I was very confused this morning… I got into class and everyone was arguing whether we’re all going to die or not. It wasn’t until I got into science 2 hours later when I found out what everyone was on about.
Cern has been working on a 14 mile under ground tunnel, with a pipe in it rigged to electromagnets. Its a partical accelerator. They are going to launch it on wednesday when they first fire atoms at each other in order to recreate a miniture “big bang” that created the planet we live on. Well that all sounds good but apparently there is a chance that they could create a black hole and destroy the planet in seconds… thus the “we’re all going to die” argument. The chances of this happening are apparently 1 in 50,000,000, but someone else sait it was 1 in 50 and another sait it was a 50/50 chance. Now I’m confused… what is supposed to happen? What do you think about it all. Are we all about to die? If so, good bye good friends :(.
I don’t see the point in stuff like that, just a huge waste of time, and a bigger waste of money as far as I care. If we all die then we all die, if we don’t then we don’t.
[LEFT]yeah I think it was a big waste of money too, why do we need to know what happens… it doesn’t matter really. I presume there is a reason for it but is it really worth it? If we die in a black hole we’re all going to get a little closer as we get sucked into a highly comdenced mass with huge gravitational forces. That might hurt.
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Lol, mind you, if we all die because of it, there’ll be no one to tell them that it was a big ass waste of money.
Instead of stuff like this, the money could have been spent on something more for the good of every day people, rather than to satisfy some rediculously overpaid nerd’s curiosity.
How will the experiment benefit us? Congratulations, you now know how the earth was created, shame though as evolution has to re-start as you destroyed life as we know it with a black hole.
very true, everyone dies eventually… oh yeah sorry for the typo, I didn’t notice because the spell check didn’t spot it. I’m studying particles at the moment anyway so I don’t kno why I spelt it wrong.
Impossible. Even our own sun (a very tiny star compared to most) which is more than 300,000 times bigger than our earth, is still not nearly massive enough to ever become a black hole!
It will only be tiny to start with, but the more it sucks in, the bigger the mass, and then the more gravity it has. That sucks more and more stuff in to create a super condensed mass that just keeps getting bigger.
the entire point is that we’re not entirely sure what’s going to happen, but you can be fairly sure that it won’t cause the destruction of the universe.
Random fact: when up to speed each proton has the same kinetic energy as an aircraft carrier travelling at 30 knots.
And as for why, probing the nature of the universe is human, why did we bother landing on the moon or plunging the depths of the ocean? For technology to advance it requires us to research all areas of existance, it is impossible to know where the results of the research will lead and what impact it will have on humanity.
If you’re really worried dying about recognise the real dangers in your life and for god’s sake don’t ever go near a car again.
see that would be boring, avoiding every danger, you might as well be dead! I personally think its just a load of rubbish but there is apparently a chance that it could happen and it doesn’t sound so fun.
If they don’t create a black hole the first time they’ll just damn well keep going until they do…
If you have anything you really want to say or do get it said or done before next week (good advice anyway probably).
Me, if I get sucked into a black hole still unable to unicycle one-footed with my left leg as well as my right, that is going to be the least of my concerns so I can die happy. Apart obviously from the instantaneous agony of being stretched almost infinately long and squashed almost infinately flat at the same time.
I was sorta concerned at first, but was placated by the argument that incredibly powerful cosmic rays hit the upper atmosphere often. These perform the same experiment, but we aren’t up there with all our gear to see or learn from it. So if this kind of collision was going to cause a durable black hole, or ice nine etc., it should have already happened by now.
As far as what we can learn from this ? Who knows ? Personally, I don’t think they are trying to learn about origins, the big bang etc., so much as testing theories about quarks and sub particles.
I think they want to find Higg’s Boson also. I kinda agree with ^ most of what was said above about the impressive cost of the LHC. It will seem hard to justify unless something really cool is learned. Maybe all we will learn is that it would of been a hell of a lot cheaper just to buy Higgs another Boson.
