Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Kryptonite?


12:30am Wednesday should prove very interesting. This is the time set for the members of CERN to turn on the Large Hadron Collider in the specially built tunnel on the French / Swiss Boarder.

Some are calling LHC the doomsday machine; some are calling it one of the greatest collaborations thus far in scientific research with the intent to explain the universe.

LHC is supposed to create conditions that were the same as those existing after that of the Big Bang. It will smash particles creating new particles which scientists hope will then be proof to the String Theory:

"String theory states that the fundamental building block of the universe isn't a particle, but a string. Strings can either be open ended or closed. They also can vibrate, similar to the way the strings on a guitar vibrate when plucked. Different vibrations make the strings appear to be different things. A string vibrating one way would appear as an electron. A different string vibrating another way would be a neutrino."

With words like Dark Matter, Parallel Universe, other Dimensions and Time Travel how anyone could not fine this “Fascinating” as Spock would say, is beyond me. Really crazy stuff! I am surprised that Religious groups who do not believe in the big bang are not all over this with protesting religious rhetoric...

Perhaps one on the biggest discoveries that the participating scientists hope for is proof of Higgs Boson, “The God Particle”; the particle that gives mass to all other particles. Steven Hawing is betting against it, implying that proof of Higgs would kind of take the fun out of the whole process.

I guess we shall just have to wait and see if LHC creates the small black holes that the doomsday people are predicting.

Anyway here is an interview the BBC had with Professor Hawing on the subject:

Professor Hawing



what a black hole created by LHC would look like.









7 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

the relgious right would be up in arms about it, excep they only read the bible and watch rush limbaugh..
hmm, maybe the myans were off 4 years and now is the end of the world..ha..famous last words..'hey look we just created the big baaa

Raspootin said...

Baaa Baaa :) I really liked your Palin post in case you could not tell.

So what happens if they prove the big bang? The Christians are going to just weave it in to their book?

billy pilgrim said...

i love that thing, maybe it'll help us figure out warp drive to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Raspootin said...

exactly BP!

Woozie said...

Steven Hawing?

Anonymous said...

I'm not a doomsdayeur but everyone seems to forget two things. The theory that "little" black holes will evaporate is according to the theory of virtual particles. Those "particles that come in and out of existence everywhere all the time but remain undetectable therefor hypothetical" need to actually exist for evaporation. Unfortunately we have has much experience with those "particles" as we do with "big" black holes. 2. The high energy collisions that happen in our atmosphere travel at the speed of light which go wizzing through our earth and out into space at the speed of light. The collisions from the LHC would not be moving relative to the Earth, thus they would sink to the core and rattle around picking up the earths mass.

Do I think it will destroy the Earth? No. But the attitude of the scientists behind the project bother me. They don't know what is going to happen so why are they so confident nothing will go wrong. As Scott Adams said, ruff quote "when assessing the risk/benefit of an action and the risk is total annihilation of everything, then the risk factor is infinitely high."

Raspootin said...

Thanks woozie, YOU would notice that: Hawking Hawking Hawking

Hehee

I hear ya IH. Did you ever read that book Blasphemy that I gave you? Though it was fiction the (sort of) concept of what they were doing was the same as LHC. And yes as depicted in that book the scientists would stop at nothing to achieve what they wanted. The project was more important than the "whole picture".

So do I think the Scientists really know what the long term effect of mini black holes are? No, of course not. Is the risk worth the information the experiment can provide? I think yes, but a lot of folks think no.

What is the ultimate cost of "going where no man has gone before”? I don’t know, but the way we are going in the world now we are going to destroy it & (ourselves) anyway so why not go out with a big bang of information and knowledge?