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Large Hadron Collider


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67 replies to this topic

#61 nefastor

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Posted 06 May 2008 - 01:42 PM

I just watched the latest episode of "The Big Bang Theory" (hilarious comedy show for geeks, I recommend it ! It's kinda like "The IT Crowd")

The episode starts with two scientists talking :


I saw it. When they started talking about the anxiety disorders...I found it kind of funny considering our nootropic forum.

I believe this show resonates with people like us and scientists and engineers at large, it's so close to the "nerd experience". I hope this show will last longer than Stargate SG-1 did. And I'm praying there will be more seasons of "The IT Crowd". The world needs more of this :



And here's some more particle physics / LHC humor :

Posted Image

Enjoy :)

Nefastor

#62 freethinker

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 12:00 AM

elrond,

Professor Otto Rossler calculates that a single micro black hole could destroy the Earth in as few as 50 months.

See this research paper: http://www.wissensna...NIBLACKHOLE.pdf

#63 eternaltraveler

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 10:17 AM

elrond,

Professor Otto Rossler calculates that a single micro black hole could destroy the Earth in as few as 50 months.

See this research paper: http://www.wissensna...NIBLACKHOLE.pdf



I see nothing in that article that refutes any of the above, and no reference to the 50 months you are referring too. His reasoning over all is quite vague.

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#64 Centurion

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 03:02 PM

It could spell the end of life on earth as we know it.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

If we create an Earth-swallowing black-hole, we probably won't notice until we're all dead, at which point we won't be able to care anymore because either atheists are right and there's nothing after death (so, no awareness of our stupidity) or the Jesus-freaks are right and it's the Rapture.



Your nihilism shines through like a black light through your pores.


Poetic
Still, I can't find fault in a single word of it though.

#65 nefastor

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 09:50 PM

Poetic
Still, I can't find fault in a single word of it though.

I'm not sure which you are commenting on : my words or Solbangers' ?

In any case, I'm considering using Solbanger's poetry as my sig. :) because it's the funniest way anyone has ever described by way of life :)

Nefastor

#66 nefastor

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Posted 07 May 2008 - 11:31 PM

from a old thread on a similar subject, Jay did a few calculations.

Not to criticize, but these numbers don't look right. For starters, the atom-sized black-hole would have a mass of around 10^-15 kg, not 10^15 kg.

10^-15 kg is about the same mass as 1000 billion hydrogen atoms, which sounds right if you consider the micro black-hole has no vacuum between its nucleus and electron cloud like atoms do (that vacuum would be all filled with collapsed atoms). "minus" is but a dash, but here it's dash that translates into 30 orders of magnitudes ! :)

By comparison, the mass of the Earth is 6*10^24 kg.

Also, I don't think it's meaningful to calculate the damage a black hole can do based solely on how much matter per second its surface area allows it to gobble. In case you haven't noticed, demolition explosives do a lot more damage than the dump trucks which carry out the debris. Black holes "in the wild" sort of rearrange matter around them into an accretion disk and THEN suck it down. If we had a black hole on Earth, it would probably break the planet into bits quickly, and then it really wouldn't matter how much time it would take for it to swallow the bits.

But let's assume Jay's assumptions are correct and a micro black-hole won't eat up much of our planet... that'd forgetting the LHC is estimated to generate one black-hole per second. I think we all know the damage difference between a muzzle-loaded single-shot rifle and a belt-fed machine gun.

I can't be bothered enough to whip-up Matlab, but I'm pretty sure everyone talking about the LHC's micro black-holes today are talking out of their @$$es. Need I remind you how much of particle physics is based on theories and indirect evidence ? Or what the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty means ? It's not like we've ever put a black-hole sample under the microscope... actually that's why we need to build and USE machines like the LHC.

So, like I said, let's switch on that bad boy and see what happens :) and tell me beforehand so I can plug my ears, ya know, just in case. :)

Nefastor

#67 freethinker

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Posted 08 May 2008 - 12:02 AM

All, lets post our discussions about LHC operational safety concerns in the thread "Safety concerns about the Large hadron Collider" here: http://www.imminst.o...der-t21777.html

Thanks.

David

#68 eternaltraveler

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Posted 09 May 2008 - 02:18 PM

Not to criticize, but these numbers don't look right. For starters, the atom-sized black-hole would have a mass of around 10^-15 kg, not 10^15 kg.


The Schwarzschild Radius = 2Gm/c^2 calculation gives us 1.5*10-12 meters for a black hole with the mass of 10^15 kg. Jay used this figure to demonstrate that a black hole even with the initial mass many orders of magnitude greater than the one that could be created by the LHC is still nothing to worry about, and therefore how ridiculous worrying about a black hole with the mass of a few atoms is.

To put things in perspective a black hole with the mass of the earth, or about 10^24kg, would have a diameter around 1 cm, and if the sun could somehow collapse into a black hole it would have a 3 km diameter

Also, I don't think it's meaningful to calculate the damage a black hole can do based solely on how much matter per second its surface area allows it to gobble. In case you haven't noticed, demolition explosives do a lot more damage than the dump trucks which carry out the debris. Black holes "in the wild" sort of rearrange matter around them into an accretion disk and THEN suck it down. If we had a black hole on Earth, it would probably break the planet into bits quickly, and then it really wouldn't matter how much time it would take for it to swallow the bits.


Ummmm...... there is no logic in the above paragraph that I can even respond too...

the only thing I can say is that everything you said has no bearing. We are talking about a black hole with the mass of a few atoms, which will therefore have no more gravitational force than.... the drum roll please... a few atoms. There would be no accretion disk. It would be (very) lucky to swallow the occasional proton.




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