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Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Generates a 'Mini-Big Bang'

buildslave writes "The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a 'mini-Big Bang' by smashing together lead ions instead of protons. The scientists working at the enormous machine on the Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November. The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the center of the Sun."

9 of 570 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Next step... by imamac · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Last I checked they weren't mutually exclusive.

  2. Not a mini big bang... by dtjohnson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The title is misleading. The LHC did not create a mini 'big bang' but created a miniature of the conditions that might have existed shortly AFTER the big bang. The 'big bang' was the event that created all mass, space, and time in the entire universe in a single instant approximately 13.7 billion years ago. The LHC collision of lead ions did not create any mass, space, or time but did create a "hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma" that might have existed after the 'big bang' event.

  3. Re:Science Journalism by X0563511 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Frankly I don't give a shit who gets pissed off. The objective is scientific understanding, not pissing people off or not.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  4. Re:Science Journalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I believe you have that reversed. I've met plenty of religious fundamentalists who weren't anti-science loons... Can't say I've met / heard of any anti-science loons who are not religious fundamentalists.

  5. Re:Next step... by Hotawa+Hawk-eye · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if there is a God, and he isn't happy about us playing with creation?

    Then He/She/It/They shouldn't have created us with a brain that was capable of designing and a body capable of executing those experiments, or He/She/It/They should have kept an eye on us and smacked our hand if we tried. IMO deadbeat deities shouldn't get to wander back into our lives after a long absence without any clear communication with us and immediately get to dictate what we can and cannot do.

  6. Re:Science Journalism by Logic+and+Reason · · Score: 4, Insightful

    God made the universe 6000 years ago as if it were made much longer ago.

    That contradicts the idea that God does not deceive, which most Christians believe.

  7. Re:Science Journalism by joeyblades · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So your premise is that religion causes people to commit horrible acts? Is it not just possible that humans commit horrible acts all on their own and some merely use religion to justify their actions?

    Most religious people have never commited a horrible act... I think this alone refutes your premise.

    However, as further contra-evidence, I can think of many seriously horrible acts that were not done in the name of religion... the Holocaust, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Rwanda, 9/11/2001, (in)human medical experimentation through the ages... the list goes on.

    Let's face it. Humans have always and will continue to commit horrible acts and they will try to rationalize some justification for it, be it religion, or politics, or scientific advancement... If you believe that religion causes people to do bad things, then you really don't understand people... or religion.

  8. Re:Mini - Big ? by SETIGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's time axis is perpendicular to ours. From our point of view the new universe existed for an infinitesimal time. I don't think there's any way to tell how long it existed from its point of view.

    Please don't mod this insightful, I'm trying to be funny.

  9. Re:Science Journalism by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's people's morals - often based on or at least supported by what you blithely dismiss as "fiction" - that stop us from doing those sorts of things.

    Those of us that aren't sociopaths don't need religion to keep us from inflicting pain and suffering upon others. Those who are sociopaths use religion as an excuse as often as it prevents them from harming others.