The LHC -- A good thing?
It's 2 a.m. and I have decided to post a little something. As you have probably guessed, I am at home on-call again. Last night, I was called in at 12:30 a.m. and I made pretty good money. I am sitting waiting for the phone to ring again. I will write a little something to stay awake a little while longer.
Kathy posted this on her blog, so she beat me to it... but I am going to say a little something about it too.
The world's first "super collider" is about to be launched. It is called the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), located between France and Switzerland and scientists are trying to get a glimpse of what the universe looked like one nanosecond after the Big Bang (assuming that the Big Big theory -- keyword: THEORY -- is an accurate and correct working hypothesis of how the universe was created). These egg-head scientists are going to do this by whipping protons around a 17-mile long loop of underground magnets (cooled by liquid helium), accelerating the particles near the speed of light (making 11,000 revolutions around this 17 mile loop per second!), and then smashing the protons together just to see what happens.
Sounds like a fun day at the park, huh?
I watched a special on this project on the History Channel last night and the more I watched the program, the more I started asking myself, "Is this really a good idea?"
Even the brainiacs, these physicists who think on a much higher level than I could ever dream of, admit that they are "not sure" what will happen when protons collide at the speed of light, because it's never been done before, at least not intentionally. All of this is based on quantum theory. One physicist said, "Strange things can happen on the quantum level -- black holes, parallel universes, other dimensions, the creation of dark matter -- we're not sure what to expect!" And he was actually giddy about this! For my money, it's not such a good idea to start creating parallel universes just for shits and giggles.
The oddest and potentially most dangerous of these theoretical possibilities is called "strangelets," which is a hypothetical form of "strange matter," which is a special type of quark matter (you know, versus your "garden variety" quark matter) which scientists believe exists, which could theoretically initiate a runaway fusion process in which all the nuclei in the planet were converted to "strange matter," thus ending life on this planet and converting earth into a quark star.
Science fiction comes alive. Sounds like fun to me!
Another phrase I keep hearing over and over again is the search for the "God particle." This is, as of right now, a hypothetical elementary particle. The creation of it would help to explain how otherwise massless elementary particles (such as photons) cause matter to have mass. Why is this important? I don't know. But I do know that this is deep, deep, deep shit. One scientist said this is equivalent to "looking for God."
How about opening the Bible and reading a verse?
Several groups of scientists have filed injunctions against the LHC, stating they believe these experiments are not safe, but high courts in Europe and the United States both ruled against the injunctions, stating there is “... no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced by the LHC.”
We should all feel better about that, because the courts have NEVER made an error in judgement in the past, right? And I'm sure the $6.4 billion it cost to build this thing had no bearing the courts' opinion, either.
The first experiment will be launched after the LHC is officially unveiled on October 21, 2008. And quite honestly, no one knows what to expect. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe earth will never be the same. No one really knows. We are trusting everything to quantum theory.
And this is a good thing?
Kathy posted this on her blog, so she beat me to it... but I am going to say a little something about it too.
The world's first "super collider" is about to be launched. It is called the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), located between France and Switzerland and scientists are trying to get a glimpse of what the universe looked like one nanosecond after the Big Bang (assuming that the Big Big theory -- keyword: THEORY -- is an accurate and correct working hypothesis of how the universe was created). These egg-head scientists are going to do this by whipping protons around a 17-mile long loop of underground magnets (cooled by liquid helium), accelerating the particles near the speed of light (making 11,000 revolutions around this 17 mile loop per second!), and then smashing the protons together just to see what happens.
Sounds like a fun day at the park, huh?
I watched a special on this project on the History Channel last night and the more I watched the program, the more I started asking myself, "Is this really a good idea?"
Even the brainiacs, these physicists who think on a much higher level than I could ever dream of, admit that they are "not sure" what will happen when protons collide at the speed of light, because it's never been done before, at least not intentionally. All of this is based on quantum theory. One physicist said, "Strange things can happen on the quantum level -- black holes, parallel universes, other dimensions, the creation of dark matter -- we're not sure what to expect!" And he was actually giddy about this! For my money, it's not such a good idea to start creating parallel universes just for shits and giggles.
The oddest and potentially most dangerous of these theoretical possibilities is called "strangelets," which is a hypothetical form of "strange matter," which is a special type of quark matter (you know, versus your "garden variety" quark matter) which scientists believe exists, which could theoretically initiate a runaway fusion process in which all the nuclei in the planet were converted to "strange matter," thus ending life on this planet and converting earth into a quark star.
Science fiction comes alive. Sounds like fun to me!
Another phrase I keep hearing over and over again is the search for the "God particle." This is, as of right now, a hypothetical elementary particle. The creation of it would help to explain how otherwise massless elementary particles (such as photons) cause matter to have mass. Why is this important? I don't know. But I do know that this is deep, deep, deep shit. One scientist said this is equivalent to "looking for God."
How about opening the Bible and reading a verse?
Several groups of scientists have filed injunctions against the LHC, stating they believe these experiments are not safe, but high courts in Europe and the United States both ruled against the injunctions, stating there is “... no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced by the LHC.”
We should all feel better about that, because the courts have NEVER made an error in judgement in the past, right? And I'm sure the $6.4 billion it cost to build this thing had no bearing the courts' opinion, either.
The first experiment will be launched after the LHC is officially unveiled on October 21, 2008. And quite honestly, no one knows what to expect. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe earth will never be the same. No one really knows. We are trusting everything to quantum theory.
And this is a good thing?
