Large Hadron Collider probably won't destroy Earth
The Large Hadron Collider slated to be fired up in September isn't likely to accidentally generate any Earth-devouring black holes. That's according two new reports, including a safety review by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The world's most powerful particle accelerator may crank out black holes, but they'll be so tiny and vanish so quickly that we shouldn't worry. I wonder if these reports will appease those who filed a lawsuit against CERN fearing that the machine might suck Earth into a parallel universe. From Science News:
Previously on BB:
• Lawsuit about risk of collider and parallel universe Link
• Large Hardon Collider Link
...It is possible that the LHC, according to one theory, could be a veritable factory of mini-black holes — no larger than a thousandth of the diameter of a proton.Link
That theory proposes that gravity is weak, compared to the other forces in nature, because some of it leaks out into other, hidden dimensions folded up into sizes as small as 10-17 centimeters, a tiny fraction of the diameter of a hydrogen atom.
At the high energies and small scales probed by the LHC, gravity would become much stronger than it is in ordinary three-dimensional space. Gravity could then cram enough matter together to form microscopic black holes as often as once a second.
However, such black holes, according to research first reported by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s, ought to rapidly radiate away their energy and evaporate in an instant, before doing any harm.
Previously on BB:
• Lawsuit about risk of collider and parallel universe Link
• Large Hardon Collider Link
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"hidden dimensions folded up into sizes as small as 10-17 centimeters "
Or about the size of an apple.
Actually, last night I had a nightmare that a black hole swallowed the earth.... it appeared as a round black window in the sky rimmed with red and it grew until it covered the screaming masses and the whole planet! We're doomed!
the creation of hidden dimensions should not be taken lightly. i'm perfectly happy existing in this dimension.
"Those ivory tower eggheads will destroy us all!" (shakes fist in anger).
But seriously-- reminds me of that 80's film "The Quiet Earth."
Mindpowered,
that's 1.0E-17. The superscript went missing ;-)
Wait a sec......"proabably"!?!? The best they can give us is a probably!?!?
Elysianartist (#6), I'm the one who said "probably." I don't know how sure they are.
The probability of the total annihilation of humanity has moved from "slight possibility" to "not likely" - I'm feeling better already.
Reminds me of the great Onion article:
World's Nuclear Arsenal "Pretty Much" Accounted For.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29474
Of course, the protestors are -well, almost certainly- completely wrong.
Meh, I'm ready for a change. Do your worst LHC.
Unfortunately the classification of gravity is all wrong. Gravity is really electro-magnetism. Call me crazy, but remember you heard it here first.
You've perfected the Unified Field Theory? I'm all ears.
I think I'd be pitchforked, lynched, or burned as a witch. I'll wait for the LHC or someone else to do it.
The answer is not that gravity and electromagnetism are two expressions of the same force, but that they ARE the same force.
dun dun dun!
You know, if they are the size of a small apple you could dip them in chocolate and put them on stick.
Or have them as an office paperweight. I bet a hidden dimension in a calabi - yau shape would make a great conversation piece.
Holy crap!
Hidden dimension are hidden is sizes that are "10-17 centimeters". I'm gettin' me a ruler and a magnifying glass and going where no man has gone before...
...guess that's suppose to be 10E-17 centimeters....
drat!
@Mindpowered: Ten to seventeen is "big apple" to "Christ, that's a bloody big apple". Where do you live, Chernobyl?
Oh wait
http://www.bathsheba.com/crystal/calabiyau/
Someone already has made one.
I was thinking about those steroid induced monsters you can pick up at 7 - 11.
Those darn scientists striving for accuracy. Why can't they just say "The LHC is not going to destroy the earth"? Because the probability is nonzero, the way the probability of you winning every single lottery on the planet 100 times is nonzero - its too small to comprehend.
The important thing to remember is that earth's upper atmosphere is bombarded by cosmic rays that cause many similar high energy particle collisions, almost every day for the last several billion years, and so far that hasn't destroyed the earth.
If you were playing poker, it would be a very safe bet to put all the money you have against the LHC destroying the earth.
If you are still worried, you may want to make sure your pointy aluminum hat is on tight when they fire up the LHC.
A hidden dimension would be a great place to dump your trash.
I'm a fan of large hadrons myself...
It's not the size of the hadron, it's how many times it can collide in one night.
Some days I wish scientists would destroy the earth, do us all a favor...
It can collide with me anytime!
No, he's just read the myriad free-energy e-texts that end up in all the places one looks for ebooks.. along with "Make Money, Fast!", "Make Yourself Irresistable to Women" and "How To Kill a Man, With Your Bare Hands".
Oops, that was @ Antinous (12)..
BrooklynTwang:
Indeed, I'd stake the life of every person on the planet, against it :D
Every time I read Large Hadron i see 'Large Hardon'
it'll still create Large Hardons, at least in *my* pants...
So the probability of black holes that don't radiate away is low. But what's the impact of a black hole that doesn't? I seem to recall reading that a black hole of this size would take millions(?) of years until it had grown enough to consume earth. Am I right? If that's right, then the impact is low too. But if I'm wrong, and if microscopic black holes are created and don't radiate away, is there a contingency plan? A containment strategy? Is any containment strategy possible? I don't think that black holes are magnetically charged (any one confirm?), so we couldn't balance the pull of gravity with a magnetic force. While it's light, perhaps we could keep it from sinking with air pressure. Any other ideas?
Welcome to the H.E.V. mark 4 protective system. For use in hazardous environment conditions. High-impact reactive armour activated. Atmospheric contaminant sensors activated. Vital sign monitoring activated. Automatic medical systems engaged. Weapon selection system activated. Munition level monitoring activated. Communications interface online. Have a very safe day.
@#4
Hey! I saw The Quiet Earth too. I must be one of, oh, two now I guess, that saw it. Freaky movie.
I think we have a new variable for the Drake equation.
Where'd you get September? Isn't it supposed to come online within the next month?
http://www.lhcountdown.com/
The black hole will destroy earth, but it won't matter since the Farcasters will let us go to any number of other fun planets in the galaxy, so who needs Earth?
(I just finished "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion"...)
#34 and #4: yay, other people who've seen that movie!
correct me if I'm wrong: the amount of energy required to "destroy the planet" is more than the amount of energy required to create tiny black whole.
http://quegrande.org/countdown/
good! finally some peace and quiet
One of those countdown sites says 13 days and the other says 51 days. I'm thinking that they already fired it up and we're caught in a temporal rift.
I saw Quiet Earth too. That makes three...
"Concerns have been raised that performing collisions at previously unexplored energies might unleash new and disastrous phenomena. These include the production of micro black holes, and strangelets, potentially resulting in a doomsday scenario...."
isnt the the story behind Doom?
"Suddenly, something goes wrong and creatures from Hell come out of the teleportation gates, or "Gateways
Does anyone else remember the whole John Titor time traveler episode of some years back? John posted some frighteningly believable material to some bulletin board and, pertinent to this discussion, very specifically predicted that CERN would produce tiny black holes that would then be utilized to create the very time travel units that John Titor had used to come back from the future and communicate with us. Reading this whole story has really made the hair on the back of my head stand up.
10-17 is very different from 0.00000000000000001, care to correct that? (I'd written that number as in the original article, but turns out you're not allowed to do that in bb comments.)
I don't think this report really proves or disproves anything. It doesn't do anything to increase the operational understanding of Hawking radiation, for instance, which is the energy loss by which so-called "micro black holes" would completely decay before they could amalgamate enough matter to outpace it. From what I understand, it is considered likely that the black holes will form, but will only exist for tiny fractions of a second. But this still isn't proven.
What the report does do is help to allay ignorant fear of the collider by those who have no inkling of the principles that underlie it. In that sense, it's nothing but PR.
I could go on playing devil's advocate here, but I guess I'm not really personally afraid that this thing is going to turn the entire world into strange matter. I think (hope) a good analogy turns out to be that some people were concerned about the Trinity test, the first explosion of an atomic bomb. They thought the fissile chain reaction could continue beyond the bomb's fuel and set off a much bigger explosion than intended. Those were entirely different scientific principles, of course, but similar human ones.
One thing that does give me pause, though, from the Wikipedia article: "On March 27, 2007, there was an incident during a pressure test involving one of the LHC's inner triplet magnet assemblies provided by Fermilab and KEK. No one was injured, but a cryogenic magnet support broke. Fermilab director Pier Oddone stated 'In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces.' This fault had been present in the original design, and remained during four engineering reviews over the following years."
Have you read CERN's SPC Committee's LSAG report disclaimer?
"this argument relies on properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos that, while highly plausible, do require confirmation, as can be expected in the coming years."
So Dr. Otto Rossler's theory might still be correct? "...after 50 months the earth to a centimeter would have shrunk."
LHCFacts.org
Awww, it won't destroy the Earth? Not even if we really really want it to?
interesting that the protest emerges on the`eve of the`test. Almost as if it were piggybacking on the publicity. Where were these people when this was in the planning stages?
ZuZu, do you know Orbital? I know the clip you linked said "Orbital" too, here's why :)
Just a clip, but the album is great.
"Probably", "hopefully", and "unlikely"...
But wouldn't be funny if the world really did end when they started cranking out collisions at CERN?
It wouldn't end right away would it? I would love to study the phenomena of areas being dragged in, gravity collapses and etc. Sick, yes, but still fascinating.
I really don't think funny is the word you're looking for.
I, for one, welcome our new, swirling, sucking black hole of death. You have to go somehow. It might as well be dramatic.
Yeah, so long as we're all going.. bring it on :)
i find it a little amusing, swallow, that a bunch of people who are pretty sure that 75% of the universe is dark matter, no wait, dark energy, no wait, fifty different kinds of particles that mainly exist in theoretical equations, no wait, 13 dimensions, no 26, or 27, uh, no CLUE what gravity actually is, no wait...are saying, um yeah, for sure, it'll be fine, don't worry, we're pretty sure, i mean, we haven't done anything like this before, um, he said he's sure, and I'm pretty sure, so let's just cross our fingers...when we humans do kill ourselves off, my guess is it will be due to collective hubris.
That "end of history" decade between the "Communists" and the "Terrorists" (1991-2001) playing the role of phantom menace was actually pretty sweet in hindsight.
hey, I'M not happy with it - I'm holding out for robot world domination.
I'm waiting for when they change their experiment in 4-5 years and it doesn't go through the same rigorous review process.
I say it'll end up being something less exotic. Perhaps a nuclear fusion type explosion (but not necessarily nuclear fusion itself) that makes a nice huge glowing crater and sends a happy radioactive cloud eastwards.
The BBC already made a nice piece of fiction on this already. Looks like fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1vKisefsuI
I think the sweetest thing ever would be if we all got eated up by a man-made black hole.
I'm serious, and I even like people. I just think it would be the most awesome way for our species to go, not with a bang, but a horrible sucking and crushing sound.
#62, forget about micro black holes, a vacuum metastability event, that would be something. What is the power to destroy a planet in comparison with the power to destroy an entire universe?
At least there's some humanity on that space station. And we have various trinkets on the moon, mars, and Carl Sagan-approved bits floating out into space... and Shinji, right?
Shinji and Asuka will remain on Earth to repopulate the species after the LHC initiates Third Impact.
#62 I think the sweetest thing ever would be if we all got eated up by a man-made black hole.
I agree--I just wonder, do you get to see anything?
This collider is the least of out worries.....
http://www.13moon.com/prophecy%20page.htm
http://www.greatdreams.com/2012.htm
You know those strange gamma-ray bursts that show up every so often WAY out in the universe and are brighter than entire galaxies for a few seconds?
Yeah, that's a civilization turning on their LHC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst
Reading the article on CNN.com I was amazed at how fast the beams of protons will travel through the collider. 11,000 revolutions per second around the 17 mile tube. That means the protons are moving at 187,000 miles per second.
Then I wondered how that speed compared with the speed of light. I figured 187,000 miles per second to equal 300,947,328 meters per second, where the speed of light is only 299,792,458 meters per second.
I realize that I'm assuming that the figures in CNN's article are exact rather than rounded, and I'm also assuming that I did the math correctly. However, my scientifically-deficient mind is curious as to whether this is possible. Or did the AP just make a mistake by using rounded figures that, while easier to type and read, are wrong to the point of impossibility?
It seems that, were the earth to be destroyed by a black hole, we wouldn't know because we would already be gone. Black holes swallow up light, and therefore, time-- if, in the future, you were to encounter a black hole, that meeting would presumably have taken place in the past, present and future, and therefore would have already occurred. Since we are discussing the likelihood of a black hole enveloping earth, it doesn't seem like it's in the cards.
I want to go back in time to tell my ex-girlfriend the awesome comeback I thought of later that night, after she dumped me.
Black holes, nuclear war, cancer, heart attack, accident etc. etc....
Bottom line: the death rate remains 100% - whatever the "cause"!
My advice: don't worry about particle accelerators and black holes...be concerned about stepping into eternity and facing the Creator of the universe and His holy judgment of sin. John 3:36
you can listen to someone who is working on the LHC discuss the project on the viking youth power hour at
http://www.thefeedlot.org/vikingyouth/show_show.php?show=120