'Black hole' Machine Could Destroy Planet

Off Topic
21

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
at any rate, i’m not exaxctly worried, but you can’t help but to wonder whether these issues should be fully vetted with the public rather than a group of scientists and gov’t types deciding on our behalf. [/quote]

That’s a very good question.

I don’t personaélly believe that the general public would be able to make informed and “useful” decisions on topics like say, this LHC in CERN.

By “useful” I mean objective decisions that take into consideration factors much greater than their own lives. (Science etc.)

Going back to your example of the nuclear bomb. Work done in this area ended up providing us with nuclear power stations that are very safe (especially the new generations III and IV that will become more and more self sustainable)

With projects like the above being so visionary and incredibly complex I’d like to think that perhaps the hundreds if not thousands of scientists who have dedicated years of their life to the given project and an in depth study of mathematics/physics, would be able assess the potential risks/benefits to a high degree of certainty.

Most definitely, if it was say one crazy scientist vs the world it would be a different matter.

Anyhow that’s just what I think.

22

[quote]Scrotus wrote:
wait, is it gonna fry my johnson and the boys?
[/quote]

Just one boy.

23

[quote]swissrugby67 wrote:
TheBodyGuard wrote:
at any rate, i’m not exaxctly worried, but you can’t help but to wonder whether these issues should be fully vetted with the public rather than a group of scientists and gov’t types deciding on our behalf.

That’s a very good question.

I don’t personaélly believe that the general public would be able to make informed and “useful” decisions on topics like say, this LHC in CERN.

By “useful” I mean objective decisions that take into consideration factors much greater than their own lives. (Science etc.)

Going back to your example of the nuclear bomb. Work done in this area ended up providing us with nuclear power stations that are very safe (especially the new generations III and IV that will become more and more self sustainable)

With projects like the above being so visionary and incredibly complex I’d like to think that perhaps the hundreds if not thousands of scientists who have dedicated years of their life to the given project and an in depth study of mathematics/physics, would be able assess the potential risks/benefits to a high degree of certainty.

Most definitely, if it was say one crazy scientist vs the world it would be a different matter.

Anyhow that’s just what I think.

[/quote]

I think that is well put and I pretty much agree with you. But in addition to nuclear power, we gained nuclear war (hiroshima), the loss of many lives and the ability to end the world :slight_smile:

I believe we should always move forward and this area of study being undertaken is worthwhile. I just wonder sometimes if our ability to “experiment” has exceeded our intellect…that our ability to experiment might one day get us in a whole lot of trouble. I just hope that one day we’re not the proverbial child playing with matches.

Anyway, for anyone interested, they are about to recreate energy not seen since the theoretical big bang, albeit on a much smaller scale. Pretty incredible.

24

I heard an interview with the retired physicist that has filed the lawsuit. He also brought a law suit against the second largest collider a number of years ago, which was dismised and the collider has been working for years without incident. Of course, the LHC is quite a bit more powerful.

One point that he made in the interview was in rebuttal to CERN’s contention that if the LHC is capable of producing microscopic blackholes, then cosmic radiation striking earth/earth’s atmosphere must be routintely generating microscopic blackholes without incident. Basically, he argued that this was no guarantee of the safety of the LHC, as the microscopic blackholes that may be created by the LHC are created at a virtual standstill relative to Earth, whereas a microscopic blackhole created from cosmic radiation striking earth would be created travelling at a speed approaching the speed of light relative to Earth, and therefore would pass harmlessly through Earth (perhaps taking an atom of Earth’s mass with it as it passes through Earth in less than 1/4 of a second). He referred to the harmless effects of neutrinos passing through Earth.

CERN’s comment on this point was that neutron stars have enough mass/density to prevent a microscopic blackhole from passing through it, i.e., a microscopic blackhole travelling at close to the speed of light, such as that created by the impact of cosmic radition, would be halted and captured at a standstill by a neutron star. Therefore, the presence of neutron stars strongly indicates that even if a microscopic blackhole is created at a standstill it would not result in the destruction of Earth.

25

I bet there wouldn’t be a lawsuit if the hole was white. Damn racists.

26

There is a funny entry about this topic on the Dilbert blog:

…
If the lawsuit succeeds, imagine trying to get another job with that project failure on your resume.

Interviewer: �??So, you spent $8 billion dollars trying to build a machine that would either discover something cool or destroy the universe. Is it fair to say you are not a people person?�??
…

27

[quote]super saiyan wrote:
I bet there wouldn’t be a lawsuit if the hole was white. Damn racists.[/quote]

lol

28

[quote]chris666 wrote:

Interviewer: �??So, you spent $8 billion dollars trying to build a machine that would either discover something cool or destroy the universe. Is it fair to say you are not a people person?�??
…[/quote]

HAHAHAHA!! Oh that’s GOOD. Classic.

29

[quote]Reef wrote:
Wow, straight out of a science fiction movie.[/quote]

This is a baseless worry. The “black holes” that are being created are caused by high-energy collisions – the same collisions that occur everyday around you at higher energies that you are completely unaware of. They are not creating black holes as we know them in the cosmic sense. In other words, they are not super-massive collapsed stars – nor is there enough matter or energy available in a single lab to create one.

All matter can create a gravitational field proportional to its mass capable of “sucking” other matter into it; however, these fields are so small that they will decay faster than the average person can blink.

30

[quote]analog_kid wrote:
What hell, if it brings us closer to warp drive I’m all for it.[/quote]

My life depends on it.

Part of understanding the universe is being able to label it, categorize it, and or make reliable predictions about it. Dark matter takes care of the labeling – its essentially just matter we can’t see or account for but assume it has to be there for the equations to make sense. Now we need to know why so that we might be able to say something useful about it.

Many theoretical physicists do what amounts to hand-waving. Experimentalists are there to keep them in check.