Any opinions on the potential end of the world?

CERN Large Hadron Collider.

Anyone aware of frantic injunctions etc via the Court of Human Rights?







Seems a bit worrying.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/2650665/Legal-bid-to-stop-CERN-atom-smasher-from-destroying-the-world.html

This is the first I have heard of it.

Report back soldiers.

Sounds like fear of the unknown to me.

Well, they do seem to be conducting a somewhat unpredictable experiement. With no absolute knowledge of what will happen.

A Big Bang occurs once every 13.7 billions years or so...coincidence? ;)

It is worrying that scientists who say they don't know what is going to happen are allowed to play with something this powerful...but then the same was probably said about the original CERN accelerator.

Its a fine line between fear of the unknown, and blind ignorance.

I think it is certainly worrying - I have been Googling it and seeing injunctions flying in from all over the world.

It is confirmed that there is no absolute guarantee that this will be a safe experiment. It cannot be guaranteed - they just think that the black holes created will die quicky. Other scientist worry that, if the black holes start feeding, they won't stop feeding and will continue to grow.

the thing is they through the A-bomb would destroy the world to and we are still here just.

I've been following this story with great interest over the past few months. I'm not making a prediction one way or the other.

Thought all that had been sorted by now...

Well I would look on the bright side... At least I wouldn't have to go to work ever again :)


They also thought that the human body would turn to mush (internal organs exploding etc.) if it ever exceeded 60mph ( note the human body will still turn to mush at this speed if stopped by a hard surface e.g. a wall or the old faithful ... the floor.)

I'll bet anyone any amount of money that the world will in fact will NOT be destroyed. If I'm right it's extra cash in my pocket. If I'm wrong, well, good luck collecting. :)

During the "Project Manhattan" fears were, the atomic explosion could trigger a fire of the earth's atmosphere. But also with the physics knowledge of the year 1942 one could realize fast that the physical conditions outside the explosion centre (pressure drop, no tendency of the atmosphere atoms towards the reaction with each other) exclude such a process from themselves.

Exactly this is the difference compared with today's fears:

With today's knowledge we must assume that a process (emergence of a black hole) started once is stable out of himself alone and expands by himself.

While today, so the consequences of some of the possible results are clear, unclear are the results of the experiments themselve, which is the reason, CERN is doing the whole thing.

This does not sound like a responsible fundamental research for me but to Russian Roulette.

So? Just because something else was safe doesn't make anything else more or less safe. By definition, any last thing that destroys the world would also be the first thing to destroy the world.

Sometimes a little fear of the unknown is a good thing... especially when the fear is coming from Professor Otto Rössler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

Personally I don't think anything bad is going to happen but I just wanted to point those things out.


xMicky, I'm sorry but your post doesn't make much sense to me.

We are all going to die, one way or another. So why worry... ;-)

Oh, and yes, I am all for activating the collider. My bet is nothing will happen and they won't find Higgs bozon.

Barney

What's the problem ?

Today we don't know the result of CERN's experiments but we know for sure if certain results happen it's the end of the world.




To me it makes agigantic difference whether I die as humans always did or the whole earth is terminated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1vKisefsuI

First 5 parts are also quite cool (esp. for 'just a documentary')

To these sort of people they dont give a toss really all they want is thier five minutes of fame.

The fact that there are many around the world that try to get their opposing voice heard doesn't surprise me much. One does not have to look further than the question of the origin of humans before it is evident that there are many who refuse to accept scientific knowledge.

The energies used in LHC are great by human standards, yet they pale in comparison to even the energies in some atmospheric collisions between particles from space - not to mention the energies inside stars. I don't remember hearing about any expanding black holes in sun?

It is true that the reactions these new experiments will show us are not clear yet, but since similar collisions happen elsewhere in the universe regularly and don't seem to lead to exponentially growing black holes, I wouldn't be worried. I'd say the theory that micro black holes evaporate quickly (Hawkins' radiation and all) has way more evidence to back it up than the claims that LHD could create these small black holes in the first place.

As for the Higg's boson, AFAIK they should find it if it exists. Therefore, even if they don't find it, it's a great find.

I hope that black hole doesn't turn into a portal, and CERN becomes Black Mesa.

Otus wrote:



from link posted by puki in its first post, source: telegraph U.K.:

It must have already happened with the amount of weird stuff that's going on in this world. So no worries there then.

The universe is extremely old and it has undoubtedly seen millions of super-intelligent inhabitants. To date, it is obvious that none of them have managed to destroy it, so I doubt we will either.

Earth, on the other hand, maybe.

I think people are afraid of the thought that an experiment creates enormously hot temperatures. The actual energy there is still relatively small, though, and such hot things are created all the time!

They don't know - they simply just do not know.

Haha Pickesworth, it took us this long to evolve, how do you not know that humans are not the first? It's possible, one species would have had to be first...

Besides like I said before, just because the world hasn't blown up yet, do to xy doesn't mean that z isn't going to blow it up.

This has the same credibility as those "experts" who shouted the loudest over the Y2K bug and what a anti-climax that turned out to be.

The only chance of that happening would be to smash two atoms together at near light speed... oh wait, yes we're all doomed ;)

CERN September 10, 2008, 10:15am

Lead scientist - "Those sceptics are such fools.. It's time to turn this baby on!"

*atom smasher fires up, a group of geeky scientists congratulate each other*

Lead scientist - "oops!..."

what truly amazes me, is that in a board full of programmers, no one has yet posted a nice little graphical sim of the earth getting eaten up from the inside by a black hole...
starting to slack off are we?

http://secretgeek.net/gameoflife_.asp#

That's all I ever end up with. Perhaps the game is trying to tell me something.

As others have said, the forces involved occur naturally without any evidence of black hole formation.

It will be interesting to see if they find the Higgs particle or not.

Some (aerospace-engineering) scientist friend told me that doing a fart equals 1.000.000.000 times more energy than this CERN experiment will give..

>This has the same credibility as those "experts" who shouted the loudest
>over the Y2K bug and what a anti-climax that turned out to be.

Only because millions of man-hours were spent analysing and replacing Y2K riddled systems. It was a real problem.

And if you light the fart with a lighter it doubles the energy given off and produces a small amount of heat...

Seriously though it could spell the end or it could not. Maybe many Civilizations have wiped themselves out by doing experiments like this (could be the reason why we haven't seen or been contacted by any) and we are next on the universal extinction list. :)

They switch this thing on on Wednesday - we have just 3 or 4 days left to live - I would have liked a bit more notice on this.

Nobody can guarantee it won't end in disaster - they just think it probably won't - but accept the small chance, it could somewhat go wrong.

And spawned us with their big band?

I'm surprised all you UK folk are evolutionists/bigbangists - or so it would seem.

Since when was the big bang anything to do with evolution? :P

The big bang supposedly occurred billions of years ago, if you believe in the big bang why should there be a god? Thus my assumption all bigbangist's are probably evolutionists.

Huh? Granted we don't know the results because the experiments haven't happened yet. But since CERN's LHC is nothing new, we do know what to expect. Remember, LHC isn't the first, it is just the biggest (that we know about).

If this interests you, you might want to get the novel Blasphemy by Douglas Preston. It was a good read.

Likewise.

>>if you believe in the big bang why should there be a god?<<

Well I guess someone somehow had to turn it on for a very first time...

The scientists in charge would not start this one if they thought it would destroy the earth. That would be just plain stupid. And if anybody really thinks it will go boom, they would probably not notice it. And if they did notice it it would only be in such a short time they would not feel any pain.
... and IF they would die we have two choices. Either they would go to heaven or hell, depending on their belief, or face oblivion. In any case, it would not matter.

So... Fire it up. Nothing will happen.

I read that development of such black hole will take longer than lifespan of our sun..but whatever case may be, I heavily doubt anything will happen...as well as fact that this scientists will learn something new, but fire up tax payers money...I mean, how bizarre sounds that someone trying to get in to begin of whole universe what is so big that its impossible for us to understand its size, while place we are living are not properly understood and examined at all...ocean for example...so..I say, they going to make nothing, and they are going to learn pretty much nothing except some comments with phrases noone can understand, just for sake of defending burn up of taxpayers money...

If we don't get destroyed we will be on our way to awesome, superfast internet (CERN's 'Grid').

Oh! A business opportunity!!!
Contact me, I sell 'anti-universe-collapsing-kit': You can survive to this experiment and tell to the other (if any) 'I was there'.
The kit includes: a copy of the game Spore, a 'I was there' t-shirt, sunglasses (to take care of your eyes during the next Universe Big-Bang), a mousepad with the CERN logo, a kit for building new proto matter to replicate or create a new and original universe (battery not included, not for children under 3 years old, please read carefully manual instruction - controindication: the device can conduct to God-onnipotence delirance).


On 2nd december 1942 Enrico Fermi and his equipe in Chicago activated the first (and not so tested...) nuclear reactor: we are still here.

Pah. Forget all that mini-black hole hoo-haa
Them scientists have been playing too many games of Another World

Now, this is more like it !! .. Surviving 2012 and Planet X

Mayan calendar ends late december 2012 - surely just a coincidence...

OH $#!^ ... WOW!

I've been following this for a while, either in the news or documentries on tv... And I'm not worried...

Watching Steven Hawkings explaining it all on the TV was loads more comforting than reading it in the tabloids, where they like a bit of fever pitch.

If Mr Hawkings is confident nothing will go wrong, then I'm happy and will plod on with life as usual.

Dabz

Of course they don't. How do we obtain knowledge? Through experimentation and observation. Once the experiment has happened, they will know. If they already knew, there would hardly be any point in experimenting.

Why would a chemists opinion on what could be the outcome of a quantum physics experiment matter? At all. Would you ask a Rabbi about the divine nature of Jesus Christ? Of course not. Why would this be any different?

Wow. That's simply not the correct question to be asking. If you believe in God, why should there be a God, and if there is, why couldn't he have been the cause of the big bang? Particularly the one you believe in. There are thousands of religions and Gods in this world. Faith in one does not make that God any more real, than it makes any of the others less real. But surely if this experiment would undo the creators plans, he would intervene (like you would if some bully was destroying your kids sand castle). So either the experiment is perfectly safe, or we'll see some form of divine intervention. Come on people, have a little faith in your invisible sky fairy.

Faith really doesn't determine what happens to us after we die.

It does. A Black Hole is a large amount of mass confined to a very small space (a gravitational singularity). There is neither enough mass or energy involved in this experiment (or for that matter, available on planet earth) to possibly create a Black Hole. Also there is no such thing as a "mini" Black Hole. If you have something with enough mass to capture light in its gravitational field, it can hardly be described as "mini".

It seems like a highly dangerous experiment to me. However, there's no better way to get your experiment known, than to say it could cause the end of the world.

I just hope these people know what they are doing, as they shouldn't be able to hold the fate of the earth in their hands.

Can't they hold these experiments in space? And I love the assurances of people on this board. I never knew anyone on here was also a practising physicist :oP

Particle accelerators are dangerous - period.

The guy at the start of Another World messed with one, and look what happened there.

The fact is, temperature is a macroscopic quantity that has to do with averages. The above may well be true. Nevertheless, there are plenty of particles in the sun with more energy than the ones that will be accelerated at CERN and there are bound to be collisions between some such particles rather often given enough time.

If you look at a very small volume containing such a collision, the temperature will be like that in the speck of dust in the LHC.



The "mini" comes from volume rather than mass, but you are exactly correct. Forming such a "mini" black hole would require stuffing the whole Earth in approximately a cubic centimeter. If they had enough energy at CERN for that, we would never be talking about an energy crisis.



At least I'm not, but I am a college student studying physics.

> Thought all that had been sorted by now...

Which one, the Earth being flat, Global Warming, or the super collider is going to be the end of everything?

Far more likely an event that an Earth-gobbling black hole is an Earth-mushing strangelet soup.

But still, the likelihood of such exotic particles surviving long enough to get anywhere near the collider walls is so remote that the Earth being hit by a moon-sized walrus is almost certain, by comparison.

I vote for Super Collider (Planet X)..sounds more reasonable :)

So maybe the 3 installs limit on Spore won't be a problem after all...

On the other hand, they should at least wait until Duke Nukem Forever is finished.

In fact I think there are some physic formulas that determine the exact amount of mass/energy you need to collapse into a black hole and capture the light. In general you need a star bigger than our Sun.
So any experiments in the world cannot create any mini-black-hole simply because the scientists need a) an incredible request of energy or b) the equivalent (in term of mass) of the Sun.


Yes, just some days befor Christmas an asteorid will hit the Earth - this dosnt' mean the end of the universe, only a mass extinction on this planet. Life will rise again.

Correct. A black hole requires a massive amount of mass (at least 3x the mass of our sun) in order for gravity to overcome all the other forces that apply.

(I have a 1st class 4 your degree in physics)

Why?

I'm pretty sure all the participants have been checked out to make sure their degrees didn't come from a diploma mill. Still if the world has to be destroyed, I would prefer it happening at the hands of scientists who were mistaken, as opposed to politicians who were too greedy and power hungry. I have a lot more faith in scientists than politicians.

Sure. But constructing something like the LHC in space is not logistically sound. Neither is providing enough energy for the experiment. Besides a Black Hole any immediate distance from the Earth is still going to bring about the end of our solar system, so isn't going to make much of a difference.

Either that, or the Mayans simply figured (much like software engineers writing software that wasn't 2YK compliant) that by the time it became a real problem, there would be a real solution as well. Besides the Mayan civilization was destroyed in 1697 so their calendar was at least 300 years longer than necessary. Amateurs.

That's the whole point of experiments. If they knew for a fact what would happen there'd be no point building the LHC in the first place.

Fear not, for The Flying Spaghetti Monster shall save us all.

Ballcocks.

Every single year there's someone or other that predicts the end of the world. Someone will eventually get it right but that'll just be a fluke.

P.S. What exactly is an 'asteorid'? :P

dont worry puki, end is somewhere arround 2012, you got 3-4 more years to steal other peoples engines and content, then you can wrap it all up and realease without fear, cos 2012 the main show begins :D

I'm about to put a frozen curry in the microwave... Wish me luck, the end maybe nigh! :P

Dabz

From: http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/anon6.htm

1/ *****A small unexpected phenomenon could have grave consequences
Recently, the RHIC succeeded in producing a plasma of quarks-gluons [Ref.5] (the last step before creating black holes with even higher energies).
The physicists were amazed to see that this plasma was much denser than expected, acting like a "drop of liquid" and not like a "gas" as predicted by theory.
This quark-gluon plasma reduces the speed of and retains the particles created in the collision ("particle beam suppression") and as this plasma, moreover, also produces « strange quarks », we can conceive that it could slow their speeds and create, given prolonged use of the RHIC accelerator, the famous strangelet considered so dangerous to the planet.
Arguments suggest that in the LHC the strangelet danger will be less significant than in the RHIC but it is notable that the LHC will be producing a greater number of these decelerating plasmas
In this example, we cannot confirm absolutely that the decelerating plasmas present a real danger but we want to point out that simple unexpected phenomena could be the source of significant danger.

You have to at least worry a little bit when experiment results don't match what is predicted by theory. It makes those small chances of "unexpected phenomenon" a lot more significant.

Saying that people should only be able to perform experiments if they can guarantee that nothing bad will happen is worthless. If I asked anyone here to give me an absolute 100% guarantee that aliens wouldn't come here tomorrow and kill us all, I would argue that no one could.

I would also argue that it is precisely when experimental results don't match theory that we should get excited, not scared. Imagine if experimental results always matched theory: objects of different masses would fall with the same rate, there would be no electromagnetic field, etc... If experiments didn't give unexpected results there would have been no point in building the LHC to begin with. No one is going to spend $8 billion dollars just so scientists can pat themselves on the back and go "ahhh everything we've predicted has been correct."

In all probability, you *can* guarantee it.
Will you still be excited if your face is being sucked inside out?
Yes, but bringing about the end of the world via the creation of a black hole, is just a tad more catastrophic than setting your white coat on fire with freak bunsen burner-related accident. Put it into perspective at least.

For perspective. I would guess the chance of the USSR (yeah, yeah - it's officially gone) or the US launching their nukes by accident to be a heck of a lot higher then the chance a scientific experiment will destroy the planet. (this guess from the fact the Russians very nearly did do so in the late eighties - and who knows how many times the US might have)

Professor "Brian Cox" - LHC scientists at Cern:


He sounds somewhat angry - almost like he doesn't care what people think.

I find this worrying.

GfK - are you flirting with him?

It's more that he's an actual physicist who's been working on the LHC for ages and knows what he's talking about, unlike all the idiot panic-mongers.

Now that's the kind of faith I'm talking about!

Here's the problem tho'. A bunch of overtly non-scientific people discussing science. Oh strangelets (which are hypothetical) are considered (hypothesis) dangerous to the planet. Well maybe we should test that hypothesis, considering that the earth is (hypothetically) being bombarded with stragelets (in the form of cosmic radiation) thousands of times a day, it'd be nice to know if this form of cosmic radiation posed any real threat.

Yes. That's how science moves forwards. You form a hypothesis. You test this hypothesis. Then based on your observations, you go back and conclude which parts of your hypothesis have been corroborated, and which parts have been falsified and need to be changed.

Only if you're religious. Science is only improved when you learn something new. When you manage to positively falsify an assumed truth (like say the earth is flat and was created in 6 days), science moves forwards in leaps and bounds.

Particularly since "nothing bad" is subjective.

That's not 100%.

That's not what would happen in the event of a spontaneous black hole. You would simply cease to exist. However the fact remains that there is still not enough mass on the planet to conceivably create a black hole.

Indeed. And the perspective is this. God says don't do it.

Given that the two sides seem to be real scientists saying there's no danger, and religious crackpots claiming it'll anger their invisible sky fairy, discussing "perspective" seems a little out of sync with reality.

You think this is the first time Walter Wagner has been fear mongering? Guess again, and just like last time, he's still wrong. I guess beating a dead horse hasn't gone out of fashion in Hawaii. Anyway if you're interested in what real scientists think, read this.

Why would he care what a bunch of religious zealots in the US think? It's not like religious bigotry is going to change the outcome of a scientific experiment. It didn't with the RHIC 8 years ago, and it's not going to this time. You can pray all you want.

I do think its a bad idea, but I can't say I formed that opinion because a fictional character told me to.

Jealous? ;)

Stunning images of the Hadron collider
The final images really conveys it's staggering size

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html

If you're really worried, you know what must be done. A lifetime in a prison cell in Switzerland is probably better than oblivion.

Either stand by your convictions or stop whining.

Faith is the opposite to knowledge. I would recommend not to mix both concepts on any kind of logical development. Not even theology bases its studies on faith.

I wish they would put more effort into space programs and get some manufacturing and scientific labs off world where there would be some great advantages, and things like this collider could be assembled and run with a lot less worry.

Of course, you would probably have something like what ben bova writes about in his novels. Where politics get embroiled with the whole thing and those off world places end up having to fight for independence causing another load of problems.

Looks like were relying on the russians for launching space crews these days. The shuttle is to be decomissioned in 2010 and the US will be using russian facilities to take space station staff off planet till 2015.

Would almost be funny if they screwed up and destroyed the earth over a 4 year period with a miniscule blackhole. Maybe we would have 2 years of peace after whilst we all made a combined effort to do something about it. Of course most of the big players in the EU would be the first to go, and we would probably end up having more wars with the middle east instead.

If the whole universe would vanish instantly, what would you have to worry about?
Nobody would even notice it, as there would be nobody to notice it.

The media are simply worried the science story won't be interested unless they can add some drama so they are trying whip up some hysteria. Any serious scientific discussion about this topic was over 6 months ago. Also the usual luddites will try to block any kind of progress because they fear whatever they do not understand.

Darkheart

Fair enough. Why do you think it's a bad idea then? What did you base your opinion on? Every reputable scientist in the field of quantum and relativistic physics, says it's perfectly safe, and that it's just the typically anti-intellectual lobby doing their typical scaremongering. If you can't trust the people who know what they're doing, who can you trust?

People are going to worry regardless. As long as the people who run this place have you covering in fear, you're not likely to be thinking rationally, and thus you're more open to manipulation.

Just look at all the clueless people worrying about MMR vaccines in the US! You would have to be criminally insane to think for a second that millions of people killed by a measles epidemic is somehow better than 1 or 2 people possibly (yet contrary to any credible scientific studies on the subject) becoming autistic. Yet we have renowned molecular biologists, like ex-playmate Jenny McCarthy, running her mouth on things you could charitably call her clueless about.

It's not a matter of what scientists think, or even what they can prove or disprove, beyond a shadow of doubt. It's about politics, public opinion, and how many clueless airhead celebrities you can recruit to your "cause". It doesn't matter that you can cure Cancer or Parkinsons Disease, if you need embryonic stem cell research to do it, God says no, and his clueless celebrity proxy Patricia Heaton will tell you that, because God doesn't care one way or the other, or he would have made his own opinion heard.

Besides it wouldn't matter if this type of experiment were done in space. If you create a gravitation singularity (which given the amount of mass and energy in the solar system, is impossible) the entire solar system would be pulled into it in a second. In fact it doesn't matter if any of the ridiculous doomsayer accidents did happen, if any one of them happen at all, we're in big trouble regardless of where we do it.

A nuke is child talk compared to a black hole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_of_the_Large_Hadron_Collider
Sounds like a mBH (micro black hole) would slowly eat our planet.

Black holes aren't the only threat here, read the wiki.

I'm against it!

I have always thought that, if I am going to die, I would rather die being sucked into a black hole. It is far more interesting, nobody has ever died that way before, and we certainly are not 100% sure what happens. (Only theoretically sure that the person gets crushed into a tiny, tiny pebble).

Would you rather die in a bloody bus accident, a terrorist attack or a black hole engulfment?
With the latter, you even have the slight chance in Hell that a future civilization will dig out your well-preserved remains and actually find your presence fairly interesting.
While you're at it, there is a chance that the gravitational pull will have you "flying" (or in free-fall) for a few moments. Wouldn't that be cool?

Oh yeah? Tell that to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think they have a quite different perspective regarding which is more dangerous. A nuclear reaction destroying the landscape for generations and burning hundreds of thousands of people to a crisp in seconds or one or more theoretical scenarios that everyone who knows what they're talking about, thinks is absurd.

I mean if you had to chose between being nuked and being perfectly fine, which would you chose?

Did you actually read that article? Or did you just link to it? Here is a quote for you from the very first paragraph. "The consensus in the scientific community is that experiments at the LHC present no danger and that there is no reason for concern". Could it possibly be any clearer?

You're right, because "The Safety Assessment Group argues that they would also have been produced by cosmic rays and have stopped in the Earth or some other astronomical body, and the stability of these astronomical bodies means that they cannot be dangerous". Do you get it yet? The experiments going on at the LHC aren't dangerous, because they occur naturally thousands of times every day. since the earth has been here around 5 billion years and and counting, it seems reasonable to deduct that if there was even a slight chance of anything bad happening, it would have happened already and we wouldn't be here. Seriously, read the wiki.

And no you're right. Black holes aren't the only threat. However the other threat (stranglets) have not yet been proven to exist, despite 8 years worth of research. They are theorized to exist, because they explain certain astronomical phenomenon, however they are as likely to occur as the biblical flood, as far as scientific evidence goes.

Sorry, but we need to build a hyperspace bypass.

You'll be ripped apart by gravitational gradient, not to mention the Earth collapsing beneath you before you get anywhere near a micro black hole. Personally, I'm far more worried by the impending global economic collapse.

Cool.

I had heard about this before, but don't really know what to make of it.

Oh, and as a side note to EdzUp's comment at the very top of the page, I'm pretty sure no one thought the atom bomb would destroy humanity. Otherwise it wouldn't have been dropped. Twice. Sure, everyone's willing to accept that a bunch of them at once could, but not just one.

I based my opinion on the fact that they're messing with things, the potential consequences of which they can't possibly comprehend.

There was a time when the 'reputable scientists' thought smoking was safe. And Thalidomide. The long-term effects of both had not even been considered.

We seem to have an overwhelming interest in faffing about with things we don't understand "to see what happens". If we keep doing it, you can guarantee that we'll come unstuck sooner or later.

Some people have more chance dropping dead from stupidity (if it was possible).

My opinion:

If we didn't take risks as a race we wouldn't be where we are right now. We wouldn't have electronics, the internet or anything else most of the human race depends apon for daily activities. Honestly, I'm also a bit on the wary side of this experiment, but if it wasn't this, then it would probably be something else.

I honestly hope we don't get blown to oblivion as I haven't even graduated highschool yet.

I guess we'll find out pretty fast, won't we?

I have followed this from the start. It sounds pretty scary stuff, but they have already been doing 1000s of experiments like this already. This one is just... bigger.

So.. when is it going live so i can get the sunglasses and marshmallows out?

I agree 100% and I am all for scientific experiments to further our understanding of reality. The only problem with this experiment is that if we positively falsify the theory of hawking radiation, the micro black hole will not evaporate and continue to grow.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly preparing for the end of the world as we speak. However, there are peer reviewed published papers in respectable journals that question hawking radiation and have mathematical models to support other theories It's just something to think about.

** Edit: The link I posted was broken, here's another link to a listing of articles both supporting and opposing the theory of hawking radiation. http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+hawkings+radiation/0/1/0/all/0/1

Supposedly those exact same conditions happen in the upper atmosphere all the time with particles smashing in from outer space, so if this was truly so dangerous the earth would have been obliterated a long time ago....

...Apparently.


I guess we'll find out soon. In the event that thinks do go pear-shaped, I have a feeling that hallmark doesn't quite carry any cards that would cover an "oops we were wrong" of that magnitude. ;-)

I think you should be more concerned about what's coming out of my arse tonight.

Considering the conditions of the earth currently, I'd say any sort of disaster LHC would impose would just be an accelleration of the inevitable.

On the other hand, our last extremely dangerous experiment with energy (the atomic bomb), opened the door for understanding and harvesting another form of energy. If the results revealed another form of cleaner energy, I'd say the timing couldn't be better.

At least this time, war isn't prompting the discovery.

It may as well been the end of the world for Chuck Lidel tonight after he just got sparked out by one punch. Knocked out cold.

I love the UFC.

somewhat on-topic:

Things happen differently in space then they do on our electromagnetic filled, gravitationally generating planet.

Who says they care about the good and continuance of mankind? Your choice to assume they are lying or not.

Man how did the Ice Man lose his mojo over night?

Cool. I didn't realize that there was no gravity or magnetic field in the upper atmosphere.

Oh wait -- there are.

:)



Maybe a huge blackhole has happened before, I mean, we wouldn't know would we? Just food for thought - kinda a planet of the apes situation :)

Ahh hell.....lets just get it over with. Its about time Armageddon arrived anyways and 4 years is just too long to wait.....goddammit.

I wish they would just switch the sod on and be done with it! :)

Dabz

Cern scientists made a rap video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

looks harmless and fun, I'm sure they will not implode the planet, just find the secret of the universe is all that theyz wantz

My opinion, if it is worth anything, is that it is impossible for a 'micro' black hole to exist. The theory is based on the theory of primordial black holes, holes supposedly created just after the big bang under extreme temperature and pressure. I don't believe the primordial black hole theory. I think a black hole can only be created from a collapsed star when all the star's energy has gone and it kind of goes in reverse. There would have been too much energy in the big bang for a black hole to form, in fact the universe probably was one big black hole before the big bang.

Oh well it all turned out OK.

Today is Thursday 15th of June 2059 and we are all still here.

They've been infiltrated by the Al-Qaeda.

I've marked it in my Outlook diary as an 'all day event'

... 2 days to go!

Armageddon!!

Armageddon out of here :p

Marked it up as 'High Importance' too.

Ok theeeeree we goooo.. everything is moving.. no wait I just need another cup of coffee, phew..

This doesn't quite worry me as much as the delayed milleniums 'End of the World' all computers will crash and the universe will go poof, or the delayed 'There's a hidden planet behind the sun' that is going to spontaneously collide with the earth tomorrow, or even the incoming: 'The world is going to end' again in 2020 from the current "awaiting spontaneous phenomenon" by religions/crazy scientists that don't get enough attention at home.

And back when electricity was discovered, the warlocks and witches have yet to come destroy us under gods name for using this powerful strange force of evil.

I don't know all that much science, but I know people are absolutely retarded, so i'll hang on for the ride with the scientists (the smartest people in the world) instead of the crazy amateurs and religious folks that are scared of their own shadow.



Since when does the government not want to save their own ass? Maybe consistent facts with the experiment (That has been done on smaller levels, safely, already) are just keeping their rocks in a bundle.

The scientists (not the crazy ones) are laughing at us AGAIN.

I'm not worried either.

What's amazing is the gigantic size of the LHC, that is the biggest machine ever constructed by mankind.

LHC facts :

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/LHC/Facts-en.html

Oh and not to forget that without the CERN's 'dreadful' experiments there would be no internet (at least not the internet we know of today).

>>Oh and not to forget that without the CERN's 'dreadful' experiments there would be no internet (at least not the internet we know of today).<<

Well, i think without taxpayers money they will not be able to do a thing..so ball bounce back..

You'd think if this was such a big deal there would be more news coverage. Yet i've not heard much about this at all -- the first I heard of it was about 2 weeks ago

Say what??! on the 10th? crap I won't turn 16, bummer.

No no, you will turn 16. You just won't turn 20 by the time the earth sucks itself inside out.

Only bad thing I can think of this, is that if the world does end, I won't have enough time to feel glad I don't have to go to work anymore.

Time for something completely different. So fire away 'em particles!

I can think if another. I ordered The Batman Season 2 and took the 'long-delivery' option. It will arrive Thursday. If there's a chance the world is to end I would have gone for the option to have it delivered today.
Power Rangers Operation Overdrive is due the same day but I'm not that fussed about watching that. It's a present for my son and he doesn't know he's getting it so he'll be sucked into a black hole without any regrets.

Looks like some people didn't even read it =P The world's not going to end on the 10th. The experiment is just going to 'begin' on the 10th.

According to the crazies it will take a while before we turn inside out like resident-evil dobermans.

I wish people would make their blooming mind up.
OK so I WILL get to see my DVD. There's 13 episodes. How long *have* I got to watch them? I can probably do 2 per day but not at the weekend. That gives me until Thursday next week.
Any news from the boffins whether it's 'doable'?

my opinon and is backed by nature of reallity is that the world will end one day!!!

ive skimmed alot of this thread but has anyone used the pun yet?

if not i demand my cookie from puki ;)

edit:
and it should have been the topic title if you ask me :)

That's probably why you shouldn't rely on journalists and religious nutjobs for your scientific information. What they're going to do on the 10th is simply try and see if a particle can be run the complete circuit. There won't be any non-chance of the world ending until they start actually experimenting with it, which isn't until the 21st of October.

I'd say on average about 60 years? Should be plenty of time.

Absolutely. In 5 billion years time or so, the Sun will begin it's "Red giant" phase, and swallow up the Earth. However by then life on Earth will have been extinct for millennia, so nobody is going to be around to panic about it on Interweb fora.

I reckon disease will wipe out the human race first.

Taking bets now!

*Waves a bookies slip*

a working DVD player in 60 years time?
i thought we were going to get holographic drives within the next decade and silver jumpsuits and duke nukem forever



ive got a terminal illness
its called life
it will kill you in the end

... i'll get me coat ;) (not going anywhere mind its just a wee bit chilly these days)

Holographic drives, yes.

Duke Nukem For-never, your having a laugh, surely?

You Brits are so nihlistic.

Dam americans, with your dam smart words.

*me looks in his dictionary*

Ah, i assume you mean, nihilistic? You Americans ;o)

lol, did you hear the part about it taking about 4 years until the earth would be sucked in?? Guess what 2008 + 4 is?



2012 IS THE END OF THE EARTH!!! THE MAYANS KNEW WE WERE GOING TO MAKE AN ATOM SMASHER THAT WOULD CREATE A MINIATURE CONCENTRATION OF SUPER-DENSE MATERIAL AT ASTRONOMICAL TEMPERATURES WHICH WOULD IN TURN CAUSE THE EARTH TO BE SUCKED INTO IT OVER THE COURSE OF 4 YEARS BY GRAVITATIONAL FIELDS ON DECEMBER 22, 2012!!!!

wow, they're good.

As a string or integer? 20084?

The end of time.....

It's the end of the earth, but also a new beginning of the earth.
It has happened every 26000 years as long the mayans could count.

I'm pretty sure that as a string it's a syntax error...

that is, outside of basic, of course...

Oh dear, time for the tinfoil hat song.

2012 by the mayan calender or the rest of the discovered world?
ive forgotten what we are meant to be if we use the ancient egyptian one 4000 or 7000 well by their account 2012 didnt do much to end the world
NOW we have a global calender but in those days america was another planet as far as europe was concerned untill we 'found' it and they could have had 10* days to the week and the makings of a stranger time diference its 2008 here but over in maya its 2411 massive jet lag that one

*i remember something in aliens vs preditor about the mayan calenda being decimal based 10 days 10 months feh could be 10 weeks too for that matter :)

Mayan number system is base 20.
http://www.michielb.nl/maya/math.html

If anyone is prepared to put their money whee their mouth is on this one, I'll offer 100:1 odds on the Cern experiment causing the end of the world (destruction of the planet, end of all life etc, we can work out the small print later). I'll take any bets up to £4000 and I gaurantee to pay up if the world ends. I need to recieve your money before the end of the week please.

Of course if you win you might not have a lot of time to spend your money...but you can go out with bang! *drum sting*

Darkheart

lol, it was interpreted from their number system/calender system to ours, so it's 2012 for us, something else for them

It has happened every 26000 years as long the mayans could count.

Thank you, we didnt know that!

Bring it on

I'm excited about the end of the world coming soon, it's all just a big game and we are virtual creatures that did not behave that well, so now a wave is coming to flush out 99.9%

lol yeah, but there's be a memory leak AND WE SHALL LIVE ON!!!!

Well on one hand, a stranglet reaction would be instant death, so you wouldn't feel a thing.

On the other hand, a black hole wouldn't kill us all right away as it slowly grows (correct me if I'm wrong). But being ripped apart/crippled makes the stranglet death seem more painless :)

I think if a mini black hole were to kill us, it would do it instantly

As long as the Hawks win the Grand Final before the end I'll be a happy chappy.

My 2 cents: I don't say that anybody working at CERN is smarter than any of us folks posting here, but I'm convinced that the folks there know much more about the subject than anybody of us does. And unless we are willing to spend the next couple of decades studying the involved sciences to collect enough knowledge for a reasonable and well-founded -professional- discussion, we are only talking science fiction instead of science fact (which, I admit, is still a lot of fun).

"After all, it's just life and we're all gonna make it through it."
- Dean Koontz, Dark Rivers Of The Heart

Well the Earth has only existed for 6000 as long as the Jews (and New Earth Creationists) could count. Second of all, there is no such thing a a Mayan Calendar, as the Mayan civilization used 3 distinct types of calendars. Lastly the idea that the 21st of December 2012 will somehow bring about the end of the world, is a myth.

Arent strangelets' existence purely hypothetical, the possibiliy of a reaction purely hypothetical and the possibility of strange matter production also hypothetcal?

Thats 3 purely hypotheticals in a row.

Sure, sure a myth you can belive in. If you gonna stand for something then stand for something, dont stand for nothing. <- Now that sounds like something Dubya would have said :D

Apocalyptic nonsense aside, I hope that LHC will provide some useful data which will support (or not) some theories in quantum physics which emerged in last decades or even give results which will lead to the new theories.. I like to read popular texts from this area. I am sure there will be plenty of them in the near future :)

I bet even if it does open up a black hole that swallows up the entire planet on 21st December 2012, there'll still be some bugger managing to post in this thread.

The BBC site has some impressive 360º views
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7543089.stm

Flicking a booger could cause the end of the world if you believe in the butterfly effect

Eg: I fling a booger at Puki, who goes to punch me out outraged and disgusted, I duck and he accidently hits Rob's girlfriend/wife. He throws a beer bottle at Puki, but fails and hits Flameduck instead. In the resultant fighting, others get involved and it turns into a riot. Someone gets thrown in the road and goes under the wheels of GFKs car causing him to brake and causes a flaming 10 car pile up. In that pile up is government diplomat and spy maximo with some top secret documents of grave importance he has just obtained. Loss of these cause suspicion for the latest world-crisis to fall on an innocent country and WW3 ensues and we are all doomed.

Never know, it -could- happen :P

Steven Hawking's opinion on the LHC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7598000/7598686.stm

guys, I was joking about the whole myans predicting the end of the universe. They did predict it would happen, along with Merlin (a DIFFERENT merlin than the one you're thinking), and Nostradamus (SP?), but really now, nobody cares. I'm fully confident I'll still be alive in 5 years :D

This 6000 year old earth information has been caused by a CRC32 checksum error when transferring information from the old testament to the new testament, which also had an error when transferring information from the babylonian bible to the old testament, which also got wrong information from the akkadian bible, which got it wrong from the sumerian tales. The mayans, aztecs and hittites were probably some sumerian colonists who found america. But as long noone can show me stories older than the sumerian tales (enuma elish), I say that everything written after that is bullshit and falsified from the original information.

This topic reminds me of an episode from the sci-fi show Lexx called " Little Blue Planet" (A.K.A. Earth) when the Robot head 790 states "that it is a type 13 planet that usually destroys itself at its particular stage, either by war or unintentionally condensed in a pea sized object by scientist trying to find the mass of the Higgs Boson particle."

Since nobody spotted (and flameduck completely missed) fredborg's excellent humour, I'll repost it:


I'm against it!




Just because you boasted, I'm pointing out that you're wrong. There is no proven lower limit to the mass of a black hole, but if there is one, it's expected to be around the plank mass (0.0000000217645 kg) or possibly lower. Yes I ripped it from wiki go flame me. However, I have read a book about space which said that if the earth's volume was reduced to the size of approximately a coin, it would collapse into a black hole. Also gravitational collapse isn't the only way to form a black hole, there can also be produced in high energy collisions where enough mass to overcome gravity doesn't even matter. Oh look, how relevent!

Hasn't the World ended yet?!

As far as I know the issue really is that people don't know whether black holes can be created at the scale being discussed. However, the reasons why this is a non-issue is three fold. First, if black holes were created they would have such a high amount of kinetic energy that they would leave the earth before they did any damage. Second, they would vaporize by Hawking radiation long before they acquired a significant amount of mass. Last, even if the whole earth was shrunk so that it was smaller than it's event horizon (the criterion for earth to be considered a black hole) then the force that we would feel would be no different from that now. Now consider an object with a mass of ~10^-50 of the mass of the earth. The force it would exert would be so minuscule that in a worst case scenario it wouldn't pose a legitimate threat.

This thread too, I wouldn't wonder.

I'm fully confident that Max3D will still be in development in 5 years..

Begone heathen! Hast thou no faith in Mark Sibly?!
I shalt smite thee with a copy of the Blitz3D programming Manual until thou repentest!

LOL..oil price drop under 100$...they dragging our attention from black hole issue :)

STOP....

They are turning the machine on today... But, they are not clattering those ickle particles for another four weeks!!!

Why is it always 'four' something?

Dabz

Thank goodness for that, still a chance of a Hawthorn victory..

This is true.. I sometimes have coins in my wallet and the next moment they are gone.

Um.... It's been running an hour and we're still here folks

Except it's six.

Darned. Guess I owe Darkheart 4 grand then. :o>

For those that missed it, although it has been switched on for an hour today (not the first time it has been switched on either) they aren't yet sending another stream of particles around the loop the opposite way and then smashing both streams together.

This allows Puki and others to prophesize the destruction of the Earth for a while longer...stay tuned ;)

These are almost better than youtube comments! Brilliant!

http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/09/this-may-be-the-last-thing-you.html

here is some more information coming directly from norways politicians:

http://projectcamelot.org/norway.html

You can get interweb on The Other Side now:

Well, after the first experiment, and we're still here.

Unless your over there, of course.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/bigbang/

Nice link Rob (the first time). I especially like th insightful comments of lewis:

"ure all wankas u dont know your talking about i hope u all die of cancer and then get shot in the face 5 with a relly relly big big gun! your sincerly lewis!!"

CERN in live!
http://akastreaming.tsr.ch/vp/chtsr/no_geo/chtsr_3_1_no_geo.asx
http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/endirect/0,,4078645,00-le-lancement-de-l-accelerateur-de-particules-.html

well considering they are not doing the collisions yet i should hope so :D

That was weak...so much for going out in a bang...

Planet X is comming and also in 2012 the strongest solar eruption ever which will in its turn dissable our whole system and throw the world in darker then dark age

don't be conCERNed just listen to this CHEERFUL SONG.

CERN would definitely be Abstergo Industries if this were Assassin's Creed. Maybe they are trying to create a Piece of Eden!
lol

Are they playing cricket or what? :P

Dabz

Rob: The comments at that first link say it all.

lol yeah, the collisions don't start until 29 or so days from now. A TON of the reports on the progress of the LHC have been drastically wrong lol...

er... as with all overhyped, mis-informed media reports (such as the millennium bug) - this one was always going to be October 23rd - if ever - I believe.

IPete2.

Anyone picked up on the Google logo at the search engines homepage?

www.google.com

:D

Dabz

> Anyone picked up on the Google logo at the search engines homepage?
Ha .. I love Googles sense of humor!

They should have incorporated a black hole into that logo!

You mean the planet Nibiru and our alien/god creators the Annunaki?

There is, its a mini one, currently, its making its way to the status bar and will then gobble the whole page... Estimated time of the utter destruction of the Google home page is 10th Sept 2012, around breakfast time.... ish!

Read it in the Sun tomorrow! ;)

Dabz

Didn't that not show up already, then they changed the date? rofl.

In Hawking I trust.

I love the Google logos ... the LHC one is terrific. By the way the Google logo is being sucked in as if by a black whole. It'd be fun to have that guy's job ;)

I'd like to take this moment to thank all the religious anti-intellectual fearmongers, for bringing about the death of a young girl. I hope you're proud of yourselves.

Blame the media.

I'd like to take this moment to thank Flameduck for showing his concern for a superstitious uneducated young Indian girl who had access to pesticides and the media.

Why blame the media?
The media outputs information, although sometimes exaggerative, they don't create it from scratch. Religious fanatics, bad parenting, and stupidity (on the teens part) is to blame.

It's already stupid to believe everything the news says these days anyways before looking more into things, especially on science / medicine. Without being a paranoid conspiracy freak, it can't hurt to verify crap, especially before you're going to kill yourself over something so stupid, but clearly someone was too stupid to do that.

If you're the kind of person who believes everything you're told on spot, you may as well kill yourself anyways. Without pawns the game moves quicker.

You just gave the exact reason why I would.

Am I right in thinking that they only did a test drive of the collider and not an actual smashing matter together at near speed of light?

I love this stuff. I've always wondered how deep things go e.g is it true (apologies if I'm mistaken) that everything has to be made of something, even the smallest things we know exist today? Where does it end and on what level?

It's strange really beacause I can't imagine how something can be made of nothing.

I'd like to say also that it's the scientists who first start the fear mongering. They're the ones that start the ball rolling with their talk of big bangs and black holes forming because it's they that discovered it all. Surely when they thought up the collider they also thought of the worst case scenario, I mean that's part of what science is, isn't it; planning for every possible known variable and situation just in case it all goes wrong.

Amon that's correct, they've only done a test drive. The particle successfully went around 3 times. Something like 3 weeks I think it was said by cern that they will attempt the collide.

Daily planet (Discovery) had a quick interview with someone there, and in one part when they asked the guy about hawkings, he replied "what does he know??" then seemed to realise that it came out wrong. I'm sure it's already on google lol.

Why you making fun out of it? 2009-2012 the show beggins, civilization is comming down

Why?

Information is not nearly as available in Madhya Pradesh, as you seem to think. Even on this forum, many people who are usually rather intelligent, and have immediate access to all relevant information, seemed to buy into the end of the world bollocks (although now of course it was all just said in jest). I think it's unreasonable to expect more from a religious 16 year old girl from a developing country, than educated mostly intelligent adults from western countries.

I don't see how saying "We're going to conduct a perfectly safe large scale experiment, that we've done thousands of times on a smaller scale the last decade" has any correlation to fearmongering.

You quoted only the first bit of my statement and not all of it. I explained why scientists started the fear mongering to which you obviously have no reply.

You see the experiment has been done many times on a smaller scale but not at this level. If they knew what would happen they wouldn't have built the thing, would they?

Keep that tin foil hat secured.

Stop with the religion crap. I believe in God and I definitely don't believe we're about to be sucked into a black hole. These experiments are nothing to do with religious beliefs, they neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. Even some of the scientists at CERN are religious.

The media are the 'fear mongers' and there's an abundance of stupid people to believe every word they say.

Yes I did. That scientists are not trying to recreate big bangs or black holes, and have never said anything to indicate that was the purpose of the experiment.

The word "know" has a different meaning to scientists. They don't assume they know anything, they try and find explanations for natural phenomenon, through experimentation and observation.

Oh I stopped with the religion crap when I was 9 years old. But I'm sure that's not what you meant.

I didn't say you did.

Well I know that, and you know that. Now if you would please explain that to all the fundies. (you can of course find more ludicrous ranting from the religious right on this issue, although I'm sure most of the respectable ones will have practised a little revolutionist history by now).

The media prints stories they believe will sell.

>>Oh I stopped with the religion crap when I was 9 years old<<
..and I guess you have been mature enough to understand at that age considering spending previous time of your life examining everything around yourself and came in to conclusion that there is no God..

Might have already been posted but the experiment is very dull...
webcam

No. I had a friend who died from Leukemia. Since he hadn't yet undergone the rite of Confirmation he would according to the Christian faith, burn in Hell for all eternity. I figured that a kind and benevolent God, who thought that was entirely reasonable was at best a hypocrite, and even if he did exist, he deserved nothing but scorn. It wasn't until much later, when I was 19, that I figured I should read the bible, that I concluded that at least the Abrahamic God did not exist (although to be entirely fair I haven't read the entirety of the Torah or the Quran).

I couldn't care less about which invisible sky fairy you pray to (provided you do so in the privacy of your own home, or in designated temples). But when your righteous crusade against intellectuals "who are playing god", costs the life of an innocent young girl, who didn't know any better, you've crossed the line.

This video is great. It explains the principle workings of the HLC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQNpucos9wc

How do you come to the conclusion that God doesn't exist from reading the Bible?
What page does it say that on?

That's not true.. some Christians don't even practice it at all.

What's that got to do with me? How'd you like it if I picked some arbitary crime committed by an athiest and implied you were also guilty for being an athiest.

Edit: after reading the article I don't even see what the "crime" is you're talking about. It's unfortunate but she was a kid and kids get scared, why did you use this as an excuse to bash religion.

It not the end of the world and the wrath of the almighty you should be afraid of. Its wardrobe monsters. And boogermen. Especially boogermen, in fact.

You have to wonder how many pillocks jumped off of buildings or under trains thinking the world was gonna end

I know that. From what I've read the purpose of the experiment was to recreate what the conditions could have been like a few milliseconds after the biggest explosion reality has ever seen just to find if a certain higgs boson exists.

Now again, it was scientists who first came up with the "This could create a big bang or black hole" ideas.

You have 2 sets of scientists who believe in different things. One set tells you something bad may happen the other lot tell you everything is going to be fine.

I wanted to also say just to clear things up that I thank science for what it has achieved and brought us and thank scientists and evolutionists for proving that a God can exist.

After reading the Bible I've come to the conclusion the Biblical God is either non-existent or incompetent and sadistic.

I don't understand why people would kill themselves because the world is ending...

Who needs the end of the world as an excuse? G/f is watching katie and peter on TV :/

It makes nearly as much sense as why flameduck trolls these forums.

It actually sounds a little scary when you read it like that ;)

Because it's a contradiction in terms. The Abramhamic God is not a forgiving, kind or benevolent god. Exodus 20:5 - You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me

Well so much for turning the other cheek I suppose.

Well that just makes them bad Christians doesn't it? Kind of like a scientist who doesn't peer review, experiment or observe is a bad scientist. Kind of like how a programmer who doesn't indent and uses gotos liberally is a bad programmer.

Nothing to do with you personally.

Personally, if you wanted to join The Catholic League go right ahead. It's your life to do with as you chose. But I didn't pick some arbitrary crime committed by a single Christian (like Paul Jennings Hill), and assessed that all Christians are murderers. I picked a massive hysteria, fed by large and reputable predominantly Christian organizations, (and I agree the media shouldn't be allowed to wash its hands on this one either, because a simple search on wikipedia would have told them that the experiment which might hypothetically create a hypothetical phenomenon, which hypothetically could destroy the Earth, isn't on for another 6 weeks). However the religious kooks who fed this hysteria with all their doomsday prophecies shouldn't be allowed to wash their hands either, particularly since some people apparently pay attention to what they say.

Because all this ridiculous nonsense about the world ending was primarily spawned by the likes of Bill Donahue.

Well that depends on your definition of "scientist". Science is a broad term. The concern was first raised by a Hawaiian college teacher with a biology major. Unfortunately not the most qualified person to make such a judgement call. Never the less, the quantum physicists initially took him seriously, and decided to run the numbers. The number that they came back with is a probability of 10^-110. The probability of you spontaneously vanishing without a trace tomorrow morning while brushing your teeth is 10^-70, so about 40 orders of magnitude greater. Are you going to stop brushing your teeth?

This wasn't good enough for Mister Wagner, because he thought of it as the police, policing themselves which I'll give him is reasonable enough. So the nice folks at CERN let another independent group of scientists run the numbers, and they came back with the exact same result. The probability of it happening is so ludicrously small, it's not statistically significant.

This still wasn't good enough for Mister Wagner, so he filed a lawsuit. In Hawaii. To prevent France and Switzerland from doing the experiment. Apparently he has about as good a grasp on the concept of jurisdiction as he has on quantum physics. Never the less this provided the perfect opportunity for the religious right, to engage in a little anti-intellectual FUD, and being the opportunistic twats they are, they didn't care that someone might get hurt. What was important was making science seem dangerous. And it worked. It worked so well that a poor young girl, became so scared she chose to take her own life, so she would die on her own terms, rather than someone elses.

If that isn't the saddest story you've heard all year (at least so far) there's something wrong with you.

That's not even marginally a correct assessment of the situation. At the risk of reiterating what Darkheart said, "Any serious scientific discussion about this topic was over 6 months ago".

They have done no such thing. Science cannot "prove" something can exist, particularly something a vaguely defined as god. What they can do, is look at specific definitions of god (like the god of Abraham), and prove they don't exist. Thankfully most scientists have more important things to do.

Ditto. Thus the Christian god, is positively falsified.

If they're going to destroy the earth then I wish they'd hurry up and take this pointless, derailed thread with it.

I've no idea who bill Donahue is but the article talks about Hindu Indians.. so your vendetta against Christianity is irrelevent here.

No it just means you were you more convinced by what your religious authorities were telling you than by finding the answer out for yourself, suprisingly. It's a good thing to have but not a requirement. The Bible never says if you don't get it done you'll go to hell (quote me wrong if you please), the wiki article doesn't mention anything about hell... troll about God being evil if you want to, but make sure it's accurate.

An evil grin spreads across WERDNAS face.

For years he has tried to end the world, but has always been stopped
by his arch nemesis Merlin. But now he knows the way.
The one true way, to finally bring destruction to this pathetic world
of mortals.

WERDNA begins to laugh. A chuckle at first. Then a quiet laugh.
But his laughing steadily grows louder as the world collapses around
him!

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

As an athiest, I sure find that we (athiests) try to prove a point far too often, and always at the wrong place/time.



Yeah, contradictingly this is one topic I was hoping to stick around, but religion talk = lock around here, which might even be a good thing afterall.

>>No. I had a friend who died from Leukemia. Since he hadn't yet undergone the rite of Confirmation he would according to the Christian faith, burn in Hell for all eternity. I figured that a kind and benevolent God, who thought that was entirely reasonable was at best a hypocrite, and even if he did exist, he deserved nothing but scorn. It wasn't until much later, when I was 19, that I figured I should read the bible, that I concluded that at least the Abrahamic God did not exist (although to be entirely fair I haven't read the entirety of the Torah or the Quran).<<

..well because you didnt read all, you should be careful..for instance in Quran, God said that every child, regardless religion, race or you name it what, will go to heaven without questions asked, if passed away...simple as its gets...however, judging something you entirely cant understand (God) is not wise, especially if all those facts you taking as a relevant are caused by humans or ridiculously wrong interpretations of pretty much any religion newdays...I read them all, and can tell you, that it is HUGE difference between message I saw in Bible, Quran, Budhism, Talmud, etc, and what corresponding groups of followers doing..its all failures because of humans, not God..

So all this nonsense about 'finding' the **THEORIZED** Higgs Boson is just an excuse so they can use all our money?

"Since he hadn't yet undergone the rite of Confirmation he would according to the Christian faith, burn in Hell for all eternity."

There are thousands of Christian denominations, each comes with its own teachings, and commandments, so there is no "THE" Christian faith, but many Christian faiths and teachings. And even if you knew from personal experience ONE of those Christian faiths, that could be really different from what the bible actually teaches.



I have a different persective, i would say that a God that came to die for me even when i was his personal enemy is a forgiving and loving God.

the "Abrahamic God" was behaving more as a parent with an errant child, if you do good i reward you but if you do bad i punish you, the "God of the New Testament" acts as a loving parent who gives that child an option to get its nose out of the corner or what have you. it is still the same God.

two things that never end well when discussed online...religion and politics...

Actually, its usually 7 something... 7 wonders (classical), 7 days (biblical creation), 7 days in a week, Seven hills of Rome (classical), Seven Liberal Arts (classical), Seven last words, Seven Virtues, Seven deadly sins..

Ok, so if I've got this right, because the old testament God was bloodthirsty and the new testament God was forgiving then they can't be the same God. If they're not the same God then the Bible must be full of people telling porky-pies and God is a porky-pie too so he doesn't exist.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Sad is when soliders from a specific country which I will not name, so called spreaders of freedom kill babies and rape women in front of their own children in Iraq then some little shit ass scared girl killing her self because she got scared, she made the decision not to live and that's it, if she was so unstable then let her kill her self 1000 times, somebody so unstable better take out them self before they start making trouble for others.

Its stupid of you to say this to be saddest story you ever heard and attack the people /for being concerned about HLC and disccussing it and implications, etc/ like they killed her: You must be living in a small world Michael to even focus on thjis so much when there is hell in places like Iraq for example. I've never heard you talk any criticism against country of haters who are bent on destroying the world and taking us all down in the process of globe domination and empire building...

To quote SoggyP:

OK... This has slid off topic enough now.