Large Hadron Collider

Azagoth · 7 Sep 2008 at 15:59

Be pretty ironic if this is how Universes are actually created. For instance, say 13.7 billion years ago a civilisation turned on their LHC and created our Universe, destroying theirs in the process.

JAMAL · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:01

Azagoth said:
Be pretty ironic if this is how Universes are actually created. For instance, say 13.7 billion years ago a civilisation turned on their LHC and created our Universe, destroying theirs in the process.

I was thinking this today!

Very strange!!

Fuzz · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:02

and me

JBuk · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:04

Azagoth said:
Be pretty ironic if this is how Universes are actually created. For instance, say 13.7 billion years ago a civilisation turned on their LHC and created our Universe, destroying theirs in the process.

heh , did you happen to be stoned when you had that thought?

james.miller · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:05

Azagoth said:
Be pretty ironic if this is how Universes are actually created. For instance, say 13.7 billion years ago a civilisation turned on their LHC and created our Universe, destroying theirs in the process.

would be a hell of a way to go though lol

Gackt · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:08

james.miller said:
would be a hell of a way to go though lol

I suppose at least if we destroy everything in the Universe (which is something man tends to lean towards anyway), we'll be creating new life that'll hopefully not be as incredibly dumb as us.

james.miller · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:11

Gackt said:
I suppose at least if we destroy everything in the Universe (which is something man tends to lean towards anyway), we'll be creating new life that'll hopefully not be as incredibly dumb as us.

yeah, thats what the people said before they switched their LHC on

Inquisitor · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:12

nokinidea said:
Professor Brian Cox
Straight from the horses mouth on BBC iplayer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dccnr

Start from 35:00 mins in...

Well I don't know where he got that from but CERN seems to disagree.

http://lhc-first-beam.web.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam/News/FinalLHCsyncTest.html

10 September: The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV). This historical event will be webcast through http://webcast.cern.ch, and distributed through the Eurovision network. See http://www.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam for further details.

wez130 said:
That is far from a professional approach, wouldn't it be better if something went wrong testing rather than with the actual experiment, i mean,what's the rush? We've waited millions of years to try and find Higgs Bosum, another couple of months won't make a difference.

Exactly. What's the rush?

wez130 said:
i read / heard that they were only using lead particles to begin with then they were to start smashing atoms in October some time.

No, they're starting off with proton beams, then moving onto lead ions later on.

JBuk · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:13

james.miller said:
yeah, thats what the people said before they switched their LHC on

and it took the next lot (us) millions of years to be as dumb as them

THMRK · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:20

nokinidea said:
Professor Brian Cox
Straight from the horses mouth on BBC iplayer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dccnr

Start from 35:00 mins in...

The magnets need trained. It'll take two months to do that. The thing won't actually operate at full power for about two years anyway.

closeratio · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:41

Woody__ said:
The thing won't actually operate at full power for about two years anyway.

Awww well that sucks

I thought we'd be at full power by half way through next year or somethin. Mind you I bet it'll take 'em a while to draw conclusions from the results and publish papers on them anyway.

Spitfir3 · 7 Sep 2008 at 16:56

The above program was very good although it didn't seem to flow that well.

It was also interesting to see where I have been - the control room.. when I was there it actually had a graphical 2d image of the detector and it even showed bits detected - cosmic radiation.

Also the entrance (where he said about the radioactive signs).. lot of security there.. the tunnel where it had that sign of someone bent over :S forgot what it means.. Oh and the server room... pretty impressive.. forgotten the specs of them but I asked the guy if they O/C them a bit and he said no because of the warranty.

Also met a few people on the program.. the presenter (brian cox) and someone there from lpool uni. Amazing the amount of super intelligent people there.. I talked to some guy who went to Oxford, Cambridge + Harvard in the cafe place.

wez130 · 7 Sep 2008 at 17:11

Inquisitor said:
No, they're starting off with proton beams, then moving onto lead ions later on.

I knew it was something like that lol.

I've just watched that program on iplayer, interesting, and i was just about to post what the above have posted, the collider is designed to create a 'big bang', what's to stop this expanding as ours has.

Another question i wonder about, the collider has been cooled to 1.9 Kelvin (or whatever it is), so, would whatever is created be even able to exist in our atmosphere, be it a black hole or whatever? excuse the dumbness - i'm no scientist hehe.

closeratio · 7 Sep 2008 at 17:19

wez130 said:
...the collider is designed to create a 'big bang', what's to stop this expanding as ours has.

The collider hasn't been designed to actually create a 'big bang', it's been made to try to simulate the conditions just a tiny tiny bit after it happened. That's my understanding of it anyway.

And anyway, the big bang (as I know it) involved all the matter in the universe (a lot), the collision which will take place at the LHC involves only a few particles (not a lot).

wez130 said:
Another question i wonder about, the collider has been cooled to 1.9 Kelvin (or whatever it is), so, would whatever is created be even able to exist in our atmosphere, be it a black hole or whatever? excuse the dumbness - i'm no scientist hehe.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. There is no 'atmosphere' as such in the LHC anyway because it's a vacuum inside the accelerator itself (well, pretty much). Black holes (assuming they do indeed exist) also exist in vacuums, or rather the vacuum that is space.

Regardless if you do the math, the chance of anything bad happening during the course of the collisions is less likely to happen than you marrying a meerkat and bringing up a happy family of meerkat children.

Azza · 7 Sep 2008 at 17:28

Scientists get death threats over Large Hadron Collider

Cocks all of them.

Prof Cox has the right idea...

"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a ----."

Tefal · 7 Sep 2008 at 17:29

Azza said:
Scientists get death threats over Large Hadron Collider

Cocks all of them.

Prof Cox has the right idea...

lol, Surely they must realize death threats aren't going to persuade someone not to turn on a doomsday machine

Dave · 7 Sep 2008 at 17:32

closeratio said:
Regardless if you do the math, the chance of anything bad happening during the course of the collisions is less likely to happen than you marrying a meerkat and bringing up a happy family of meerkat children.

Wasn't it Terry Pratchett who said in one of the Discoworld books "the million-to-one chances are the most likely" or something along those lines? Let's see if he's right

Inquisitor · 7 Sep 2008 at 17:33

Dave said:
Wasn't it Terry Pratchett who said in one of the Discoworld books "the million-to-one chances are the most likely" or something along those lines? Let's see if he's right

Yep, in Guards! Guards! :cool:

It does have to be exactly a million to one though. 1,000,001:1 is no good.

Skeptic · 7 Sep 2008 at 17:58

I bet all those who have won the lottery and been hit by lightening are bricking themselves now.

wez130 · 7 Sep 2008 at 18:33

closeratio said:
The collider hasn't been designed to actually create a 'big bang', it's been made to try to simulate the conditions just a tiny tiny bit after it happened. That's my understanding of it anyway.

And anyway, the big bang (as I know it) involved all the matter in the universe (a lot), the collision which will take place at the LHC involves only a few particles (not a lot).

From that program, they make it out to have been created by one single event involving something like a single atom or something.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. There is no 'atmosphere' as such in the LHC anyway because it's a vacuum inside the accelerator itself (well, pretty much). Black holes (assuming they do indeed exist) also exist in vacuums, or rather the vacuum that is space.

Regardless if you do the math, the chance of anything bad happening during the course of the collisions is less likely to happen than you marrying a meerkat and bringing up a happy family of meerkat children.

You kind understood what i mean, like you say, a black hole exists in a vaccum, but what if it breaks out of that vacuum, could it still exist / grow?

I don't for one minute believe that anything that drastic will happen, or at least i hope it doesn't lol.

One thing that did strike me as gobsmacking is the fact that when the tiny atoms strike in a strand a fraction of the diameter of a human hair, the forces created will be the equivelent of a aircraft carrier travelling at 30 knots, that's a hell of a lot of force lol.