A few good quotes should speak volumes more than anything I could say on the issues so:
quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
On The LHC
"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator located at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. It lies in a tunnel under France and Switzerland."
"When activated, it is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and "missing links" in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass."
Have a looky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CMS_Higgs-event.jpg
Cool!
"Concerns have been raised that performing collisions at previously unexplored energies might unleash new and disastrous phenomena. These include the production of micro black holes, and strangelets, potentially resulting in a doomsday scenario."
Some quotes from the CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) Homepage: http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html
On LHC Computing:
"When the LHC begins operations, it will produce roughly 15 petabytes [annually]"
15,000 Terabytes! with a backup held on tape at CERN. So if anyone tells you tape is out again.
The information will be sent out using "The Grid" which supports 1 gigabytes per second. Not Gb/s, GB/s. That's 10,000 times faster than the net. More here: http://gridcafe.web.cern.ch/gridcafe/" CERN employs just around 2500 people. The Laboratory�s scientific and technical staff designs and builds the particle accelerators and ensures their smooth operation. They also help prepare, run, analyse and interpret the data from complex scientific experiments.
Some 8000 visiting scientists, half of the world�s particle physicists, come to CERN for their research. They represent 580 universities and 85 nationalities. "
So they're saying that the LHC goes live this year. They want to work out what causes mass. Its about slaming proton into protons and creating bosons or something. What they seem to be focused on it understanding why gravity is such a weak force. There's something called a Standard Model ("The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory that describes three of the four known fundamental interactions between the elementary particles that make up all matter." from wiki)
Its a lot to taken in especially if you're not from a physics or maths background. There's no doubt something very big is around the corner. Thoughts, more, questions, answers, more??? I don't know, share.|||Yeah, I read an article about people protesting the LHC (I think it was the LHC, I get all those acronyms confused) being created because there were still concerns it could create a singularity and destroy the planet.
Reminds me of that old urban legend that scientists at the time of the Manhattan Project were still uncertain of whether or not an atomic chain reaction would continue in the atmosphere and destroy the earth. So they tested it.|||The stuff about strange matter and black holes is scary, to say the least. Two different ways to annihilate life on Earth.|||Quote:
The stuff about strange matter and black holes is scary, to say the least. Two different ways to annihilate life on Earth.
I read somewhere that physicists were fairly sure that if strangelets existed, they would have turned the Moon to strange matter long ago. Micro black holes should evaporate due to Hawking radiation.
EDIT: Here's a link on that first part.
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910333|||Did the OP make his post hard to read on purpose?|||I don't think the matter of Hawking radiation has yet been settled.|||You want scary. Ok - regarding strangelets creation.
"one strangelet hits a nucleus, catalyzing its immediate conversion to strange matter. This liberates energy, producing a larger, more stable strangelet, which in turn hits another nucleus, catalyzing its conversion to strange matter. In the end, all the nuclei of all the atoms of Earth are converted, and Earth is reduced to a hot, large lump of strange matter.
This is not a concern for strangelets in cosmic rays, because they are produced far from Earth and have had time to decay to their ground state, which is predicted by most (though not all [11]) models to be positively charged, so they are electrostatically repelled by nuclei, and would rarely merge with them [12][13]. But high-energy collisions could produce negatively charged strangelet states which live long enough to interact with the nuclei of ordinary matter [14]." From Wiki
Notice the 'high-energy' collisions bit, aka LHC. Not that I'm trying to scare the crapeazes outta-ya.|||Quote:
I don't think the matter of Hawking radiation has yet been settled.
Yeah, it hasn't. I don't really know much more than what I've read about this stuff in various articles, I'm just relaying what people much smarter than I have said on the matter.|||Quote:
Did the OP make his post hard to read on purpose?
Did you read it "Large Hardon Collider" too?|||I've always been interested in the "particle zoo", I think it's cool beans.
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