Kevin's Watch

lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

Haven't seen any news on the new CERN supercollider lately, so went to check it out and wasted lots of time I should have been working.

Three points:
1 - This thing is four hours from my house, and like an idiot I did not tour the tunnels before it was too late.
2 - The cryogenics are online now, and the sectors are cooling.
3 - Do you really underestand how cold 1.9 Kelvin is? 0 Kelvin is basically no energy at all.

stutt

I'm currently checking the temperatures on my cryo-pumps. 10-12 K. Yep, that's cold.

Some cool pics.

oh! cool!!!!!! pics are AWESOME!!! 3 DAYS!! i went to the countdown site too!!! soooo cool. (no pun intended)

I certainly hope these guys know what the hellfire they're doing... so are we all going to die on the 7th or the 8th?

It was Hyperception's dream to work on this project when he was a physics major in community college over a decade ago. I need to remind him activation is in three days. Thanks guys.

Awesome pics...looks like the Cube from the movie of the same name...well, except for the fact that it's a sphere.

--A

Speaking of the LHC, we're all going to die the second they turn it on.

Why does it look like the Death Star, and when can we all expect to lose our lives? Or has this sucker already been turned on?

I see this mentioned anywhere.

There going to be firing the Large Hadron Collider soon. Large particle accelerator where they will be firing high energy particles at each other to try and discover new particles and find out how elementary particles acquire mass or something like that.
Of course there are fears that this thing could end the world through the development of micro black holes, strangelets, magnetic monoploes, vacuum bubbles and new dimensions but scientist say that there is little empirical evidence to suggest this and that they are unlikely... hey scientists have never been wrong before .
Shows you how far science will take things to prove something.

hmmm large under ground lab in the mountains doing big physics experiments which could cause multi-dimensions....

I smell a story for a computer game!

Queeaqueg wrote:Of course there are fears that this thing could end the world through the development of micro black holes, strangelets, magnetic monoploes, vacuum bubbles and new dimensions but scientist say that there is little empirical evidence to suggest this and that they are unlikely... hey scientists have never been wrong before .

Sounds like an SF novel I just read. Seriously. Jack McDevitt's Odyssey.

Three threads below this one....

Merged.

Ya, this does sound like SciFi. I wouldn't worry though, cause I'm sure the good Alien's will save us from killing ourselves like this; well, as long as the bad Aliens don't get in the way.

Probably just me but this thing feels like a story from a James Bond film.

Some evil scientist has developed the LHC and saying to the world that he is going it to help the world but actually he wants to destroy all life and plans to create blackholes or strange matter.
"ah Mr Bond, you can't stop me now and my particle accelerator, soon the world will be nothing more than a mass of strange matter muhahahaha!"

This scares the bej*sus out of me! My big sister and her family (incl my god-daughter) live within the ring of this thing. Making matters even worse, the cleverest guy I know (known him well from 9yo-18yo, casually since), works for Cern and he's only involved in developing the software that interprets what's going on. If he's on the fringes, then the people on the edge, must be super-types.

Patrick Moore (I bow down before his wisdom) was on telly tonight saying the chances of them creating a black-hole-destroying-the-world was about the same as a UFO landing on the Loch Ness Monster's back.......BUT HOW DOES HE KNOW?????????? Nothing like this has ever been done before, and just for this weekend I find myself a complete techno-phobe. I'm scared.

Next week, everyone please feel free to laugh at me.

Stonemaybe, surely your programmer friend can put your mind at ease. I'm actually jealous of your family living that close. Very cool science karma to me.

Regarding safety, I've seen on TV and read here and there that while the ideas of micro-blackholes has a scary sound, the energies these guys are dealing with are just not that remarkable. Yes, they are getting really freaking close to the speed of light, and yes they are attempting to recreate energy levels simlar to the earliest moments of the big bang, but they just aren't dealing with that much mass. I've heard the exeriments they will be doing are comparable to things that happen in the upper atmosphere every day.

www.uslhc.us/What_is_the_LHC/LHC_Safety

Will review later.

stutt

Stonemaybe, surely your programmer friend can put your mind at ease. I'm actually jealous of your family living that close. Very cool science karma to me.

You...you...you.. techno-phile, you!

Have you heard the one about the extra-dimensional god-daughter?

here is a nice " walk thru" of what its all about..mite ease any trepidation or not..lots of info and links included..

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7543089.stm