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.

[Akaihiryuu]

I don't understand the whole "miniature black hole" thing. I think the naysayers have just been reading too much sci-fi. 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. The LHC won't be doing anything that isn't already happening in the upper atmosphere due to cosmic rays anyway.

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.

[chissg]

No boom tomorrow either:

"First beam circulated" != "First collisions"

Also, beam will be circulated at injection energy (450GeV) and not accelerated to the design collision energy. Even if they did circulate beam in both directions *and collide them* (a separate activity) the total energy of collision would still be less that half of what the tevatron at Fermilab, USA, has been doing for many years. If *that* were a problem we'd already be

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.

[CorSci81]

The Large Hairball Collider?

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[omnivagus]

It's an odd coincidence that Dan Simmons, in his Hyperion Cantos series of books, talks about an event called the "Big Mistake of '08" where humanity creates a tiny black hole during a scientific experiment, eventually leading to the destruction of Earth... Of course he doesn't say which century this was in ;-)

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.

[timholman]

I don't understand the whole "miniature black hole" thing. I think the naysayers have just been reading too much sci-fi. 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. The LHC won't be doing anything that isn't already happening in the upper atmosphere due to cosmic rays anyway.

One of the main fearmongers concerning the LHC is Otto Rossler. He's a 68-year-old biochemist whose initial career was respected and conventional, but in recent years has veered into promoting his own "Theory of Everything" that contradicts the Theory of Relativity. According to Rossler, (a) Hawking radiation doesn't exist, and (b) microscopic black holes created by cosmic rays are moving so fast that they pass right through the earth, whereas LHC black holes will be trapped by earth's gravity and destroy the planet.

What's really happening is that Rossler and others like him are using the LHC as a soapbox to promote their particular brands of pseudoscience. 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.

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.

[philspear]

Microscopic black holes would evaporate in a very small amount of time due to Hawking radiation..

Are you willing to gamble the existence of the universe on that untested hypothesis? Yes?

By the way, every biology article gets tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong?" An article showing that artificial DNA self-associates was tagged that. No chance of killer viruses from that, yet it got the tag. Here we have a scientific study with some people actually claiming it will end the earth. They may be idiots, but people who worry about DNA strands creating vampires like in I am legend are just as idiotic. What gives?

I personally say it's only because no movies have yet taken the idea of LHC and mangled it into nonsense to use as a plot device the way they've used killer artificial viruses. And that's probably only because "complete oblitheration of the world" is a pretty boring plot.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[fermion]

The naysayers retort is that no one ever has seen Hawking radiation. My retort is that we are afraid that a black hole, which is only a theoretical construct that requires that certain constructs go to infinity, is not being evaporated by Hawking radiation, which coincidentally is another theoretical construct which requires theoretical virtual particles to theoretically become real. If one fanciful theoretical object cannot be eliminated by another fanciful theoretical object, then all my education through bad science fiction is for naught. In the end, right before we are destroyed, we can take solace in knowing two things. First, that black holes are real. Second, that Hawking radiation is not. Sometimes scientific proof comes at a great price.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[TheDauthi]

The fear is that the LHC is doing one thing differently - any black holes created in the upper atmosphere would have a velocity approaching that of light, and pass harmlessly through the earth, grabbing a proton or two on the way. At the LHC, it's possible that some of the holes created would have a much lower velocity - less than escape velocity. Those holes wouldn't just leave earth, they'd stick around.

First, we actually have to be in the right range to create the black holes. This is very, very unlikely - it requires large extra dimensions, something allowed for but not expected in theory.

Then there's Hawking radiation. While there's no reason to believe it doesn't exist (and several to believe it does), it hasn't been experimentally verified. If it doesn't exist, or if a black hole radiates much slower than expected, any created holes could survive long enough to actually absorb more matter.

This PDF has the interesting math behind all of this.

Note: No, I'm not even saying they're right. I'm simply stating what their argument is for it. There's a lot of problems with those arguments, and I'm on the "destroy the world? Yeah, right?" side. I'm actually having an LHC get-together tomorrow night, and plan to have an Mad Scientist "End of the World" party on October 21, when they're having the first high-energy collisions.

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.

[kylemonger]

I don't understand the whole "miniature black hole" thing. I think the naysayers have just been reading too much sci-fi. Microscopic black holes would evaporate in a very small amount of time due to Hawking radiation.

Yes, if Hawking is right about the radiation. But suppose he's wrong? Or worse, suppose in our attempt to recreate conditions similar to those around the time of the Big Bang, we actually recreate the Big Bang? That's one answer to the Fermi Paradox.

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.

[asCii88]

That's exactly what I was going to say. And I will also add:

"Collisions" != "Boom"

But I think I'll still be flagged as Redundant

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]

Even if they don't evaporate, black holes don't produce a stronger gravitational field than other objects of the same mass. As long as the law of conservation of matter holds (or even if the amount of matter in the LHC triples) we should be fine.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[vena]

wikipedia is wrong or was edited for hilarity. in the books, it's actually "big mistake of '38"

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[omnivagus]

wikipedia is wrong or was edited for hilarity. in the books, it's actually "big mistake of '38"

Actually, I performed that edit, but it's the '38 that's wrong. I was just reading The Rise of Endymion last night, and it clearly says "Big Mistake of '08", page 92, near the bottom. And that's coming from the AI on the Consul's ship, so it ought to be reliable ;-)

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[budgenator]

Does he explain how a proton is going to acquire enough mass into a small enough radius to turn into a blackhole without using lorenz transformations, E=mC^2 and relativistic weirdness?

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[omnivagus]

Apparently Simmons is not consistent!

5 occurrences of "Big Mistake of '08" in Rise of Endymion.

2 occurrences of "Big Mistake of '08" in Endymion.

1 occurrence of "Big Mistake of '38" in Fall of Hyperion.

No references to any year in Hyperion.

It looks like '08 is the clear winner.

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.

[Tmack]

No boom tomorrow either:

"First beam circulated" != "First collisions"

I duno, when the beam needs a Dump Block consisting of an 8M long, 10ton graphite rod encased in 1000 tons of concrete, and even then has to be directed around in a pattern to keep from burning through it because it is "capable of melting a 500-kilogram block of copper," Id say boom possible, but not likely. I just wouldnt want to be in the tunnels with something like that racing around held in place by magnets, if one nearby turns off, BOOM you either turn into the incredible hulk, get zapped off to another world or simply vaporized like that 500kg block of copper.

tm

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[TheDauthi]

It would take an absurdly long time for it to get to a macroscopic scale. Just because it's a black hole doesn't mean it's going to just suck everything up. In fact, if it were a charged, stable, non-massive black hole, it can go for quite some time without absorbing matter, simply because of how weak gravity is compared to the other forces. The gravity of a single proton is still going very weak compared to that of its charge.

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.

[bugeaterr]

Mod the above as +10 Informative since most news outlets completely missed this point in their coverage.

The *actual* doomsday will occur when the first collisions occur in one to two months.

Much cooler than a black hole would be Death By Strangelet

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[fishbowl]

I always ask for the CV of whoever calls Sen. Obama "inexperienced."
They always make excuses, rather than disclose their own position from which they criticize.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[hardburn]

Don't say that. Just keep quiet and when we're all still alive on Thursday, the naysayers will just go away.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[reverseengineer]

A counter to the argument that any subatomic black holes the LHC produces would behave differently than those produced in cosmic ray collisions in the upper atmosphere is the existence of neutron stars. Cosmic rays are constantly colliding with these objects as well.

Neutron stars present a gravity well surpassed only by that of black holes, so even subatomic black holes moving at relativistic velocities are likely to be pulled in. The densities of neutron stars are such that if it is indeed possible for a subatomic black hole to grow to macroscale by encountering nearby matter, there would be no place likelier. After billions of years of cosmic ray bombardment, one should expect at the very least to find lots of black holes with masses between the Chandrasehkar and Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limits (roughly, between 1.4 and 3.0 solar masses), implying that these events are the ultimate fate of neutron stars.

That is not what is observed however; there are in fact no known black holes with masses in that regime, while there are a lot of neutron stars. And it would take much longer than the current lifetime of the universe for a 2 solar mass black hole to evaporate by Hawking radiation, so if they were ever made, they should still be around.

So either subatomic black holes are not produced in energetic collisions of cosmic rays, which is good news because those energies are far greater than what the LHC will produce, or subatomic black holes very, very rarely or never survive to consume massive objects, which is also good news.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[extrasolar]

Are you willing to gamble the existence of the universe on that untested hypothesis? Yes?

Sure, you could reply to this post thinking that nothing will go wrong; but are you really willing to gamble the existence of the universe on this untested hypothesis?

See, that's the problem with this whole line of reasoning: the idea that as the conception of danger increases, the less risk we are allowed to afford. And since everything has some risk, there is, afterall, all kinds of things we don't know anything about; and for all you know responding to this very post may bring about the end of the universe.

But the problem is that any actual risk doesn't need to be demonstrated, and apologists are left with the burden of proving a negative: that running the LHC won't bring about the end of the universe. That's why this is a fallacy, but it works in the same way all scare campaigns work: it affects the primitive part of the brain.

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.

[darkmeridian]

This is really the big problem here: we like to imagine black holes as object that suck everything in, but that's only true of black holes that have star-level masses. A black hole sounds impressive until you realize it could weigh as much as a proton. At that scale, it's gravitational pull isn't really going to be big enough to be a big deal on the femtoscale. And at that collapsed size, there is no reason that it will go and contact anything it can suck in.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[Ceriel Nosforit]

Nobody is in the tunnel while the beam is on, except cockroaches. Since the particles are moving in a circle they are as if accelerating constantly and consequently they as charged particles constantly give off radiation, in the gamma range somewhere. The whole tunnel is constantly bathed in lethal levels of radiation.

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.

Re:Not supposed to be dooms day yet.

[winnabago]

Found at your Wikipedia link:

A detailed analysis [18] concluded that the RHIC collisions were comparable to ones which naturally occur as cosmic rays traverse the solar system, so we would already have seen such a disaster if it were possible. RHIC has been operating since 2000 without incident.

Phew! I was worried that I overslept and missed the Strangelet singularity! Talk about stating the obvious.

Wikipedia: -1 Redundant

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they're dumb.

Re:Death threats

[xstonedogx]

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

Re:Death threats

[sexconker]

Insightful?

Logical fallacy is fallacious.

A threatens B because A believes B's experiments will destroy the world. B believes this is not the case.

There is no indication that B does not fear death.
B most likely falls in line with the general stance on death - B probably doesn't want to die.

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.

Only in a single direction

[rminsk]

They will be only sending a beam around the LHC in a single direction at about 7% power. It will be about a month before they send a beam in the other direction and have a collision. I think it is about a year before they will be up to full power.

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.

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.

Wasn't this already covered by Ghostbusters?

[repapetilto]

Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you. Dr. Peter Venkman: What? Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams. Dr. Peter Venkman: Why? Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad. Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"? Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal. Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

Re:Wasn't this already covered by Ghostbusters?

[repapetilto]

Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

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.

Re:Remember what we were taught?

[Michael Spencer Jr.]

I didn't miss the joke -- I LOL'ed, I promise -- but speaking as a CERT instructor: you were told to get under your desks not to protect against a blast near enough to cause vaporization, but to protect against a possible collapse of a building damaged by an otherwise-non-lethal pressure wave. Yes of course if the bomb detonates right above you, you're toast, and if the bomb detonates far enough away that the pressure wave can't cause building damage then you're cowering under your desk for nothing. For the huge chunk of distance-from-ground-zero in between those two extremes, though, your chance of surviving a building collapse is much greater if you have a personal void to hide inside -- like the area under a desk. That's why your 'nuclear bomb drill' and your 'tornado drill' are so similar: you are increasing your odds of survival, being successfully located and extracted by search and rescue teams, in the event that part of your building collapses.

Re:Remember what we were taught?

[Kirth Gersen]

Parent is correct: I have often considered making the same points whenever the whole "duck and cover" thing is discussed.

However, he leaves out the issues of flash and broken glass, which are even more likely to create a survivability opportunity over a wide radius than building collapse. Being under a desk is a simple rule of thumb for minimizing those injury modes.

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

[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.

For Sydney Slashdotters

[femto]

Doctors Karl Kruszelnicki and Kevin Varvell are giving an LHC lecture at the University of Sydney tonight. 7pm at the Footbridge Theatre. Varvell is a contributor to the ATLAS detector. Kruszelnicki is always fun. It includes a live cross to CERN. The lecture was to be in the school of Physics but has had to be transferred to a larger venue due to popular demand.

Radio 4 coverage in the UK

[mustafap]

For some reason, the BBC are making a big thing of this, and providing a lot of coverage and related programmes on the Radio 4 station.

The BBC provide a listen again service for those of you who are distant but interested. Check out the programmes here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/

Assuming that the world isn't swallowed up by a black hole from the experiment, that is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15risk.html

Most expensive science experiment ever?

[thermopile]

Look, I think the LHC is really cool -- and I'm looking forward to the results it produces -- but I'm afraid it's not the most expensive science project.

The International Space Station gets that (dis)honor, with an estimated cost of $25.6B (US) from 1994 to 2005, not including shuttle costs - and that's just NASA's budget.

So, from that perspective, the LHC is a bargain. And it's probably still cheap compared to what the Superconducting SuperCollider would have ended up costing.

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:Most expensive science experiment ever?

[sidyan]

For its first 12 years, The ISS has been/will be an engineering project first, a science facility second (with the unending stream of budget cuts and cost overruns invariably being held against the science part). Only when the crew size is increased to 6, after the delivery and outfitting of Node Three, will sufficient crew time be available for science to take the forefront of ISS operations.

Even disregarding the ISS, ITER could give the LHC a good run for its money in the cost department, though it's not expected to begin operations for another 10 years.

Regular status updates can be found here:

[garethw]

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

Re:Regular status updates can be found here:

[skuzzlebutt]

Thankfully, there is an RSS feed so you know in real-time if the Earth has been destroyed:

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/rss.xml

But, what if the end of the world affects my DSL? Is there an option for SMS?

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.

Have the nuts not noticed?

[damburger]

Aside from the idiocy of the conspiracy theorists in general, they seemed to have missed the point that if the beam is at 450GeV, then the collision will be 900GeV and that doesn't exceed the energy of the most powerful currently active accelerator (the Tevatron). Even if the 14TeV collisions ultimately envisioned were going to create a micro black hole and end the Earth, it wouldn't happen tomorrow anyway.

Fermi Paradox?

[gumpish]

Is this the answer to the Fermi paradox?

If, given the expected number of star systems with planets capable of supporting life (which although may be a low percentage of stars still isn't nil), and given that evolution eventually results in intelligence (or at least there's a decent probability it does), then there should be plenty of other intelligent civilizations (certainly including post-Singularity civilizations). But there (apparently) aren't.

So either we're first, out of all those star systems...

Or just perhaps intelligent civilizations all eventually delve into the field of particle physics and build colliders... then wink out of existence in spontaneous black holes.

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: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.

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~~~

Obligatory Car Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a road that goes in a circle.

Now, tomorrow, they're going to put ONE CAR on the road
and drive it moderately fast to make sure the road is intact.

Then they will proceed, in future tests, to drive that ONE CAR
faster and faster around the circular road to make sure the road holds up.

On "collision day", the add a SECOND CAR driving in the
OPPOSITE DIRECTION on that circular road.

Then they drive those two cars REALLY REALLY FAST and crash them head-on
into each other.

The point is to try to understand the cars and how they are put together
by analyzing the parts that go flying off in the collision, and the speed
and direction that those parts went flying.

Re:Obligatory Car Analogy

[Permutation Citizen]

The point is to try to understand the cars and how they are put together
by analyzing the parts that go flying off in the collision, and the speed
and direction that those parts went flying.

Actually, they expect to obtain from the collision.
  - Three bicycles
  - one motor bike
  - An amazing big truck nobody has seen yet !

The truck will move about 10 meters then explode in several vehicules that will be analysed.

Re:That's just great.

[Spacezilla]

Informative? Well, I suppose his did tell us his birthday. My birthday is February 24th, 1980. Now mod me up!

Video's Down Already - Black Hole Successful

[billstewart]

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

Particles of far higher energies occur naturally

[richard.cs]

Has anyone here read about the "Oh-My-God particle"? A proton detected in 1991 with an energy of 3.2±0.9×10^20 eV - that's 51 Joules, an energy you'd expect for a macroscopic object and 10 million times more than the maximum the LHC can produce (7 Tev).

The linked page has some of the relativistic properties calculated for that proton including that "After traveling one light year, the particle would be only 0.15 femtoseconds -- 46 nanometres -- behind a photon that left at the same time."

Re: A small group of people...

[Msdose]

The physicists are basing their experiments on concepts such as supersymmetry, phase change, gauge theory etc. These are not things that are well understood and defined enough to be called laws of nature. The experiments based on them are very speculative. Other better understood laws of nature such as evolution, genetics, and anthropology are not given any weight when considering the consequences of the experiments. Evolution would suggest that the universe exists now as the current iteration of a long series of universes, each recycled from the last in some process perhaps similar to the LHC experiments. The history of the world is ten thousand religions leading their people to extinction in religious wars. Their policies of eugenics breed zombies who want to die and take the whole world with them. Pack a lunch!