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More bloviation from the Media - this is IN NO WAY going to happen.
It's interesting to note that ALL of this hysteria is being generated by one idiot who doesn't even possess the physics skills to understand what it is the LHC does.
Wait, was this supposed to be a sarcastic thread? Is this tongue in cheek?
I find it really sad that I can't think of anything I should have done by Wednesday. Even if we avoid this whole "black hole" thing, Ike seems pretty poised to strike up an affair with Hanna and nail this hole I live in, soo . . .
(He fights for his friends! I'm scared! )
Originally posted by Armando
No one at Square Enix has heard of Occam's Razor.
Originally posted by Armando
Nintendo always seems to have a legion of haters at the wings ready to jump in and prop up straw men about hardware and gimmicks and casuals.
Originally posted by Taskmage
GOD IS MIFFED AT AMERICA
REPENT SINNERS OR AT LEAST GIVE A NONCOMMITTAL SHRUG
GOD IS AMBIVALENT ABOUT FURRIES
THE END IS COMING ONE OF THESE DAYS WHEN GOD GETS AROUND TO IT
Originally posted by Taskmage
However much I am actually smart, I got that way by confronting how stupid I am.
I find it really sad that I can't think of anything I should have done by Wednesday. Even if we avoid this whole "black hole" thing, Ike seems pretty poised to strike up an affair with Hanna and nail this hole I live in, soo . . .
...where collisions between packets of 'heavy' subatomic particles, 'hadrons', will take place in the hope that the innermost workings of matter and energy will be revealed.
In other words, we'll have more stuff to learn at school, our kids will have more to study and answer wrong on their science tests, and if it fails we're all screwed?
I'd been keeping up with the LHC's progress since I'd heard about it a couple years back. There's a pretty amusing video on YouTube. Pretty informative for us lay-people. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQYXMqEwRxc&feature=related]Large Hadron Rap[/ame]
Am I the only person more eager to see what it teaches us than I am concerned about the dangers?
First, wherever you got your interpretation of Pandora's Box is unlike any variation I've previously heard, and most likely fails. Wiki's is more accurate:
Opening of the "box"
After Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire, Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create the woman Pandora as part of the punishment for mankind. Pandora was given many seductive gifts from Aphrodite, Hermes, Charites, and Horae (according to Works and Days). For fear of additional reprisals, Prometheus warned his brother Epimetheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus, but Epimetheus did not listen, and married Pandora. Pandora had been given a large jar and instructed by Zeus to keep it closed, but she had also been given the gift of curiosity, and ultimately opened it. When she opened it, all of the evils of mankind escaped from the jar, although Pandora was quick enough to close it again and keep one value inside: hope.
Second, your cautionary tale doesn't quite fit. Pandora was warned quite directly to not open that box. Nobody has yet floated out of the sky and told us not to plumb the myriad mysteries of the universe.
Now, we do have running theories as to the downsides of the LHC's aftereffects, but they are just that: theories. Odds remain good that the LHC finds what every accelerator before had found: more neat little atoms that disappear in a billionth of a second.
Burning: Not really, I am with you, except for the "concerned about the dangers" thing. It would be interesting to see just what all this reveals, if anything actually, though I do hold back some reservations about how this could change the world.
Personally, I see this as another "Y2K" event -- perhaps it's just me and my infantile knowledge, but I could never understand how all the computer's clocks going from 1999 to 1900 would cause planes to fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles to launch on their own or other similarly catastrophic events to happen (especially those not related to electronics). In the same way, my faith compels me to believe that nothing cataclysmic will happen in the coming week or beyond that's related to this.
Of course, if I'm wrong, you'll have all eternity to point and laugh at me.
OK, the energy levels of the LHC - which won't even be up to full power for 12-18 months are very very large compared to every other collider on Earth - but they are VERY VERY TINY compared to the energetic Gamma Ray collisions we OBSERVE out in space - and those much higher energy interactions DO NOT produce black holes (as - if they did - we would be able to detect their formation via Gravity waves, which has already been proven). Since collisions of three or four orders of magnitude higher than the LHC interactions take place regularly, but very far away from us, and we've never seen quantum black holes, or even Kerr Newman objects, the theory posed by Wagner that the LHC will create a planet gobbling black hole is as spurious as claims of witchcraft and telekenetics.
I'm always amazed that the Media gives short shrift to ACTUAL scientists and plays along with idiots like the Attention hound Wagner (whose degree, btw, is in MEDICINE and his only physics knowledge is from Health Physics and Nuclear Medicine). It's like the media saying "The jury is still out on Global Climate Change" - NO IT ISN'T - the Media perpetuates that lie, just like they perpetuate this one. Science has been very clear; MAN CAUSES GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, it's ONLY the media who insert uncertainty.
The LHC won't create a black hole, nor will it even create strangelets, because they DONT EXIST (tho, that's my belief, not proven theory - about the strangelets). Quantum scale black holes have life spans measured in jiffies (the smallest measurable time scale), and they evaporate very quickly (as tiny singularities are swamped by the quantum foam of the subatomic universe, which - accodring to string theory - would smooth over those kinds of transitory events), so even if SOMEHOW the LHC created a QBH, it would be gone as soon as it was detected.
Additionally the ignorance of the reporter shows in that they ignore entirely TIDE - the whole reason a Black Hole can destroy a planet is because of TIDE, the closer to the event horizon you orbit the faster your orbit becomes, in extreme cases this change in orbital velocity can be exponential over very small distances; meaning your feet are trying to orbit twice a second while your head is trying to orbit once an hour - this would be painful - THIS is what causes most of the "Damage" from a black hole. The actual consumption of matter is somewhat secondary - AS ANY REAL PHYSICIST KNOWS.
The Tides on a quantum black hole are enormously tiny - LITERALLY subatomic - which just adds fuel to the "THIS MAN IS AN IDIOT" flames.
People who don't have the slightest grasp of the Standard Model should not report on science, especially Physics. Stick to Paris Hilton and Geritol McCain. And Wagner needs to stick to curing cancer and leave the hard science to those who can understand it.
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