Scientists in search of the God particle may find more than they bargained for!

[SSSnail]

Eeezee, don't go all scientific with slicksnake, his head is a black hole after all, he'll never understand what you typed.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake
UPDATE:

The LHC is going to kill 10 million kittens SCIENCE IS BAD PRAISE JEBUS

Thanks for the high quality update, Slick!

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake
UPDATE:

Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World

Still worried that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole that will destroy the Earth when it's finally switched on this summer?

Um, well, you may have a point.

Three physicists have reexamined the math surrounding the creation of microscopic black holes in the Switzerland-based LHC, the world's largest particle collider, and determined that they won't simply evaporate in a millisecond as had previously been predicted.

Rather, Roberto Casadio of the University of Bologna in Italy and Sergio Fabi and Benjamin Harms of the University of Alabama say mini black holes could exist for much longer ? perhaps even more than a second, a relative eternity in particle colliders, where most objects decay much faster.

Under such long-lived conditions, it becomes a race between how fast a black hole can decay ? and how fast it can gobble up matter to grow bigger and prevent itself from decaying.

Casadio, Fabi and Harms think the black hole would lose out, and pass through the Earth or out of the atmosphere before it got to be a problem.

"We conclude that ... the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible. Nonetheless, it remains true that the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly >> 1 second) than is typically predicted by other models," the three state in a brief paper posted at the scientific discussion Web site ArXiv.org.

FoxNews.com can think of a few other things that didn't seem possible once ? the theory of continental drift, the fact that rocks fall from the sky, the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun, the idea that scientists could be horribly wrong.

We're also wondering how often the LHC might create individual black holes, since longer-lived ones have a greater chance of merging with each other, and, um, well, see ya.

If the worst comes to pass, and there's now a slightly greater chance that it might, at least it might explain why we've never heard from extraterrestrial civilizations: Maybe they built Large Hadron Colliders of their own.

But it was just one TINY mistake in the calculations, REALLY. :shocked:

Just take our word for it there are not any other mistakes in the mathematics, OK? :roll:

Seriously, we have already calculated the odds against destruction on our trusty abacus that there is nothing to worry about or anything!

stop reading things as it's no good for you. You have serious issues with source scrutiny. Just because some journalist doesn't understand what a physicist is telling them and interpret it in their own way within their article doesn't make it so.

It's especially skeptical with such a sensationalist title. Move along, troll troll troll.

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: So

Look, it's been discussed a million times: in no uncertain terms, there is NO chance that the LHC will destroy the earth, almost no chance that it will create a black hole, and a 100% chance that millions of higher energy particle collisions happen in an uncontrolled fashion at the edge of the atmosphere every day, yet here we are.

And the people who brought that lawsuit were either dumb as posts or just looking for their fifteen minutes of fame.

Ok, just for arguments sake, there are a few other things it might cause besides black holes.

The 2 main cores of the Earth are supposedly solid in the center then molten liquid metal mostly iron and nickle, which are both magnetic. Prolonged use of the LHC might cause the core to deform either towards or away from the LHC and cause a new volcanic hot spot in the Earths crust where one does not exist at present and also trigger Earthquakes.

Origin of Earth's Magnetic Core Remains a Mystery

There is the possibility it could also help trigger another pole shift since we are supposedly over due for one anyway.

It could also alter the Earths magnetic field signifigantly around the LHC creating an unstable area over it in the atmosphere that might be more susceptable to solar radiation or other harmful charged particles flying through space while it is operational.

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm?list829804">A Giant Breach in Earth's Magnetic Field
</a>

The LHC is primarily a giant superconducting electromagnet, and one this size has never been constructed or operated for an extended period of time before, and its long term effects on the environment will also be studied, you can be sure about that.

 

[Eeezee]

Slick, do you intentionally go looking for science articles and then misinterpret them? Do you get some sort of sick pleasure out of drawing wild conclusions that have little to do with the source?

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: So

Look, it's been discussed a million times: in no uncertain terms, there is NO chance that the LHC will destroy the earth, almost no chance that it will create a black hole, and a 100% chance that millions of higher energy particle collisions happen in an uncontrolled fashion at the edge of the atmosphere every day, yet here we are.

And the people who brought that lawsuit were either dumb as posts or just looking for their fifteen minutes of fame.

Ok, just for arguments sake, there are a few other things it might cause besides black holes.

The 2 main cores of the Earth are supposedly solid in the center then molten liquid metal mostly iron and nickle, which are both magnetic. Prolonged use of the LHC might cause the core to deform either towards or away from the LHC and cause a new volcanic hot spot in the Earths crust where one does not exist at present and also trigger Earthquakes.

Origin of Earth's Magnetic Core Remains a Mystery

There is the possibility it could also help trigger another pole shift since we are supposedly over due for one anyway.

It could also alter the Earths magnetic field signifigantly around the LHC creating an unstable area over it in the atmosphere that might be more susceptable to solar radiation or other harmful charged particles flying through space while it is operational.

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm?list829804">A Giant Breach in Earth's Magnetic Field
</a>

The LHC is primarily a giant superconducting electromagnet, and one this size has never been constructed or operated for an extended period of time before, and its long term effects on the environment will also be studied, you can be sure about that.

Reading through here reminded me of how ridiculous all this is. The LHC is not a giant superconducting electromagnet, it would be a really shitty electromagnet, but let's humor you because I already posted on this previously. To wit:

If the magnetic field was in anyway perceptible, I doubt they would have any kind of ferrite metal around the facility. For the love of Benji, Lord knows what the consequences would be if 100 sq km of French and Swiss countryside had a constant 8 T of magnetic field. If I recall correctly, Fermi lab (and by extension LHC most likely) used quadrupole magnets, and a quadrupole moment falls off as 1/r^4 where as the normal magnet source is a dipole moment, 1/r^3. So let's say that we want a focused 8 T at the origin of the quadrupole. For sake of proper normalization, let's just say that at a distance of 1 foot, the magnetic field is 8 T. Then 100 feet away, the magnetic field has already dropped to 80 nT from quadrupole magnets and 8 microT from the dipole magnets.

Yeah, it's a real world buster.

 

[Fayd]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
*sigh*

Someone hears the word "black hole" and thinks that we're all going to die.

1) I think they said that the odds are like winning the lottery for 3 weeks in a row, every day.
It's basically impossible. When you talk science, they will say, "Yes, there's a chance." There's also a chance that every proton on Earth will spontaneously decay.
Link
"A lot can happen in an eternity. Protons, for example, while incredibly stable, are believed to eventually decay like any other particle. So simply wait for a period of time of the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years, and roughly half of the constituent particles of Earth will have decayed into positrons and pions. If that's still too much like a planet for you, you could wait for another 10^36 years, leaving only a quarter of the original Earth. Or wait even longer. Eventually there will be as little of Earth left as you wish."
Hence the quote in the article, "Besides, the random nature of quantum physics means that there is always a minuscule, but nonzero, chance of anything occurring, including that the new collider could spit out man-eating dragons."

I for one welcome our new trogdor overlords.

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: Born2bwire

Reading through here reminded me of how ridiculous all this is. The LHC is not a giant superconducting electromagnet, it would be a really shitty electromagnet, but let's humor you because I already posted on this previously. To wit:

If the magnetic field was in anyway perceptible, I doubt they would have any kind of ferrite metal around the facility. For the love of Benji, Lord knows what the consequences would be if 100 sq km of French and Swiss countryside had a constant 8 T of magnetic field. If I recall correctly, Fermi lab (and by extension LHC most likely) used quadrupole magnets, and a quadrupole moment falls off as 1/r^4 where as the normal magnet source is a dipole moment, 1/r^3. So let's say that we want a focused 8 T at the origin of the quadrupole. For sake of proper normalization, let's just say that at a distance of 1 foot, the magnetic field is 8 T. Then 100 feet away, the magnetic field has already dropped to 80 nT from quadrupole magnets and 8 microT from the dipole magnets.

Yeah, it's a real world buster.

Ok, so you agree to clean all the bird guts and whale guts off the LHC when all these migrating animals go astray then?

But aside from that, it's all good, right?

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: Born2bwire

Reading through here reminded me of how ridiculous all this is. The LHC is not a giant superconducting electromagnet, it would be a really shitty electromagnet, but let's humor you because I already posted on this previously. To wit:

If the magnetic field was in anyway perceptible, I doubt they would have any kind of ferrite metal around the facility. For the love of Benji, Lord knows what the consequences would be if 100 sq km of French and Swiss countryside had a constant 8 T of magnetic field. If I recall correctly, Fermi lab (and by extension LHC most likely) used quadrupole magnets, and a quadrupole moment falls off as 1/r^4 where as the normal magnet source is a dipole moment, 1/r^3. So let's say that we want a focused 8 T at the origin of the quadrupole. For sake of proper normalization, let's just say that at a distance of 1 foot, the magnetic field is 8 T. Then 100 feet away, the magnetic field has already dropped to 80 nT from quadrupole magnets and 8 microT from the dipole magnets.

Yeah, it's a real world buster.

Ok, so you agree to clean all the bird guts and whale guts off the LHC when all these migrating animals go astray then?

But aside from that, it's all good, right?

The LHC is at least 50 m below ground. The Earth's magnetic field ranges from around 30-60 microT. At ground level, ignoring the perturbations of the field by the soil, rocks, and other ferromagnetic material in and around the LHC, the magnetic fields will be imperceptible compared to the Earth's field. MRIs have stronger magnetic fields than the LHC and you don't see them pulling down flocks of birds or even disturbing the equipment in the adjoining rooms.

 

[Eeezee]

Even above-ground colliders with strong magnetic fields have never had a problem with "bird guts" or migrating animals getting lost. The Tevatron uses 4.2 T magnets and has been in operation for over 25 years. And it's not submerged 100m beneath the Earth like the LHC's tunnel. By comparison the Tevatron tunnel is practically above ground (you can actually see it from above ground, unlike the LHC tunnel)

Edit: Remember, 100m below ground means an 8T field (the peak for the dipole magnets) in the tunnel is only 8 microTesla at the surface. Every animal magnetism study in existence indicates that you need a much larger field than this if you want to interfere with animal migration. 8 uT is about 5-10x weaker than the Earth's magnetic field, which tends to very depending on your location.

And that's only an approximation if you're looking at 100m of vacuum. There's material in the way that will cause the magnetic field to drop off more quickly. If you were standing at the surface directly above the LHC ring, even the most precise instruments wouldn't be able to measure a change in the surface magnetic field before or after the magnets are turned on.

And WTF, whale guts? Please at least go find Switzerland on a map.

Slick, don't you get tired of being wrong all the time?

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: Eeezee


Slick, don't you get tired of being wrong all the time?

Actually, no. I am hardly ever wrong. And I wasn't wrong when I posted this thread. But others sure seemed to enjoy thinking I was wrong.

The thread was started from someone else?s post I stumbled over from the NYT. My initial point was this is a waste of money that will be used for militaristic purposes, and not to benefit mankind, and nobody has made a good argument that this was not the case.

They didn't spend almost 9 billion dollars on the LHC to make the last bit of shaving cream leave the can without sputtering all over the bathroom. This is not as much about research to save mankind as much as it is about the weaponizing of the physics research to destroy mankind. Spin it however you like to if it makes you sleep good at night, but this research is designed to kill you, not to help you.

And you can feel free to speculate about the magnetic fields they claim to be generating, but unless you are looking at their actual specifications on a technical diagram, which you are not, you are only estimating based on whatever they decide to publically publish. You think if they were attempting to create a new weapon or weapons technologies they would give adversaries all the correct mathematical formulas and ingredients to make one at the same time?

And the whale guts was meant to be humorus merely because they migrate. I realize the LHC is land locked. Sorry if that was lost on you as well.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: Eeezee


Slick, don't you get tired of being wrong all the time?

Actually, no. I am hardly ever wrong. And I wasn't wrong when I posted this thread. But others sure seemed to enjoy thinking I was wrong.

The thread was started from someone else?s post I stumbled over from the NYT. My initial point was this is a waste of money that will be used for militaristic purposes, and not to benefit mankind, and nobody has made a good argument that this was not the case.

They didn't spend almost 9 billion dollars on the LHC to make the last bit of shaving cream leave the can without sputtering all over the bathroom. This is not as much about research to save mankind as much as it is about the weaponizing of the physics research to destroy mankind. Spin it however you like to if it makes you sleep good at night, but this research is designed to kill you, not to help you.

And you can feel free to speculate about the magnetic fields they claim to be generating, but unless you are looking at their actual specifications on a technical diagram, which you are not, you are only estimating based on whatever they decide to publically publish. You think if they were attempting to create a new weapon or weapons technologies they would give adversaries all the correct mathematical formulas and ingredients to make one at the same time?

And the whale guts was meant to be humorus merely because they migrate. I realize the LHC is land locked. Sorry if that was lost on you as well.

God, you are an idiot. Do you have any kind of concept of science or mathematics? How the hell is this designed to kill us?

 

[Eeezee]

No, I am hardly ever wrong.

Actually, you've been proven wrong quite a few times in this very thread. I guess it's an off day for you?

Militaristic purposes? What the hell? I'm a LHC scientist, and I can guarantee you that there is no military in the world that will benefit from what we're doing at the LHC. Perhaps the discoveries made there can be used in a few hundred years after some remarkable development, but that's like blaming Rutherfoord for the atomic bomb. Uncovering the Higgs Boson and possibly eliminating a bunch of supersymmetry models is not exactly research that can be weaponized.

And who are "they?" Who are you talking about? The US government? The EU? Which of the hundreds of contributors are we discussing? Did you know that Americans can't even become CERN members? We're considered "guest users" by CERN's founding papers. CERN was established to consolidate European scientists, since in the wake of WWII America and the USSR ended up taking most of the crop and Europe suddenly lacked a strong physics research center. No single entity spent the 9 billion dollars to make the LHC possible, so I'm not sure who you're referring to.

We're not trying to save mankind, we're checking predictions made by the standard model and hopefully breaking most of the theoretical particle physics models out there so that we can narrow down how the universe works. It's entirely selfish. However, it has nothing to do with any nation's military, and it's certainly not a facility that can kill you or even harm you. Believe me, if this was the case the US wouldn't have cut the SSC, which was going to be about 3x more powerful than the LHC

Not only have I seen the technical specs of the dipole magnets, but I know one of the guys who designed them. Those specs are not public information, they're only available within the collaboration, but the basic details (ie they're about 8T) is public and highly accurate. You can do the calculations yourself with run of the mill E&M calculations; if the magnetic field was any stronger, the beam wouldn't fit in the circular ring. Don't take my word for it. You'll wind up getting the same number, but by all means, calculate it yourself, it's not too hard if you have a basic understanding of magnetism. Remember, the LHC is in the old LEP tunnel, which is the only reason such powerful magnets were required (digging a new tunnel would cost more than using stronger magnets, but since they're 100m underground anyway it doesn't matter).

Like I said, do the calculations yourself if you don't trust the published figures. The equations have been around since the mid-1800s. Synchotrons aren't that difficult. They've been in use since the 50s, and they're based on Maxwell's Equations, which haven't changed in ~150 years. They were already invariant in the rest frame, so relativity didn't require any changes to E&M like it required with Newtonian kinematics.

However, you CAN take my word on this: Liquid Helium cooled superconducting magnets have almost no military application. I can imagine maybe making some sort of rail gun with them if you wanted to throw a lot of money away (the military already has a rail gun, and they use much more efficient magnets than we use). The LHC didn't exactly invent superconductors and I'm not sure how you're drawing a link.

I thought you were just another run of the mill LHC doomsday nutjob, but it turns out you're a full-blown conspiracy theorist in disguise!

Okay, sorry if I missed the whale guts joke, but the rest of your posts have been in a serious tone and have lacked intelligence. Worse yet, it was part of an utterly stupid rant on how the magnetic fields are going to screw up animal migrations. Don't blame me if you come across as someone who might think that Switzerland has a sea border (perhaps you had mixed it up with Sweden, I don't know).

Believe me, if the LHC had anything to do with weapons research I'd be paid MUCH more than the paltry salary I receive now. I WISH I could make that kind of income.

 

[SSSnail]

Slick, you do realize that Eeezeee is actually a physicist working at CERN right?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
Slick, you do realize that Eeezeee is actually a physicist working at CERN right?

He's just part of the plan to kill us all!

Slick's role is to drive us all insane with his utter idiocy and voluntary blindness so that we welcome the end.


And I wouldn't qualify this as a "character attack," Mr. All-Knowing ScientistSnake. This is observation based on extensive evidence. If you are not simply trolling for your own amusement, then you are completely opposed to scientific progress. Why there's technology in your very computer which has been used by the military. Damn scientists, always trying to quietly wipe out humanity.

 

[SunnyD]

Here's an interesting thought - wouldn't any black hole exist infinitely? After all, within the event horizon they can distort space-time, so once they effectively break relativity by becoming a black hole, they exist in all points in time (at least all point prior to their creation?)...

Hmm.

Bah, who cares.

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: Eeezee

No, I am hardly ever wrong.

Actually, you've been proven wrong quite a few times in this very thread. I guess it's an off day for you?

Militaristic purposes? What the hell? I'm a LHC scientist, and I can guarantee you that there is no military in the world that will benefit from what we're doing at the LHC. Perhaps the discoveries made there can be used in a few hundred years after some remarkable development, but that's like blaming Rutherfoord for the atomic bomb. Uncovering the Higgs Boson and possibly eliminating a bunch of supersymmetry models is not exactly research that can be weaponized.

And who are "they?" Who are you talking about? The US government? The EU? Which of the hundreds of contributors are we discussing? Did you know that Americans can't even become CERN members? We're considered "guest users" by CERN's founding papers. CERN was established to consolidate European scientists, since in the wake of WWII America and the USSR ended up taking most of the crop and Europe suddenly lacked a strong physics research center. No single entity spent the 9 billion dollars to make the LHC possible, so I'm not sure who you're referring to.

We're not trying to save mankind, we're checking predictions made by the standard model and hopefully breaking most of the theoretical particle physics models out there so that we can narrow down how the universe works. It's entirely selfish. However, it has nothing to do with any nation's military, and it's certainly not a facility that can kill you or even harm you. Believe me, if this was the case the US wouldn't have cut the SSC, which was going to be about 3x more powerful than the LHC

Not only have I seen the technical specs of the dipole magnets, but I know one of the guys who designed them. Those specs are not public information, they're only available within the collaboration, but the basic details (ie they're about 8T) is public and highly accurate. You can do the calculations yourself with run of the mill E&M calculations; if the magnetic field was any stronger, the beam wouldn't fit in the circular ring. Don't take my word for it. You'll wind up getting the same number, but by all means, calculate it yourself, it's not too hard if you have a basic understanding of magnetism. Remember, the LHC is in the old LEP tunnel, which is the only reason such powerful magnets were required (digging a new tunnel would cost more than using stronger magnets, but since they're 100m underground anyway it doesn't matter).

Like I said, do the calculations yourself if you don't trust the published figures. The equations have been around since the mid-1800s. Synchotrons aren't that difficult. They've been in use since the 50s, and they're based on Maxwell's Equations, which haven't changed in ~150 years. They were already invariant in the rest frame, so relativity didn't require any changes to E&M like it required with Newtonian kinematics.

However, you CAN take my word on this: Liquid Helium cooled superconducting magnets have almost no military application. I can imagine maybe making some sort of rail gun with them if you wanted to throw a lot of money away (the military already has a rail gun, and they use much more efficient magnets than we use). The LHC didn't exactly invent superconductors and I'm not sure how you're drawing a link.

I thought you were just another run of the mill LHC doomsday nutjob, but it turns out you're a full-blown conspiracy theorist in disguise!

Okay, sorry if I missed the whale guts joke, but the rest of your posts have been in a serious tone and have lacked intelligence. Worse yet, it was part of an utterly stupid rant on how the magnetic fields are going to screw up animal migrations. Don't blame me if you come across as someone who might think that Switzerland has a sea border (perhaps you had mixed it up with Sweden, I don't know).

Believe me, if the LHC had anything to do with weapons research I'd be paid MUCH more than the paltry salary I receive now. I WISH I could make that kind of income.

Ezzzee, I am already aware of most of the above points you have posted, and thanks for pointing them out for those too lazy and afflicted with ADD to read up a bit before posting.

And many of my prior posts here, and in fact many of my posts PERIOD are of a sarcastic and or humorous nature considering most of the puerile posters here claiming enlightened intelligence and putting other posters down in thread after thread are nothing more than bored Googtrog poster boys looking for another topic to argue about. On this so-called ?tech? forum it is often nothing more than a posting race to see who can come up with a sarcastic response to the Ops topic after speed reading all the replies as fast as possible, if they even bother to read any replies at all, in most cases. And if someone feels I am personally putting you down, then I probably am and there is a blue or red pill with your name on it. Which is why about 75% of the posters constant snide comments to each other on a regular basis such as occurs in P&N matter about as much to me as a 9 billion dollar search for a strangelet or some new bizarre particle some closet case ego bloated mad scientist wants to win the Nobel prize over.

And it is nice in this thread for once to actually have a supposedly informed person posting to it. And the fact you even admit the magnetic specifications figures are not publicly published only serve to confirm my prior observations about them being secret, don?t they? I can only wonder what else is also intentionally left out of those all fluff and little substance news bites they feed to the masses to keep them updated. I have read up fairly extensively on the beast and done some of my homework, and obviously so have you if you work there as you claim.

The fact remains this project is primarily funded for militaristic applications, and no amount of trying to convince me the US is not directly involved changes this accurate premise one little bit. And the fact they tried to cut the US out of the magnetic loop as much as possible only further cements this weaponization hypothesis.

And by the way, I am not against science, as many of the other crackpot posters like to infer, but I am morally against the constant militarization and weaponization of science. And since I can only see the immediate practical applications of this research going to support new ways to kill, I still have not been convinced otherwise, nor swayed by the countless uninformed responses to the contrary. If this physics research can be eventually converted and perverted into weapons research and not much else then I am right, correct? Do you really think all these countries funding and staffing CERN did this to make a newfangled microwave oven to cook popcorn in faster?

Now, since you are in the magnetic loop, so to speak, care to name a few physicist pie in the sky practical applications of this god particle technology that would not be a weaponized use in the next 200 years?

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: SSSnail
Slick, you do realize that Eeezeee is actually a physicist working at CERN right?

He's just part of the plan to kill us all!

Slick's role is to drive us all insane with his utter idiocy and voluntary blindness so that we welcome the end.


And I wouldn't qualify this as a "character attack," Mr. All-Knowing ScientistSnake. This is observation based on extensive evidence. If you are not simply trolling for your own amusement, then you are completely opposed to scientific progress. Why there's technology in your very computer which has been used by the military. Damn scientists, always trying to quietly wipe out humanity.

See my above post if you are interested in more reasons why your virginal self loathing is often foisted off on others as an opinion instead of fact.

 

[Codewiz]

Originally posted by: SlickSnake

Originally posted by: Eeezee

No, I am hardly ever wrong.

Actually, you've been proven wrong quite a few times in this very thread. I guess it's an off day for you?

Militaristic purposes? What the hell? I'm a LHC scientist, and I can guarantee you that there is no military in the world that will benefit from what we're doing at the LHC. Perhaps the discoveries made there can be used in a few hundred years after some remarkable development, but that's like blaming Rutherfoord for the atomic bomb. Uncovering the Higgs Boson and possibly eliminating a bunch of supersymmetry models is not exactly research that can be weaponized.

And who are "they?" Who are you talking about? The US government? The EU? Which of the hundreds of contributors are we discussing? Did you know that Americans can't even become CERN members? We're considered "guest users" by CERN's founding papers. CERN was established to consolidate European scientists, since in the wake of WWII America and the USSR ended up taking most of the crop and Europe suddenly lacked a strong physics research center. No single entity spent the 9 billion dollars to make the LHC possible, so I'm not sure who you're referring to.

We're not trying to save mankind, we're checking predictions made by the standard model and hopefully breaking most of the theoretical particle physics models out there so that we can narrow down how the universe works. It's entirely selfish. However, it has nothing to do with any nation's military, and it's certainly not a facility that can kill you or even harm you. Believe me, if this was the case the US wouldn't have cut the SSC, which was going to be about 3x more powerful than the LHC

Not only have I seen the technical specs of the dipole magnets, but I know one of the guys who designed them. Those specs are not public information, they're only available within the collaboration, but the basic details (ie they're about 8T) is public and highly accurate. You can do the calculations yourself with run of the mill E&M calculations; if the magnetic field was any stronger, the beam wouldn't fit in the circular ring. Don't take my word for it. You'll wind up getting the same number, but by all means, calculate it yourself, it's not too hard if you have a basic understanding of magnetism. Remember, the LHC is in the old LEP tunnel, which is the only reason such powerful magnets were required (digging a new tunnel would cost more than using stronger magnets, but since they're 100m underground anyway it doesn't matter).

Like I said, do the calculations yourself if you don't trust the published figures. The equations have been around since the mid-1800s. Synchotrons aren't that difficult. They've been in use since the 50s, and they're based on Maxwell's Equations, which haven't changed in ~150 years. They were already invariant in the rest frame, so relativity didn't require any changes to E&M like it required with Newtonian kinematics.

However, you CAN take my word on this: Liquid Helium cooled superconducting magnets have almost no military application. I can imagine maybe making some sort of rail gun with them if you wanted to throw a lot of money away (the military already has a rail gun, and they use much more efficient magnets than we use). The LHC didn't exactly invent superconductors and I'm not sure how you're drawing a link.

I thought you were just another run of the mill LHC doomsday nutjob, but it turns out you're a full-blown conspiracy theorist in disguise!

Okay, sorry if I missed the whale guts joke, but the rest of your posts have been in a serious tone and have lacked intelligence. Worse yet, it was part of an utterly stupid rant on how the magnetic fields are going to screw up animal migrations. Don't blame me if you come across as someone who might think that Switzerland has a sea border (perhaps you had mixed it up with Sweden, I don't know).

Believe me, if the LHC had anything to do with weapons research I'd be paid MUCH more than the paltry salary I receive now. I WISH I could make that kind of income.

Ezzzee, I am already aware of most of the above points you have posted, and thanks for pointing them out for those too lazy and afflicted with ADD to read up a bit before posting.

And many of my prior posts here, and in fact many of my posts PERIOD are of a sarcastic and or humorous nature considering most of the puerile posters here claiming enlightened intelligence and putting other posters down in thread after thread are nothing more than bored Googtrog poster boys looking for another topic to argue about. On this so-called ?tech? forum it is often nothing more than a posting race to see who can come up with a sarcastic response to the Ops topic after speed reading all the replies as fast as possible, if they even bother to read any replies at all, in most cases. And if someone feels I am personally putting you down, then I probably am and there is a blue or red pill with your name on it. Which is why about 75% of the posters constant snide comments to each other on a regular basis such as occurs in P&N matter about as much to me as a 9 billion dollar search for a strangelet or some new bizarre particle some closet case ego bloated mad scientist wants to win the Nobel prize over.

And it is nice in this thread for once to actually have a supposedly informed person posting to it. And the fact you even admit the magnetic specifications figures are not publicly published only serve to confirm my prior observations about them being secret, don?t they? I can only wonder what else is also intentionally left out of those all fluff and little substance news bites they feed to the masses to keep them updated. I have read up fairly extensively on the beast and done some of my homework, and obviously so have you if you work there as you claim.

The fact remains this project is primarily funded for militaristic applications, and no amount of trying to convince me the US is not directly involved changes this accurate premise one little bit. And the fact they tried to cut the US out of the magnetic loop as much as possible only further cements this weaponization hypothesis.

And by the way, I am not against science, as many of the other crackpot posters like to infer, but I am morally against the constant militarization and weaponization of science. And since I can only see the immediate practical applications of this research going to support new ways to kill, I still have not been convinced otherwise, nor swayed by the countless uninformed responses to the contrary. If this physics research can be eventually converted and perverted into weapons research and not much else then I am right, correct? Do you really think all these countries funding and staffing CERN did this to make a newfangled microwave oven to cook popcorn in faster?

Now, since you are in the magnetic loop, so to speak, care to name a few physicist pie in the sky practical applications of this god particle technology that would not be a weaponized use in the next 200 years?

Wow, way to backtrack and not admit you are completely pwned. You don't know sh*t and you refused to admit it now.

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: Codewiz

Wow, way to backtrack and not admit you are completely pwned. You don't know sh*t and you refused to admit it now.

Wow, way to threadcrap and post nothing and show what a l33t g33k you are by using pwned. You don't know sh*t and you refused to prove otherwise and admit it now.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Here's an interesting thought - wouldn't any black hole exist infinitely? After all, within the event horizon they can distort space-time, so once they effectively break relativity by becoming a black hole, they exist in all points in time (at least all point prior to their creation?)...

Hmm.

Bah, who cares.

Fun fact, black holes decay. You can actually detect black hole emissions from Earth. Theory indicates that smaller black holes decay faster than big ones. We don't understand what goes on inside the event horizon of a black hole.

SlickSnake, the US didn't even make the lion's share of financial contributions to the LHC. I swear to you, it has NOTHING to do with the US military.

If this were a military project I'd probably at least own a nice car, but I'm driving around in a '95 hand me down. Don't bother insisting that this is a military project, because it isn't. Not only do you have no evidence, but there isn't even a casual link that can be drawn.

The "god particle" is a term coined by the media for the Higgs boson, which is thought to give all particles mass via the Higgs mechanism. There's not really anything god-like about it, no more so than the other bosons (photon, W, Z, gluon). If we discover it, great, we've confirmed another facet of the gem we call "The Standard Model of Particle Physics" which we think pretty accurately predicts what goes on in nature. This is what scientists do; we make and/or test theories. Filling out the standard model doesn't really have any weaponization possibilities.

If you want to get mad at projects that DO have potential weaponization, go talk to the nanotechnology people. I can think of 100 ways off the top of my head for tiny robots to be turned into incredible weapons. I can't even think of one way for the LHC to be converted into a weapon, and neither can you (or at least you haven't so far). Anything we discover there will be completely natural, generated by nature all the time; the difference is that we'll be able to see the particles better, since it's a controlled lab setting.

And speaking of microwaves, a military project (radar) gave us the microwave oven. Did I just blow your mind? :shocked:

You're asking for practical applications of the LHC? Sorry, I have none for you. The ramifications of any discoveries we find there won't be known for at least 50-100 years. The muon was discovered in 1936, and there is still no practical application for them. However, I find it hard to believe that anyone will find a way to weaponize particles that decay in less than a nanosecond. Perhaps with some bizarre combination of matter/antimatter fueled hand-held particle collider that generate such particles and fire them at near the speed of light? But at that point why don't you just fire the antimatter at your opponent? Seriously, you can't weaponize the Higgs boson any more than you can weaponize apple trees.

Your posts are crazy. You're insisting that you're being sarcastic and humorous but there's nothing funny about the military perverting scientific research. Is that part of the joke or do you seriously believe that the LHC is being used for US military research, even though it's located at a European research center that doesn't allow Americans to become local scientists (only gusts), in a country that would never tolerate any US military presence of any sort (Switzerland)?

 

[SSSnail]

I'm gonna chalk this up for "2009 Pwnage of the Year". We're starting early.

 

[AlienCraft]

If that's how it ends, that's how it ends. What are you going to do about it? Go all Bourne Identity on someone?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
...
You're asking for practical applications of the LHC? Sorry, I have none for you. The ramifications of any discoveries we find there won't be known for at least 50-100 years. The muon was discovered in 1936, and there is still no practical application for them. However, I find it hard to believe that anyone will find a way to weaponize particles that decay in less than a nanosecond. Perhaps with some bizarre combination of matter/antimatter fueled hand-held particle collider that generate such particles and fire them at near the speed of light? But at that point why don't you just fire the antimatter at your opponent? Seriously, you can't weaponize the Higgs boson any more than you can weaponize apple trees.
...

I always think of the electron, and power generation via magnets and coils of wire, as fine examples of "useless" experiments in particle physics and electromagnetics. A tiny particle, even smaller than a proton? Who the hell could possibly do anything useful with that?

And with nuclear weapons, we've managed to weaponize neutrons. Hell, long before that, we weaponized rocks. In its time, scientists believed that their Pointy Rock Theorem would lead to improved food production and clothing production. Opponents believed it would be used as a weapon. That research should have been shut down, but The Fire Project was hogging the limelight.

 

[Eeezee]

Yes, technically you could say that neutrons were "weaponized" in the sense that they can assist in nuclear fission/fusion bombs, although it's pretty misleading to make that statement. There are two more things to remember

1) Neutrons are much easier to make than muons
2) Neutrons have a lifetime of ~ 15 minutes, whereas muons have a lifetime of a microsecond. The particles we're looking for at the LHC have lifetimes that will be much smaller than that.

Certain things are just less likely to have military applications. I can make a weapon out of a stick, but I'm less likely to make a weapon out of an orange.