[king_buzzo]

The countdown to the startup of the world's most powerful particle collider has begun with today's announcement that the first beam of protons will be sent all the way through the 17-mile-round Large Hadron Collider on Sept. 10.
A key phase of the final preparations for the $10 billion project begins this weekend, when Europe's CERN particle-physics center begins testing the last links in the high-powered chain of magnets that will eventually send beams shooting through the collider's ring with the energy of a bullet train. During this weekend's tests, low-intensity protons will be injected into a small section of the collider and zip around one-eighth of the ring.
The tests will grow in strength and complexity all the way up to "Red Button Day."
If the schedule holds, the collider on the French-Swiss border will make a splash at 9 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) Sept. 10, a week after a federal judge in Hawaii begins hearing a motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit claiming that the device could destroy the world. Over the past few months, scientists at CERN (and the federal government) have laid out their case that a globe-gobbling catastrophe could never happen. Nevertheless, the court proceedings could provide a sideshow for the main event. Or they could be finished up by that time.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archi...7/1252902.aspx




Would be fun to see them fail and blow up the world

[floatingslowly]

I love it when a plan comes together.

[pbradley]

For your particle-ular enjoyment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

[Rob Instigator]

-FUPPETS- explains the Large Hadron Collider

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by king_buzzo

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archi...7/1252902.aspx




Would be fun to see them fail and blow up the world

10But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
11Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
12Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

[akprodr]

Originally Posted by pbradley

For your particle-ular enjoyment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

that rocks my nerdy ass!

Ya know, I was just thinking about this today: if the LHC does create a black hole and it swallows all of us, we probably won't even know it happened.

[floatingslowly]

when the temporal difference between yr head and yr feet turn you into living spaghetti, you'll know.

oh, yes. you'll know.

[Rob Instigator]

any black hole created by the LHC wll be many times tinier than a proton, and would nearly instantly "evaporate", mand this is IF it were to happen, which it will not.

suchfriend's quote is rightly applied to people who actively SEEK the end of the world/armageddon/the final days, and asks those IDIOTS why you wish something to happen when it will wipe away any and all trace of "god's" work?

basically, the Bible is calling the seventh day adventists, jehovas witnesses, and any other pentecostal apocalypttic believer an IDIOT, and the bible is doing it thousand years ahead of time.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

any black hole created by the LHC wll be many times tinier than a proton, and would nearly instantly "evaporate", mand this is IF it were to happen, which it will not.

suchfriend's quote is rightly applied to people who actively SEEK the end of the world/armageddon/the final days, and asks those IDIOTS why you wish something to happen when it will wipe away any and all trace of "god's" work?

basically, the Bible is calling the seventh day adventists, jehovas witnesses, and any other pentecostal apocalypttic believer an IDIOT, and the bible is doing it thousand years ahead of time.

Here is an irony to that quote, some austere fathers of the Ethiopian monastic tradition, have developed the interpretation a thousand years ago no less that all apocalyptic and 'end-of-world' prophecies about death and destruction, which are far to numerous to give examples, though just today I read Zephaniah, "The whole world will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger," are not references to physical death, but actually cryptic references for baptism which is a symbol death.

The Hindu scriptures were equally ahead of their time the nearly scientific description of the 'end of the world'..

[Rob Instigator]

mystics the world over have been able to describe in words that are cryptic to us, sights such as the end of the univers and the beginning of time, and they could only use allegory and metaphor to describe what they saw, but it is still kick ass.

[Trasher02]

I've read about this earlier this week. Only two days away from possible world destruction hooray!
I gotta make sure I'm stoned out of my mind at that moment.

[Rob Instigator]

I have been hearing about the "end of the world" repeatedly since 1980 and I am SICK to death of the media actually giving creedence to these fringe assholes who see armagedon at every turn.

[pbradley]

Remember, people that think the LHC will destroy the world are twats.

[Trasher02]

Would be hellah funny though.

[atari 2600]

Sure, these series of ultra-advanced experiments hold the promise of allowing us to see the subatomic world in more precise terms than ever before. Think of it like Plato's Cave. From shadows to reality.
Relativity describes the very large macroverse to the tiniest detail. But we have long been groping in the dark in the realm of quantum physics. Which is why no one has really expanded on Einstein to form a GUT or a TOE.

Guess what? We never will have a truly working Theory of Everything. Whatever we discover will only lead to questions. Questions that will never be fully answered in a way that makes what we refer to as rational sense. When you start to deal in measuring the properties of particles even approaching the speed of light things get real crazy real fast. That's why we use the most basic of particles. And why we use the heaviest nuclei available. Should we not try? No, of course we should try. As we learn more and more, science will be advanced. But just as actual hard physics hasn't advanced all that much in the last almost century since Einstein's first breakthough (despite the vast amount of resources and brainpower devoted to the quest since), don't expect any ridiculously huge leaps. At any rate, my gut feeling is that the microverse will ultimately remain elusive and mysterious no matter how much we learn about it.

Originally Posted by science

An electron is a tiny and very, very light particle that forms part of an atom (everything around us is made out of atoms but they are far too small to see without a scanning electron microscope).

Ok, say we want to accelerate an electron to the speed of light. Since it's so small and light, we can make it travel at the speed of light, can't we?

This has been tried, but so far physicists have only actually managed to send electrons flying round at 99.999999995% of the speed of light, which is very close to, but not quite the speed of light.

So, why is it so difficult to make an electron go at the speed of light?

In order for an electron to accelerate it needs energy. The energy given to an electron is converted into kinetic energy which is associated with the forward motion of the electron. At low speeds the more energy given to the electron, the faster the electron goes; but as the speed gets closer to the speed of light, the electron does not go much faster as energy is put in but seems to just store kinetic energy (this was first noticed by a scientist called W. Bertozzi in 1964)...
If you calculate the instantaneous speed of electron
using the theoretical models, it comes out to be the velocity
of light. However, we cannot measure instantaneous speeds, but only
speed averaged over some time scale by measuring position at two
instants of time. When we do this, the speed is always less than
the velocity of light. Theoretical models also predict average
velocity less than speed of light. The above discussion only applies to speed of light
in vacuum. Electrons can , and do, travel at speeds faster than
speed of light in some media.

[ALIEN ANAL]

so is there a countdown website
im excited
i want exciting action shit to happen
9/11 but with blackholes

[ZEROpumpkins]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

Sure, these series of ultra-advanced experiments hold the promise of allowing us to see the subatomic world in more precise terms than ever before. Think of it like Plato's Cave. From shadows to reality.
Relativity describes the very large macroverse to the tiniest detail. But we have long been groping in the dark in the realm of quantum physics. Which is why no one has really expanded on Einstein to form a GUT or a TOE.

Guess what? We never will have a truly working Theory of Everything. Whatever we discover will only lead to questions. Questions that will never be fully answered in a way that makes what we refer to as rational sense. When you start to deal in measuring the properties of particles even approaching the speed of light things get real crazy real fast. That's why we use the most basic of particles. And why we use the heaviest nuclei available. Should we not try? No, of course we should try. As we learn more and more, science will be advanced. But just as actual hard physics hasn't advanced all that much in the last almost century since Einstein's first breakthough (despite the vast amount of resources and brainpower devoted to the quest since), don't expect any ridiculously huge leaps. At any rate, my gut feeling is that the microverse will ultimately remain elusive and mysterious no matter how much we learn about it.

I completely agree with this. There's just no point to it all, I reckon. And if there was, big fuckin' whoop, the big bang happened, how's that going to stop war and other shit.

Jesus christ...

[Rob Instigator]

the idea that, because we can never truly know everything, knowing what we know does not matter, is SUICIDAL and STUPID and WRONG.

the beauty iof exploration of scientific inquiry is that, once something is learned it doe snot close doors, instead opening up new doors of inquiry. that is the BEAUTY of it.

for centuries humans thought we would never understand what light was, and we now know probably 99% of what we can find out about light. For centuries humans thought that our solar system was the whole of existance, then we thought our galaxy was the whole of existance, but no, someone KEPT ASKING QUESTIONS, and we discovered that there are millions upon millions of galaxies just like ours, and millions extremely different from ours, and that only made us want to know more.

science, it's what's for dinner.

people made the same criticisms of the hubble space telescope when it was first created and funded, and those IDIOTS were wrong.

[Rob Instigator]

atari, to say that physics has not advanced much beyond einstein's breakthrough is just plain wrong my man. JUST WRONG.

[PAULYBEE2656]

yknow i wpuld love to carry on discussing this with rob and co but i know i am just out of my depth with this science thing and getting science wrong is a big no no in my book. its best to know when to watch than say! and now i am watching with mega intrest.. this shit is fascinating!