Hey, who knows exactly when that CERN world-ending particle accelerator gets turned on because we want to host a party with a countdown...

I heard it was going to be May 14th, midnight my time (thats Melb EST)... but I havent looked it up to confirm it 100%

Still... are we all going to die, or what? :(

Oh hang on it isnt going to be next week at all, seems like its slated for June or July now according to New Scientist and Wiki.

We'll just all die then.

I shall commence drinking myself to death to enjoy the final moments of my oh wait a minute...

Hmmm. Only 1 in 50 million chance of world ending, according to a trustworthy physicist (Sir Martin Rees).

Realises missed opportunity for joke along the lines of "party goes with a bang" or whatever.

http://www.pdm.com.co/images/Noticias/Images%20Noticias%20Mar01-May31%202008/CERN%20foto%201.jpg

"What could possibly go wrong?"

But hey, if the entire world/solar system/universe gets sucked into a surprise mega-vortex created by this thing, so be it. Out of almost all scenarios one can imagine in which the entire population of Earth gets wiped out, the CERN scenario seems relatively quick and painless.

That looks unnervingly Event Horizonish to me. Waaahh mummy.

fire it up

Aw, May 14th would have been perfect for me, as the night before my last day at university. Ah, dissertation finally finis*BOOM*

A party sounds like a very good idea, though. I might try to instigate one myself.

Yeah, it looks so ridiculously sci-fi that it's gotta be a fake. Was Stanley Kubrick involved with this?

I like how pointless speculation on the myriad improbable results that could arise from the lhc has caused such fun murmurings among the anthropic principle 10-dimensional unfalsifiable nonsense crowd like "ooh maybe this is why seti won't find anything because any civilization that becomes as sophisticated as us builds one and causes the big bang with it"

and yeah so on and so forth walker percy OTM about everybody being totally stoked for the apocalypse ever since we invented the bomb

So this is going to be even more catastrophic than Y2K?

I guess I'm just more concerned that the photo indicates that the Death Star's internal structure is now sitting under a mountain in Switzerland somewhere.

walker percy OTM about everybody being totally stoked for the apocalypse ever since we invented the bomb

Ooh, this sounds like my cup of tea--where did he write about that (this is 'The Moviegoer' chap, right?)

And yes, if it DOES end the world, a sudden, instantaneous world-swallowing is a pretty painless way to do it, since it ought to happen so fast we won't even know.

I don't know how familiar everyone is with that photo (it was in National Geographic a few months ago and I think I must have stared at it for about 10 minutes straight), but it's worth checking out the ultra large version:

http://www.scitech.ac.uk/Resources/Image/csCERN2.jpg

My tiny 12" Powerbook screen can only display about a 1/10 of that photo at a time.

So when *is* this damn thing happening? My boyf said May 14 cause he claims he found a countdown page somewhere on line. I cant find one anywhere, and every other page I've looked at (CERN, blogs, wiki) say "june...ish".

.since ever backwards going been has time and happened already has It

good idea for a party

Sorry, Trayce, it sounds as though I have ruined your day.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wR_GS12E8gM

im going to do this & pretend i thought of it

That youtube clip has nothing on the first comment below it: "In females, these are on the third period, or nearby on the sternum in higher crabs; in males, the gonopores are at the base of the fifth pereiopods or, in higher crabs, on the sternum nearby. Hermit crabs can hold their breath up to 4 minutes."

Indeed.

ya i was thinking of doing the same thing xp

WHAT IF IT JUST MAKES A TEENY TINY BLACK HOLE AND THE EARTH GETS SUCKED INTO IT RIIIIILLLLY RIIIIIIILLLLY SLOWLY???????????

Time for Chinese Democracy to be released

And Duke Nukem Forever.

are these scientists being irresponsible?

fancy coming round and ringing the doorbell at this time of night

as far as I understand it the types of things that will happen inside the LHC are just going to be controlled and readily observable instances of things that happen out in space all the live long epoch and have been since fucking genesis, or at least since 1962, so there's your probability curve for miniature singularities forming in switzerland

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v10/i4/p146_1

reading that it's approx the same probability as winning the lottery three weeks in a row made everything okay by me.

Ooh, this sounds like my cup of tea--where did he write about that (this is 'The Moviegoer' chap, right?)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21MEQ2X88KL.jpg

which is basically a distilled and refined version of the ideas from his essays in

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/49/43/e7f5225b9da0dfdc099ab010._AA240_.L.jpg

Cool: thanks!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Lt1Yo610lG0

^^^ fucking incredible

"what is 'strange matter?' the bible warns us about strange flesh! this is how we know that the moon landings never happened."

srsly this guy is amazing

http://youtube.com/user/gorilla199

Holy shit, he's a nutty fellow, isn't he?

Huh huh huh huh "prola.aps"

huh

Oh, don't mind me, will you, guys? You just go right ahead with your science talk.

"now this particle has been nicknamed by the scientists - freemasons, same thing". Bahaha oh man.

So close, they could have called it freemesons (except it probably isn't a meson, I can't remember that much particle physics)

Run away! Killer Strangelet approaches!! Not as scary as giant asteroid though.

According to the site it will be turned on officially late August perhaps, but they still don't have a date.

But it doesn't look like they'll be colliding anything until much later this year, perhaps even next year.

Doesn't look like this has been posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6aU-wFSqt0
"The Large Hadron Rap"

Nearly done:

http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/07/31/final-pieces-of-the-cms-puzzle/

Finished cooling: http://www.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk/lhccooldown.html

fucking scientists
lol
tho it's a pretty great explanation!
shld make the switch from rappin abt science to like enya-singing or well, anything, yknow just talking, enthusiastic interview style
xposts

famous people (in britain) like physics - http://www.cernpodcast.com/?p=7

they still don't have a date.

what about http://www.lhcountdown.com/ then? is it bogus?

dudes:

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

oooohh

haha these celebrity photos are hilarious rrrobyn

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/247/2469066262_f5ed2640f5.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2063/1612957985_f0d624f6e3.jpg

lol the actor kevin eldon

quality pictures, there's some serious engineering going on here.

xxp

is that Chris Morris?

WOWOWOW s1ocki's link has some great pictures.

ledge, its a good site but i think a countdown to an official date is misleading.

brian cox is a creepy looking dude

xxxp, yes Chris Morris: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cernpodcast/

WOW. new desktop pics, yay!

lol @ british celebrities looking flummoxed (not that i wld not look the same way but i am not a british celebrity)
i love how brian cox is always called 'a rock-star physicist' - like b/c he has shaggy hair and is actually social with people who are not physicists
xposts - brian cox smiling away and talkin abt particles - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/brian_cox_on_cern_s_supercollider.html

The owner of the Cat with No Face, obv

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/247/2469066262_f5ed2640f5.jpg

UH

xp slocki's link is a trove of desktop pics

CERN seems like a 'hip' place to be for young scientists don't it.

xp slocki's link is a trove of desktop pics

lol yeah i meant slocki's link not chris morris and/or brian cox duh.

we all know your desktop is this
http://www.apolloschildren.com:16080/brian/images/brian2.jpg

oh the wonders of the universe

he was in some bands, i am reading, so i guess he really is/was a 'rock star'

brian cox is called a rock star physicist because he was in D:REAM and had a number one hit!

"brian cox smiling away" pretty much sums him up. It makes sense that he's who you call when you have a CERN question in the UK media, but I have no idea how hw became became the go to guy on issues of big ticket physics funding. he was all over the place during that STFC funding debacle.

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/lhc_08_01/lhc15.jpg

this is where the last boss fight will take place

i obv know nothing abt #1 hits :/
xpost

I like Chris Morris's shirt. He looks disgusted by the particles tho.

xp: no problem! their number 1 hit sucks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D:Ream

ok, i will not listen to it so as not to taint my view of particle physics

tho my view is muddied by those who criticize CERN (and obv other particle colliders) for the extreme $$$$ that has gone into it all. i don't quite know what to think about that except that it is kind of insane. but at the same time it goes to show that the drive to discover more about the world/universe is being upheld - or i'm being idealistic and maybe the conspiracy theorists are right and this is a satan portal whoa haa

DG's pick really does look like a boss fight level in a video game. Now where did I leave my gravity gun?

yes, it's like the setting for one of those mad eastern scrolling shootem ups, with far too much happening on the screen for the mind to understand.

my actual instinct re: the money issue is that somehow it's an apples & oranges argument - on the one hand totally insane when compared to, say, how much money is given to preventative health care or low-income teen mothers or etc etc, but people argue that they're totally different worlds and money/resources for both can't even be compared. and yet wait they are same world, we all live in it. i am both excited abt CERN and bothered obv.
xposts

gravity gun

and this whole project really does sound like a real life Half Life

People can start complaining about big science when the government stops giving so much money to the military and big corporations (yes i know big science funds big corps).

(xpost) actually it sort of reminds me of the level in Nightfire where you have to face off with that guy with the jet pack.

I hope their on-site armory is well-stocked.

My view is that the rest of the economy should view big science as a cost associated with generating large numbers of highly-skilled/numerate/technical PhDs, most of whom leave public science and go on to produce way more money elsewhere in the economy than is spent on CERN, etc. If the prospect of CERN/Mars/Hubble wasn't there, hardly anyone would start a physics PhD.

http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/grid/gw18.jpg
CERN, yesterday

Also, someone needs to be worrying about this shit: http://prola.aps.org/abstract/RMP/v69/i2/p337_1

Brian Cox... sigh...

I always forget about him until he pops up on some documentary being bouncy about astrophysics.

"PHYSICS MAKES US ALL ITS BITCHES!!!"
http://vinceconnare.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/briancox_023_2.jpg

Um... as you were.

not actual scale?

Well, it's only just been turned on, so the supernova hasn't got very big yet...

That's the new Pepsi logo...

I think there was a Shimura Curves song about him, la la la. OK, I'm off to the Crush of Shame thread now...

not actual scale?
i lolled

i like that explanation, caek

love the pic of concerned munnery/eldon

xp, ty! I'm not sure it stacks up if you check the numbers. Presumably someone has actually done this. Of course you can prove anything with facts.

what happened to your radio show? the world needs a science show where they play Sonic Youth at the start (is not joke)!

radio show still on! just haven't been updating the blog b/c i am lazy/busy... that is sort of my goal for august, updating... today was abt linguistics (haha and i played the beginning of that mummie movie/olympic games mash-up ad as an example of voice/language bizarreness.) thinking abt playing the brian cox ted talk one day but should prob just go interview a mcgill physicist instead b/c they are pretty good too even if not rock stars

glad you're still doing the show. is the perimeter institute too far for you? those guys are canada's physics rock stars.

oh it's kinda far from mtl, but i will totally have to talk to people there - they even have an arts & culture section on their website!

they are good physicists but they may be so good they are crazy. the craziest physicist I know is there.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3249/2734803481_237a1cf9b6_o.jpg

wau that is actually a pretty effective piece of visual slash

You don't actually know what slash is, do you?

(Unless you are inferring that he is going to get it on with the supercollider, in which case, I really DON'T want to know.)

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/lhc_08_01/lhc15.jpg

control: particle launch in 10..
control: 9..
control: 8..
control: 7..
control: 6..
control: 5..
control: 4..
control: 3..
control: 2..
control: .ONNEEOH SHIT WHO LEFT THAT BOX OF LEGO AT THE BOTTOM THERE!??!?!?! FUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!

chill kate, it's a good drawing, i was only teasin'!

I only have a problem with this thing if the resultant massive accident doesn't instantaneously wipe us all out. I'm gonna be pissed if I have to live out the rest of my days looking like the Thing.

I'm hoping it triggers the zombiepocalypse.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/kenjuggle3/slash.jpg

I'm hoping it triggers the zombiepocalypse.

it better

Ha ha ha, Ken C I hate you!

(I'm going to call my next album Appetite For Particle Collision now)

I am pretty conCERNed about this.

I may even draw a comic of my angst.

I know two people who look like Gordon Freeman, should I be worried? Or perhaps this is the time to profit from a crow-bar rental business?

Yes, yes, Jel! CERN comix are the way forward, clearly.

I know two people who look like Gordon Freeman, should I be worried?

You should be delighted! Stick with them, they've save your ass.

Nothing to worry about here... that red flashing light behind my head... perfectly normal!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2318/2242025622_7a4e96c95a.jpg

Yes, yes, Jel! CERN comix are the way forward, clearly.

ha, i had already started one. but then had trouble drawing faces and gave up.

I know two people who look like Gordon Freeman, should I be worried?

You should be delighted! Stick with them, they've save your ass.

not true??? don't most of them who actually hang out with him die?

cern comix? take it to xckd.

(I did not do this one...)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2196/2368442203_f16bbb116e_o.jpg

OK, I am really procrasturbating getting on with my SQL studying, can you tell?

xxp well he's kind of a lone gunman but I'd still opt for my chances with him, rather than sticking around to get carted off to a Combine labour camp.

Oh shit, of course it's not gonna be the zombiepocalypse, it's gonna be the Combine takeover. That's much less fun ;_;

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/lhc_08_01/lhc9.jpg

http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/cubes/1.jpg

Haha dude on cart looks like he's racing

The fire service of Toytown is not going to be able to cope with the apocalypse unleashed by the incompetent Noddy and Big Ears being incapable of preventing the Resonance Cascade. Actually, Resonance Cascade sounds like an internet only radio station specialising in techno music.

not true??? don't most of them who actually hang out with him die?

Well I'm going to change my name to Barney to be on the safe side. Either that or become a white haired scientist, or have a sex change and call myself Alex.

Am I the only one reminded of this?

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/death-star-8.jpg

you and all of something awful

They probably turned it on weeks ago anyway. They shut it down during winter anyway.

Only 1 in 50 million chance of world ending, according to a trustworthy physicist (Sir Martin Rees).

I'm sure that number is just a stab in the dark, but if it were believed to be accurate, wouldn't that be an unacceptably high risk? Consider the concept of "expected loss". For instance a 10% chance of losing $100 has the same expected loss as a 20% chance of losing $50 - ie., $10. That is if you ran all the possible outcomes and weighted them by the probability of their occurring and took the average, you would lose on average $10 over all possible outcomes. So what's the expected loss if there's a 1 in 50 million chance of losing the entire planet? It seems to be still too high.

Would it be morally acceptable to perform an experiment that had a 50% chance of killing one person? Of course not. But the expected loss for that hypothetical experiment (the average over all possible outcomes) is only 0.5 human lives. The expected loss for this experiment is 5 billion / 50 million = 100 human lives (this is not even counting the loss of future generations). So statistically speaking, we are willing to accept an expected loss of 100 lives to run this collider.

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/lhc_08_01/lhc9.jpg

jon williams has taken bong hits to a new level

oops img
http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/lhc_08_01/lhc9.jpg

So statistically speaking, we are willing to accept an expected loss of 100 lives to run this collider.

-- o. nate, Tuesday, 5 August 2008 17:03 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Expected number of deaths isn't a meaningful number for extremely rare/unlikely catastrophe (see. e.g. http://www.global-catastrophic-risks.com/abstracts/ab_hillerbrand_ord_sandberg.html this if you're interested in the maths).

cern comix? take it to xckd.

-- s1ocki, Tuesday, 5 August 2008 16:29 (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

OTM

I tried that link, but I didn't find any maths, just an abstract. Is there a link to the full paper?

xpost

xp to me: Martin Rees's estimate is not unreasonable, but then neither is Sean Carroll's (http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/08/04/what-will-the-lhc-find/), which is 10^-25 %, which is 20,000,000,000,000,000,000 times smaller. This is the reason why expectation values are so useless. Any values derived are overwhelmed by the chance that the probability used to estimate the expectation value is fundamentally flawed.

xp, no sign of the paper yet, but the talks were recorded. I found her argument convincing.

(no sign of the recordings yet either. I'm on their mailing list so I'll revive this thread when they post them.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/kenjuggle3/CERN.jpg

I wouldn't say they are useless - they still provide a ballpark-estimate of what kinds of risk we're taking on. And if you do accept that there is such uncertainty about the risk that we can't put even a ballpark estimated loss figure on the outcome, then isn't that another argument for not doing the experiment?

Ie., sometimes what we don't know can hurt us.

xxpost

LOL!

(there's three panels there, quick readers)

that's so XKCD I had to highlight the image to get the joke

xp, Martin Rees's estimate is OK. But so is one that differs by a factor of 20,000,000,000,000,000,000. There is no "ballpark estimate" here unless you're playing in a particularly big ballpark. Even if you take a census of estimates from eminent scientists, the limits on those estimates (say Rees's is at the upper end and Carroll's is at the lower) are useless (ask the IPCC about this).

There are much more useful ways of thinking about tiny risks, but they can't be reduced to phrases like "1 in a million". They require in-depth understanding of the methods used to derive the probabilities, and also probabilities that those methods are themselves wrong.

In the particular case of the LHC, there is no credible safety argument against turning it on.

It seems like your argument is "We can't measure the risk, so there is no risk". Surely there must be more to it than that.

No, my argument is that multiplying probabilities by number of dice rolls is useless when those probabilities are very, very, very, very small and very, very uncertain. It can't be used to say the LHC is dangerous.

But you're right. My argument that you're argument is useless doesn't necessary imply that it's safe and this is not the argument from which my sentence "In the particular case of the LHC, there is no credible safety argument against turning it on" follows. That arguement is covered in detail here: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html. My point is that you won't find the word "probability" once in that entire report.

No, my argument is that multiplying probabilities by number of dice rolls is useless when those probabilities are very, very, very, very small and very, very uncertain. It can't be used to say the LHC is dangerous

Well, they're "useless" in the sense that they'll produce widely vary estimates of the expected risk. However, I would argue they do give us some boundaries on what an acceptable risk would be. In other words, if the risk were known with 100% certainty to be 1 in 50 million of a catastrophic, world-ending event, then we could all agree that the risk would be too high to perform the experiment. Since we don't know, we can't say whether the risk is too high or not.

In other words, if the risk were known with 100% certainty to be 1 in 50 million of a catastrophic, world-ending event, then we could all agree that the risk would be too high to perform the experiment.

this is so rong

Why?

Because we're gambling so much else at far lower odds. If it was 1 in 100 I'd probably still be up for it.

D4 DAMAGE POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Well you might personally be willing to play Russian roulette with a handgun with 100 chambers and 1 bullet, but that doesn't mean it would be right for you to make the world play along with you.

xp

Because we're gambling so much else at far lower odds

Despite global warming n all I don't think anything approaches the enormity of the planet actually ceasing to exist.

I would take the world with me on this distantly possible suicide mission, actually, but for the purposes of argument, what about 50 million chambers?

(basically this could mean "energy crisis solved at odds of 100/1 against world ending" versus "worsening energy crisis", to put it crudely)

(make that 50000000/1 if we're being a little more realistic)

for the purposes of argument, what about 50 million chambers?

My argument is that when 6+ billion lives are at stake, 50 million chambers is not nearly enough. You'd need 600 billion chambers just to get the risk down to 0.01 per person.

o. nate: If you ask 100 people to estimate you'll get estimates based on completely different methods with completely different shortcomings. It doesn't follow that the ones at either end are meaningful upper and lower estimates. This isn't like measuring the heights of 100 people and assuming that is representative of the population.

The risk is not too high to perform the experiment for the reasons explained in that report. However, because the risk is so low it does not have associated with it a nice, concise, meaningful headline-grabbing number like "1 in 50 million".

Even if their were, it's not obvious to me what probability would be acceptable if they event you're talking about is the destruction of the universe.

I think I'm repeating myself here so I'll stop. I'll just finish up by noting that, if it's that 1 in 50 million that's bothering you, Martin Rees is the same guy that gives humanity at 50% chance of surviving the century. That is based on all sorts of assumptions and caveats, which he goes into in his book, but he understood full well that when he wrote it that the only thing that would get reported would be "50%". His making estimates like this is not without motivation. I'm not saying he's not a credible scientist, but he certainly understands how to get attention. I'm sure If you asked him he'd be the last person to suggest that the LHC was too dangerous to turn on.

All I'm saying is, once you start talking about an event like the destruction of the universe and a probability like 1 in 50 million, you've long ago passed the boundaries of seriousness of consequences and probabilities where everyday statistics are a useful technology. You need to change it up.

what are the odds of meteor hitting here and giving us an ice age?

i think what we are forgetting is that the chances of anything coming from mars, was a million to one, he said. the chances of anything coming from mars, was a million to one, but still, they came.

o. nate: If you ask 100 people to estimate you'll get estimates based on completely different methods with completely different shortcomings. It doesn't follow that the ones at either end are meaningful upper and lower estimates

I never said that they are meaningful upper and lower estimates. To quote that great sage, Donald Rumsfeld:

"There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know."

I think your argument is that the "unknown unknowns" outweigh the "known unknowns" in this estimate. I would agree. However, I would also say that people naturally tend to underestimate the probability of "outliers" - what Nassim Taleb calls a "black swan". There were plenty of very sophisticated mathematical models put together by very smart PhDs that put the probability of our current credit crisis at way, way less than 1 in 50 million - yet it happened.

I think your argument is that the "unknown unknowns" outweigh the "known unknowns" in this estimate. I would agree. However, I would also say that people naturally tend to underestimate the probability of "outliers" - what Nassim Taleb calls a "black swan".

I agree with all of this, which is why I'm saying a probability is not a useful number for an event like the destruction of the universe by the production of a magnetic monopole/tiny black hole/brownout in Geneva.
You can't think of something like this in terms of a massive game of Russian Roulette. You have to bust out the astrophysics and field theory, I'm afraid.

I think your argument is that the "unknown unknowns" outweigh the "known unknowns" in this estimate. I would agree. However, I would also say that people naturally tend to underestimate the probability of "outliers" - what Nassim Taleb calls a "black swan". There were plenty of very sophisticated mathematical models put together by very smart PhDs that put the probability of our current credit crisis at way, way less than 1 in 50 million - yet it happened.

lol

YET IT HAPPENED.

anyway yeah at least if the universe ceases to exist when they fire it up then we'll finally have an answer for all those anthropic kooks

YET IT HAPPENED.

I should write the voice-overs for horror movie trailers. I bet I'd be good at it.

I think, on a very essential (and, admittedly, non-scientific) level, the fact that CERN is attempting to reify theoretical constructs and create, in miniature, phenomena that can be hugely destructive is enough to give me the jeebs, just a bit. Because when you come right down to it, these are still human beings who are doing this stuff. And human beings tend to be flawed and not all that good at not fucking things up.

It does seem a bit creepy, I agree. Here you have these scientists basically saying, Hey, we don't know what will happen if we focus this immense amount of energy into an infinitesimally small space, so let's do it!

I guess science has always proceeded by creating situations where the outcome is unknown - that's what an experiment is, I guess - though Einstein publishing his groundbreaking papers without access to a laboratory of any kind (though I guess he was referencing results of other experiments). But it just seems like we're entering a period of diminishing returns, where it takes ever larger amounts of expense and effort to create an ever more extreme situation that we can't predict, and it seems like the scientific breakthroughs have been slow in coming. There must be a natural temptation for these scientists who just spent billions on a super-collider that produced disappointing results to go back to the funding agencies and say, Hey, we just need to make it ten times bigger - because you know there are salaries that need to get paid. But I have a suspicion that these enormously expensive projects might have a self-perpetuating momentum that tends to get out of proportion to the scientific value.

I'll go with the parallel universes option and firmly believe that it's another universe that gets eaten rather than ours or one of the infinite others like it.

I thought they'd come to the conclusion there were no risks anymore? (Well, no risks to 'humanity' that's not to rule out risks of the thing coming against some faulty wiring and going skywards.)

And arent't the so called black holes that 'may' form be so itsy bitsy small that they'll just vanish instantly anyway?

parallel universes, yes that was where my comic was heading

And arent't the so called black holes that 'may' form be so itsy bitsy small that they'll just vanish instantly anyway?

Okay, the fact that they're going to do something that may form tiny black holes, plus the fact that we don't really have any experience with creating black holes of any size, plus the fact that they don't seem to know whether they're going to create little bitty black holes or not? Equals me all kinds of peeing myself.

I have a suspicion that these enormously expensive projects might have a self-perpetuating momentum that tends to get out of proportion to the scientific value.

sunk cost fallacy applies to everything, big goofy science projects with a low chance of sexy results are really not where I'm going to start complaining though

I mean I'm all for more science funding - but I don't know if big headline projects like this are the best way to go about it. Maybe science needs something spectacular and awe-inspiring as an advertisement to all the budding young nerdlings out there who would otherwise end up as quants at a hedge fund somewhere.

science isn't around to provide entertainment

well, we also need something that can start rendering a bunch of the lunatic fringe cosmological models of the past few decades falsifiable so that interested laypeople like me can feel like there's a point to all this nattering on about the CBR and parallel universes and supersymmetry and shit

apart from showtime at the apollo with Michael Faraday and Bernie Mac, that shit killed

xpost

Okay, the fact that they're going to do something that may form tiny black holes, plus the fact that we don't really have any experience with creating black holes of any size, plus the fact that they don't seem to know whether they're going to create little bitty black holes or not? Equals me all kinds of peeing myself.

There is no risk. Read this: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html

well, we also need something that can start rendering a bunch of the lunatic fringe cosmological models of the past few decades falsifiable so that interested laypeople like me can feel like there's a point to all this nattering on about the CBR and parallel universes and supersymmetry and shit

-- El Tomboto, Tuesday, 5 August 2008 21:26 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Good luck with that : (

yeah well
will we at least get warp speed?

Higgs boson would be nice (although it would be more entertaining if it wasn't there)

isn't the whole point either the existence or non-existence of higgs boson?

no, the whole point is if it DOES exist, how does it go with gin, and if it DOESN'T exist, how do we make gin taste better without it

TWO of my friends have made films in this thing!

xxp: They wouldn't spend this much money just for that, but most people think confirming Higgs will be the first result (of many).

and after they've finished with the tube they could convert it into a huge real life Wipeout level

it already is a wipeout level if you're a proton

i'll stick to whisky and top quark condensate on the rocks

There were plenty of very sophisticated mathematical models put together by very smart PhDs that put the probability of our current credit crisis at way, way less than 1 in 50 million - yet it happened.

Ok, we're getting a bit off subject here but where are these to be found?

GAO, current presidential cabinet official files

Hey tombot, most of theoretical physics is nonsense at the moment, but there is still credible, non-bullshit physics going on that is also way cool. E.g. This paper I saw over coffee this morning is good times: http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.0472

DM self-annihilates and the energy produced was much bigger than starlight in the early days (and will be again ones the stars start dying). Some sci-fi shit right here.

^^^ is the kind of stuff that totally fascinates me, but w/o a physics background it is really hard to separate from the bullshit speculative chaff

it all just reminds me of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt4vXaoPzF8

Ok, we're getting a bit off subject here but where are these to be found?

I was referring to the types of models that Taleb debunks in the FT column I linked to here:

Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

Last August, The Wall Street Journal published a statement by one Matthew Rothman, financial economist, expressing his surprise that financial markets experienced a string of events that “would happen once in 10,000 years”. A portrait of Mr Rothman accompanying the article reveals that he is consider­ably younger than 10,000 years; it is therefore fair to assume he is not drawing his inference from his own empirical experience but from some theoretical model that produces the risk of rare events, or what he perceives to be rare events.

Or consider that the probability of a AAA security defaulting is supposed to nearly zero, yet banks have seen immense writedowns on "super-senior" debt which was supposedly better than AAA credit.

this thing runs on dilithium crystals, right?

that is because they were not actually doing science, nate

Or consider that the probability of a AAA security defaulting is supposed to nearly zero, yet banks have seen immense writedowns on "super-senior" debt which was supposedly better than AAA credit.

no offense meant but raising this in the context of the LHC and little teensy black holes forming in the subspace killzone to bring forth armageddon is - well, actually, surprisingly accurate, if you flipmode

e.g. bad quacks are hard at work ascribing false levels of risk to all kinds of shit

that is because they were not actually doing science, nate

Yes, but they were using sophisticated statistical models though to make these estimates. LTCM had Nobel laureates working for them, and they estimated that the event that brought them down was a 14-standard deviation event, ie., 1 in 10^30.

Three times I have clicked on this thread in the last two days and it's still work-safe. Admirable!

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/Astronomers-Discover-C.jpg

what are the odds of meteor hitting here and giving us an ice age?

The chance of this happening in the 21st century are about the same chance as rolling a double-6 with two dice. I shit you not.

Yes, but they were using sophisticated statistical models though to make these estimates. LTCM had Nobel laureates working for them, and they estimated that the event that brought them down was a 14-standard deviation event, ie., 1 in 10^30.

Economics Nobel scientists? Because economics is balls, man.

shouldn't we be more worried about the meteor than the CERN then?

1 time in 36 is higher than 1 in 50 million

However, I would also say that people naturally tend to underestimate the probability of "outliers"

ever played the lottery?

shouldn't we be more worried about the meteor than the CERN then?

-- ken c, Wednesday, August 6, 2008 2:25 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ain't shit to do about it tho

die in 60 years or 60 seconds you dead the same, just try to meet it with a :D, you know?

not trying to be glib, just saying there's very little we can do to prepare for death. Barring varying pain levels the method by which we meet it is sort of immaterial.

ever played the lottery?

Good joke. I guess people tend to overestimate rather than underestimate their chances of winning the lottery, which is an "outlier" event. But then again, the odds of winning the lottery can be known with a high degree of precision by anyone who cares to study the matter. There are no "unknown unknowns" in the lottery. The statement about people underestimating the probability of outliers has to do more with the false sense of confidence that is bred by limited experience or historical data.

once when i was a kid, about 7 or 8, I kicked my friend out of my house because he rolled 6 sixes in yatzee. blackhole creator...or cheater?

so, em... does anyone know exactly when that CERN world-ending particle accelerator gets turned on? because now I want to host a party with a countdown. Wikipedia says August 9 which is not only a Saturday night but also my birthday?

?!

I want live TV coverage of this (with Dr. Cox bouncing around like a mad ferret.)

And utterly non-surprising no-show of Higgs Boson

fooled by randomness! HOTCHA

awesome favicon on these pages: http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.0472

that's always been the favicon. they had a kinda fancy web 2.0 redesign about a year ago, which is the layout you see now, but it's one of the oldest still-active-at-the-same-URL websites around (1994 or something)

http://web.archive.org/web/20040212112836/http://arxiv.org/icons/front/front.gif

Guys they're going to be ramping up energies and fluxes for months. I'm not sure what's happening on August 9 but it sure isn't any science.

once when i was a kid, about 7 or 8, I kicked my friend out of my house because he rolled 6 sixes in yatzee. blackhole creator...or cheater?

As you're only allowed five dice in Yahtzee, cheater seems the most probable outcome (didya see what I did there? robble robble...)

yes that's how I read it too, this will all be switched on very gradually. But I think they're firing a single proton beam to mark a kind of official switching on some time in late August.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1421/977416043_cca3d0e1f7.jpg?v=0

nice thread synchronicity
No - help ME! (obscure half-remembered film pt 2)

"Ramping up energies and fluxes for the next few months..." is the second best science sentence I've read all day. (Best was "The stimulating image of a host of madly oscillating sonoluminescent bubbles..." in my physics of foam book.)

I am now writing a song about the Hadron Supercollider. It will NOT be called Dr. Cox's Box because that is a fnar factor too far, even for Miss AMP to sing.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1421/977416043_cca3d0e1f7.jpg?v=0

beijing olympics, 12 noon.

doh

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1421/977416043_cca3d0e1f7.jpg?v=0

beijing olympics, 12 noon.

once when i was a kid, about 7 or 8, I kicked my friend out of my house because he rolled 6 sixes in yatzee. blackhole creator...or cheater?

As you're only allowed five dice in Yahtzee, cheater seems the most probable outcome (didya see what I did there? robble robble...)

obviously the blackhole is in my brain, already. they should put whole humans in there and see if we can create ghosts. now that would be interesting. i hear it is damn freezing though.

Artist's Impression...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3009/2741509630_91a88d9cda_o.jpg

Sept 10 is when the particles get fired fwiw. up until that point I think they're just cooling everything down.

personally I'm not worried about this at all, my bet is that they discover nothing and string theory and all its bullshit attendant hypotheses finally get the boot. we'll see though.

They've finished cooling (http://www.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk/lhccooldown.html), but there are all sorts of lower case j's to be dotted before they start colliding those hadrons.

Speaking of chances of meteors, I was rather depressed to read that unlike yer "drag it out for months, oh look its coming for us" meteor scenario a la Deep Impact, we'd actually more likely have absolutely no idea one was in our path - and it would hit the atmosphere and obliterate half the planet in mere seconds, not lazily trawl thru the upper atmos for a few days leaving a giant contrail. Whoosh, air pressure flattens, vaporisation, BLAM, giant hole, nuclear dusty winter, say bye bye everyone.

Maybe its better that way.

wikiquote:

On October 25, 2005, a technician was killed in the LHC tunnel when a crane load was accidentally dropped.[28][29]

On March 27, 2007 a cryogenic magnet support broke during a pressure test involving one of the LHC's inner triplet (focusing quadrupole) magnet assemblies, provided by Fermilab and KEK. No one was injured. Fermilab director Pier Oddone stated 'In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces.' This fault had been present in the original design, and remained during four engineering reviews over the following years.[30] Analysis revealed that its design, made as thin as possible for better insulation, was not strong enough to withstand the forces generated during pressure testing. Details are available in a statement from Fermilab, with which CERN is in agreement.[31][32] Repairing the broken magnet and reinforcing the eight identical assemblies used by LHC delayed the startup date[33], then planned for November 2007, by several weeks. Initial testing of LHC abilities is scheduled to take place on August, 9th in CERN labs.

Subatomic particles behave randomly only within the parameters of what they're capable of doing, being or becoming. I'm not sure quantum physics applies to the risk analysis for this scenario. I think the firing up of of the accelerator and its dire consequences, if any, are part of the macro, causal universe, i.e., inexorable. Shrug.

We are all so fucking dead it hurts.

I'd like to get excited about this, it's a big cool looking machine, but honestly they're just going to fire some lasers or something at some shit you can't even see, so what's the big deal... Help me get psyched peeps.

On October 25, 2005, a technician was killed in the LHC tunnel when a crane load was accidentally dropped.

THE BLOODBATH BEGINS!

So the thing has been built on death - the Indian Burial Ground effect.

Maybe it'll go all Event Horizon on us.

Exactly. There's already been a blood sacrifice, so the Dark Lord is just waiting for them to open the doorway and allow the hordes of hell to pour forth. Or something.

from BBC site :

"BBC Radio 4 will broadcast live from Cern on 10 September. The Big Bang Day starts in the LHC control room at 0830 BST for the official start-up, and then continues through the day with related programmes, from indepth discussions about particle physics to a special one-off radio version of the popular TV drama Torchwood. "

What annoys me most is that if the doomsayers are right, they will never be around to say 'I told you so'. It seems unfair.

BIG BANG DAY!!!! Oh, how long have I waited for such a thing? Swoon!

OK, I might actually have to buy a radio to listen to that. (Though I can listen on the web if I'm at work, can't I?)

Here's the NY Times article about the people who filed a lawsuit to try to stop CERN from turning on the collider:

Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?ref=us

It seems some of the imagined failure modes are a strangelet is formed that transforms the planet into a lump of strange matter, or a stable micro-black hole is formed that expands to consume the planet.

The Large Hadron Collider is designed to fire up protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts before banging them together. Nothing, indeed, will happen in the CERN collider that does not happen 100,000 times a day from cosmic rays in the atmosphere, said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

What is different, physicists admit, is that the fragments from cosmic rays will go shooting harmlessly through the Earth at nearly the speed of light, but anything created when the beams meet head-on in the collider will be born at rest relative to the laboratory and so will stick around and thus could create havoc.

man am I glad caek is on this thread

Mr. Wagner, who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, studied physics and did cosmic ray research at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a doctorate in law from what is now known as the University of Northern California in Sacramento. He subsequently worked as a radiation safety officer for the Veterans Administration.

Mr. Sancho, who describes himself as an author and researcher on time theory, lives in Spain, probably in Barcelona, Mr. Wagner said.

Mr. Sancho, who describes himself as an author and researcher on time theory, lives in Spain, probably in Barcelona, Mr. Wagner said.
Mr. Sancho, who describes himself as an author and researcher on time theory, lives in Spain, probably in Barcelona, Mr. Wagner said.
Mr. Sancho, who describes himself as an author and researcher on time theory, lives in Spain, probably in Barcelona, Mr. Wagner said.

The contents of my ~/mail/cranks file.

  1   C May 12 Mahler✧✧✧@a✧✧.✧ (9.4K) The Cause of the The Extraction of Space-Time & Matter                                            

   2     May 13 Kevin Wilson    ( 18K) Re; The Solar Core is Collapsing and Jetting Twin Jets.                                           

   3     Jun 12 birxh@canisius. ( 24K) Encyclopedia of Time (SAGE): Letter of Invitation                                                 

   4   T Jun 29 David Tagg      (551K) Greetings                                                                                         

   5   T Jul 20 Said Mahmudov   ( 13K) Greetings to You !!                                                                               

   6   T Jul 21 Said Mahmudov   ( 19K) Oxford University                                                                                 

   7   + Sep 10 Stephen Mooney  (3.5K) new paradigm                                                                                      

   8     Dec 05 Pierre-Marie Ro (3.0K) WMAP: A Radiological Analysis                                                                     

   9     Feb 07 Mark Culbertson (307K) 07+ NIX-KIX-REX IVY's 2WORK4 FOOD @F/X3rd SEAL BLK HORSE CHKMRK-OUT> -60%                         

  10     Mar 03 Gordon Mackay   (124K) The True Nature of Mathematics, 8th Edition.                                                      

  11     Mar 03 Gordon Mackay   ( 23K) The Bibliography for the True Nature of Mathematics, 8th Edition.                                 

  12     Mar 05 Mark Culbertson (350K) USA From Bible Ethics2 Golden Calf @ "Anything-Goe$$" = fX4 Horror Ending!                        

  13     Mar 20 Pierre-Marie Ro (2.1K) The Microwave Background and the Earth's Atmosphere                                               

  14     Mar 20 Pierre-Marie Ro (2.0K) The Microwave Background and the Earth's Atmosphere                                               

  15   + Mar 22 norman copeland ( 17K) Anthropology considerations {greys/men and human development}.                                    

  16     Apr 29 pavlovi@bellsou ( 62K) New gravity theory                                                                                

  17     May 10 pavlovi@bellsou ( 35K) LIGO project                                                                                      

  18   + May 13 pavlovi@bellsou (1.4K) New Gravity theory                                                                                

  19     Jul 05 Mark Culbertson (6977) US TV Minister Jerry Falwell murdered 5-15-07 Via Wall Street > WH Orders?                        

  20   T Aug 01 Cool            (  67) Implore the help analysis once, Very thankful��This isn't the spam                                

  21   T Aug 09 David           (194K) Fw: FYI                                                                                           

  22   + Sep 12 pavlovi@bellsou (1.2K) Gravity                                                                                           

  23   + Mar 23 pavlovi@bellsou (  49) Gravity (updated)                                                                                 

  24   + Jun 17 David           (345K) Greetings                                                                                         

  25   + Jun 18 Navrátil Josef  (5.0K) new idea of cosmology                                                                             

oh man I wish I could show you some of the shit we get submitted to ApJ, ApJL, and PASP

THE TRUE NATURE OF
MATHEMATICS

by

Gordon E.
Mackay

First Edition,
October 15, 2005,
Second Edition,
November 8, 2005,
Third Edition,
November 26, 2005,
Fourth Edition,
April 29, 2006,
Fifth Edition,
May 13, 2006,
Sixth Edition,
July 15, 2006,
Seventh Edition,
October 8, 2006
Eighth Edition,
December 31, 2006.

THE MODEL FOR THE DESCRIPTION OF THE TRUE NATURE OF
MATHEMATICS

This is my model for the description of the true nature of mathematics,
which involves a structure of there being a basic, fundamental, ABSOLUTE
NUMBER, which is self-referential, does not seek to count in an explicit
way, and counts in an unmanifest level of consciusness. This ABSOLUTE NUMBER
is the source of all other numbers, as the 'root-seed of a tree' that then
grows and then 'branches off' in two main 'branches', the EXPONENTIALS and
the LOGARITHMICS; and this ABSOLUTE NUMBER is equal to zero to the power of
zero, no matter which rhythmic balanced interchangements of quantitatives
may be utilized. There are three basic fundamental laws of mathematics,
which all mathematics is based on; these mathematical laws determine which
primitive notions exist. There are seven primitive notions that exist, which
bring out the meanings and implications of these three basic mathematical
laws. It is on this descriptive basic foundational structure of
mathematical laws and primitive notions that axioms can exist; and then from
this, theorems can exist and then be proven according to any or all logical
structure pathways of a cultural or societal nature(s) utilizing any or all
information theories involving any or all symbolisms available. All this is
then descriptively allocated by any linkage(s)-of-association(s) of any
algebras, geometries, topologies, logic-structures, arithmetic-based number
theories, mathematical analysis, or symbol-based information theories that
may exist; these are then utilized to any cultural-based or societal-based
mathematical systems which involve either pure mathematics (utilizing
mathematics for its own sake), or applied mathematics (using mathematics in
applications involving situations or model-scenarios), in any culture(s),
society(s), or civilization(s) that themselves are based upon any ecospheric
physics-wise, chemistry-wise, or biology-wise arrangements of any support(s)
of life forms, God first, then any other intelligent/intellectual or
otherwise kinds, types, or natures of life forms.

THE THREE LAWS OF
MATHEMATICS

(1). All mathematics emanates from a thought(s) based on desire(s) to
sensate 'differencing(s)-of-leveling(s)',
(2). Any or all arranged rhythmic balanced interchangements of quantitatives
are sensated relative to a basic foundational frame-of-reference structural
assembly of a cultural nature, and
(3). Any or all determinatives involving rhythmic balanced interchangements
of quantitatives are picture-patterned or cloud-stream-flowed by branching
processes according to any cultural-based systems of logic.

THE SEVEN PRIMITIVE NOTIONS OF
BEING

The seven basic primitive notions of being that mathematics is based on, and
each and all of the axioms, theories, corollaries, lemmas, propositions,
conjectures, and the like, are also based on, are these seven: (1). God,
(2). Substance, (3). Network, (4). Collection, (5). Object, (6). Relation,
and (7). Finality

and so it goes on.

for 100,000 words

haha dan, I bet! We got some odd stuff when I was at JPhys A, but it's maths not cosmology so relatively little. I used to work with P4ul D4vies in Australia. He had a hall of fame of hand-written stuff he'd received in the mail since he wrote "The Mind of God". Madness of a truly staggering persistence.

p.s. I finished my paper. You guys charge too much so it's going to MNRAS : \

What's going on with this move of AJ to IoP? Is the editorial stuff staying at Chicago and IoP are just handling production? Is ApJ going too?

Sounds like Gordon only got as far as pre-calc!

IOP has fully taken over AJ. ApJ, Letters, and Supplement are moving to IOP within the next 3-4 months, along with all of the peer review, editorial, and production work. Chicago's Astronomy Journals Group should be shutting down right about the time the U goes on break for Thanksgiving (the second to last week in November). PASP is staying here for the time being.

(there have been a depressing string of emails around the office detailing how this will work -- I'm still trying to figure out whether I'm going to take the generous severance we're being offered or try to finagle a new job here at UCP)

I'm still trying to figure out whether I'm going to take the generous severance we're being offered or try to finagle a new job here at UCP

actually considered starting a thread for advice on this... o_O

Take severance then finagle job?

Is editorial moving to Philadelphia or over to Bristol then?

Unfortunately, taking severance requires agreeing not to apply/take any other job at the U while receiving said severance. Not that I couldn't find work elsewhere, but I do like working here.

I'm not sure where the editors will be. My old boss got headhunted away from UCP by IoP and has been working out of DC, but he's more on the technical end of things (as am I). My guess is it'll be headquartered either in Bristol or Philly or maybe DC but the actual editing will be done in India.

Unless an accepted paper was almost unreadable, IoP have done their copy editing of accepted papers in India since before I was there (2004). They do peer review and production in Bristol though (and printing just outside of Oxford, as it happens).

Do you want to stay in Chicago/publishing/physical sciences publishing?

Yeah, sure. Working for UofC is pretty great. Never gonna get rich here (unless you're in lol b-school, medicine, or law) but it's an amazing environment full of smart and friendly people. Publishing is something I've been interested in for a long time, but I fell into the astro group totally randomly. I love being able to stay abreast of science via my work, so I'd be interested in going to something like the biology/plant sciences journals we publish if there was an opportunity. I've been considering getting into the science books end of things, too.

(plus, since I've worked here I've seen astronomers on TV and things and thought "D@v|d J3w|tt? I fixed his LaTeX!")

I'm not sure if caek is the voice of reason on a hysterical thread, or if he's just hating on our fun with his, like, proper science and all.

I'm guessing both

Man, Dan, I hadn't heard about that -- hope you find a solution that works for you! UC Press might be kind of odd, especially over in journals, but yeah, compared to 95% of work environments, it's pretty pleasant.

Yeah, it's pretty sad (~50 people being laid off). The (official) story is here: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i37/37a01201.htm -- I probably shouldn't start posting my own opinions on the matter just yet... ;)

Hey, caek, were you working with davies in Adelaide?

No, Sydney

The interesting twist on the 'i'm conCERNed' doomsday theory, is the Mayan prediction of the world's end on Dec. 21, 2012

med school students = totally down for a nerd party about particle physics

thanks, thread!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/jel2004/cern.jpg

I don't understand.

oh, they are looking for the higgs boson, aren't they?

Yes, but what on earth does the higgs boson have to do with naked breasts?

Anybody here see "Copenhagen", either the play or the movie? I just watched the movie and thought it was dense, irritating and dull.

I tried watching the movie. Too much angst, not enough particle physics.

kate, higgs 'bosom'

This killer strangelet will be the kick drum from hell. Possibly Tiesto will attempt to sample it.

ARGH ha ha ha ha ha. OK thank you for explaining that. I can be really thick sometimes. :-D

Tracer: there is a film? i've been waiting for the play to come to my town for five years. haha. I will put it in my queue.

I think it may have been a teleplay. At least, I saw it on the telly a few years ago.

Yes, it's a TV movie.

OK, am designing the invitations to a Sep 10 party now. In my city (Adelaide), switch-on time is 6pm on the Wednesday, so not exactly the perfect time, but never mind. Am doing an animation of the earth being sucked into itself.

http://www.ominous-valve.com/images/crosley.jpg

http://www.arune.com/batusi/climb.jpg

coming soon... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/08/25/beam-day-at-the-lhc/

yay, yay, yay! So exciting!

(I was trying yesterday to explain why I was so excited about it to a non science geek type friend.)

"End of the world" covers it pretty succinctly.

No, it's more exciting that it's all "MAYBE it's the end of the world, but MAYBE we get the answer to EVERYTHING!!!"

(But more likely we get nothing but a loud hum and "oh dear, we're gonna have to build a bigger/faster/more accurate atom smasher.")

I was just thinking it'd be nice if it was only a small black hole that stopped outside my back garden and we'd have to be careful not to let the cat be too curious.

But it would be hidden by the Event Horizon so you wouldn't get to see anything cool.

What would a small black hole look like if you were stood near enough to see it (but not near enough to get inside that event horizon)?

Would it look like a big black void? Weird bendy light distortions?

I think the latter, probably. With all kinds of weird radiation coming off it.

Hey, caek, Mr. Proper Scientist dude, what would a little tiny black hole look like to the casual observer?

I imagined it would a pulsating glowy black wall. with a voice saying "please prepare to push the trolley off the end of the event horizon"

A small black hole wouldn't be visible, right? 'Cuz what light didn't get sucked in would be bent in such a way as to eclipse it.

so the earth might be covered in them and we'd never know.

science! wow!

I imagine it'd look like an 'invisible' plug-hole floating in mid air - everything would be spiraling into it.

I've gone back to worrying about nanobots by the way.

In fact it’s not really even possible to say whether such a thing is “likely” or not (Sean’s earlier musings notwithstanding) since it will either be there or not.

This is the point I ineptly tried to make awhile ago.

I've gone back to worrying about nanobots by the way.

grey goo? there is noooo danger of that. for a long time. probably.

i mean we are so far from making a self-replicating organism, let alone one at the nano scale, let alone one that can replicate using any resource or material.

It would look like a gravity lens--light would bend around it oddly, things behind it would appear on either side in warped form, etc.

The small BHs crazy people are talking about as being a CERN possibility are like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length in size when they form and incredibly unstable, so you wouldn't see anything until it was too late. If you're talking about a human size, stable BH then I guess these would just look like the intermediate and supermassive ones we've already observed, i.e. accretion disk (spiral down plughole), X-ray emission, gravitational lensing effects: http://space.about.com/od/blackholes/ig/Black-Holes-Pictures-/

I just hope we all end up in one of the universes that don't disappear.

This whole "universe that doesn't disappear" business is just a fucking lottery if you ask me.

I'm endlessly amused that we exist at all!

cheer me up, more talk about how it might be possible this world could be swallowed up

Anybody here see "Copenhagen", either the play or the movie? I just watched the movie and thought it was dense, irritating and dull.

I saw the play here in Dublin, it was really enjoyable, though the presence of various stars of the Irish stage helped.

so anyway, is 10th September when they are turning off the world?

I sure hope that a tiny part of the budget went to the installation of the "ping!" sound making part of a microwave oven to go off at the end of every collision. Do we know someone there who could get the machine to go "ping!" ? This is important!

also, if things go wrong and its start to shut down, we want the looming bassistic sound from that scene in star wars where obi-wan disables the death star sheilds.

^

so it's been established that in the unlikely event of a teeny tiny black hole being formed, it would take some months/years for it to consume the planet.

So they could have like several large unrequired objects nearby to 'feed it', France for instance?

(sorry that was so lame and 'sitcom' droll, it's what happens from reading red dwarf episode guides all day instead of working)

i like the idea that they will discover something they haven't planned to, rather than one of the checklist things they're hoping for

ha, erm or they're 'not' hoping for if you follow.

I'm hoping that cherubs come flying out and Jesus lays teh smack down. Or something...

Do we know someone there who could get the machine to go "ping!"

Isn't it a Monty Python sketch where Palin, while touring the lab of a scientist played by Chapman, says "ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping!"

I think the phrase from Red Dwarf is "let's dance the awoooga waltz"...

Actually I used to have a sample of "machine that goes ping!" as the "new e-mail notification" sound in MS Outlook - got old fast...

Isn't it a Monty Python sketch where Palin, while touring the lab of a scientist played by Chapman, says "ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping!"

Isn't it a woman giving birth scene?

It is, memory playing tricks on me again.

Yeah, of course it's Monty Python, but it would also be brilliant to have this multi billion dollar technological beast be turned on, heat and speed up for weeks, make some extremely scientifically relevant whirring and explosive sounds, make the whole continent tremble and then, after a short silence (timing = important) go "ping!"

The sketch in full. It's the way Cleese says "Ping!" that makes it.

"Amplify the machine that goes 'ping!'"

What wonderful things we can do nowadays.

so anyway, is 10th September when they are turning off the world?

-- The Real Dirty Vicar, Monday, 1 September 2008 22:17 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

I hope Keith coded a way around this.

(xxxxxpost to StanM) ...or for an everlasting gobstopper to come out, like in Willy Wonka

That too! Next time, they'd better let us design the next Even Bigger Hadron Collider.

http://i34.tinypic.com/2v1owab.jpg

so it's been established that in the unlikely event of a teeny tiny black hole being formed, it would take some months/years for it to consume the planet.

-- Ste,

That's a relief - it won't interfere with out travel plans in early 2009 then.

Ha I'm just imagining this slow process of like sitting in my living room and watching objects imperceptibly scoot to one side.

Do you think people will panic shop? It would be a bit irrational if they did.

If the Apple product launch is on the 8th, yes.

I guess this thread should have a link to the Large Hadron Rap

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

Oh wait, I have to be on an airplane to fly back east for my republican cousin's wedding. Someone delay things so that I can be right sloshed when it happens.

i always thought it was funny when there was talk about cern instigating time travel, opening wormholes etc, that scientists should have been having tentative discussions about the effects, but that they mightn't have for fear of sounding stupid. like laying out an agenda with modest ideas about the restrictions to be placed on wormhole usage. are these conversations happening? about what to do in the event of a black hole?

On 27 March 2007 a cryogenic magnet support broke during a pressure test involving one of the LHC's inner triplet (focusing quadrupole) magnet assemblies, provided by Fermilab and KEK. No one was injured. Fermilab director Pier Oddone stated 'In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces.'

way to instill confidence guys...

In the event of a wormhole forming, do not try to hold on to anything as this will not work.

We need Bob Calvert to come along and tell us what to do...

IN CASE OF WORMHOLE ATTACK... IF YOU ARE MAKING LOVE IT IS IMPERATIVE TO BRING ALL BODIES TO ORGASM IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT PANIC. USE YOUR WHEELS IT IS WHAT THEY ARE FOR. METAL, NOT ORGANIC OBJECTS SHOULD BE USED...

ew

Hey, don't blame me, that's how the song goes! (sort of)

In case of WORMHOLE Attack on your district, follow these rules:

If you are making love it is imperative to bring all bodies to orgasm simultaneously.
Do not waste time blocking your ears.
Do not waste time seeking a "sound proofed" shelter.
Try to get as far away from the sonic source as possible
Do not panic
Do not panic

Use your wheels. It is what they are for.
Small babies may be placed inside the special cocoons
and should be left, if possible, in shelters.
Do not attempt to use your own limbs.
If no wheels are available - metal - not organic -
limbs should be employed whenever practical.

Remember:
In the case of WORMHOLE attack survival means
"Every man for himself"
Statistically more people survive if they think
only of themselves
Do not attempt to rescue friends, relatives, loved ones
You have only a few seconds to escape
Use those seconds sensibly or you will inevitably die
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Do not panic
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself

These are the first signs of WORMHOLE attack:
You will notice small objects - such as ornaments - oscillating
You will notice vibrations in your diaphragm
You will hear a distand hissing in your ears
You will feel the need to vomit
You will feel dizzy
You will have difficulty focussing
You will need to breathe more rapidly
There will be bleeding from orifices
There will be an ache in the pelvic region
You may be subject to fits of hysterical shouting or even laughter

These are all sign of imminent BLACK HOLE destruction
Your only protection is flight
If you are less than ten years old
Remain in your shelter and use your cocoon
Remember - you can help no one else
You can help no one else
You can help no one else
Do not panic
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself

lol at the Q&A section on the bbc website, and Coxy going off his rocker in his final paragraph.

well done though guys

The best bit was Prof. Wolf(e?)'s mince pie collider on Sky News! Look those currents are the Higgs Boson!

Reposting this because it still makes me LOL:

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

hey I read that if a tiny blackhole escaped into the core of the earth it could take several years (possibly decades) for it to consume our earth so no need to party like it's 1999! I was kind of excited at the prospect of us being consumed by a black hole of our own creation. It would be funny. God would LOL.

We had the party. Big excuse to get drunk, really. Was fun. Had a big sign stuck out the front of the house saying 'THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH (so you'd better get some booze in you)'.

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!!!!

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

if the black hole were to appear, there'd be nothing we could do to stop it, right?

Oh noes! Crazy mutants are appearing already!

http://largehardoncollider.com/

Some rather NSFW illustrations on that link.

it will be like The Mist

opening new dimensions for beasties to come through.

caek is never going to come back to this thread with the real sciences.

:-(

of course the best thing ever would be if we could get Dr. Cox to come on and call us all twats!

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000570

BANG

alternatively: http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-long-would-it-take-the-lhc-to-d-2008-09-10

the world's most expensive microwave oven!

just to boast since some of you guys are so into this: I know one of the leaders of one of the four big detector projects on this

so hope this is real

Added: Friday, 12 September, 2008, 02:54 GMT 03:54 UK

Not a new concept. This experiment has been conducted Years ago by Nobel winner for Physics named Max Plank and cost a FRACTION of Billions quoted.His objective was not the "Big Bang", but Origin of Humankind.
He started out with a single Sperm, and after ramping up the speed beyond quarks, found NOTHING and concluded:- There is a matrix of this universe that is the CREATOR of EVERYTHING.
GOD to me.

Flinkus, Streatham/Canada

Recommended by 1 person

http://io9.com/assets/images/gallery/8/2008/09/medium_2852090870_3f8b0f1772_o.jpg

i think i read somewhere that Sep 10th all they did was send a particle stream clockwise, then one counterclockwise. all the way around, sure, but no collisions were taking place. Possibly they have yet but <a href="http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/";>LHC@Home</a> hasn't updated since the 9th..

Duh, because they all died in the black hole.

no they won't be colliding anything probably for a few weeks, but they've said they're going to try to do it before it shuts down for the winter.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7613201.stm

I want a stuffed plush Higgs Boson:

http://www.particlezoo.net/shop.html

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hacked

apart from probably delaying the experiment by knackering the system, what exactly would be the point in hacking this?

Pointing out that it can be done, and they are vulnerable to attack by people who are not quite so ethical about f*cking sh*t up.

Yeah, it's be nice to live in a world where computer systems aren't subject to malicious attacks, but we don't. It's not nice, but I can see the point of it.

...but I really don't think this is the place to open up a debate on hacker/cracker/white hat/bad guy mentality and morality.

It looks like it will be a few more weeks yet before they start doing the real high-energy collisions:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/science/20collider.html

oh man how did I miss Stevie posting the Black Hole thing
I love that movie so much

SUBTLE

I was so sad when B.O.B. died. :-/

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/large-hadron-co.html

...the Forerunners built the rings for two purposes. The first use of the rings was to contain and study the Flood, an infectious alien parasite. The rings also act together as a weapon of last resort; when fired, the rings kill any sentient life capable of falling prey to the Flood, starving the parasite of its food.

lol

The AP story I read about the cooling failure on this said something along the lines of a relevant temperature having risen to 4 Kelvin, too far above the ideal of 2 Kelvin, and I guess I am not enough of a science person because I was like "ok either that's a misprint or current events have just officially escaped my understanding"

2K = -455.8F
4K = -452.2F

funny, I kind of thought the difference would be larger

it's actually 1.9K they need to get to.
it's crazy because if anything goes wrong in the ring, they have to take five months to let it get back up to a temperature where they can fix it, then another five months to cool it back down to operating temp

I am apparently behind on science: it had never occurred to me that it was possible for human beings on our earth-planet to create earth-planet temperatures flirting with theoretical absolute-zero points

Cryophysicists go way colder than that on smaller scales. The challenge at CERN is the sheer volume they have to maintain at that temperature.

Details on this incident: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4789673.ece

Note this will not necessarily require the 5+5 month repair.

More as-it-happens from the last couple of days: http://blogs.uslhc.us/?p=383

there has been a magnet quench in LHC sector 34

I would love to be able to say that to someone in a film.

Heck, I'd love to be able to say it IRL!

"There has been a magnet quench in LHC sector 34!"

"Quick, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow"

Um.

1) neutrons don't have a charge!
2) it's not actually a neutron flow, it's protons winging around at nearly the speed of light

(sorry, I'm trying hard not to be pedantic - I'm just yr fact checking cuz)

lolhc

(I'm so sorry, I hate when the comma police do shit like that to me.)

Damn, I was sure reversing the polarity would've fixed it.
Egg, face...

Kate's right, you're way off. You've not even taken into account the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.

I think DavidM meant to say "parity", in which case everything with that sentence is A-OK. It's a mistake we could all make. Let's not turn this into a physics clusterfuck thread guys.

^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

It all in here:
http://www.mercuras.com/0908/sarah_book_180x150.gif

From wikipedia, world's finest scientific fact checking cuz resource:

... it is possible for neutrons to flow and, since neutrons have a magnetic moment[1], it is possible in theory (although difficult in practice) to have a stream of neutrons polarised along or against their direction of motion. Given this, such a polarity could presumably be reversed.

Oh, when caek fact checks us on really complicated notions about black holes, it's all in the name of science, but when we fact check someone on schoolboy errors, oh, it's a physics particle cluster fuck!

You needed to fact check deeper first, k-8.

Doctor Who geeks vs Physics geeks, FITE.

I thought everyone was joking.

knock knock
who's there
doctor

etc.

I was joking guys.

hang on wait it says here on the internet that scientists can get stuff to within one thousandth of a degree of absolute zero huh what.

yes, the LHC is not that cold.

well, it's broke until next spring now. I hope you're all happy.

thing was gonna shut down for the winter anyway. this is like saying someone who picks up a dead leg in the penultimate game of the season is out until next year with an injury.

It's gotta be kept cold to run and they're shutting down for the winter?!

haha, I am going to try that joke at work today.

it's something to do with saving on electric bills

As it happened http://cornellmath.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/no-lhc-beams-until-next-year/

I was in a meeting at CERN when someone ran to the front of the room with a computer, then after letting the speaker finish and setting up the computer to project the press release/e-mail (agonizing moments: it was a Mac), they let us know. I was worried that the sector with the helium explosion had collapsed like an old mine— there were rumors going around that this is a weak point in the tunnel. (Of course there would be such rumors.)

I have learned a few more graphic details about the event in the last few days. First off, it was two tonnes of helium, not one. But I’ve also learned that this was a more explosive and dramatic event than I had imagined— helium is fortunately an inert gas, but the temperature gradient caused it to explode violently, probably causing physical damage to the nearby components. And now that section of the LHC is an ice tunnel, maybe with stalagtites hanging down and a Yeti moaning in the distance. (A Yeti may well replace Big Bird on my diagrams.) There was enough helium released to replace all the air in a kilometer-long section of the tunnel. The full tunnel is 27 km long, so I imagine it’s dilute enough to breathe, possibly with a squeaky voice. (Okay, a high-pitched Yeti.)

dear caek, please confirm the physics involved in this story: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/science.html

So it was in 1978 that when the proton beam entered Anatoli Bugorski's skull it measured about 200,000 rads, and when it exited, having collided with the inside of his head, it weighed in at about 300,000 rads. Bugorski, a 36-year-old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, was checking a piece of accelerator equipment that had malfunctioned - as had, apparently, the several safety mechanisms. Leaning over the piece of equipment, Bugorski stuck his head in the space through which the beam passes on its way from one part of the accelerator tube to the next and saw a flash brighter than a thousand suns. He felt no pain.

From what we know about radiation, about 500 to 600 rads is enough to kill a person (though we don’t know of anyone else who has been exposed to radiation in the form of a proton beam moving at about the speed of sound). The left side of his face swollen beyond recognition, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow so that doctors could observe his death over the following two to three weeks.

Over the next few days, skin on the back of his head and on his face just next to his left nostril peeled away to reveal the path the beam had burned through the skin, the skull, and the brain tissue. The inside of his head continued to burn away: all the nerves on the left were gone in two years, paralyzing that side of his face. Still, not only did Bugorski not die, but he remained a normally functioning human being, capable even of continuing in science. For the first dozen years, the only real evidence that something had gone neurologically awry were occasional petit mal seizures; over the last few years Bugorski has also had six grand mals. The dividing line of his life goes down the middle of his face: the right side has aged, while the left froze 19 years ago. When he concentrates, he wrinkles only half his forehead.

The rest of that wired article is pretty amazing too btw but this bit was just mind-blowing (pun, sorry), and wikipedia seems to confirm the story. can you actually open up a proton accelerator while the beam is passing through? wouldn't that break the magnetic field or destroy the vacuum? And how is he not blind?

The dividing line of his life goes down the middle of his face: the right side has aged, while the left froze 19 years ago. When he concentrates, he wrinkles only half his forehead.

it's two-face! is this the key to eternal youth?

There's no reason per se why that should destroy a magnetic field. If the field is sustained by superconducters and opening the experiment raises their temperature then the field will collapse (along with other bad things depending on the design of the experiment). But in 1978 it was probably just a few whopping great electromagnets rather than superconductors.

As for the vacuum, I tried to find out about the particular synchrotron your man stuck his head into without success. It may not even have run under a very extreme vacuum. And even if it's full of air at atmospheric pressure, air does not have much ability to stop or scatter a beam of high energy protons. You need something much denser. E.g. the LHC uses 7m of carbon to stop their beam in the event they have to dump it in an emergency: http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/components/beam-dump.htm. This guy used his head.

I love that he completed his PhD. There's hope for us all!

excellent! thanks. yeah I thought it was so great that he went on being a scientist after that.

ZAP.

http://www.microsiervos.com/images/Anatoli-Bugorski.jpg

Like the Phineas Gage of particle physics.

https://edms.cern.ch/file/973073/1/Report_on_080919_incident_at_LHC__2_.pdf

There is still particle physics going on even though LHC is knackered:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=1045

The bottom line though is that for the first time in quite a while, there’s some very exciting and potentially revolutionary news in particle physics. It’s coming not out of the LHC, which is still a hope for the future, but from a currently functioning machine which is producing more data every day. If this result holds up, this data contains a wealth of information about some new physics which will likely revolutionize our understanding of elementary particle physics. Particle physics may already have started to move out of its doldrums.

(I don't actually understand the physics most of this stuff, but will do my best to translate bits of that post if anyone is interested.)

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=1290

: (

Plan A:
# Restart in (late) summer of 2009 with beam.
# Beam intensity and energy limited to minimize any risk.

Plan B:
# No beam before a complete ‘upgrade’ of the pressure relief system is implemented on all sectors.
# Excludes beam in 2009.

Final decision in February?

Query for caek: how does the CERN accelerator compare with the larger SSC collider that was in the works in Texas when the U.S. Congress defunded it in 1993? Has subsequent technology found ways to "straighten" the trajectory over shorter distances? Would the Texas project, had it been completed and were it now employing state-of-the-art technology, be capable of doing things the CERN accelerator can't?

Has subsequent technology found ways to "straighten" the trajectory over shorter distances?

Not that I know of. The velocity of the particles and the curvature of the path are related by a strict and very simple equation. There's no wiggle room, to my knowledge. So, if you want collisions of a given energy, you've got no choice but to make a collider of a particular radius (or go the linear route, which is another kettle of fish). The difference between CERN and SSC is the energy of the collisions; SSC needed a bigger ring because its collisions would have taken place at 3 times higher energies.

Would the Texas project, had it been completed and were it now employing state-of-the-art technology, be capable of doing things the CERN accelerator can't?

My naive guess is based on the fact that the SSC would have had a higher top speed, so explores more of the "parameter space". So at the very least, if various things expected to be found by LHC (supersymmetry, Higgs, etc.) were also not found in the higher energy SSC, that would place stronger constraints on theories that predict the Higgs et al. That's really a quantitative difference though. There must be qualitative barriers passed between 14 TeV (LHC) and 40 TeV (SSC), but I'm afraid I don't know what they are.

Thanks.

back again in september, bitches. total delay = one year.

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR02.09E.html

Phew, I don't have to start worrying until at least July.

http://www.splitreason.com/product/538

FAO Kate:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/cox09/cox09_index.html

Not that I know of. The velocity of the particles and the curvature of the path are related by a strict and very simple equation. There's no wiggle room, to my knowledge. So, if you want collisions of a given energy, you've got no choice but to make a collider of a particular radius (or go the linear route, which is another kettle of fish). The difference between CERN and SSC is the energy of the collisions; SSC needed a bigger ring because its collisions would have taken place at 3 times higher energies.

This was an absolute waterfall of bullshit, by the way.

Higgs news: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=1685

i appreciate a man who can call bullshit on his own post, once he's in a position to know better.
kudos, caek.

final LHC magnet replaced: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/04/30/final-lhc-magnet-goes-underground/

And the daily show on the LHC: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225921&title=large-hadron-collider

50/50

Slightly melodramatic article in the NYT the other day (mostly because they quote theorists with very little to do with CERN): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/science/space/04collide.html

Perspective with which I largely agree:
http://gordonwatts.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/fizzle/

And some news: reduced power (starting in Nov, iirc):
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR13.09E.html

my landlord's in the LHC < /suzy>

oh I did that already

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8299668.stm

james bond stuff

I wonder if his plan was to flash us all forward to six months in the future for two minutes.

They were just making sure that none of the particles were directed at Mecca.

Actual update: maybe this year

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2339

I wish they'd wait for just a bit and then announce it'll be turned on on December 21st, 2012, just for the lols. (Date of the end of the Mayan long count calendar, invasion of the evil x-files aliens, wingnut end of the world, etc.)

This is the most awesomely wacky thing I've ever read about the LHC apart from the notion that it's going to cause Armageddon (although maybe it really might!): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

"A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists"

lol

seriously it's an elaborate prank right? Or have they both just gone mental?

they have both just gone mental. it may not surprise you to learn that this is fairly common among theoretical physicists once they get into their later years.

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2373

and two years ago:

http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/respectable-physicists-gone-crackpotty/

was John Connors sent back from the future to stop the LHC from ever starting up and gaining sentience?

ok wait a minute, this was actually from 2 years back and the NYT is just picking up on it now? um maybe should've posted it in the NYT lols thread ha.

no, they've been posting papers about this for a while now, there was a new one last week (hence the NYT thing)

ah okay

http://www.nbi.dk/~hbech/holg.jpg

(one of the authors)

apparently a danish tv personality. i think the other one is president (elect?) of the japanese physics society. so these are very high profile and eminent people to have gone nuts.

I kinda love that they picked the LHC's troubles as the center of their theory as though any other seemingly jinxed phenomena couldn't also be the result of backwards causation. "We are smart people doing important work - it can't possibly be just bad luck! we must prove that the universe is conspiring against us!"

anything's possible, right?

luv this theory btw

yeah i kinda love it in the same way i love time travel on LOST.

I prefer the quantum suicide theory - turning on LHC destroys the universe so (per many-worlds interpretation) we only ever find ourselves in a universe where it breaks.

lol

i hate science these days, "blue is blue yes BUT it's not if we say "blue is red". Meanwhile, still no flying cars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8326666.stm
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2416

Bird returns from the future to warn us about gluten, shuts down LHC by accident instead. :-/

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/large-hadron-collider-suffers-temp-problems-due-to-bird-with-bread-2009116/

I still like the "we are being sabotagued FROM THE FUTURE to warn us not to do it" theory the best:

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/the-trouble-with-physicists-is-the-lhc-being-sabotaged-by-time-travelers-20091020/

booya:

Yesterday the LHC Hardware Commissioning Coordination Team announced the end of the 2009 Hardware Commissioning Campaign as all 8 LHC sectors were declared commissioned and ready for beam. A two day checkout period is now underway, which should have the LHC ready for beam at 17:00 Friday. Friday evening and night should see beams threaded around the machine in both directions. Saturday the plan is to capture a circulating beam in one direction, Sunday in the other direction. Celebratory drinks are scheduled for 17:00 Monday in the CERN Control Center.

Exciting stuff! And drinks! Yay for science! And breweries!

i predict an ant will short circuit the whole thing by sunday morning.

does that give us an official switch on date

friday night, saturday morning by the sound of it. actual world-ending black-hole-creating science is not until the new year, i don't think.

Yeah, one step at a time. First sending protons in both directions, then speeding them up, then having them collide, then getting the cameras/microscopes/observation thingies in focus, then getting data, etc

then destroying the earth

Hurray!

Assuming something is going to gum up the works yet again, tho. Convinced this shit ain't ever happening imo

oh c'mon dudes
don't you want to realize the secret of time travel?
i thought _that_ was the point of lhc

What about that article that said those tiny black holes wouldn't do squat? Was that posted here yet?

i knew this dude who thought all matter consisted of tiny black holes

http://plus.maths.org/issue47/features/mulcare/pi_1.jpg

"happy birthday, Euclid"

When come back, bring pi

A clockwise beam has just gone half way round the LHC.

Would be nice if the world could end AFTER payday instead of before, thanks.

wtf? so you can be about to buy something and then die?
use credit card and no pay bill due to end of world

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8371662.stm

achieved a stable circulating beam just after 9:00gmt

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/large_hadron_collider_ready_to.html

yes, you read that URL correctly: large hadron collider ready to html!

msnbc is calling it a "Big Bang machine"!

lol europe <3

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/lhc_11_20/l02_00903080.jpg

ohgeez. i am excited tho.

also, lol respect for:

When come back, bring pi
― StanM, Friday, November 20, 2009 12:35 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

:D

It's from http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/pie btw :-)

I sure hope that a tiny part of the budget went to the installation of the "ping!" sound making part of a microwave oven to go off at the end of every collision. Do we know someone there who could get the machine to go "ping!" ? This is important!

― StanM, Monday, September 1, 2008 3:51 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

^

I do wish that CERN would stop "joking" on their twitter account. That shit is disconcerting.

(still, I liked the control deck screengrab)

LOL @ the flying hats (near the end) http://ow.ly/E9OG

Update? Not even a small bang?

cool pix

the images on the monitors meant nothing to me though.

http://thebovinecomedy.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/wargames.jpg

coverage later today: http://webcast.cern.ch/live.py?channel=Channel+1

The whole thing was a promo for the new Tron movie:

http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/public/EVTDISPLAY/atlas2009-collision-atlantis-140541-171897-new.png

http://thebovinecomedy.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/wargames.jpg

lmao

(xpost) in ur Atari 2600 smashing ur atoms

Come on people from Cern, we want to see pictures of your black holes!

cern, yesterday

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/new/q50/i8-10-BIG-small.jpg

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/new/q50/Pow3hope1-small.jpg

http://www.dedoimedo.com/images/life/earth_owned.jpg

caek, those are delicious

wow

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/11/23/science/23cnd-lhc-span/articleLarge.jpg

All these display screens are reminding me of the Star Trek movies...
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/stexpanded/images/5/59/RedAlert.gif

That's just their geeky clock (xpost).

It's reading a quarter to apocalypse.

caek: what are those pictures of?

deadhead pc users exploring mandelbrot sets with maya or something, pretty rad: http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html

That second one upthread reminds me of a stretched out piece of Blu-Tack.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2009/11/23/01016-20091123ARTFIG00659-les-projets-fous-de-l-islamiste-du-cern-.php

That second one upthread reminds me of a stretched out piece of Blu-Tack.

exactly what i thought. i used to stretch blutack all the time and draw it, when i was stranger.

omg @ that site caek links to

srsly wow

In short, that whole crazy muslim terrorist assassin story doesn't have anything to do with CERN, it's just where he happened to be working.

xxpost

So the next year they're going to up the speed on these thingies (they've reached 540 GeV last week but the ultimate target is 7 TeV, so they can collide at 14 TeV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_volt) ), but after that, months/years of analysis until there's actual news? Not saying that it's an anticlimax, but meh anyway. :-)

haha, yeah, this is going to take a while

and i'm not saying it's not impressive from a sociological or engineering POV, and it's going to be a spectacular success scientifically, but it's not going to get kids into physics, and no government will ever pay for anything like it again.

p.s. life, seriously:

UK physics council sees grim future

Second financial crisis in two years leaves researchers questioning the council's long-term viability.

Geoff Brumfiel

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which funds the United Kingdom's astronomy, particle- and nuclear-physics communities, is short by roughly £40 million (US$66 million) in its annual £450-million cash budget. High-energy-physics grants have already been affected, and in a bid to contain costs the council said last week that it would probably withdraw from the multinational Gemini telescope project in 2012.

It is the second such budgetary dilemma for the STFC. The council was formed from the merger of two other councils in April 2007, at the same time as the UK government was undergoing a triennial budget review. "It was a perfect storm" of financial pressures, says Paul Crowther, an astrophysicist at the University of Sheffield. Within months, the newborn STFC announced that it was facing an £80-million budget gap.

The latest problems have made physicists angry once more. "This second crisis makes clear that the STFC is incapable of being run in its current form," argues Brian Foster, a particle physicist at the University of Oxford.

Things are likely to worsen in the coming months. Throughout the autumn, physicists have met to prioritize projects in areas supported by the council. The prioritization will be used to determine how to spend money within the current budget levels, says Terry O'Connor, the STFC's director of communications.

High-energy physicists have already seen their latest grants funded for one year rather than for the standard three to five. That makes it difficult to support postdocs and hire technical staff, says Phil Allport, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool. And the change comes as scientists are gearing up to study data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland. "Just as collisions are starting in the LHC, the United Kingdom may not be able to adequately exploit it," Allport says.

Astronomers are also feeling the pinch. The proposed withdrawal from the Gemini Observatory, a pair of eight-metre telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, echoes a 2007 council announcement that it later cancelled. This time, a review panel of academics made the decision, says Andrew Fabian, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and president of the Royal Astronomical Society. "We feel that the current package we have with Gemini does not give us a big enough benefit," he says.

Nuclear physicists' dreams for the future are also being affected by the cash problems. UK researchers had hoped that Britain would become a partner in the multinational Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, now being planned at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. But the budgetary shortfall has left those plans in question, says Bill Gelletly, a nuclear physicist at the University of Surrey in Guildford.

The origins of the shortfall are complex. In 2007, the STFC proposed deep cuts to deal with its financial problems. The UK government responded by allowing the council to borrow money from future years and by providing some support to compensate for currency fluctuations. "The outcry got the attention of people high up," says Crowther, but "it didn't make the problem go away."

Since then, the weakened pound has made it increasingly difficult for the STFC to pay its overseas subscription fees to international facilities such as CERN, the lab that houses the LHC. In addition, repayment of the money borrowed from future years is now due. A 2008 prioritization cut grant renewing by a quarter, but that was not enough to make up the shortfall.

Many who depend on the council for funding can barely contain their anger. "We've had scientific prioritization after scientific prioritization," says George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. "Why has this organization still not got its programme sorted out?"

O'Connor says the council is doing the best it can at a time when the country's economic future stands at a crossroads. The uncertainty "is not confined to particle physics, nuclear and astronomy", he says, "it's right across the research base — it's right across the economy".

The council is now looking beyond its current three-year spending plan to establish a five-year programme and a ten-year strategy, he says.

from http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091125/full/462396a.html for those of you with institutional access

really cool mandelbulb link, caek - am I alone in finding some of the pictures on it almost unsettling? something about the use of lighting and texture feels quite odd.

(just read that article too, grim stuff)

:-/

The crisis won't last forever though. How can humanity justify not wanting to understand how shit works?

grim is a word.

the reason i bring that shit up on this thread is that although the situation is mostly uk science management's fault, it's made much worse by CERN, which is like 50% of the UK budget, and cannot be reduced because we have treaty obligations.

xp
I mean, sure, 99.999% of humanity won't ever understand and will only get to hear about The God Particle (imagine "3.5 spin muon with negative strangeness bumps into antimuon shocka!"), but even so, someone has to find out for the rest of us.

i'm not convinced people do want to know how shit works per se. astronomy and particle physics are basically culture. voters are willing to pay us for the same reason there is state funding for the arts. our jobs are to make people go "whoa, cool". 50 years ago you could do that by showing them how things work, but at the moment the theoretical framework of most of it is so ugly and crufty that that trick doesn't work any more. this may change, but not in the next couple of decades. so in the meantime the best way to get a "whoa cool" or a moon landing moment is Hubble images and solar system exploration. they're not cheap, but they're much better value for money from that POV than the LHC imo.

voters are willing to pay us for the same reason there is state funding for the arts.

government have a slightly more sophisticated (but less correct) view of why we pay particle physicists and astronomers. they have convinced themselves that it's for the same reason we pay chemical engineers and people figuring out cell death: to directly benefit the economy and our health/tangible well-being. lolz.

the one possible way that is true is that there being jobs in fundamental physics encourages people to get very good PhD-level training in physics, which turn out to be extremely useful for the economy when they leave physics, which 2/3 of them do, because there aren't enough jobs. governments are quite rightly happy with this aspect of the situation, but it's kind of morally dubious imo.

sorry, i'm ranting. cern is cool.

The general population doesn't need to know about gluons & bosons & stuff, but if you can tell them that understanding gravity might help someone invent a flying car or a better rocket so we can go fight the aliens, then there's your "whoa, cool" opportunity!

but yeah, funding :-(

haha, yeah. if/when they figure out particle physics, the world is going to get all dr. manhattan very quickly, which will be fun.

in the meantime, any uk dudes reading this who feel like writing a letter to their MP, literally every graduating astronomy PhD i know who is not stuck in the UK for personal reasons is leaving this year, all because of an accounting fuckup happening at the same time as the LHC. we only need £20-40m to make it right, which is not a big deal to keep some astronomy going in the UK, you know?

truth bomb: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2539

not particularly related, but i don't know where else to put it so i'm putting it here.

first LHC science paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0911.5430v2 (click PDF)

they sure do have a lot of co-authors in particle physics.

I'm making this the particle physics thread and therefore posting this: http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2009/12/dark-matter-discovered.html

Note: it is a running joke in astronomy at least that a prerequiste for a paper to get publishing in Nature is that it be interesting but also proved wrong within 1 year.

But this is true: "If they are right, the Christmas holiday will be ruined."

Kick ass!

Too bad it's rather unintelligible for mere mortals :(

basically stuff is getting really real

That's more like it!

I somehow expected that a discovery of dark matter was going to be something overwhelming since it's supposed to be 80+ percent of all matter, not the detection of a tiny number of telltale events in between billions of others but yeah

update to that blog post

I was alerted to your blog of yesterday (you certainly don't make contacting you easy). Your "fact" #1, that Nature is about to publish a
CDMS paper on dark matter, is completely false. This would be instantly
obvious to the most casual observer because the purported date of publication is a Friday, and Nature is published on Thursdays. Your "fact" therefore contains as much truth as the average Fox News story, and I would be grateful if you would correct it immediately.

Your comments about the embargo are therefore, within this context, ridiculous. Peer review is a process, the culmination of which is publication. We regard confidentiality of results during the process as a matter of professional ethics, though of course authors are free to post to arxiv at any point during the process (we will not interfere with professional communication of results to peers).

Dr Leslie Sage
Senior editor, physical sciences
Nature

lol at nature dude losing his rag, but ya burnt

Liveblogging and stream of possible announcement of DM detection here now:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/12/17/dark-matter-detected-or-not-live-blogging-the-seminar/
http://www-group.slac.stanford.edu/kipac/cdms_live.html

ok looks like we have a winner

THE NUMBER IS TWO!!!

so should we commence worshipping our dark matter overlords or what

ok, it's not as big a deal as first thought. the expected background (i.e. spurious detections that are not caused by putative dark matter particles) was 0.5, but the real background turned out to be 1, so seeing 2 counts is not as unlikely as it seemed. promising though.

meanwhile, i haven't read this yet, but i'm told it's a really good introduction: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/01/hadron-collider-201001

(introduction to the LHC, that is)

The Case of the Collider and the Great Black Hole

The physicists have had their say. Now a legal study asks how a court might handle a request to halt a multibillion-dollar particle-physics experiment. The analysis makes for startling reading.

The physicists have had their say. Now a legal study asks how a court might handle a request to halt a multibillion-dollar particle-physics experiment. The analysis makes for startling reading.
For particle physicists, the Large Hadron Collider is a long-awaited dream that has finally come true. The LHC should supply a steady stream of data for the community to number crunch and that should lead to some fundamental new insights into the nature of the universe. It also guarantees jobs and careers for a generation of physicists around the world.

But there is another group who say that CERN, the organisation that has built and runs the collider, has not done enough to reassure the world that the work is safe. The fear is that the collider can produce black holes that might gobble up the Earth. Various legal actions have failed to halt the work, not because of the scientific or safety issues involved, but because of problems of jurisdiction. CERN has an immunity from court action in its member states and a US court action in Hawaii found that it did not have the jurisdiction to proceed.

Today, we get a fascinating new perspective on the issue from Eric Johnson, an assistant professor of law at the University of North Dakota School of Law in Grand Forks. Johnson asks what a court should do with a preliminary-injunction request to halt a multibillion-dollar particle-physics experiment that plaintiffs claim could create a black hole that will devour the planet.

This is a problem, he says, that has all the hallmarks of a law-school classic. And to give him his due, it's certainly a gripping read.

Johnson begins with an account of the history of the debate behind the science and its safety. This is worth a read by itself because Johnson writes with flare, clarity and an excellent grasp of the issues that scientists grapple with. He is not a physicist but uses his journey of understanding as a way of benchmarking how a court might come to grips with the issues involved.

Having set the scene, he then introduces the unique legal problems that this case presents. "The enormity of the alleged harm and the extreme complexity of the scientific factual issues combine to create seemingly irreducible puzzles of jurisprudence," says Johnson.

For example, one problem that a court might have to deal with is the expert witness. The problem here is one of independence. There is a huge amount at stake for these witnesses. On the one hand, an injunction would threaten the career of almost any particle physicist who gave evidence. On the other hand, there is the threat to the Earth.

"The experts are either afraid for their livelihoods or afraid for their lives," writes Johnson.

One way round this is to carry out a cost-benefit analysis but this soon runs into problems too. How do you value the future of entire planet? You could argue that it is infinite in which case any risk that it will be destroyed, no matter how tiny, is too much. Another argument, well established in law, is that there can be no award to a dead person's estate. "Death is simply not a redressable injury under American tort law," says Johnson.

By this argument, the downside of a particle-accelerator disaster that destroys the planet--assuming it is quick--is nothing. The cost-benefit analysis simply blows up in our faces.

There is a way out of these legal conundrums, however. Johnson describes four categories of meta-analysis that could be used to address the black hole case.

One line of analysis focuses on the possibility that the scientific theory upon which the safety assurances are based may be defective. He points out that these safety assurances have not yet stood the test of time. In fact, the various safety assurances that CERN has given over the last ten years or so have changed several times as new ideas and challenges have arisen. That's worrying.

And in any case, there is a more general point. Many scientists, even particle physicists, would surely agree that a scientific theory that seems unassailable in one era may seem naïve in the next.

This raises the important question of whether state-of-the-art theoretical physics is up to the task of making a trustworthy prediction that the LHC is safe.

Then there is the possibility that the scientists at CERN who have given the safety assurances have simply made a mistake in their thinking. Is it really possible that a team of world class scientists could make such an error?

Well, yes. One fatal example is the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test which was supposed to yield 5 megatons but actually yielded 15 megatons because of flawed calculations. In this case, a Japanese trawler fishing outside the exclusion zone was engulfed by fallout killing one of the crew.

Then there were the calculations that physicists used to reassure the public that another accelerator called RHIC was safe. These too turned out to be seriously flawed.

But perhaps the most worrying problem is the possibility of groupthink, that particle physicists have simply convinced themselves that the LHC is not dangerous and will brook no alternative view. There are some other examples of this in science, perhaps the most high profile one being the Columbia space shuttle tragedy.

Johnson says this: "The report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board ("CAIB") found that decision makers focused on information that tended to support their expected or desired result--that the foam strike that ultimately doomed Columbia did not represent a safety of flight issue."

Indeed CAIB said: "In our view, the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with this accident as the foam."

It would be hard to rule out the possibility that a similar form of groupthink infects the particle physics community. On the contrary, there is evidence that physicists have little time for anyone who questions their safety assurances. Johnson quotes the British physicist Brian Cox who is reported to have said: "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

That is not an encouraging sign.

But perhaps the most powerful argument that all is not well with CERN's safety assurances is the fact that the organisation has carried out the safety studies itself. Here is Johnson's take:

"It is remarkable to think for a moment how CERN's situation might be viewed if, instead of operating a particle accelerator, CERN was a developer of pharmaceuticals. If a pharmaceutical firm attempted to take a drug to market based on the safety assessment of a panel of five of its employees, who in turn relied on the scientific work of one employee and one other scientist with a pending visiting position with the firm--it would be a scandal of epic proportions."

Having presented the case, Johnson himself is remarkably relaxed about the issue. "My motivation in writing is certainly not to engender fear. I have no apprehension to share. Nor is it my intent or my desire to shut down the LHC. ... My argument is one of law," he says. He does not not predict how such a legal case might pan out. Instead, he says it would be a matter for a court decide (presuming one could be found with the necessary authority to hear it).

Nevertheless, it is hard to come away from Johnson's analysis with the impression that the global public interest has been well served in this matter.

Johnson says this:

"While it seems absurd, in the abstract, that a group of apparently normal people could risk the entire planet in the course of carrying out a science experiment, the prospect does seem distinctly plausible once one takes a look at the details. Such a disaster is not likely, to be sure, but it does appear plausible enough to give one pause."

Johnson is well aware that this case may never come to court (although he points out that one like it that raises the same issues may well come about in the future).

So the real test will be how the particle physics community responds, whether with spittle-flecked ire or reasoned argument.

There is another possibility of course; that they'll simply attempt to ignore it.

lol at the idea of the particle physics community responding with spittle-flecked ire to this

Fermilab & the Haiti earthquake (1800 miles away) :

http://www.cernlove.org/blog/2010/01/billion-dollar-seismograph/

http://oglaf.com/ad-hadronmom.png

somebody finally made a banner ad intriguing enough that I actually want to click on it

LHC to shut down for a year to address safety concerns

Can someone explain this to me? At the beginning of the article it says...
The atom smasher will reach world record power later this month at 7 trillion electron volts (TeV).

And then later on it says...

Engineers believe the machine is now safe to run at 7TeV but are anxious to avoid another breakdown.

So they have taken the decision to run the machine for 18 to 24 months at half-maximum power before switching it off for a year to carry out improvements to the 27km tunnel.

So are they going to power this baby up to 7 or what? (Or am I just be reading it all wrong).

OK, sorry, being a bit stupid. 7 is half the ultimate maximum power. I get it.

The atom smasher will reach world record power later this month at 7 trillion electron volts (TeV).

But the machine must close at the end of 2011 for up to a year for work to make the tunnel safe for proton collisions planned at twice that level.

bah xp

7TeV in each direction = collisions at 14TeV, no?

One minute (okay, last november, but still) they were piddling about at 1 trillion and now they're up to 7. Seems incredible to me but I have no idea how these things work.

Oh FFS, get on with it or I'm going to build one in my shed.

Hold on, I don't have a shed. Nevermind.

So the world ending machine will finally get turned on in 2012? That's pretty convenient.

lol^

i'm sure i called that

So the world ending machine will finally get turned on in 2012? That's pretty convenient.

Hah, apparently late 2012!

The LHC is my favorite celebrity.

Hold on, I don't have a shed.

1) build shed
2) build LHC crusher
3) ???
4) profit

Brilliant! Thank you, I will name the frozen planet that I create with my first explosion after you in tribute.

The LHC is my favorite celebrity.
word!

at least the LHC gossip machine is working at full power!
/jackie harvey

lol copyediting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skepchick/4445007033/sizes/o/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100330-large-hadron-collider-lhc-record-higgs-boson/

Great! That url is slightly misleading though, the Higgs hasn't been smurfed yet.

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-03/52999783.jpg

http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/t/tempest.png

http://www.knowledgerush.com/wiki_image/9/94/Berzerk.png

Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49305387,00.htm

The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines.

Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin.

Eloi is easy, but Cole?

12 Monkeys

nice

wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin.

Gallifrey?

great

"Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening."

what subatomic collisions sound like

rad stuff in my opinion

I'm pretty sure that's a Steve Roach album.

So, yeah, would def buy if available as a cheap download and was about an hour longer.

totally rad

I was hoping god particles would sound way cooler than a dull noise record.

idk sounds pretty chilling and mind opening to me

Disappointed there's no vuvuzela button, BBC. :-/

First atoms smashed last night?

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2010/11/08/first-lead-ion-collisions-in-the-lhc/

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/alicelead3-300x212.jpg

would smash

Sorry, no, my mistake. They have already smashed gold ions previously. Now they are smashing lead ions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life-and-physics/2010/nov/06/1

ALCHEMY: YOU DOING IT RONG

I, for one, welcome our new Quark-Gluon Plasma overlords

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life-and-physics/2010/nov/26/2

This has been a ludicrously exciting week.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Science/contributors/2010/11/26/1290790499232/eric.jpg

CERN employees figuring out what ILX stylesheet they want to use?

Please create a black hole and end the world already

Despicable press antics at the moment imho:

GOD PARTICLE DISCOVERED - EVERYBODY PANIC

Geneva - God particle not discovered. Internal memo hints at possible possibilities but it's way too early to tell.

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4136

confirmation of higgs next week by the looks of it http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4794

blimey

Great! So when can I order my anti-gravity vehicle?

On the other hand, LOL @ "Update: Finally confirmation from a reliable media outlet… The Daily Mail reports..."

How long until the Daily Mail has a 'HIGGS BOSON CAUSES CANCER' scare headline?

The papers are out.

CMS: http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1207.7235
ATLAS: http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7214

I predict this will significantly increase the chances of our sending an unmanned probe to Mars in the near future.

http://dealbreaker.com/uploads/2010/09/drudge-siren1.gif

Thursday, 21 March 2013 - 10:00 CET:
Planck: Cosmic Microwave Background map release

General Interest Media Press conference live stream from 10:00 to 12:00 CET from Paris ESA HQ.

http://dealbreaker.com/uploads/2010/09/drudge-siren1.gif

http://www.piercepioneer.com/massive-upgrade-large-hadron-collider-back-action-soon/37946

planet to be destroyed by hardons