LHC Goes Live – Earth Has Not Been Consumed By a Black Hole
September 10th, 2008
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You may remember that for the past year or so several individuals have come out to try to stop the construction and operation of the Large Hadron Collider, claiming it could lead to the creation of a black hole, a tear in the fabric of space-time or some other effect that would mean the complete destruction of the earth and possibly the universe. As the powering up of the accelerator grew close, one scientist at MIT even received death threats over his involvement in the project. Others in Europe have apparently also been threatened with death or attacks on the facility to stop the LHC from going online.
The massive particle accelerator that has been under construction for over thirteen years and represents one of the most ambitious multinational scientific endevors and has brought togeather scientists from the member states of the EU, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia and elsewhere. The project stems from increasing research into fundimental particle physics. Scientists hope that the LHC will be able to produce particle beams of suffecient energy to create the kind of reactions that will acurately simulate the conditions that existed shortly after the big bang. The extremely energetic reactions will also allow for deeper probing of the structure of matter than ever before.
Now, the LHC has finally been powered up and… believe it or not… the universe still seems to be here. (Surprised?) Cern has begun the first of a series of test runs of the collider finally turning on the main particle beam earlier today (or yesterday, depending on what time zone you’re in).
The LHC has not yet been brought up to anywhere near full power, however. The first test run was relatively small and low power, but has shown the system to be generally sound. This is definately a relief, as any system this large has a signifficant chance of some bumps in the road at startup, such as coolant leaks or short circuits. Thus far, it’s been smooth sailing and scientists are enthusiastic about putting the LHC through its paces and begining research experiments.
So at what energy level do the black holes start forming? I’m guessing never. After all, lets not forget that the forces at work in the LHC are puney compared to high energy cosmic rays, the fusion reactions in the core of the sun, the particles ejected from supernovas or the energy of gamma ray bursts. And as of yet, none of these events, though many orders of magnitude more violent and powerful than any manmade accelerator, have not torn apart the universe. (Although occasionally some very small parts of it)
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Good Science, Just LAME. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 10th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
See I hoped the LHC would tear a multidimensional rift in spacetime. Now that would be cooler than a mere black hole.
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September 10th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
For those who haven’t seen it yet
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Check out the source of the page as well, for an extra chuckle.
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September 10th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
If you honestly believed it was going to end the world or the universe, why bother sending a death threat to a scientist involved? Obviously the scientist has no concern for being obliterated or he would not be condoning the doomsday machine being turned on. The only other explanation is that he didn’t realize it would cause mass death in which case you don’t need to threaten him but only explain why it would cause mass death and destruction of the universe. I’d think he’d have an objection to that happening (most people would).
Just one problem is that an MIT physist probably understands it a lot better than some crackpot so explain to him why it’s so dangerous will likely not work (especially if you’re a crackpot who has no scientific background)
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September 10th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Well this was just a startup test, the main experiment is scheduled for several months from now.
So don’t put away your tinfoil hats just yet!
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September 11th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I assume that over the next few months they’ll put the system through its paces and start off with weak beams and then go stronger. It might be more than a year before it is run for an extended period of time at the highest energy avaliable. They will probably push it a bit further as they get more data and are more confident in the equipment.
Therefore, these crazies will continue to tell us that the end of the universe is right around the corner as the number of ions are increased and the dial moves up another notch on the power level.
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September 11th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Yeah, the super collider is not capable of reaching high enough energy levels to do anything which does not occur naturally. The thing about creating a rift in space time is absurd since this would occur in different situations (such as when high energy particles strike the moon).
The only remote concern would be the creation of a micro black hole (Micro black holes are thought to be possible) AND hawking radiation not existing (Hawking radiation is a great theory but there’s no observational evidence of it). Then any black hole created by the LHC would perhaps actually be a threat since it would be slow moving (in comparison to micro black holes which might exist and might be flying around at the speed of light) and could actually eventually get big and destroy the world.
What would worry me is a much more powerful collider which can cause higher energy collisions than occur naturally. Baring the self-contradictory theory of the micro black hole thing the LHC is just cool, it allows us to study something in controlled circumstances which is actually natural. But a much much much more powerful collider, orders of magnitude more powerful, might create a rift that moves the universe to a lower energy state by giving it the initial input energy to do so, which would then become self sustaining (as in how C4 can blow up, but needs some initial input energy to do so).
I know it’s always laughed at when people discuss the end of the world. It’s so much more sophisticated to assume that any theory that leads one to be “against” further research is just an excuse to be an anti-science Luddite.
About the death threats. Death threats are a sensible thing – GIVEN the circumstances. The scientists at the LHC have gone over all of this, they don’t think it can possibly destroy the world. Therefore, you need to give them another motive to NOT turn it on. So you threaten to kill them.
Also, maybe the reason we haven’t discovered any other intelligent life is because they all get about as advanced as we are now, build an very powerful collider and then destroy themselves in a black hole. Such black holes would be nearly impossible to find. So there’s about a 100-150 year window before intelligent civilizations destroy themselves. I know, it’s an absurd idea, but I must admit the possibility is slightly unsettling.
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September 11th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Andrew said:
This post makes a good point in that the energy levels at the LHC are nothing compared to things like high energy particles that occasionally fly into things in space or the forces that happen during a solar mass ejection or the other occasional super high energy celestial event.
Obviously supernovas and that kind of thing don’t occur anywhere near earth (very often) but even the mundane particles that whiz through from distant ones or the actions of the sun and everything: if these have not caused a black hole and if even distant super quasars have not ripped the universe to shreds then how could anything a human could make do such a thing?
All the energy humanity produces is nothing compared to the energy imparted to particles by celestial events.
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September 11th, 2008 at 12:42 am
So I am left to wonder. If something akin to the LHC was to create a mini black hole, or push the vacum energy to a lower state, etc.
Would I even notice ?
How fast would such a thing propagate ?
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September 11th, 2008 at 2:25 am
While, the thinking on the mini black holes (only a minority believe they will even be created) is that they will dissipate due to hawking radiation.
Pushing the vacuum to a lower state would propagate at or near the speed of light (or faster?), so you wouldn’t notice that, we would just stop existing as such. That theory is totally absurd though. No real physicist believes the that the LHC could do this, since it would have previously occurred since LHC energy levels are achieved naturally.
I personally find any theory that we could ever have the capability of destroying the universe a bit absurd, some other intelligent alien civilization would have already done it (No I don’t mean aliens on earth, just somewhere else in the universe). Of course there is some small chance we’re just the first ones to do it or be dumb enough to do it!
If a mini-black hole did form, and didn’t dissipate, then it would accrue matter. I’m not sure how long the initial stage would take. I guess that depends upon whether it has a charge or not (?), if the charge is negative or neutral then it would tend to suck up the nucleus of some atom. At that point it would have significant gravity and things would really take off.
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September 11th, 2008 at 2:57 am
On a side note: The word black hole is something you should be careful with. It’s not used in Russia because the literal translation of “black hole” is a word which in normal context is a term for the… human anus…
or at least this is what I have heard, but perhaps it’s a myth. If so, our Russian friends can correct me.
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September 11th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Damn it, Jason, you beat me to it.
One of my friends is a mad scientist working in Geneva. He’s keeping me updated on how the apocalypse is progressing. So far, he says they’re just warming up.
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September 11th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Chayya Lal, 16, from the central state of Madhya Pradesh, committed suicide after watching television reports on how the particle-smashing test in Geneva could bring about doomsday, Indian newspapers reported.
I hope the idiots are happy – the world did end for one little girl.
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September 11th, 2008 at 10:38 am
See link below for a reasoned argument of why the LHC hasn’t ended the universe
http://www.aip.org/pnu/2008/871.html
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September 11th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I’m glad things are going well. As you say, any system this large, it would not be that unusual to find a few bugs when it is first powered on. Hopefully things will continue smoothly. There’s huge potential for some great discoveries.
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September 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Yeah, DV82XL, that was a really tragic thing to hear about.
I think stupid sensationalist journalism has got a lot to answer for in that regard.
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September 11th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Hi guys,
I am doing the rounds of the skeptic (and paranorma) blogs to shamelessly promote the site and book. Take a peek if you have time.
http://www.brucemhood.com
best
Bruce
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September 11th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
bruce hood said:
No problem, I’m always happy to promote such critical thinking, even if this is a bit off topic for this discussion. If you’d like to email me with some more info I’ll make a dedicated post about it.
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September 11th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Luke Weston said:
Actually, I think that she would have been likely to commit suicide anyway, it is just convenient to blame some news story. Kind of like they blamed heavy metal for suicides in the 80s, etc…
Ummm, did I just defend the media?
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September 11th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Creating a mini-black hole and sticking a charge on it and spinning it up should be extremely useful for a power source, and for a way of propelling space craft.
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September 12th, 2008 at 3:22 am
CBMTTek said:
Yes Judas Priest went to trial because they said there was a subliminal message in their music. It’s idiotic that it even went to a court because the whole idea was such a farse. There is a point where there is a sound in one of the songs on the record that the lawyers claimed was the words “do it” but the band said it was not those words and it was a combination of the singer inhaling and background noise. I heard it and it sounded more like a grunt to me or a “ho-way” than “do-it” but I still don’t get what “do it” means. It might mean “Do it. Go to the bathroom” but I guess the song was kind of dark and angry so they said it was saying “do it” and kill yourself.
This isn’t as crazy to say the news media caused a girl to commit suicide, but I still think it’s unfair because no normal level headed person commits suicide over something like a far out news report. She must have had issues and this was just the trigger and if not this it would be something else.
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September 12th, 2008 at 7:17 am
No question the girl in question was unstable and was likely to have gone off on just about anything. However there are several reports of elementary school teachers having had to deal with panicked kids on Wednesday over this issue, and this is not right. The claims were not coming from some doomsday cult, but from scientists, and that gave the concerns more weight than they deserved. In my view this is irresponsible, and does nothing to help the rationalist movement at all.
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September 12th, 2008 at 8:49 am
drbuzz0 said:
Thanks so much…. the comments on the book are starting to come in and I think your readers would be interested in this line of work.
Unfortunately publication is not for another 6 months!!!! argh but you should start to see more in the media about it.
best
bruce
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