talkmagic.co.uk

It appears that we have a 1 in 50 million chance of not surviving to the new year. While I am not worried about it I'm not sure why we are bothering to even attempt to do this, but then again I'm not that smart.

http://www.startribune.com/world/223947 ... efer=World

All this to smash an atom.

Now where on earth did I leave my hammer?

I think the last para sums up the reality of the situation quite nicely:

"There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans.

Tomo wrote:There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans

Does it mention that the message was pre-recorded last year and that Evans is currently in orbit around the planet Jupiter?

A while back a saw a poster that was a a picture of the LHC with the tag line "It's killing us, August 2008"

All the speculation will only lead to the massive let down of it doing simply what it is intended to do.

Agreed, Lawrence.

The combined collision energy released by the LHC is 14 Tera electron/volts (7 Te/v in each proton beam). The Standard Model says this is still far too low to produce the dreaded micro black holes the people protesting the accelerator's use believe it will. Besides which, if one were to be created, there's nothing to suggest it wouldn't disappear instantly in a flash of Hawking radiation.

The machine itself is designed to try to produce something called Higgs Boson, which is thought to imbue particles with mass. If this exists (every other fundamental particle predicted by the Standard Model of physics has been found), the implications for understanding the nature of physical reality itself are profound.

The really interesting thing is that when individual protons shoot past each other they may not only warp space-time as per general relativity, but will actually make it spin back on itself, like an anticyclone forming between two high pressure systems in the atmosphere. That should be quite cool, even if it doesn't quite mark ground zero for time travel.