Threat Watch, LHC?

Oh I HOPE that happens! AWESOME!!!!!

The Dragons would be cool too.

Just another attempt to stop people from understanding creation of matter, and where the energy is taken from. So black holes exist for a couple nanoseconds big deal, they will bend the light around them, suck up a few hadrons but still to weak to start ripping molecules from LHC or even the Earth. Its not a big enough threat to stop the project.

People fear what they do not understand, and clearly people do not understand how black holes work.

I think it impolite to call people who might not "understand" how black holes work and be afraid of the potential consequences to be kooks.

I am not the brightest scientific mind but after taking a rudimentary course in Quantum Mechanics and other nuclear sciences I am not entirely ignorant.

I believe that government scientists are powerfully persuaded to lie, cheat their results and otherwise decieve the processes in order to stay a 'team player' so I do not have a strong belief system in place to support that all the 'experts' think it is safe. I am skeptical, what about the neutron bomb? What about the X-ray laser, all these 'brightest minds' thought these were devices that worked, but we found out otherwise ... What if Mr. Hawkins, bless his soul, IS WRONG? is the price of study and assuring our future is safe for a few years, or decades too high a price to pay?

I am not an ignorant cuss, but I do not know enough to assure safety. I also do not 'trust' those scietists to be 'sure' about anything so small as a miniscule black hole.

This lack of trust does not make me a kook, but it does make me oppossed to rushing into things and says that another decade or so of study would not be unreasonable considering the stakes.

The LHC will be an amazing tool in the hands of physicists. I can't wait to see what discoveries they will make. I for one am not worried about black holes or anything... this has been very exagerrated by the press.

Check out some fun shirts I made on the subject!
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Thanks!

I agree that "team players" Smile and go along with the crowd in order to sustain some higher authority's agenda.
Also that better a better understanding of what they're actually dealing with should be better reviewed, but the Physicists at CERN are the most brilliant in the World, and I am sure they all care very much about the importance of Life. If there was a threat to it, One would speak up despite skeptics and humiliation, if it mean't loosing Life. I have complete trust in their capabilities.

Besides the only way we will find out is when it happens, which it will. If the Earth is destroyed and all matter is taken to a smaller space then we could imagine.. Then we will start at the beginning again, inside a large black sphere of energy that will create it all again.

Since when, after a black hole is created, would the process cease or reverse itself? This would be out of the norm. Black holes, after collapsing into existence as iron suns, only grow, and cannot be turned off. This is their nature. The premise upon which this experiment is based is incorrect. Remember, the laws of physics have to be followed. There have been many pet theories over several millennia, which at the time were popular, but were found, in fact, to be wrong. I believe this to be one of them.

If a black hole, regardless of how small it was, were to be created on this planet, it would be a disaster. The black hole, as it grew, would sink into the planet, and we would be gone. If one wants to create a homemade black hole, it should be done far away in the bowels of space, away from other worlds. As a super ultra-dense body that cannot be seen, it will affect the local space-time continuum in terms of the orbits of meteors, comets, satellites and the like. If you get too close, you might orbit forever or get torn apart and crushed in the singularity.

Do you really want one of these things here?

I do not know enough to know what the theoretical underpinnings behind the statements from the laboratories that the collider is safe. However it would seem reasonable that experiments could be devised that tested some of the theories further prior to risking total annihilation.

I was not concerned about this technology until I listened to some of those CERN scientists speak. What they said was alarming from my basic understanding of quantum mechanics. They defended the collider as only re-creating those energies that are occuring when gamma radiation slams into matter. While the energy is the same the supercollider is slamming two masses together which is entirely different that slamming a massless photon into matter. I understand there are secondary interactions and that may or may not be the theoretical underpinning, but to say that colliding a previously collided masses is the same as an uncollided masss in the accelerator is again a very large stretch. My question is thus .... Are we absolutely positively 100.000000000% sure that these experiments cannot get out of control? In answering this question to the required precision will take a decade or a century then I say so be it. The stakes are simply too high and we can learn about these interactions at a future date.

This desire to assure safety to a level of precision that is coincident with the risks does not in any way make me a kook. I think quite the contrary ...

I think they should do these experiments on the moon. That way, if any dragons were created, they would suffocate and die before wreaking havoc on the human race.

Anytime you mess around with things you don't fully understand, there is a potential for disaster.
Now they are saying that the little black holes are not going to act like they thought they would.
Duh.
When it destroys the earth, they won't be around to say "oops" again.

ahhh dont worry guys by the time that lil black hole grows to anything dangerous, the scientists will have learned enough from the lhc to stop it from happening ;)

Devils Advocate

1. Black Holes are a theory. There is no "proof" of existence.
(how can you say there's a chance that something will happen if it doesn't exist?)

2. If a black hole does form... we know nothing about them. so how can we say it would be around for a nano of a nano of a nano second?

My Opinion

we don't know enough about this situation, the outcome, or the possibilities.

When is the last time science didn't screw something up? When was the last time science got something right on the first try?

I am not saying it's right, but when the atomic bomb was first tested physicists didn't know if it would cause a chain reaction that would destroy the universe.

One of the basic premises of science is that you can never be absolutely sure about anything, especially when it comes to quantum physics, and if we always wait to make sure every decision has absolutely zero risk we will never make any progress in areas of life or science.

i will ease all your fears with 1 post. the mass of 2 protons hitting and causing a micro sigularity( odds of are basically impossible) is not even close to the mass of both protns combined. we all had science in highschool i assume. well remember the law of conservation of matter.(matter cannot be created or destroyed only changed to another form.)well given just that alone, shouldnt it be obvious that when they hit alot of mass will be,lost in the form of heat and light. now here is the important part. well we will ay for arguements sake that only 1/4 of the mass of both is lost in the impact. that gives us a black hole that weights in at a whopping 1.5 protons. lol wow thats scary. its event horizon would be to small to even suck in another proton or electron meaning it could only eat on muons and gluons and quarks and other subatomic particles. and at the mass we have i doubt that it would even have enough gravity to attract anything. not to mention overcoming the nuclear forces holding atoms together.

see that wasnt hard at all was it

I find comments by reddwhite to be only adding to confusion by not either laying out the challenge or providing any definitive answers. Mere verbal rational alone will not definately estimate the risks in this case.

The point of jedi Battosai is simply too cavalier when faced with large risks. Some risks are just simply too large to ignore. If Mr. Barrosai's logic were pursued we should set fire to the rainforest just to prove global warming and advance our knowledge of science. I am not the brightest scientific mind, but recognize that proof in the case of black holes and LHC is difficult at best. However the risk is sufficiently great as it appears to be, then we should not pursue research that is impossible to prove safety for.

What I see in this LHC debate are any number of kooks who are willing to ignore any risk in order to advance knowledge and science. Madam Currie was one of those scientists, I do not want to end up with her fate.

TX77092 you seem to have completely misconstrued my comments. What does a realistic look at how everything in life has risks have to do with burning down rainforests?

My only point is that people today take risks way out proportion when they don't have control over events. A person can be afraid of flying and not have a second thought about driving a car even thou the former is far safer then the later, and both the airplane and car represent risks that are many magnitudes greater than the LHC.

If a bunch of network TV stations start broadcasting "Special Reports" about disappearing parking lots in Switzerland, just lie down and throw a paper bag over your head.

It won't do you any good, but it might make you feel better.

TX77092 you seem to have completely misconstrued my comments. What does a realistic look at how everything in life has risks have to do with burning down rainforests?
www.promdresspicture.com

Hey TX77092:

Is "100.000000000%" more accurate than saying "100%"?

LOL - sorry - coudn't resist