U.S. EPA 1983)"

-->

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-143825-2");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
</body>
</html>

Re:Regular status updates can be found here:

[Surt]

You missed the comment
<!-- oh shit bears -->
Go look up how that is to be rendered in the html4 spec in the event of the earth's destruction.

Cyclical

[caluml]

Perhaps this is the end of the cycle. Perhaps, this is how our universe was created. And so, every X billion years, we get smart enough, disintegrate the universe, and have to start all over again, evolving from slime.
Perhaps real intelligence will know *not* to switch it on in a few more cycles of this.

Well, it's been nice knowing you all. I'm just off to steal some Porsches (no Ferarri garages nearby), and loot, and plunder booty.

I think we should ask reader WillRobinson

[spun]

Can you tell us if there is any DANGER! DANGER WILLROBINSON!

Re:I think we should ask reader WillRobinson

[WillRobinson]

Did you see my robot flailing its arms around? Was it screaming danger! danger!?

No not yet as noted above on the amount of energy used. Ill be sure to let ya know when its necessary.

As reported by CERN announced the success of the second and final test of the Large Hadron Collider's beam synchronization systems which will allow the LHC operations team to inject the first beam into the LHC.

Some very cool pictures there too. Now what they mean, is a bit beyond my skills.

Now if I could just get that LHC song out of my head ...

Re:I think we should ask reader WillRobinson

[Plutonite]

Check out the youtube comments on the video you linked to. Much more entertaining than the video.

chrisROFL65 (2 minutes ago)

We are fucked. Fuck you scientist and youtube.

Just in case

[coren2000]

In case of doomsday tomorrow... I hereby leave all my worldly possessions to the blackhole that will claim everything and kill us all.

Re:Most expensive science experiment ever?

[verbamour]

I'm just mad that the Europeans are going to beat us to destroying the Earth.

What every happened to America #1?

It would server them damn Europeans right if the LHC _didn't_ destroy the Earth and we managed to do it with Global Warming (sorry, Global Climate Change) instead. Ah, they'd probably just hide out in their circular tunnel, tweaking their precious proton stream until they got it right... ...stupid geniuses...

Re:honestly,

[moderatorrater]

plenty of wives and girlfriends would like one good bonk before then as well

They'll probably want to take care of their headache and get a good night of sleep more if their past reactions are any indication.

The anthropic princiiple strikes again

[jake-in-a-box]

At least in this instantiation of the multiverse, nothing universe-destroying will happen. There will undoubtedly be many - perhaps an infinite number - that will be destroyed. But since I will be telling you I told you so, ipso facto it didn't happen here.

Else we'll never know - nor care.

The world has ended - the Internet says so!

[Anonymous Coward]

I followed the posted link (http://webcast.cern.ch/), but the screen is blank, so I'm assuming the world has ended - or at least the other side of it - as a result of a man-made black hole :-) I'm hoping the black hole has finished it's vengeance against mankind in the northern hemisphere and doesn't decide to go south for the winter (or is that summer?).

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

can't wait for Large amounts of Herbal Cannabis to be produced from this experiment. Isn't that what LHC means?

Don't worry...

[Panaflex]

LHC has all the latest safety systems... in the event of an actual black hole or strangelet event...

they simply full the lever and hit the button!!

It says.. "Black Hole/Stranglet CRASH button - In case of imminent world destruction, break glass and press CMS ABORT button"
(Yes, that's really in the LHC control room LOL)

Time loop

[Samah]

Damn it you insensitive clods, we're stuck in a time loop!
Somehow I was immune to its effects and have been reliving this day over and over and over, at least 100 times now!
I've been watching Groundhog Day and 12:01 to try to work out what's happening and how I can stop it but... oh crap here it goes ag~~~

Video's Down Already - Black Hole Successful

[billstewart]

Either that, or they're just slashdotted...