The Stephen Hawkings of the world say no worries but there’s this theory
that their proton-smashing will create mini-black holes that will swallow the Earth.
The only good news in that case is, they’ll start with France.
Update – A successful test of the Hadron Collider.
Re the smart comments about France. The French don’t need to create black holes. They can order all they want from England!
The LHC is darned expensive, I grant you. It is probably the last atom smasher to be built. And it will smash atoms; it is staring with the Hydrogen nucleus, the Proton. It will also use, later, the lead nucleus, many Protons and Neutrons.
What is significant is that many theoretical physicists will have to drop their pet theory of matter. This is a classic scientific experiment. There are competing theories, all making different predictions about what one will see as one smashes protons together at ever increasing energies. Just as there is an electromagnetic spectrum, that goes from radio waves to gamma rays, and different events cause different e/m waves to be emitted, so with the spectrum of particle energy/mass; the two are not distinguihable, which is why a massive particle is described in GeV (1 billion electron volts).
This machine will be able to crash particles together with amsses of 140 TeV, a hundred and forty thousand times greater. These events should yield, according to which theory you adhere to, particles of lower energies with different life-times and other propoerties, such as charge, etc.
ET, nothing is known of the universe before the hypothesized “big-bang”. Little is known about the universe, even now.
There is no distinction between mass and energy
If only climate scinetists would allow their theories to be tested by actual data from the real world.
Hint: It’s not warming
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/uah_august2008.png
Edward Teach, everything that exists is within the Universe, by definition. Something cannot exist outside of the Universe.
RW – I understand your point about ‘there is no distinction between mass and energy’ but I ‘beg to differ’. There IS a distinction – otherwise mass could not transform itself from one Form to another Form. Mass is Well-Formed Energy; it is energy that is organized in patterns within space and time. Only at the squared speed of light, are they theoretically equivalent, or rather, mass no longer has Form (patterns of organization within space and time) and is therefore, pure energy.
I agree that nothing is known about the universe before the Big Bang, but I think that a great deal is known about the universe now.
Worst case if black holes form we have nothing to worry about.
1. Hawkings radiation will cause the black holes to evaporate very quickly and.
2. The force of gravity is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the point masses.
This means (I believe) that if black holes form, they will have such low mass that they will likely evaporate (due to Hawkings Radiation) before the very low amount of gravity due to the very low mass of the black hole created has time to be attracted to and consume any nearby particles (gravity falls off proportional to distance.
So don’t waste anytime with this nonsense.
By the way, we should be solidly behind the experimental physicists. Their work is where the rubber meets the road and prevents a lot of quack science espoused by theorists from gaining traction. (Yes climatology I’m looking at you)
Who cares about experimental results? I demand to know why these scientists are referring to their research in racially insensitive terms.
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
They’ll find the Higgs boson after they read the sanity clause in their contract …
Wait, everyone knows there ain’t no sanity clause!
And there ain’t no Higgs boson either!
Think of how much money that could have been saved if instead of building the Hadron Collider, they had just asked ET. She already knows everything!