Have you noticed the seemingly unending stream of articles and conjecture concerning the celebrated particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider? The most recent comes from the UK Telegraph, and concerns a teenaged schoolgirl who sought to have underage sex and to lose her virginity before the Collider brought about the end of the world. She didn't want to die without at least trying it. Makes sense.
Prior to starting up the LHC in 2008, Stephen Hawking and other scientists pointedly denied claims that the accelerator would produce a black hole which would annihilate the planet. "Ridiculous!" you say. But the revered and distinguished physicist Albert Einstein set forth some principles that reinforce that Armageddon-inducing possibility.
The Hadron Collider is a 17-mile long circular tunnel in Geneva, Switzerland, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to magnetically propel small gold particles to a speed approaching the speed of light, this in a vacuum environment at cold space temperatures — temperatures near absolute zero. The small particles would be moving at those light speeds, in opposite directions, with the intent of a collision, which would be photographed and studied, to provide information related to the Big Bang, black holes, and various other theoretical phenomena.
During September of 2008, the Collider ran into a problem when a faulty electrical connection between two of its magnets caused a malfunction in the cooling system that subsequently led to a helium leak. Now, after extensive repair, we are told the Collider will again be up and running by the end of 2009, possibly during this month of September.
What, you may ask, is all this talk about Armageddon? The 21st century scientists who developed the colossus tell us we have nothing to fear from banging particles together at light speeds. I fail to be calmed. When scientists first split the atom there was concern that we may burn a hole through the planet. Now that we are colliding particles head-on, instead of splitting, some have registered similar fears.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy
Thanks for the update. We'll start refuelling the family spaceship (to make our quick getaway) this week....
2 - zingzing
i can't tell who's joking around here.
3 - STM
Someone should go and put another leak in the stupid thing.
Better still, put the maniacs who dreamt this up inside their collider, and have them collide at the speed of light.
Black holes, mini or not ... this is definitely one thing no one should be farting around with.
Look what we unleashed with the atom bomb.
It's only good luck rather than good management that we aren't a pile of rubble floating somewhere between Mars and Venus as a result of that one.
4 - Ortwin S.
Like particle smashing is something new.
If such a thing could happen Fermilab would have done it in the 70's.
They are like small children, breaking things up to see whats inside.
Mr. Lake, you'r not doing Einstein a favor by raping his theories like you just did.
5 - objective
Unfortunately this article is full of very poor basic physics. Did you ever do any?
6 - Meh
wow, you know nothing about physics, please before you write anything credible do some reading.
Why would theories not instill you with confidence, they are theories that's what they are suppose to do. No scientist is confident in their theory, that's why they constantly test them to see if they hold true.
That's the reason they are building the collider, to test all sorts of theories which scientist aren't confident about.
7 - STM
Meh: "That's the reason they are building the collider, to test all sorts of theories which scientist aren't confident about"
Quite.
Which is the reason every bastard should be worried.
Personally, I'd feel a lot more confident if they were testing theories they ARE confident about.
It's a bit like an aerobatic flight without a parachute.
Science says everything's fine ... until the wing snaps.
That's the point science says everything's not fine, as gravity takes over.
Which is where the parachute comes in handy.
Unfortunately, the Hadron collider doesn't come with one.
8 - STM
Of course, there's an upside to all this.
The one saving grace in the event of catastrophe will be that France will be among the first of the nations of the world to disappear into any black hole.
For a few minutes, we'd at the very least be free of bad waiters.
In the case of Switzerland, no one will notice that it's gone.
9 - BigLarry1337
If you've read any of the scientific papers and journals written about this topic you would realize that even if black holes are produced they would be micro black holes, so infinitesimally small they would snuff themselves out almost instantly.
10 - Xavier
You're wrong, its not starting in September.
11 - John Lake
Thank you folks for your comments.
Meh says: //That's the reason they are building the collider, to test all sorts of theories which scientist aren't confident about.//
STM picked up on that right away. Stole my thunder!
If I had been of a more serious frame of mind I might have posed some conjecture as to the expense of the project.
Transparency, and accountability, right?
12 - Criss
"Einstein said that a particle moving at 186,000 miles/second has "infinite mass.""
At CERN the particles move near the speed of light.
You miss the "NEAR" word, present in every serious communique about LHC. This tinny little word makes all the difference between end of the world and an expensive test tube experiment.
Remember that politicians leveled Hirosima, not the physicists!
13 - John Lake
To Criss:
The Scientists tell us that in fact the particles will be moving considerably slower than the speed of light. And therein lies the difference.
However I might post this argument.
A particle in our "Milky way" is traveling at "near the speed of light"; in Andromeda, a similiar particle is traveling at that speed, coincidently at a course directly away from the "Milky Way" piece. Scientist reaffirm that relative to one another they can't possibly be exceeding the fabled "186.."; but the point is, I remain skepticle.
14 - Christian A.
To Mr. Lake: Einsteins theory of special relativity has been a revolution in 1905, it changed how we look at the world. However, its effects get only noticable when something is moving near the speed of light (a speed which cannot be achieved by anything plagued with mass).
a) The faster a particle is moving relative to you, the more of the energy you use to accelerate it gets converted to mass. The nature of the process is such, that you need infinite amounts of energy to get a particle with infinite mass. So, these "infinite mass" particles will never happen.
b) Since the speed of light is quite high compared to speeds we directly feel, we can never experience the effects of relativistic addition of speeds. But the key point you should consider is that special (and general) relativity is a theory that makes a number of predictions and has many applications in physics. Not one prediction of experiments that could be done until today has been shown to be false, and the applications (like Diracs relativistic formulation of Schroedingers equation in quantum mechanics) boost the accuracy of given theories to new levels. So, anything we know points towards that the theory of relativity is true. That means that the relativistic addition of speeds is the one to be used.
I don't know much about general relativity, and special relativity says also something about inertial systems. That may imply your question regarding the two particles has no real meaning, but I cannot really comment on that.
15 - John Lake
Dr. Einstein made much ado about the speed of light and time travel. He clearly wanted his young physics' students to be awestruck by the wonder of traveling in time and witnessing the past.
In fact, we are discussing a simple theoretical passing of hte joutward racing light, and it is only logiclal and sensible that we should then see into the past. Einsteinian "time travel" then, is not a real phenomenon, only an 'apparent phenomenon'. I sometimes suggest that the good Doctor was limited by his humanity. He couldn't overcome the need to establish a point from which to view.
More extreme still my impudent suggestion about the starting point of the Universe at the "Big Bang". Was it "smaller than the smallest part of the atom"? Or did it just look that way, because no light could escape? Not dissimiliar from the familiar "If a tree falls in the forest, and no living thing hears - does it make a sound?"
If all the matter in the universe were indeed moving out from a "big bang", than any theorician however sophomoric in his thinking would conceed a single central point from which the movement started. But to say that the theoretical point was in space and time the eqivalent of the point in simple mathmatics seems calculated and improblable to my laymans thinking.
Have a great day!
John Lake
16 - John Lake
Xaviar -
//Starting in September//
From the Tehran Times: "The first beams of particles will be fired around the LHC's 17-mile ring in September and the first collisions will follow about a month later, Dr. Evans told the Cheltenham Science Festival."
17 - Daisuke
That was an error by the website and by the source that blog got it from. I been checking with CERN's website and blog often, and the plan still says Mid-November, with low level collisions in December. People haven't been keeping up with the LHC except some guys so it was easy to make an error. Rechecked CERN's website and updates today, it's debuting again Mid November.
18 - Jay
Why would a magnetic field accelerate gold particles? Gold isn't magnetic.
19 - Dan
We see huge supernova explosions in space all the time. Maybe the supernova are actually caused by beings on a nearby planet playing with Hadron Colliders :-)
20 - Mark
"with low level collisions in December"
Get your holiday shopping done early this year, kiddos!
21 - John Lake
Prior to the Big Bang, a group of world scientists had assembed and produced an accelerator to bang particles at light speeds. They were certain the bang would be uneventful.
I just checked and one source said that the view that the particles are gold is one of five common myths.
Hmmmm!!??
22 - greg petersen
o my godfather im going 2 throw me and all my family off the edge of the world just before they start it up again so i can spare them the horror of getting sucked in 2 this so called mini black hole all u scaremongeres/theorists have got ur heads stuck in O MYGODFATHER I can something pulling @ me now
23 - greg petersen
Its cool im allright its just the wife trying 2 get me 2 come bck 2 bed now i am being sucked in 4 real what a way 2 go 'yippeee yi oh'
24 - ROCK
LHC is going to be one of the biggest blunder created by man..those jokers who call them self as scientists don't know end result of the crap operaion.
25 - STM
There was a young lass named Godiva,
Who played with a Large Hadron Collider,
When the world suddenly went flat,
She said, "My look at that,
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry, Sir".