Black hole doom for all on the 10th September?

[aidanjt]

At least one died that I know of, and the others were placing bets on whether or not a detonation test would ignite the atmosphere lol. Of course we know now that such a thing would be preposterous, but it was their experiments that gave us a firm grip on nuclear physics, and the basis for the LHC's science and technology.

[BlackDwarf]

This has been speculated to be due to supermassive black holes.

This?

[aidanjt]

This.

[Lee H]

Precisely. Humans did not know what would happen when we first discovered plutonium, and I bet a few scientists/people died trying to find out.

They did and in fact the legacy of their tests affected a lot of other people.

Manchester University are in a bit of a weird situation in that radition from experiments in the early part of the 20th century wasn't decontaminated properly until 2006 and this can be seen at the following link Here

[shaithis]

Yet, the fact remains, that all this ZOMG ITS THE END OF THE WORLD nonsense, is merely a byproduct of human ignorance and fear of what they can't even begin to grasp, rather than go learn about what they hear about, they spout baseless drivel.

Oh, and I woke up this morning, what gives?.. I thought we were all suppose to die!

And it's ignorant to assume that nothing negative will happen.

Personally, I will not loose sleep over it, mainly due to the fact that regardless of what I think, I couldn't stop them from performing this experiment, even if I wanted to. I do not know what will happen but then neither do the scientists, else they wouldn't be performing this grossly expensive experiment in the first place. Most of the people who are rubbishing the concerns of others have already decided what they believe will happen and are happy to live in their little protective bubble of ignorant comfort.

But the fact remains that MANY people are worried about it and anyone that rubbishes their concerns and calls them ignorant are almost certainly the real fools. Making your mind up that everything will be fine, when no one knows with 100% certainty, its rather short-sighted IMO......especially when you consider what they are trying to achieve is a glimpse into the beginning of the universe.

[Brucelles]

Oh, and I woke up this morning, what gives?.. I thought we were all suppose to die!

I did die, but I live closer to Switzerland than you. You'll get yours around tea-time.

[Fraz]

I do not know what will happen but then neither do the scientists, else they wouldn't be performing this grossly expensive experiment in the first place.

This really is complete and utter rubbish. The reactions that the LHC will perform are effectively taking place above your head thousands of times a day in the form of cosmic rays impacting the earth's atmosphere. Bear in mind though that the LHC has an energy about a billion times smaller than these cosmic rays. The earth is still here despite this cosmic barrage.

We have a very very good idea of what is going to happen. You actually have to have a very good idea of what is going to happen in order to interpret the signals coming out of the detector properly. We couldn't have even designed the experiments if we didn't have an idea of what we'd expect to see!

People have spent roughly 3 decades working on mathematically coherent theories of what might or might not be. There are, however, holes in the theory - the most famous one being that the mass of the Higgs Boson is not predicted. However, as soon as we see this particle, and are able to measure its mass, it will lock down which particular theory is correct. Once we know the mass, we'll know pretty much everything about that particle because of the very solid foundation of theory that is already in place.

No doubt you'll say that "it's all just theory". Well, you're right - it is just theory, but in the main it's very very accurately tested theory. In fact, the theoretical models used are the most accurately tested theories ever devised by man. However, we're still filling in these models in places, and this is what the LHC will help us to do.

The idea that we have no idea of what is going to happen is completely erroneous.

[aidanjt]

And it's ignorant to assume that nothing negative will happen.

Personally, I will not loose sleep over it, mainly due to the fact that regardless of what I think, I couldn't stop them from performing this experiment, even if I wanted to. I do not know what will happen but then neither do the scientists, else they wouldn't be performing this grossly expensive experiment in the first place. Most of the people who are rubbishing the concerns of others have already decided what they believe will happen and are happy to live in their little protective bubble of ignorant comfort.

But the fact remains that MANY people are worried about it and anyone that rubbishes their concerns and calls them ignorant are almost certainly the real fools. Making your mind up that everything will be fine, when no one knows with 100% certainty, its rather short-sighted IMO......especially when you consider what they are trying to achieve is a glimpse into the beginning of the universe.

It's really simple, there's ZERO scientific basis for the assumption that the LHC will cause the planet to implode. How many times has the planet meant to be destroyed in a ghastly Armageddon in the last 100 years or so? What about the Y2K 'bug' causing all the nukes on the planet to detonate when they panic and realise they 'went back in time' because their clocks wrapped? Such a ****ing stupid notion, right?.. Yet countless swathes of people truly believed it would happen, because they didn't know the first thing about chronology or warhead detonation switches.

Their experiments are so small in scale, that few people can truly comprehend how small they're working on. It's not a cosmic scale bigbang machine, the universe throws the same kind of exotic particles around with higher energies on a daily basis, and has done so for billions of years.

Again, this is just another (classic) example of human ignorance and fear of things they don't understand. It would only just be sad if it wasn't such a chronic affliction of the average human psyche. If we ever destroy ourselves and bring about Armageddon, it'll be as a direct result of that affliction (or greed), not from scientific advancement.

[AdamAnubis]

And if the world was destroyed by CERN creating a black hole, i'd be pretty dam impressed! I've always stood by the fact that CERN wouldn't be doing this experiment if there was a remotely dangerous chance it was going to destroy the world, nor that the lovely EU would have let it go ahead due to health and safety. I'm sure the EU have better things to redirect the £3.6 billion on, like, making banana's straight or something.

[GoNz0]

[dangel]

I've just checked with our physics R&D group - they're pretty confident we'll all live so don't call off your weekend plans just yet kids..

[moogle]

maybe we've been sucked into the black hole and we don't know it.

[chuckskull]

Everyone knows this isn't the worlds first particle accelerator right? Ernest Rutherford, admittedly the same man who irradiated a chunk Manchester University built one of the first (there was a link that about in one of these doomsday threads, so it popped into my head) in the early 1900's if I remember my A level physics class right. America has a pretty big one too. I'm sure there's a few more around the world.

An experiment is the process of proving or disproving a theory. If you don't have a theory then you're just messing with things you don't understand

The EU doesn't give you billions without a damn good theory.

[chuckskull]

PANIC!!!!!! EARTH DESTROYED!!!!

[dangel]

The EU doesn't give you billions without a damn good theory.

God, I'd love to believe that.

[JimmyBoy]

i dont think anything big is going to happen til october the 21st so i think we're ok until then