Anyone heard of this Super Collider?

[cblakey1]

Pretty bizarre stuff!

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/critics-fear-collider-could-doom-earth/20080628165609990001

[Ink]

neat

[cblakey1]

:eek: Scary! :eek:

[TNovak]

I can't believe I've never heard of this before. This should be big news. It could go a long way to either buttress or refute string theory. or it could destroy the earth, apparently :confused2

[protector2814]

Really scary. I've got an eerie feeling about what's going to happen but I'm chalking it up to all the comics I've read and sci-fi movies I've seen. :eek:

[HelloKinky]

I saw this in the papers a while back, I thought it was pretty intense and then I saw a special on it on tv on some public access channel. It was pretty massive. That's the sort of thing a villain would steal to take over the world somehow!

[CessnaDriver]

Be like Fonzie.
Be cool.

Chill.

We live in fantastic times. Scientific endeavors like this are nothing to be freaked about. Just take some time to understand, (well as best as a non-physicist can), it is all about pressing forward into the unknown and exploring and understanding everything about us. Something like this could certainly be on the pathway to new incredible ways of generating energy or traveling the stars.
I for one, wait to see if it can prove string theory correct.


Safety report: latest collider at CERN won't end the world

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080623-safety-report-latest-collider-at-cern-wont-end-the-world.html

"Overall, it's hard to read this report and not wind up viewing the apocalyptic fears as simply being poorly thought through. It was striking how clearly the worries over the LHC have parallels to the fears over biotechnology, which came up during our recent interview with Carl Zimmer (http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/book-review-2008-06.ars/3). There too, billions of years of natural experiments and decades' worth of scientific experiment should be informing our view of safety; for at least some segment of the public, that's not happening."

[Endless Wake]

I use to read about it in physics books and it always reminded me of the Power Pack story where the aliens had to stop humans from creating some new technology that was going to destroy the world.

[Brru]

The fact that this entire thing is so big on the news just shows how ignorant the media is. Any chance they can get to tell you that you are going to die. Even if this was plausible, you wouldn't know it happened. A blackhole opens up and boom earth is gone. I think its comical that this "scientist" estimated a 1 in 50 million odds, yet once per second for billions of years would mean those odds have been broken over and over again.

The funny thing is that this 17 mile accelerator is nothing in comparison to what the U.S. was building. Unfortunately, Bush didn't understand how building it would be a benefit to him, so he scrapped that project even with 1/4 of it built and that money already gone.

[CessnaDriver]

The fact that this entire thing is so big on the news just shows how ignorant the media is. Any chance they can get to tell you that you are going to die. Even if this was plausible, you wouldn't know it happened. A blackhole opens up and boom earth is gone. I think its comical that this "scientist" estimated a 1 in 50 million odds, yet once per second for billions of years would mean those odds have been broken over and over again.

The funny thing is that this 17 mile accelerator is nothing in comparison to what the U.S. was building. Unfortunately, Bush didn't understand how building it would be a benefit to him, so he scrapped that project even with 1/4 of it built and that money already gone.


Assuming you mean the super conducting super collider.
Bush did not "scrap" it.



Cancellation
During the design and the first construction stage, a heated debate ensued about the high cost of the project. In 1987, Congress was told the project could be completed for $4.4 billion, but by 1993 the cost projection exceeded $12 billion. An especially recurrent argument was the contrast with NASA's contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), which was of similar amount. Critics of the project argued that the US could not afford both of them.

The project was canceled by Congress in 1993. Many factors contributed to the shutdown of the project, although different parties disagree on which contributed the most. They include rising cost estimates, poor management by physicists and Department of Energy officials, the end of the need to prove the supremacy of American science with the collapse of the Soviet Union, belief that many smaller scientific experiments of equal merit could be funded for the same cost, Congress's desire to generally reduce spending, and the reluctance of Texas Governor Ann Richards [1] and President Bill Clinton, both Democrats, to support a project begun during the administrations of Richards's Republican predecessor, Bill Clements, and Clinton's Republican predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. However, in 1993, Clinton attempted to prevent the cancellation by requesting that Congress continue "to support this important and challenging effort" through completion because "abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science..." [2]

The closing of the SSC held drastic ramifications for the southern part of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, and resulted in a mild recession made most evident in those parts of Dallas which lay south of the Trinity River.[3] At the time the project was cancelled, 22.5 km (14 miles) of tunnel and 17 shafts to the surface were already dug and nearly two billion dollars had already been spent on the massive facility.[4]

[scott]

People freaked when the light bulb was invented too, claimed it was the devil's work.

[riderV3]

Screw science, this is nothing but another big toy for those who got too much funding and nowhere to spend.

Have they ever thought about how much radioactive waste it'll create?

[CessnaDriver]

Screw science, this is nothing but another big toy for those who got too much funding and nowhere to spend.

Have they ever thought about how much radioactive waste it'll create?

It's not a nuclear reactor you know.

[Brru]

Assuming you mean the super conducting super collider.
Bush did not "scrap" it.


No thats not what Im talking about. In 1999 they set plans for an accelerator that was supposed to span the entire west basically and connect in with Stanfords accelerator. However, a couple years ago Bush cancelled funding because he wants to go back to the moon. They said the funding was going to go to NASA's moon base, but then they also cut funding to NASA a little while after.

[CessnaDriver]

If The Large Hadron Collider Produced A Microscopic Black Hole, It Probably Wouldn't Matter
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080627175348.htm

"Particle colliders creating black holes that could devour the Earth. Sounds like a great Hollywood script. But, according to UC Santa Barbara Physics Professor Steve Giddings, it's pure fiction."

[CessnaDriver]

No thats not what Im talking about. In 1999 they set plans for an accelerator that was supposed to span the entire west basically and connect in with Stanfords accelerator. However, a couple years ago Bush cancelled funding because he wants to go back to the moon. They said the funding was going to go to NASA's moon base, but then they also cut funding to NASA a little while after.


Ok is this it?..

Because the Congress controls the purse strings

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13109-us-budget-cuts-a-body-blow-to-particle-accelerator.html



NASA funding has increased since Columbia.
There is no "moonbase" in the works just yet.
Only replacement rocket systems and capsule for space shuttle called (Constellation) and the beginning of a new Lunar Lander (Altair).

Yes, the goal is to return to the moon to stay.
And this is more then a worthy endeavor.
As the nations that lead on the frontiers end up dictating the course of human history.
China has eyes on space, and has flown crewed missions. I would prefer that free peoples dicate the course of history myself. And so does Buzz Aldrin that is warning about China now.

[nexus]

I kind of get that image from the Ghostbusters when the guy shuts of the containment unit, only these guys will flip the switch and all of a sudden it'll be like "ummmm... maybe this wasn't such a good idea."

At least if we all go, we won't even realize it.

50,000 years from now some starship will cruise by and examine what's left of the Earth and say:
"Oh, here's what did it, those knuckleheads turned on a friggin' black hole generator inside their planet."

[CessnaDriver]

I kind of get that image from the Ghostbusters when the guy shuts of the containment unit, only these guys will flip the switch and all of a sudden it'll be like "ummmm... maybe this wasn't such a good idea."

At least if we all go, we won't even realize it.

50,000 years from now some starship will cruise by and examine what's left of the Earth and say:
"Oh, here's what did it, those knuckleheads turned on a friggin' black hole generator inside their planet."


50,000 years from now perhaps humanitys presence will be spread across the galaxy because of such research.

You never know what you will find when exploring and what value it will have.

[nexus]

Actually, I'll be interested to see the findings. I remember 15 years ago with the scientific community was projecting practical room temp superconductivity.

[nexus]

50,000 years from now perhaps humanitys presence will be spread across the galaxy because of such research.

You never know what you will find when exploring and what value it will have.

Maybe, who knows. All kinds of possibillities.

[CessnaDriver]

"Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops."
- HL Mencken

[Indy_Yoda]

Guess it works, and without turning the earth into a blackhole either:thumbs2:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080910/ap_on_sc/big_bang

[calkat]

Yeah, but they haven't fired the beams at each other yet.

[IronFist]

http://hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

[CessnaDriver]

Just testing for now, but
bare in mind that in the extreme unlikely event they did create a mini black hole that did not evaporate, it would take years for it to grow into anything we would even notice.

So you have a long wait to know.

Personally its on my last things in the world to worry about list.

[JLM]

The LHC scientists answer all your questions, via the gift of rap!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

Also a Q&A with one of the scientists: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7598996.stm

[CessnaDriver]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7598000/7598686.stm

"Collisions at these and greater energies occur millions of times a day in the Earth's atmosphere, and nothing terrible happens." -Stephen Hawking