Earth to be consumed by black hole

[cgallery]

"But a safety report published earlier this year by experts at CERN and reviewed by a group of external scientists gave the Large Hadron Collider the all clear. It concluded that there was little theoretical chance of the collider producing mini black holes that would be capable of posing a danger to the earth."

Are you kidding me? "Little theoretical chance?" Not much of a confidence booster! "Little theoretical chance" is something you utter at the blackjack table, not while throwing the switch at a possible doomsday machine.

OTOH, it may be the solution to our toxic waste disposal issues.

Apparently if a black hole is formed that has sticking power, it may take four years for it to destroy the planet. So at least we'd have a chance to see how the television series Lost wraps up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...the-world.html

[sparkeyjames]

Lets see collide 2 small particles at high velocity. Particles shatter into many smaller parts. Where in all that can a black hole form? Don't you just love fear mongering. Not to mention that most of the people doing the fear trip are people who could not pass their high school physics class if given the answers before hand. I am not worried in the least. When it all comes to pass the nay sayers will be so silent when nothing more comes of it but more questions than answers.

[cgallery]

Where in all that can a black hole form?

The black hole is generated by the FM principle.

[cgallery]

Here, I found a somewhat more comforting quote:

But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.

"Totally miniscule" is less than "little theoretical chance," right?

Of course, I'm just kidding with all this. I'm sure the physicists have weighed the risks against the possible rewards numerous times. I'm pretty certain they're not throwing caution to the wind just because they think the new collider is going to be a chick magnet.

[Russianwolf]

I recall a book that theorized that subatomic black holes pass through us all the time, and that it's when one of these subatomic black holes gets close enough to an atom in us to strip it of one of its elements that cancer is formed.

Maybe we'll see a spike in cancer when they start this thing up?

[cgallery]

Maybe we'll see a spike in cancer when they start this thing up?

Or an alternative to liposuction.

[JR]

I read an article last week in the Wall Street Journal regarding CERN. One of the physicists has formed a comedy bootcamp. The intention is to get the scientists to start building on others' ideas without rejecting them out of hand.

Some of the jokes:

Female physicist to male physicist: "Do my bosons give you a hadron?"

A neutron goes into a bar and asks the bartender, "How much for a mixed drink?" The bartender says, "For you, no charge."

Two protons go into a black hole.





JR

[dbhost]

Ah solid journalism, and unqeustionable science! Kind of like the DHMO emails I have gotten this last year.DHMO FAQ.

Yep, solid journalism and unquestionable science...

[DaveS]

Some of the jokes:

Atom #1: Hey, I just lost an electron!!!
Atom #2: Really? Are you sure?
Atom #1: Yes, I'm positive.

[LCHIEN]

Here, I found a somewhat more comforting quote:

But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.

"Totally miniscule" is less than "little theoretical chance," right?

Of course, I'm just kidding with all this. I'm sure the physicists have weighed the risks against the possible rewards numerous times. I'm pretty certain they're not throwing caution to the wind just because they think the new collider is going to be a chick magnet.

can they quantify totally miniscule? Is it smaller than my chance of winning the Texas Lottery (1 in 25 million?) Someone wins that every fwe weeks....

[smorris]

When they were preparing to detonate the first atomic bomb some of the physicists believed there was a possibility that the atomic reaction would ignite the planetary atmosphere and incinerate the earth. You don't know what you don't know and it can produce lots of theories about non-zero probability events.

[jackellis]

I don't know how much electric power the new CERN collider requires to accelerate particles but let's say it's 5,000 MW, or the equivalent of 800 million 60 watt bulbs. That's still miniscule compared with the 810 million megawatts or so of solar energy that's received by the US on a summer afternoon.

A 50 megaton thermonuclear weapon releases as much energy as all of the electric generators i, the US produce in a day. The Russians apparently tested a 58 megaton model years ago and the world did not end.

I'm not at all worried about this collider.

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can they quantify totally miniscule? Is it smaller than my chance of winning the Texas Lottery (1 in 25 million?) Someone wins that every fwe weeks....

Yeah, a little further in the article he said it would be like flipping heads five times in a row. So pretty unlikely, indeed.

[JR]

A few fun facts:

There will be 640 million collisions per second when the machine reaches full intensity.
The amount of data recorded will be equivalent to 10,000 encyclopedias/second.
The detector is 60 x 25 x25 meters and contains 100 million channels of electronics
There will be many tens of thousand computers in the recording and analysis clusters.


... and the LHC Rap:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/261848...20995#26528376

[JR]

I don't know how much electric power the new CERN collider requires to accelerate particles but let's say it's 5,000 MW...

The Atlas detector, one of two main detectors in the experiment, will consume nearly 70 kiloAmperes. There would also be significant power consumption from the other detector as well as the the accelerator.

Atlas facts page:
http://www.atlas.ch/fact_sheets.html