CERN's "Red Button Day"

[PEERless]

CERN (AKA, The European Organization for Nuclear Research) is completing construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 300 feet underground in Geneva. This enormous (16+ mile) machine will be used to conduct the largest, fastest, most important physics experiments yet.

In tandem to the construction of the machine, the LHC Computing Grid is being built to handle the enormous amount of data the machine will generate.

"Red Button Day" is the day that the LHC will be turned on. Construction delays have the specific date up in the air sometime in the early spring of '09.

So what?

No one is really sure what to expect on red button day. The primary goal of the LHC is to detect the Higg's Boson, a theoretical particle which gives matter its mass. But, some have suggested that the amount of matter and energy employed by CERN will create a singularity, sucking the earth into its own man-made black hole.

CERN published a report citing "no basis for concern" regarding microscopic singularities.

I'm sure it's just another Y2K, but I thought some folks might be interested.

 

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[PEERless]

^Maybe. No one knows what happens on the other side of the event horizon. Most probably, we would become infinitely small, yet infinitely massive, and time would stop.

 

[AlwaysCurious]

This is so much bullsh**, all this pseudo scientifiy talk in the press about CERN and singularities, mini black holes, strange matter, possible catastrophes and so on. Compared to cosmic particles that reach earth every day, the max energy of LHC is really REALLY small. Why should there happen what never happened in nature during the last several billion years?

Btw first experiments did already start, so if there was doomsday, we have already missed it :smxB:

 

[PEERless]

This is so much bullsh**

There's always that possibility.
:thankyousign:

 

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[Justin]

I already started selling "Red Button black hole avoidance hats"...tin foil wrapped in carbon fiber - selling like hotcakes! LOL

 

[M&T]

Since we don't know what happens on the other side of a black hole I vote Peerless to jump in and test it first!

 

[andviv]

no way... he's too lucky and he for sure will land on the right spot... who knows what will happen to the rest of us?

 

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[PEERless]

Since we don't know what happens on the other side of a black hole I vote Peerless to jump in and test it first!

I'd be interested to try it...

no way... he's too lucky and he for sure will land on the right spot... who knows what will happen to the rest of us?

Precisely for this reason. My next book would sell better than aluminum and carbon fiber helmets!

 

[Russ H]

Most probably, we would become infinitely small, yet infinitely massive, and time would stop.

Hmmm . . . sounds like a typical corporate cubical job, to me. :smxB:

-Russ H.

 

[RaisingWealth]

Yea, their's really no reason to worry. My brother is a theoretical physicist work at CERN. Basically, the amount of energy they're using is still less then a fragment of what the sun throws at us all the time. The only advantage of doing it the way they are is that they get to have a very isolated environment to do it in. Which brings down the "noise to signal" ratio (Not the right term, but thats what it would be called in audio terminology)

I mean basically what they're looking at is how endless numbers of tiny sensors are effected by extremely tiny changes in the area. It doesn't take much interference to make it useless. Thus why they put it 300 ft under the ground.

 

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[PEERless]

Thanks for the thoughtful, 1st-person (well, 2nd-person) perspective. I feel so much calmer!