There is a tiny, tiny chance the world could end tomorrow.

... ...and here starts a long debate about science that will be never-ending

I don't believe there will be any problems at all with this experiment. In fact, congratulations to the scientist who first raised the story that the world could end as a result of this experiment, because he has actually given the LHC a huge amount of publicity.

The main goal of this experiment is to find the Higg's Boson, a particle that confers mass to every other particle which also has mass. It is only predicted by theory thus far, but I'm not confident that this exxperiment will prove the theory at all. In fact, I think that it will only raise more questions than answers.

Kevin

No, I don't, because the amount of energy at the actual moment of the Big Bang was infinite. I don't actually believe that there ever was a Big Bang. Rather, I just think that the idea is used because it fits well with observation. Like, you can't have an infinite amount of energy! In my opinion, the Universe goes through cycles of contraction and expansion. Obviously, we are in an expanding phase.

Any opinions yourself?

Everyone got your kool-aid ready? Maybe we can ride the black hole to heaven : /

They'll miss September 11th by a day

Unless it arbitrarily gets delayed one day due to technical or logistical complications, which would be funny.

Oh God, yeh. I'm surprised that we haven't heard more about 9 / 11 this year than we have in previous years. Then again, I do live in Ireland where people generally are resentful of Americans.

Kevin

Yes, the angles. They are finally being seen.


"/-\__/-\"

I'm very surprised by all of the attention given to this actually. Who knows? - Maybe the founders of the experiment were actually the ones who 'leaked' the Black Hole catastrophy story in the first place, in order to gain publicity. The world was never going to end today in any case, because all they were doing today was shooting protons around in one direction only (i.e. - no collisions yet!).

Kevin

Where was this? - In the RTÉ studio or at the LHC operating room? There have been no collisions of particles yet dude - All they have done so far is shoot protons around in opposite directions, but not at the same time. The next step will be to collide them, of couse, but not at the highest of velocities. They will have to collide the particles at progressively higher velocities in order to calibrate the equipment correctly and to make sure that everything works before the final... ...big bang!

Wow, I even managed to slip a pun in.

Kevin

Whoever said that the earth would be destroyed is an idiot. THe scientists who created the LHC know the most about it, and obviously they wouldn't have done it if there was a (significant) chance that the world would be eaten by a black hole.
But excellent experiment and should clear up a lot of things and provide a lot of interesting new data.

As far as I'm aware, there is indeed a plan to create an even larger one, but that is by the Americans. They're usually a bit ticked-off when someone gets the better of them. There's a documentary on The National Geographic channel now about the LHC - It's called 'Big Bang Machine'. If you have this channel, I recommend watching this documentary.

Kevin