Large Hadron Collider successfully creates mini Big Bangs

[Humodour]

I just realised that the LHC isn't actually colliding at 3.5 TeV. It's colliding at 7 TeV because the sum energy of the collision is one particle at 3.5 TeV colliding with another particle at 3.5 TeV. So that means that when it is run at max capacity in 2012 the collision energy will be 14 TeV.

 

For anybody interested in what'll happen to the LHC in the future, here is one planned upgrade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Large_Hadron_Collider

 

And if you think that containing antimatter and generating quark-gluon plasmas are big, rare news items in physics and thus you won't hear back from CERN for a few more years...

 

"We are producing new results all the time now," Gianotti said. "We plan to release a new wave of results early next year, for the 2011 winter conferences."

 

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/emerging-tech/...-2011-40090892/

 

I love science!

Edited November 17, 2010 by Krezack

[I want teh kotor 3]

Wow, can't believe I missed this one. Let me preface this with the following: I'm a huge physics nerd. Hell, when I hit college next year, I'm double-majoring in physics and math. I have done a great deal of reading and general studying on physics as it stands now, so I'm not just pulling this out of my ass. I've also spoken to several physics profs at places like MIT, so a lot of this is basically what they told me rephrased and demath-ed. Also, although slightly relevant to the black hole thing, I'm not doing metrics here. Or manipulating the EFE in general, for that matter; just look up the damn papers for proofs.

 

I think the big problem is that people simply cannot comprehend that just because something forms a singularity it doesn't actually mean that its gravity increases, just its gravity 'gradient'. A black hole with the mass of the moon has exactly the same mass as the moon and exerts exactly the same force, it's just that its mass is compressed so much that it also has an event horizon at some distance from its 'surface'.

This is only partially true. In a classical space, you would be entirely right. Because part of the stress-energy tensor, however, involves energy densities and the like, mass has a greater effect on curvature (ie black hole formation) in smaller volumes.

 

According to the great scientific repository that is wikipedia the radius of an event horizon ~ 2.95x Mobject/ Msun, in km

 

So, for two lead atoms: 2.95x2x0.2072x6.02x10^-23 / 2x10^30 = 1.84x10^-50 m (including corrections for km -> m and g/mol to kg, hopefully, built in windows scicalc kept swapping negative exps to positive for some reason so I did them by eye in the end.)

 

By way of comparison, the diameter of a hydrogen atom is 2.4 x 10^-10m. The diameter of its nucleus is on the order of 10^-15m. The event horizon of a two lead ion mass black hole is 100000000000000000000000000000000000 times smaller than a hydrogen nucleus (~proton), in other words.

 

Again, only partially true. That number on wikipedia is for Schwarzchild black holes, i.e. those with no charge or angular momentum. A lead nucleus (or proton, for that matter) has both, so its a Kerr-Newman... Which IIRC would make it even smaller. Your point, however, stands. Its downright impossible for a lead nucleus to compress into a singularity.

 

I really wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

This.

 

I shall now eagerly await the inevitable, someone with a physics degree coming in to critique my biologist's maths...

 

The micro black hole would grow by colliding with other particles, not by attracting them.

False. Strangelets yes, black holes no.

 

possibly 100's of thousands of years or more.

By which time it will be long gone.

 

So the fact that nothing happened yet tells you nothing.

Again, false, for reasons explained in more detail below.

 

Only once the black hole grew to a critical size would it start actually attracting particles.

By and large, black holes are frickin' massive, on the order of multiple solar masses. The crap they suck in, therefore, makes very little impact on its radius or its gravity. If this were not true, supermassives would be like galactic endbosses, rather than galactic anchors.

 

 

 

 

As far as this thread, what I said is that there's a non-negligible possibility that LHC could destroy the earth.

I'd say we ahve a better chance of a fart in a nuclear bunker destroying the world. By multiple orders of magnitude, in fact.

 

Edit: Here's a paper which explains the arguments and provides references, I posted it a while back but it was dismissed with ad-hominem responses: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0912/0912.5480.pdf

I will now list things wrong with this article.

1) Its written by a lawyer. Law education and physics education have about as much in common as, well, law and math, which is to say absolutely none.

2) Its published in "Tennessee Law Review." See above.

3) There is no way this article was peer reviewed. Hell, on the off chance it was, the reviewing was done by a lawyer. See above.

4) "Einstein famously refused to believe in their existence, even though it was his theory of special relativity that predicted them" (838). Really? Special relativity involves gravity? That's news.

I'm sure there are many others, but I'm too lazy to go further. In short, however, you presented a non-scientific article written by a non-scientist in an attempt to prove a scientific argument. This is invalid.

[Gorth]

supermassives would be like galactic endbosses, rather than galactic anchors.

I'll suck the universe dry... [/garblespeak]

 

[I want teh kotor 3]

[Hurlshort]

I'm always pleasantly surprised by Iwanttehkotor3's posts. I mean I see his name, and I read his angry signature, and I prepare for the worst. And then he turns out to be a thoughtful and intelligent young man. Good stuff!

[Humodour]

I'm always pleasantly surprised by Iwanttehkotor3's posts. I mean I see his name, and I read his angry signature, and I prepare for the worst. And then he turns out to be a thoughtful and intelligent young man. Good stuff!

 

I enjoyed reading his post.

 

EDIT: In the interests of full disclosure, I got the bit about ALPHA being one of the LHC projects wrong. It's a separate project at CERN.

 

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/research/ALPHA-en.html

Edited November 18, 2010 by Krezack

[I want teh kotor 3]

Thanks guys . Glad to be of service slash I aim to please.

Edited November 18, 2010 by I want teh kotor 3

[Wrath of Dagon]

Its downright impossible for a lead nucleus to compress into a singularity.

No one's talking about compression. It's believed that it's possilble that the LHC might produce black holes, that's a fact.

 

I will now list things wrong with this article.

1) Its written by a lawyer. Law education and physics education have about as much in common as, well, law and math, which is to say absolutely none.

2) Its published in "Tennessee Law Review." See above.

3) There is no way this article was peer reviewed. Hell, on the off chance it was, the reviewing was done by a lawyer. See above.

4) "Einstein famously refused to believe in their existence, even though it was his theory of special relativity that predicted them" (838). Really? Special relativity involves gravity? That's news.

I'm sure there are many others, but I'm too lazy to go further. In short, however, you presented a non-scientific article written by a non-scientist in an attempt to prove a scientific argument. This is invalid.

I didn't claim it was a scientific article. It does source scientific articles though. Just because you found one thing from Einstein biography that you consider wrong (and irrelevant btw) doesn't make the whole article incorrect.

 

Anyway, I feel I'm taking this thread off topic. Feel free to drop this.

[Oblarg]

I didn't claim it was a scientific article.

 

It's pretty feeble support for your view, then.

[Wrath of Dagon]

It would be feeble if anyone could actually contravene any of the relevant facts. Otherwise this is simply an ad-hominem argument.

Edited November 18, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Calax]

Its downright impossible for a lead nucleus to compress into a singularity.

No one's talking about compression. It's believed that it's possilble that the LHC might produce black holes, that's a fact.

 

I will now list things wrong with this article.

1) Its written by a lawyer. Law education and physics education have about as much in common as, well, law and math, which is to say absolutely none.

2) Its published in "Tennessee Law Review." See above.

3) There is no way this article was peer reviewed. Hell, on the off chance it was, the reviewing was done by a lawyer. See above.

4) "Einstein famously refused to believe in their existence, even though it was his theory of special relativity that predicted them" (838). Really? Special relativity involves gravity? That's news.

I'm sure there are many others, but I'm too lazy to go further. In short, however, you presented a non-scientific article written by a non-scientist in an attempt to prove a scientific argument. This is invalid.

I didn't claim it was a scientific article. It does source scientific articles though. Just because you found one thing from Einstein biography that you consider wrong (and irrelevant btw) doesn't make the whole article incorrect.

 

Anyway, I feel I'm taking this thread off topic. Feel free to drop this.

It only references scientific articles to explain what something is, or when discussing what would happen after the matter. But the actual doomsday discussions were brought in via World Net Daily, Boston Globe, and "Letter to the Editor" type stuff. Not actual scientists.

[I want teh kotor 3]

Its downright impossible for a lead nucleus to compress into a singularity.

No one's talking about compression.

For something to become a black hole, its radius must be less than or equal to the one prescribed by the relevant solution, in this case the Kerr-Newman. This is accomplished by compression. Compression and black hole formation are (for purposes of this discussion) one and the same.

 

It's believed that it's possilble that the LHC might produce black holes, that's a fact.

Not by anybody who knows physics, its not.

 

I didn't claim it was a scientific article.

Then you acknowledge it has no relevance or merit.

It does source scientific articles though.

I can cite things I don't understand, too. That doesn't make my interpretation of anything particularly valid. Again, one would be hard-pressed to find a legitimate scholarly article that considers it even remotely possible for the lhc to destroy the earth.

 

Just because you found one thing from Einstein biography that you consider wrong (and irrelevant btw) doesn't make the whole article incorrect.

Actually, it renders the article invalid on several accounts. First, if the author doesn't understand the difference between SR and GR, he should be writing about neither. Second, even if he does and just made a typo, it shows a lack of careful thought on his part. Third (and this is the biggie), I found it when I searched for "Einstein." There were no meaningful references to his work. Any attempt to provide any meaningful analysis of black holes must at least touch on either Einstein or one of the solutions to the EFE; without this, it is meaningless.

 

Anyway, I feel I'm taking this thread off topic. Feel free to drop this.

Actually, this is quite relevant to the LHC; any discussion of its successes will inevitably be marred with the populace's unfortunate witch-hunt against it.

 

It would be feeble if anyone could actually controvert any of the relevant facts.

There are no relevant facts to support your argument. The LHC is absolutely incapable of creating a black hole at all, to say nothing of one large enough to destroy the earth. I cannot controvert your unquestionable myths.

 

Otherwise this is simply an ad-hominem argument.

Only ad-hominem in the sense that it is against one person, in this case you.

Edited November 18, 2010 by I want teh kotor 3

[Humodour]

It would be feeble if anyone could actually contravene any of the relevant facts. Otherwise this is simply an ad-hominem argument.

 

WoD, you're acting like those annoying people who say things like "The Bible would be unscientific if anyone could disprove its claims". **** man, we COULD hang out all day meticulously going through that mis-informed opinion piece you posted, disproving it line-by-line, but why should we bother when it's clear as day what it is and plenty of good scientific work on the topic already exists which you refuse to read?

 

Even if we did, you'd probably just reply with some new, different hack job anyway and tell us to do the same thing all over again.

 

Here, I'm going to post a Wikipedia link detailing why the LHC is safe. I expect you to provide a counterargument to every point mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_of_par...Hadron_Collider

 

And once you've done that I'm going to ignore your post anyway and just post this new link to CERN's safety analysis and ask you to repeat the process: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/safety-en.html

[Humodour]

Its downright impossible for a lead nucleus to compress into a singularity.

No one's talking about compression. It's believed that it's possilble that the LHC might produce black holes, that's a fact.]

 

Yeah? CERN official public website:

Microscopic black holes

 

Nature forms black holes when certain stars, much larger than our Sun, collapse on themselves at the end of their lives. They concentrate a very large amount of matter in a very small space. Speculations about microscopic black holes at the LHC refer to particles produced in the collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable to that of a mosquito in flight. Astronomical black holes are much heavier than anything that could be produced at the LHC.

 

According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC. There are, however, some speculative theories that predict the production of such particles at the LHC. All these theories predict that these particles would disintegrate immediately. Black holes, therefore, would have no time to start accreting matter and to cause macroscopic effects.

 

Although theory predicts that microscopic black holes decay rapidly, even hypothetical stable black holes can be shown to be harmless by studying the consequences of their production by cosmic rays. Whilst collisions at the LHC differ from cosmic-ray collisions with astronomical bodies like the Earth in that new particles produced in LHC collisions tend to move more slowly than those produced by cosmic rays, one can still demonstrate their safety. The specific reasons for this depend whether the black holes are electrically charged, or neutral. Many stable black holes would be expected to be electrically charged, since they are created by charged particles. In this case they would interact with ordinary matter and be stopped while traversing the Earth or Sun, whether produced by cosmic rays or the LHC. The fact that the Earth and Sun are still here rules out the possibility that cosmic rays or the LHC could produce dangerous charged microscopic black holes. If stable microscopic black holes had no electric charge, their interactions with the Earth would be very weak. Those produced by cosmic rays would pass harmlessly through the Earth into space, whereas those produced by the LHC could remain on Earth. However, there are much larger and denser astronomical bodies than the Earth in the Universe. Black holes produced in cosmic-ray collisions with bodies such as neutron stars and white dwarf stars would be brought to rest. The continued existence of such dense bodies, as well as the Earth, rules out the possibility of the LHC producing any dangerous black holes.

 

Anyway, I feel I'm taking this thread off topic. Feel free to drop this.

 

Why would anybody here have any reason to drop this topic besides you? We're defending the integrity of science, and in doing so that happens to place us on the side of the truth.

 

WoD, my desire to inform you and prevent argument is tempered by my desire to prevent you from spreading lies and misinformation that other readers might pick up (because lets face it, this is a public forum with many thousands of viewers).

Edited November 18, 2010 by Krezack

[Pidesco]

So awesome.

[mkreku]

Why is it that in every scientific thread, Wrath of Dagon comes in and makes a fool of himself? Some kind of masochistic tendency?

[Moose]

(because lets face it, this is a public forum with many thousands of viewers).

 

Maybe if you're counting in binary

[Wrath of Dagon]

Yeah? CERN official public website:

Microscopic black holes

... Those produced by cosmic rays would pass harmlessly through the Earth into space, whereas those produced by the LHC could remain on Earth. However, there are much larger and denser astronomical bodies than the Earth in the Universe. Black holes produced in cosmic-ray collisions with bodies such as neutron stars and white dwarf stars would be brought to rest. The continued existence of such dense bodies, as well as the Earth, rules out the possibility of the LHC producing any dangerous black holes.

Exactly what I said earlier, except I'm not convinced by their argument about the white dwarves, because you know, they're completely different from earth, like having huge amounts of gravity.

Anyway, I feel I'm taking this thread off topic. Feel free to drop this.

 

Why would anybody here have any reason to drop this topic besides you? We're defending the integrity of science, and in doing so that happens to place us on the side of the truth.

 

WoD, my desire to inform you and prevent argument is tempered by my desire to prevent you from spreading lies and misinformation that other readers might pick up (because lets face it, this is a public forum with many thousands of viewers).

That's fine, you started the thread, I was just concerned almost all of the discussion was about LHC safety instead of whatever discoveries they made, I don't mind continuing so long as anyone is responding.

 

Edit: Here's a scientific paper critisizing the white dwarf theory: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1415v2.pdf I admit I haven't read it yet and relied instead on the summary in my original link. Btw, I recommend those interested read at least the section starting on p845 of the original link,it's very interesting even if you disagree with it.

Edited November 18, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Tale]

Its downright impossible for a lead nucleus to compress into a singularity.

No one's talking about compression. It's believed that it's possilble that the LHC might produce black holes, that's a fact.]

 

Yeah? CERN official public website:

No, Wrath of Dagon is right. "It's believed." Even if it were him alone who believed it, it would be believed.

[Calax]

Yeah? CERN official public website:

Microscopic black holes

... Those produced by cosmic rays would pass harmlessly through the Earth into space, whereas those produced by the LHC could remain on Earth. However, there are much larger and denser astronomical bodies than the Earth in the Universe. Black holes produced in cosmic-ray collisions with bodies such as neutron stars and white dwarf stars would be brought to rest. The continued existence of such dense bodies, as well as the Earth, rules out the possibility of the LHC producing any dangerous black holes.

Exactly what I said earlier, except I'm not convinced by their argument about the white dwarves, because you know, they're completely different from earth, like having huge amounts of gravity.

Which I think is kinda the point. These Black Holes, in order to become the catastrophic death machines you insist they will, would need to absorb STUPID amounts of mass to become dangerous, as gravitation is based around the mass something contains. In stellar terms, Neutron stars are stars that weren't heavy enough to become the black holes people are more acquainted with when they died. The micros, even if they do gain some mass, would be a threat as much as any other object of that mass unless the rules changed. Even if it did continue to grow (rather than dissipate like it should), it probably wouldn't be a danger until after our sun went nova.

[Hurlshort]

I've been trying to watch all 10 seasons of Stargate lately, so I feel I should be ready to contribute to this discussion soon.

[Zoraptor]

There's an episode where a team is on a planet which is within an event horizon. In an amazing twist, and one of the few times in the series that it happens, problems with the Stargate ensue.

[Rostere]

As an opinion from someone going through a five-year university education in physics, I'd say that while it's clear that WoD (as well as other forum members) do not know physics very well, the point is that even those who DO know physics are not sure of what will happen. While I personally believe it is unlikely anything catastrophic will happen, no one can be sure.

 

While neutron stars and white dwarves provide a statistical argument that nothing dangerous will occur, the unknown is in the nature of the experiment. If you had known what would happen afterwards, there would be no need for the experiment. Trying to predict results with existing theories is slightly contradictory since the experiment is made for the purpose of doing (or perhaps observing) something completely new you do not know the result of.

 

So while in practice we would say the we have no reason to believe we will cause a cataclysm, in theory we can not exclude the possibility that something will indeed happen.

[Wrath of Dagon]

What gave me away?

[Balthamael]

So while in practice we would say the we have no reason to believe we will cause a cataclysm, in theory we can not exclude the possibility that something will indeed happen.

 

I seem to remember that years ago some CERN scientist actually estimated a probability for LHC causing the end of the world. It was only about 10^-60 or so. This caused some discussion in the media, and I assume the CERN people learned not to make such estimations in the future. Don't know what(if anything) was the basis of the estimation, and I can't seem to find the article anymore.

 

(You should, of course, bet the existence of the universe on those odds any day long.)

Edited November 18, 2010 by Balthamael