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

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Ozoned
I am actually quite fond of black holes.

I'm with ya there! :thumbsup: :laugh:

 

[frostedflakes]

Excuse me, it's a WHITE hole!

 

[smokeyjoe]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Excuse me, it's a WHITE hole!

I prefer my holes to be pink.

 

[TheDoc9]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Relax, Doc, that so called perfect contradiction you were complaining about was totally intentional. It was supposed to make your mind go 'Boing' and shift to a higher level.

Well I guess I took a chance with that one, my first thought was that you were either joking or totally crazy.

In any case, these are black holes we're talking about. If you're right we expand knowledge, If I'm right it won't really matter.

 

[Craig234]

I like a little paranoia when it comes to things where the downside is 'ends the human race'.

I quite possibly would have preferred never finding out that atom bombs won't be catastrophic, despite the high cost of a prolonged war.

I love the research of science, but only when the odds of ending the human race are far smaller than one in a billion.

 

[spittledip]

i say let her rip and lets see what happens. interesting stuff

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: SMOGZINN

Originally posted by: TheDoc9

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
The same stupid kinds of ideas were around when the first atomic bomb was exploded and we see now how totally safe those are.

Relax, the worst that can happen is they will figure out how everything works and no longer need to believe in a God.

And anything that takes you before you can have a single thought can't be all bad.

Wake up and think for yourself, don't believe in God, do whatever you want, but at least think before writing down such a perfect contradiction.

In any case, when did creating BLACK HOLES become ok? I think it's safe to say this is a bit different then the idea of a nuke maybe igniting the atmosphere. I think we can all agree that black holes destroy everything, the beauty of this is that they will be created here, and no one knows the outcome after that. This is stated in the LHC's own press releases.

Stephen Hawking has never had one of his theory's proven correctly and until we create a black hole like he wants, he'll never have the chance to prove them. He's had a hard life and maybe he might just have a death wish because of these things.

In all, finding higs particles and proving some mans obsession is not worth the risk of 6 billion lives.

Creating BLACK HOLES became ok when we started to understand the math behind how they work. A sub-atomic sized black hole is harmless. Even if it stuck around for hours it would be harmless. At worst it will suck in a few atoms before dissolving. The concept of a stable sub-atomic black hole has been disproved.
The main doomsday fear of the LHC is that it could create strangelets. A form of strange matter that could transform other matter it touches into strange matter creating a run away ice-nine effect, and essentially turning earth and everything on it into strange matter. Strangelets are unproven, and even if they exist they would have to have a certian property that we are somewhat doubtfull of.
The odds of this occurring are so remote as to be considered unworthy of considering, mainly because the LHC does not increase the odds of this happening much more then the odds of it occurring when you dribble a basketball.

I'm convinced it's very safe for several reasons, but mostly because these kinds of reactions occur all the time in the Sun and elsewhere in the universe, and we don't see black holes or strangelets just popping up and devouring planets. I defy anyone to prove to me black holes even exist, let alone strangelts...

 

[silverpig]

I posted about this in the other thread on here about LHC. If you read the preprint they posted in one of their first paragraphs they basically state soemthing like:

"Our world is a 4 dimensional D-brane imbedded in a 5th dimensional manifold with the metric:"

And then gave some whacky metric.

So they assumed string theory, and assumed that our space-time is living on a 5th dimensional manifold with some really crazy ass metric. That's a whole ton of assumptions. It's sort of like making the claim that the odds of picking 4 right numbers out of 1003 is 1/1000. Of course we assume that the first three numbers picked are 12, 556, and 650, and just have one left to get right.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: TheDoc9

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Relax, Doc, that so called perfect contradiction you were complaining about was totally intentional. It was supposed to make your mind go 'Boing' and shift to a higher level.

Well I guess I took a chance with that one, my first thought was that you were either joking or totally crazy.

In any case, these are black holes we're talking about. If you're right we expand knowledge, If I'm right it won't really matter.

As I mentioned earlier, there are cosmic rays arriving all the time with energies far greater than the HSC will be able to make. They haven't swallowed us so I don't think the collider will.

 

[CLite]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: James Bond
Every time I read an article like this, I have this surreal vision of some other species discovering our planet, and reading articles like this, thinking "so... this was how it happened."

Then again. I'm sure if the black hole really did happen, there wouldn't be much evidence.

Black holes actually make it impossible for any information to escape. All they would find is a black hole, indirectly of course.

You are wrong, information can not be destroyed in the universe. All the information contained within the blackhole is stored on the edge of it's 2-dimensional event horizon. Deciphering this information would be rather difficult though.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: CLite

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: James Bond
Every time I read an article like this, I have this surreal vision of some other species discovering our planet, and reading articles like this, thinking "so... this was how it happened."

Then again. I'm sure if the black hole really did happen, there wouldn't be much evidence.

Black holes actually make it impossible for any information to escape. All they would find is a black hole, indirectly of course.

You are wrong, information can not be destroyed in the universe. All the information contained within the blackhole is stored on the edge of it's 2-dimensional event horizon. Deciphering this information would be rather difficult though.

I wonder if that's where all the passwords I've forgotten have gone.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: James Bond
Every time I read an article like this, I have this surreal vision of some other species discovering our planet, and reading articles like this, thinking "so... this was how it happened."

Then again. I'm sure if the black hole really did happen, there wouldn't be much evidence.

Black holes actually make it impossible for any information to escape. All they would find is a black hole, indirectly of course.

not necessarily.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: TheDoc9
Wake up and think for yourself, don't believe in God, do whatever you want, but at least think before writing down such a perfect contradiction.

In any case, when did creating BLACK HOLES become ok? I think it's safe to say this is a bit different then the idea of a nuke maybe igniting the atmosphere. I think we can all agree that black holes destroy everything, the beauty of this is that they will be created here, and no one knows the outcome after that. This is stated in the LHC's own press releases.

Stephen Hawking has never had one of his theory's proven correctly and until we create a black hole like he wants, he'll never have the chance to prove them. He's had a hard life and maybe he might just have a death wish because of these things.

In all, finding higs particles and proving some mans obsession is not worth the risk of 6 billion lives.

1) As I understand it, black holes will be created only if string theory is correct. This is not likely.

2) Black holes created will have a mass somewhere around a few micrograms, which assumes that ALL of the matter and energy within the acceleration ring coalesces into the black hole - which won't happen.

Now, let's say you have a million times more mass - a full gram. How much gravitational attraction does that gram have? Damn near nothing. Now let's say that 1 gram is a 1 gram black hole. It still has the same gravitational pull: damn near nothing.

3) If any of these tiny black holes are created, they're magnetically contained within a vacuum that is about as complete as interplanetary space. A black hole can't grow if there's no additional matter to absorb in the first place.

4) Nature plays much more powerful games. Cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, not just of this planet, but of others in the Solar System, with much greater energy. Number of OMG-Massive!!! black holes in this star system: 0.

You are at greater risk of having your car suck up all matter on Earth, as its gravitational attraction is many millions of times stronger than any tiny singularities the LHC could create.

Originally posted by: Craig234
I like a little paranoia when it comes to things where the downside is 'ends the human race'.

I quite possibly would have preferred never finding out that atom bombs won't be catastrophic, despite the high cost of a prolonged war.

I love the research of science, but only when the odds of ending the human race are far smaller than one in a billion.

Good news then: The odds are WAY better than that. I've heard it likened to winning the lottery every single day for 3 weeks.
It's also theoretically possible for all of the protons and neutrons comprising Earth to undergo radioactive decay at the same time. It's a damn slim chance, but it is theoretically possible. But not many people seem to be worried about that.

Originally posted by: CLite
You are wrong, information can not be destroyed in the universe. All the information contained within the blackhole is stored on the edge of it's 2-dimensional event horizon. Deciphering this information would be rather difficult though.

Too bad Quantum went out of business.
The new line of Quantum hard drives: The Singularity. Data can now be stored below the subatomic level, and in just two dimensions, at data densities of up to 500 trillion yottabytes per square nanometer.
But wait, there's more! This unique device is also the world's first write-only hard drive!

 

[manowar821]

Let's mess with mother nature. Seriously, I'm not joking. It's almost like we were built to screw with the laws of nature and figure out what makes it tick, and if we take ourselves out in the process, that's a pretty fucking awesome way to go out.

The mentality of "don't mess with nature" goes on par with "don't play god". Screw that, that's pussy religious talk. SCIENCE MOTHER FUCKERS, turn that bitch on!

 

[Number1]

CBC Quirks and Quarks scientific radio show dec 28 2008 radio show


http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/media.../mp3/qq-2008-12-27.mp3

Question Starts at 21:50 :

Suppose the new Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland could actually create a tiny black hole, what would happen to that black hole? Would it head off in its own direction or stick around and eventually suck up the entire Earth?


Answer from Dr. Don Page, Professor of Physics at the University of Alberta.

You can all relax now, everything will be all right....

 

[pears2]

Originally posted by: CLite
Uhm these three physicists don't even have PhD's unless Fox has forgotten how to properly address Dr's. So these graduates students (maybe not even that) claim the blackhole could last for about a second, far longer than previous predictions. That's great and all but doesn't change the fact that a microscopic blackhole lasting for even a few seconds would not amount to anything.

Well, Benjamin Harms is a professor of theoretical high-energy physics and earned his doctorate in 1969, according to his faculty page at the University of Alabama. Sergio Fabi is only listed as the lab coordinator for the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the staff page, but is listed as earning his doctorate in 2008 according to this list. Roberto Casadio is a tenured researcher at the University of Bologna, according to the Department of Physics site, and earned his doctorate in 1996.

 

[Eeezee]

I've had enough of these shitty LHC Doomsday posts. Please STFU, you people have no idea what you're talking about. I don't understand why it's so easy for you morons to latch onto every stupid conspiracy theory and doomsday prediction that rolls through the internet. It's astounding.

Guess what? Even if the black holes last 1000 years, they'll never grow larger than a Planck length. The LHC's collision energies are tiny

 

[SlickSnake]

Yes, the world is going to end one day. Physicists will see to that. And if they can kill a few misdirected migrating birds and bees in the process with the LHC to speed things along, it's all good, right?

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=38&threadid=2180174&enterthread=y">Scientists in search of the God particle may find more than they bargained for! How many humans can you crowd into an expanding black hole? WITH POLL!
</a>

Shameless plug for my own much older thread about this that has garnered the merciless sarcastic indignation of an entire community of out of work physics professors and scientists who post to these forums out of boredom.

And I need your help in my thread, Moonbeam, hehehe.

 

[First]

Isn't this far less dangerous than exploding a nuclear bomb. I don't get the paranoia with it.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Ever notice how some here pick and choose their science?

Oh wow! A black hole will kill ME! Don't do it.

Global climate change will kill my GRANDKIDS. Nothing to worry about, and I'm not paying to fix it.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
Ever notice how some here pick and choose their science?

Oh wow! A black hole will kill ME! Don't do it.

Global climate change will kill my GRANDKIDS. Nothing to worry about, and I'm not paying to fix it.

Agreed. The ignorance and lack of thought is unsettling as well.

Why are celestial black holes dangerous? Because they started out massive, as the result of a large star's core collapsing on itself. We're talking about making something that is tiny compared to a proton. People also probably have no concept of the scale of a very large star, or of a proton.
And yet these people who evidently have next to no education in the sciences are clearly more qualified to say "The LHC will kill us all!" than people who have spent their careers studying physics and expanding the field's body of knowledge.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

The ignorance is strong in this thread.

"Millions of nuclear weapons pointed at my head"
Collectively we have never had millions of nuclear weapons from all nations inventory combined.

Originally posted by: TheDoc9

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
The same stupid kinds of ideas were around when the first atomic bomb was exploded and we see now how totally safe those are.

Relax, the worst that can happen is they will figure out how everything works and no longer need to believe in a God.

And anything that takes you before you can have a single thought can't be all bad.

Wake up and think for yourself, don't believe in God, do whatever you want, but at least think before writing down such a perfect contradiction.

In any case, when did creating BLACK HOLES become ok? I think it's safe to say this is a bit different then the idea of a nuke maybe igniting the atmosphere. I think we can all agree that black holes destroy everything, the beauty of this is that they will be created here, and no one knows the outcome after that. This is stated in the LHC's own press releases.

Stephen Hawking has never had one of his theory's proven correctly and until we create a black hole like he wants, he'll never have the chance to prove them. He's had a hard life and maybe he might just have a death wish because of these things.

In all, finding higs particles and proving some mans obsession is not worth the risk of 6 billion lives.

How is creating a black hole different than igniting the atmosphere? Both would mean the end of humanity. Both are unfounded theories based off bad science and math.

If black holes destroy everything, then why hasn't the super massive one at our galaxies center destroyed us yet? Hell how come we even have galaxies surrounding black holes, because everything should be destroyed by them. :roll:

I am waiting for the LHC press releases.

You do realize gravity is still just a theory I hope. So is the theory of general relativity, which Hawking happens to have worked on. Hawking radiation is a theory that's pretty well established.

Originally posted by: TheDoc9
whats so funny is I could provide links, from the lhc press releases (look them up for yourself). But you guys will still justify your side of the argument because you believe so strongly of how right you are.

Please do provide links that show anything with proof (especially the actual LHC press releases) that state the LHC will destroy the Earth. I'm anxiously awaiting reading these.

Originally posted by: Craig234
I like a little paranoia when it comes to things where the downside is 'ends the human race'.

I quite possibly would have preferred never finding out that atom bombs won't be catastrophic, despite the high cost of a prolonged war.

I love the research of science, but only when the odds of ending the human race are far smaller than one in a billion.

The odds of the LHC destroying the Earth are even lower than that. So I'm glad you want it turned on like the rest of the rational world. I'd hate for you to be like that Indian girl who killed herself over it.

Oh and I'm not waiting for this to change.

 

[Elias824]

Man a black hole would fix all of our problems, why dose everyone think its a bad thing. Really no more idiots, war's, famine, racism, we would all just be one big happy bunch of condensed matter!