Big Experiment Underway - Stage 1 Successful

Last edited by Codename 47 on Wed Sep 10, 2008 1:35 pm, edited 3 times in total.

SCIENTISTS are trying to stop the most powerful experiment ever – saying the black holes it will create could destroy the world.
Dubbed by some the Doomsday test, it will be carried out next week in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located 300ft underground near the French-Swiss border.

The machine is 17 miles long and cost £4.4billion to create.

When its switch is pulled on September 10, this atom-smasher will become a virtual time machine, revealing what happened when the universe came into existence 14 billion years ago.

New particles of matter are expected to be discovered, new dimensions found beyond the four known, as scientists re-create conditions in the first BILLIONTHS of a second after the Big Bang.

The atom smasher ... the 17-mile-long machine that some fear will destroy our planet
Experts even predict that millions of tiny black holes will be produced — baby brothers of the monsters gobbling up dust and stars at the heart of the galaxies.

Secrets
That is why boffins are now trying to stop the project with a last-ditch challenge in the courts.

They fear the LHC experimenters are tinkering with the unknown and putting mankind — and our whole planet — at risk.

The group responsible for the experiment, the European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN), says that these mini black holes will vanish as quickly as they are created.

But the anti-CERN brigade accuse the scientists of playing God, warning that no one can guarantee that the black holes will not survive, rapidly growing in size to suck the Earth out of existence in an instant.

But CERN, which includes several UK scientists, say their work is vital to unlock the secrets of matter that forms everything known in the universe.

In the experiment, atomic particles will be fired in opposite directions along the 17-mile long underground ring — the length of the Circle Line on the London Underground.

They will travel so fast that they make 11,245 trips around the tunnel every SECOND.

From the collisions, boffins expect to discover a fundamental bit of the atom, called the Higgs boson, that is expected to exist but which has never been seen.

Professor Otto Rossler, from the Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen in Germany, is one of the scientists mounting the legal challenge at the European Court of Human Rights against 20 countries which are funding the project.

He said: “It is quite plausible that these little black holes will survive and will grow and eat the planet from the inside out.”

A CERN spokesman said: “It will not be producing anything that does not already happen routinely in nature.”

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fe ... 630897.ece

Just read about this in todays sun. Is this one science experiment gone too far or integral to learning about our universe? Is this another case of man playing god?

What ever the answer(i personally think they should leave well enough alone) they better bloody know what they're doing. That said the world enging by being sucked into a black hole is way more excting than being hit by an astroid or global warming.

Here's what happens in the unlikely even this goes wrong big time. Alvin Flummux posted this several pages back.

I don't think we should worry, it probably won't even work let alone destroy the planet.

First the end of GR, now this? Tis the Apocalypse.

Scaremongering FTW!

the Higgs boson

lol

I think people are reading too much into it.

I mean, I'm sure the science reporters with the Sun know their stuff, but I'm pretty sure the guys doing the experiments know a bit more.

It won't destroy the world.

Fact.

I'm buying myself a nice crowbar just in case! Worked for Gordon Freeman, it'll work for me!

This has been reported so many times over the past year or so the news of the inadvertent end of the world is a little boring.

Looking forward to this. I hope it really pisses off Evangelists, and the like.

I think they should just leave things as they are, if this was to solve something like AIDS or Cancer then go ahead but it's just going to give geeks something to get excited about, not cure anything or stop any wars.

Pointless.

Stu wrote:I think people are reading too much into it.

I mean, I'm sure the science reporters with the Sun know their stuff, but I'm pretty sure the guys doing the experiments know a bit more.

Exactly. While I'm sure everyone at The Sun has their GCSE Science Double Award, I'm betting that the guys at CERN got an 'A' at A Level and everything...

Speaking as a physicist, I'm fed up of this ill-informed scaremongering. The LHC is not going to destroy the world, let it go.

Alpha eX wrote:I think they should just leave things as they are, if this was to solve something like AIDS or Cancer then go ahead but it's just going to give geeks something to get excited about, not cure anything or stop any wars.

Pointless.

It's not pointless....

If they're able to generate dark matter, hopefully they'll be able to harness that power and we'll have lots of energy from it.

I think

It's a better way to do it, though. At the moment we're slowly destroying the wonderful and pretty environment in which we live. If we collide enough hardons, we can get rid of the lot in one fell swoop.

It's all or nothing baby. 8-)

Microscopic black holes which will dissipate almost as soon as they're made does not equate to creating an Earth-shattering black hole. :fp:

Seems like a pretty big waste of money.

Abs wrote:Seems like a pretty big waste of money.

Getting the first ever hard data on black holes, which is vital to any future Theory Of Everything, is not a waste.

Seems like a strawberry floating waste of time to me....

Why don't they just build a big strawberry float off Burger King and then solve world hunger or sumting.

This is all very exciting.

Nice knowing you guys.

Big Experiment Underway - Stage 1 Successful

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