Is a black hole coming?
After 14 months of work, scientists have repaired and successfully restarted the Large Hadron Collider this weekend, following last year's electrical fault which released six tonnes of helium, blowing a hole in one of its sections.
On Saturday, they sent a proton beam around the circuit but have yet to actually smash any atoms. The first-ever low-energy particle collisions could take place as early as next month.
There was a certain amount of hype last year when it was first fired up, with doomsayers hysterical and even the most hardened sceptic secretly wondering in the back of their mind if this could be the beginning of the end. I know I did.
It's a strange and somewhat unnerving feeling knowing that somewhere, on the other side of the world, scientists are working deep underground to tear at the very fabric of the universe, potentially to the doom of us all.
If you're still getting your head around it, the LHC accelerates tiny (subatomic) particles (protons harvested from hydrogen atoms) to 99.9% of the speed of light before smashing them into each other, breaking them into sub-subatomic particles. The resulting output is measured by vast sensor arrays and stored for study.
The LHC is arguably humanity's greatest scientific experiment so far. One of their aims is to discover if "dark matter" exists. Dark matter is a theoretical substance which fills the universe and cannot be seen. The only reason we think it is there is its influence on other celestial bodies like stars and planets. We're talking mysteries-of-creation stuff here.
The experiment may also give us the answer to why some particles are heavier than others (for example, lead vs. helium). Theoretically, a particle's weight is determined by how much it interacts with the "Higgs field" - another invisible force filling the universe. The Higgs field has one indicator to prove its existence - the elusive Higgs boson - a particle that can be detected during the collisions, provided it exists.
There are plenty of people out there who are concerned with the experiment, to say the least.
A couple of well-known physicists suggested (to the amusement of many) that the Higgs boson may actually be travelling back in time to try to sabotage the LHC in order to avoid being found. No, seriously, look.
The most widely held fear is that a black hole will be created by the machine, which will head for Earth's core and suck us down like a whitebait fritter on Christmas Day.
For a (dramatic) idea of what this might look like, take a look at this.
Some say this is impossible, as any black hole which is created would dissipate due to Hawking radiation (a.k.a black hole evaporation). Yep, it's named after Stephen Hawking, who came up with the theory in 1974.
According to Mr Hawking, "Collisions releasing greater energy occur millions of times a day in the earth's atmosphere and nothing terrible happens. The world will not come to an end when the LHC turns on."
The wheelchair-bound genius wrote A Brief History of Time, and is one of the world's authorities on quantum physics. Some may know him only from his hilarious guest-appearance on The Simpsons.
Stephen Hawking to Principle Skinner (in a simulated voice): "If you are looking for trouble, you found it."
I'm going to go ahead and place my bet that the LHC experiments will amount to nothing more than significant scientific breakthroughs, and no super-massive black holes.
We'll soon find out. Let's hope Steve's right.
Are you worried that this is something we shouldn't be playing with? End of the world, or just scientific progress? Much ado about nothing?
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And people say that science isn't important.
People see this and panic 'because it might destroy the planet' and we also have reports of people calling up NASA about the movie 2012 asking things like 'When should I put my dog to sleep so that he doesn't have to suffer'.
I remember that they used to have documentaries on TV when I was younger and now they watch celebs or wannabe celebs on some island somewhere.
Steve's the man. Have you read "A Brief History Of Time"? It's easy going until about halfway through and then it just twists your head right off your shoulders.
I think the LHC is a great thing. What it can teach us about everything is going to be kinda neat.
@Sirknz NASA does have a 2012 information page on their website. It points out things like:
- If a rogue planet was going to come near earth in 2012 it would be visible to the naked eye by now.
- There are no planetary alignments happening in 2012.
and my personal favourite...
- Your calendar ends on December 31st. That does not mean the world is going to end.
FYI - for the curious, you can follow the LHC team on @CERN via Twitter.
The Quark Cannon is NOT a civil program, but a military device, ‘reconverted’ to peaceful use NOT to close an Industry of War that should have been cancelled after the cold war ended. The First Atomic Bomb was intended to be also an Atomic Cannon but due to its enormous size physicists opted out for a Bomb. The study of particles became then a collateral benefit of the study of Nuclear Weapons with atomic cannons. Now, as the Atomic Cannon reaches the awesome forces of ‘strong’ quarks, the jump on power of the bombs it researches is astounding. In military terms the Nuclear Company of Europe (CERN) has built the new generation of Nuclear Weapons, a quark factory that can create cosmic, quark bombs, which are inverse Atomic bombs that mass together energy into mass (M=E/c2), provoking big crunches of our ‘electroweak’ mass. If any of those experiments gets out of control – and CERN has no provisions or studies for such event – the big crunch of our weak mass can continue outside the lab and collapse the entire mass of the Earth into a quark condensate, pulsar or black hole. The nervous, funny way you talk about it, the massive censorship in any comment on this in mainstream press, the delays, accidents of this awesome machine, all plays as a scripted tragedy, topic of the human arrogant, ignorant electro-weak bacteria that can't understand their null importance in the Universe. it reminds me of jurassic's park greedy financier taking the dino at home. The totalitarian principle said that in physics all what ca happen will happen. And so this will happen, the questio is when? for what you say soon. Of course it will be irrelevant to the universe, and fully deserved as all warnings hve been ignored.
this is really cool stuff
Luis, the physics maxim "everything that can happen, will happen" applies to paralell universe theory. Just as there is (theoretically) a universe out there somehwere where I can fly liek superman and summon cupcakes out of think air (I'm jealous of this alterverse me already) it doesn't mean that it's likely in this universe.
So, could the LHC turn into a black hole, sure, but the likelyhood is really very very small. Astronomically small. In fact it's about as likely to open a gate to let The Great Old Ones into our world (yep, fictional creatures, that physics maxim goes a looong way).
I'm glad you have given some thought to possible danger at the LHC rather than just dismissing the idea out of hand 'because scientists say so'. We should be asking a lot of questions about this.
Like, what if Hawking is wrong and Hawking radiation does not exist?
Like, why isn't this potentially destructive activity being policed and inspected by disinterested parties?
the likelyhood is really very very small.
On whose authority is this happy idea - your gut instinct? I've noticed they all admit they don't know what is going to happen, so where does this estimate of very very small come from?
Rossler says the chances could be 1 in 6, and someone else - is it Plaga? - says certain models predict 50% or even 100%!
Seems to me that if they dont know what is going to happen they cannot estimate the chances of anything happening.
My gut tells me nothing will tho - same as yours!
Admittedly I am not near the IQ of the many physicists who have endorsed the LHC. However, logic tells me:
(1) Some well-established and widely accepted theories in all realms of science (including particle physics) have been tossed aside as new information is learned.
(2) Research is always subjective, that is, biased.
(3) Particle colliders have produced completely unexpected experimental results at much lower energies than the LHC's proposed upper capabilities. The same physicists who have been surprised at these previous results are the ones now giving out head pats to the unPhD'd masses.
Any scientific blog that I've read recently smugly states that if we don't continue to move forward, we will stagnate. I agree, but with this caveat: humankind has much more to offer than advances in our knowledge of physics. Believing that *your* work and the advancement of *your* chosen field is a benefit that outweighs any (even improbable) risk to humanity and nature is the worse kind of arrogance in my opinion.
Much ado about nothing...
The amount of energy used in the LHC is very small when compared with natural forces that occur on the earth at any given time.