toldailytopic: Large Hadron Collider: cool experiment or doomsday machine?

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Flipper

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I'd like to think that the brightest economists in the world would have taken preventative measures to ensure an economic collapse would never happen as well...

I'm a big fan of physics and the LHC, so I'm not saying I believe the world will be consumed by a black hole, I'm just sayin' 2012 is coming up and all...

Modern Mayan religious believers don't seem to be worried about 2012:

...But such a "prophecy" is news to the modern Maya in Guatemala and Mexico. Instead, they view the burgeoning end-of-the-world 2012 industry with a mixture of confusion, exasperation and anger at what is perceived as a Western distortion of their traditions and beliefs.

"There is no concept of apocalypse in the Mayan culture," Jesus Gomez, head of the Guatemalan confederation of Mayan priests and spiritual guides, told The Sunday Telegraph...

...Mayan elder Chile Pixtun recalled how he was bombarded with questions about the end of the world during a recent trip to Britain. "Man, they had me fed up with this stuff," he said, his frustration clear.

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Nathon Detroit

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If it destroys the world and kills us all, that just gets me to Heaven that much sooner. I'm all for it! Let the experiments continue!
I don't think that's a very wise point of view. After all... if you really believe that why don't you just drive off a cliff and get it over with?

God gave us this world and this life for a reason, He wants us to enjoy it and get the very most out of it. I don't think He wants us destroying the world with a black hole.
 

One Eyed Jack

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I dunno about that. Black holes, by definition, form because they have enough mass to collapse in on themselves.

That's how they form naturally, and it takes a lot of mass for that to happen (more mass than our sun has, for instance).

Seems to me that if something has enough mass to collapse on itself, gathering more mass would only make it denser, so it attracts more mass.

It will only gather more mass if an object crosses the event horizon, thus getting sucked in forever. Outside of that boundary, its gravitational effect is really no different from that of a (non-collapsed) object of similar mass.
 

Flipper

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That's how they form naturally, and it takes a lot of mass for that to happen (more mass than our sun has, for instance).

It will only gather more mass if an object crosses the event horizon, thus getting sucked in forever. Outside of that boundary, its gravitational effect is really no different from that of a (non-collapsed) object of similar mass.

Yeah, these mini black holes are hypothetically possible (as opposed to the galactic ones that we can be fairly certain exist based on indirect observations) in that they are allowed by the theories that govern black hole formation.

You can turn anything into a black hole if you sufficiently compress it. It's just that the energies required to do so are astronomical, which is why current thinking is that only suns that are at least four times the solar mass of ours are the only current potential black hole candidates. If you accept the big bang theory, then it may be that the compression of matter at the earliest moments could have spawned mini black holes, and that's something that CERN could investigate if it can happen at the lower energies that CERN can generate.

But as OEJ points out, the gravity exerted by a black hole is no more or less than any equivalent object of the same mass. So if a quantum black hole has the mass of two protons, then it will exert the gravitational pull of two protons and that's totally insignificant, even on a quantum scale.
 

Dogbean

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I don't think that's a very wise point of view. After all... if you really believe that why don't you just drive off a cliff and get it over with?

God gave us this world and this life for a reason, He wants us to enjoy it and get the very most out of it. I don't think He wants us destroying the world with a black hole.

Because that would be an act of sin, as your last act in life, with no time to repent of it. Suicide is one of the most selfish crimes anyone can ever commit. They are looking for an easy way out, and have no idea the pain they leave behind for others to deal with.

Well of course he does not want us to destroy the world. My comment was meant half-humorously. It's just one of those things I don't sweat. These guys are going to do what they want to do, so I just don't spend much time worrying about it.
 

ThePhy

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... all the black holes will be very, very small, which means they'll be very unstable.
Elucidate on why being small implies instability. And if the micro black hole does disappear, what happens to the mass and energy it contained?
It also means that some hypothetically stable black hole won't just sit there, it would be moving at atmospheric escape velocities
Why would one of these micro black holes necessarily have any significant velocity? If they are formed by the head-on collision of two oppositely-directed protons, the momentum vectors should nearly cancel.
...and will pass through the earth unnoticed and into space.
To escape the chamber where it was created and race into space, it will have to go through a significant amount of metal, and then earth and atmosphere after that. Even considering that atoms are almost pure empty space, isn't it likely that the escaping black hole would pass close enough to some atomic particles to suck them in (and thereby grow)? And if that happened, wouldn't the black hole's velocity would be reduced as per momentum conservation?
 

One Eyed Jack

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I wonder what the Schwarzschild radius would be for a black hole with the mass of just a few protons. I imagine it would be pretty small, such that something would more or less have to collide with it in order to be sucked in.
 

MacGyver

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I wonder what the Schwarzschild radius would be for a black hole with the mass of just a few protons. I imagine it would be pretty small, such that something would more or less have to collide with it in order to be sucked in.
I've read before that a black hole with the mass of Mount Everest would would have a radius of something like 10^-15 (that's negative 15) meters and would have a hard time sucking in protons even.
 

shredguitar17

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God gave us this world and this life for a reason, He wants us to enjoy it and get the very most out of it. I don't think He wants us destroying the world with a black hole.

So discovering "gods" world and universe more adequetly and meticulously isn't obeying his rule? Since it is enjoyment? Or is god's enjoyment strictly listening to his "word" and refuting substantial objective evidence?
 

shredguitar17

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You don't agree with that? :idunno:

Of course not.

I completly am for that. Trust me! But I think god obviously gave us the intellegance to create such a machine, knowing that we could possible spawn a minute black hole...

Or am I just overlooking your satire? :cheers:
 

Nathon Detroit

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I completly am for that. Trust me! But I think god obviously gave us the intellegance to create such a machine, knowing that we could possible spawn a minute black hole...

Or am I just overlooking your satire? :cheers:
God gave us the ability to think up all kinds of machines to do wicked things with but that doesn't mean He approves of what we do with them. Think of the awful things that the Nazi's did with a simple oven.

In other words... if some wacky scientists DID manage to destroy the earth God wouldn't be happy about it.

Notice what God says here...

Jeremiah 32:35 ‘And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.’

Therefore, God created us with our own minds, our own wills, and a very real ability to do good or evil apart from His direct intervention.

All of that being said I don't think the Hadron Collider will destroy the world but it is an interesting topic to consider.
 

shredguitar17

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God gave us the ability to think up all kinds of machines to do wicked things with but that doesn't mean He approves of what we do with them. Think of the awful things that the Nazi's did with a simple oven.

In other words... if some wacky scientists DID manage to destroy the earth God wouldn't be happy about it.

Notice what God says here...

Jeremiah 32:35 ‘And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.’

Therefore, God created us with our own minds, our own wills, and a very real ability to do good or evil apart from His direct intervention.

All of that being said I don't think the Hadron Collider will destroy the world but it is an interesting topic to consider.

Right. But the difference between this and the Ovens the Nazi's used are substantial. One was created for acts of genocide, the other a harmless attempt at explaining the universe, maybe proving or disproving the existence of a god.

Point being that I think god isn't frowning on this piece of engineuity. If he is, then that would be the reason why I left his Church ;)
 

Lighthouse

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Right. But the difference between this and the Ovens the Nazi's used are substantial. One was created for acts of genocide, the other a harmless attempt at explaining the universe, maybe proving or disproving the existence of a god.

Point being that I think god isn't frowning on this piece of engineuity. If he is, then that would be the reason why I left his Church ;)
Were ovens themselves created for that purpose, or did the NAZIs just build bigger versions of an already existing invention for nefarious purposes?
 

shredguitar17

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Were ovens themselves created for that purpose, or did the NAZIs just build bigger versions of an already existing invention for nefarious purposes?

Note where I said, " The ovens THE NAZIS USED..." My point being that the nazis weren't using ovens as by the definition of what ovens are; ovens is actually the slang term used to describe torture and death houses, just as the slang term "death showers" or "bath houses" came along.

So, it is a matter of this: LHC=Advancement, wholesome autonomous knowledge, and huge step for our civilization as a whole vs. Death Houses=Acts out of a genocidal narcassistic tyrant.
 

Ktoyou

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From what I know, which isn't much, as applied physics is boring to me, they cannot generate enough anti-matter to light up more than an old time light bulb. So, it is something for therm to do and speculate about. Makes news, which generates more money for advertisers than science.
 
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