Did the Hadron Collider blow up the Earth yet?

Battymo

I love me some hardon colliding...

Seriously though - Any chance that when the atoms get smashed they will create a black hole and suck us in?   Some say it could be weeks before we know... some say 4 years... If we're going down, I've got a lot of debt to start racking up when no one is around to collect it back!

arch_8ngel

My understanding of it is that there is the real possibility of creating miniature black holes, but they will probably dissipate quickly, and will not be anywhere near massive enough to create a real danger.

NewUser123456789

Let's hope they are as smart as they claim to be..



Either that or the world is going to sh#t soon..



Accidentally creating a black hole sounds pretty messed up to me..



Stupid scientists!!

bongoben

Yeah, from what I've read, it's a really interesting project. Will it save the world? No. Might it destroy all Earthly existence? Yes. I say go for it.

Penguin

This thing looks bad ass, I say we throw a bunch of Silent Service carts in the center where the atoms collide and see what happens.

marvelus10

I felt a loud bang at the side of my house last night at aboot 11pm, could that of been the big bang they were talking aboot.

bongoben

^^ or a drunk guy running head first into your siding.

Thor

I think for a black hole to wipe us out, it would have to reach a singularity in order to sustain it's existence. I don't believe that our world is dense enough to support such a singularity.

8bitking

Originally posted by: Thor

I think for a black hole to wipe us out, it would have to reach a singularity in order to sustain it's existence. I don't believe that our world is dense enough to support such a singularity.

I'll go with that

NewUser123456789

I did just do some reading and they are only testing the track right now, not smashing atoms and protons yet..



Couple more weeks or months before they end the world with their experiments..



Only kidding by the way, I do not believe this will cause the world to end..

Thor

http://hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

dangevin

That's right, late October they start manufacturing world-consuming black holes full-time.



My favorite part of the thing they showed on the History Channel last night was hearing them talk about a "quench." That's when one of the path-controlling magnets get too warm and shuts down. First, they need to vent the liquid helium so that when it warms up to its boiling point (somewhere just above 200 degrees below zero) it doesn't explode. Then, they need to discharge the 12,000 or so amps that are going through the superconducting circuit (that the helium was cooling) so THAT doesn't heat up and explode from the resistance. THEN, after all that, since the magnetic coil is no longer functional, there's a good chance that the proton beam will essentially become a sci-fi particle cannon, blowing through the side of the equipment and making a 10-meter hole in the wall. Like firing a shotgun packed with billions of high-energy protons, travelling close to the speed of light.



Cool.

TFGZ

Originally posted by: Thor

I think for a black hole to wipe us out, it would have to reach a singularity in order to sustain it's existence. I don't believe that our world is dense enough to support such a singularity.

That's not quite right.   Basically, the mini black holes that would be created would be unstable, and according to Hawking last no longer than 1 trillionth of a second before exploding.  In that period of time they can't absorb enough mass to do anything dangerous.   The destruction of the earth would be caused by the creation of a stable mini black hole, a theoretical improbability, which would sink to the center of the eart and devour mass until reaching a size where it could implode the planet.  If mini black holes were stable, there would be so many left over from the big bang that nothing would currently exist.  So the probability of creating a stable mini black hole is zero.

dangevin

Originally posted by: Thor

http://hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

Oh, BTW here's the page source from your cute link Thor

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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <title>Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet?</title>
  <!--
this is the fault of daniel drucker dmd@3e.org

 the first person to ask for an RSS feed gets a free black hole in their junk 

ok FINE here 
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<link rel="alternate" title="Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet?" href="http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" />
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<body style="text-align: center; padding-top: 200px;">

  <span style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 120pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-decoration: none; color: black;"  >NO</span>

<!-- oh shit bears --> 

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[ddrucker@scatter ~]$ host -t txt freon.3e.org
freon.3e.org descriptive text "Anesthetized monkeys exposed to 25,000
ppm or 50,000 ppm [of freon] for 5 minutes had [cardiac] [arrhythmia]s
including [tachycardia] and decreased contractility (U.S. EPA 1983)"


In their paper, Coleman and de Luccia noted:

    The possibility that we are living in a false vacuum has never
been a cheering one to contemplate. Vacuum decay is the ultimate
ecological catastrophe; in the new vacuum there are new constants of
nature; after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible,
so is chemistry as we know it. However, one could always draw stoic
comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time the
new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some
structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been
eliminated.
    The second special case ... applies if we are now living in the
debris of a false vacuum ... This case presents us with less
interesting physics and with fewer occasions for rhetorical excess
than the preceding one.
	
S. Coleman and F. De Luccia (1980). "Gravitational effects on and of vacuum decay". Physical Review D21: 3305.


the crab always wins; it makes the baby syntacticians cry.

-->

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arch_8ngel

That is hilarious. I wonder how many other pages out there have bizarre things hidden between the lines?

ninfan21

Originally posted by: arch_8ngel

 but they will probably dissipate quickly,

When dealling with detruction of the Earth, this word doesn't belong in the sentence.

Thor

Originally posted by: ninfan21

Originally posted by: arch_8ngel

 but they will probably dissipate quickly,

When dealling with detruction of the Earth, this word doesn't belong in the sentence.

Heh, I know what you mean, but TBH, I just don't believe there's enough matter on our little rock to fuel or sustain a singularity of a black hole. The 'micro' black holes they are talking about would contain an almost infinitely tiny amount of matter, and correspondingly, they would put out such a microscopic gravitational field as to be zero threat towards sucking in additional matter and achieving sustenance. There would be no Event Horizon involved for any measurable moment. I would be shocked if the occurences they hope to observe maintain for more than a picosecond.

As far as genuine threats to our survival, I'd have to look at biological warfare, and experiments with new-gen hybrid nukes as real threats.

arch_8ngel

As long as they're confined to warheads and they aren't "suitcase bombs" then nukes are a non-issue. The truth of mutually assured destruction is just as true today as it was in the 50's and 60's. I mean, there is always the possibility of some middle eastern state getting stupid and nuking Israel, but that's about it. Even there, the other countries have the same threat of mutual destruction and wouldn't be dumb enough to pull the trigger.





Biological weapons on the other hand...that just takes a single fuck-up in the lab to potentially wipe everyone out with an epidemic. That's why those weapons systems are outright illegal.

Thor

^^ Yep. And I wasn't speaking of current nukes, which are categorized in 3 ways :



A-Bombs (measured in KT)

H-Bombs (measured in MT!!, eg, 15MT = 15,000KT, The bombs dropped on Japan were less than 20kt)

N-Bombs



I was talking of theorized ways of bringing another 1000x increase in destructive power from nuclear weapons. The largest Nuclear weapon tested was Tsar Bomba, in the 50's IIRC, and it was a 100MT device that was artificially limited to ~57MT or so, and it was so strong that it caused shock waves that were measurable on the opposite side of the planet. Now take a 100MT device, and make it 1000x more powerful (as the Hydrogen stage did to the original A-Bomb design, thanks Edward Teller!), and you now have a 1,000,000MT, or 1000GT device. I don't think I have to explain how bad that would be.

dangevin

Spengler: "It would be bad."

Venkman: "I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing..."

Spengler: "Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light."

Stantz: "Total protonic reversal."

Venkman: "Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon."

arch_8ngel

It's pointless ot make a nuke that big, though. Talk about diminishing returns...



That's what MIRVs are good for. You take your 100MT warhead and break it into dozens of 1-5MT warheads. More bang for your buck!

projectingstars

^^^pun intended?

marvelus10

Its all based on theories, they have no idea whats going on.

srh201

Originally posted by: Thor

^^ Yep. And I wasn't speaking of current nukes, which are categorized in 3 ways :

A-Bombs (measured in KT)
H-Bombs (measured in MT!!, eg, 15MT = 15,000KT, The bombs dropped on Japan were less than 20kt)
N-Bombs

what about the F-bombs, cuz i drop like 100 of them a day, at least.

also, you shouldnt be dropping N-bombs unless you are black. thor, you should be ashamed of yourself!

user42

This link might help...



http://qntm.org/?board

arch_8ngel

^^^ That's a great resource, thanks!

nukie

If you think the coding from that page is funny, try reading the windows coding sometime. It explains why nothing works. I remember where a different coder took over and noted "I have no fucking clue what this joker just did, so I'm going to work on something else for awhile".

arch_8ngel

I don't doubt it. I work for a firm that develops high end flight models and simulators. Some of our guys get pretty crass in the comments. At the end of the project it falls to the resident FNG to dig all of that junk out of the source.

Thor

Originally posted by: srh201

Originally posted by: Thor

^^ Yep. And I wasn't speaking of current nukes, which are categorized in 3 ways :

A-Bombs (measured in KT)
H-Bombs (measured in MT!!, eg, 15MT = 15,000KT, The bombs dropped on Japan were less than 20kt)
N-Bombs

what about the F-bombs, cuz i drop like 100 of them a day, at least.

also, you shouldnt be dropping N-bombs unless you are black. thor, you should be ashamed of yourself!

lol, no, I was referring to these puppies :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb

catfriedrice

Originally posted by: Thor

http://hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/



I bet there's hundreds of these wasted sites.

dangevin

^ this one's a little more subtle but funny nonetheless (if you don't know basic scripting you should still be able to figure it out)

<script type="text/javascript">
if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
document.write("YUP.");
} else {
document.write("NOPE.");
}
</script>
<noscript>NOPE.</noscript>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." :
"http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost +
"google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-275043-3");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
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