Are we all going to die next Wednesday?
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Banned



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Location: Rapture
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 15:54    Post subject: Are we all going to die next Wednesday?
Two nightmare scenarios, two ends of the world. In the first, there is little warning. For maybe a month there would be no sign that life was about to come to an abrupt and nasty end for all living things on Earth.

Then, earthquakes would start unexpectedly, alerting geologists that something terrible, unimaginable, was amiss.

After a few days, these seismic disturbances would reach catastrophic proportions.

Cities would be levelled, the oceans would rise and wash in a series of mega-tsunamis that would attack the world's coasts, killing millions.

The fact that the earthquakes were striking randomly, not along well-known geological faultlines, would be proof that something devastating was afoot.

Finally, the end would come, in a disaster of Biblical scale. The Earth would literally start to crack up.

Molten lava would wash over the land and the seas would start to boil.

Mega-hurricanes would level buildings and forests the world over. Eventually, mountains would crumble as the Earth's crust continued to disintegrate.

The fabric of the planet itself would start to disappear, trillions of tonnes of rock, water, air and life sucked into a whirlpool of unimaginable force.

From space, our blue-and-white home would appear to vanish down a plughole in a flash of light.

At least in this scenario we would have a little time, perhaps, to come to terms with the end.

However, a second doomsday scenario is even more terrifying. There would be no warning at all.

In an instant - about one-twentieth of a second - the entire Earth would simply vanish from space.

Less than two seconds later, the Moon would follow suit. Eight minutes later, the Sun would be ripped apart, followed by the rest of the planets in the solar system and onwards, a wave of destruction caused by a rent in the fabric of space itself, spreading out from our world at the speed of light.

Any extra-terrestrials out there would die too, in due course. And there would be nothing technology could do about it.

But why should we now be worrying about such possible causes of Armageddon?

The answer is a gargantuan machine - the largest, most expensive scientific experiment in history, the 'Large Hadron Collider', to be turned on next Wednesday.

Although it was designed to answer the fundamental questions of life, some people have claimed that it could end up destroying the entire cosmos.

This gigantic £4 billion-plus atom-smasher has been built under the Swiss-French border near Geneva, and is the most powerful device ever built for probing the secrets of the atom and the forces and particles which make up our Universe.

It is a staggering device, occupying a train-sized tunnel 18 miles long, buried 300ft underground, studded with gigantic, cathedral-sized ring-shaped detectors where collisions between packets of 'heavy' subatomic particles, 'hadrons', will take place in the hope that the innermost workings of matter and energy will be revealed.

The LHC is, arguably, the most impressive machine ever built by Mankind.

But a few people are convinced that it should never be turned on. A lawsuit has been lodged at the European Court For Human Rights by a small group of maverick scientists.

They claim there is a small - but not zero - chance that when the LHC is activated it will create either a mini-black hole which would fall into the ground and swallow the Earth from within (scenario one).

Or, even more bizarrely, trigger a catastrophic chain reaction in the very fabric of space and time itself, which would rip apart the entire universe like the skin of a bursting balloon (scenario two).

Bizarrely, this group, led by a German chemist called Otto Rossler, are using the European Convention on human rights to argue that, should the LHC destroy the entire Universe, it would 'violate the right to life and right to private family life'.

In fact, since 1994, when the collider was first mooted by the multi-national European nuclear research organisation (CERN), a small number of doomsayers have claimed that by replicating the conditions pertaining at the start of the universe (Big Bang), about 13,700 million years ago, there would be a small but real risk an unstoppable cataclysm would take place.

This is not a threat taken seriously by the scientists at CERN. When I visited the place a couple of years ago, to see the collider being built, any mention of mini-black holes and other risks elicited only raised eyebrows and shrugs of derision.

The LHC was not designed to destroy the universe, of course, but to fill in some of the embarrassingly large gaps that still run through our basic understanding of physics and how the universe works.

It could discover, for instance, what most of the Universe is actually made of.

The ordinary 'stuff' that we see around us - the atoms and molecules of water, carbon, iron, oxygen and the rest that make up our bodies, the planet Earth, the Moon, the other planets, the Sun and all the stars - actually accounts for only about one part in 25 of the total 'ingredients' of the cosmos.

Astronomers know that something else, invisible and mysterious, must pervade every inch of space, its subtle gravity affecting the movements of the galaxy.

This material - no one really has a clue what it is - has been dubbed 'dark matter' and it is hoped that the collider just might shed some light on what it is, perhaps uncovering a new type of particle.

Perhaps more embarrassingly, we don't know what it is that gives even ordinary matter its mass.

In the 1960s, British physicist Peter Higgs proposed the existence of a new particle, now known as the 'Higgs Particle', which effectively lends 'weight' to the stuff of the universe.

So important and fundamental is this hypothetical entity that it has been dubbed the 'God particle'.

It is hoped that if Higgs is right, the collider could finally clear up this mystery and, as a result of its super-powerful collisions, traces of this particle could emerge.

That alone would, in itself, be justification for a large chunk of that £4 billion outlay. By simulating the Big Bang, it is hoped the LHC will act as a 'universe in a test tube', allowing scientists to examine a whole suite of exotic subatomic particles and forces and to go some way to completing the work started by Einstein and the other giants of 20th-century physics.

So is there really a chance that the scientists have made a terrible miscalculation and that their new toy could inadvertently kill us all?

Happily, the simple answer is no. CERN's scientists have in fact commissioned several safety reviews (such as those that have taken place before other big particle accelerators have been turned on).

All have concluded that there is no measurable risk whatsoever. Perhaps the best argument against the LHC doomsday scenario is that cosmic rays - natural high-energy particles from space - smash into the Earth's atmosphere all the time with far, far more energy than will be generated by this machine.

If it were possible to create a dangerous black hole by simply bashing atomic particles together, this would have happened naturally long ago, and we wouldn't be here to build this particle accelerator in the first place. So we are safe.

In fact, what the scientists at CERN really fear is not the end of the world, but that their machine simply isn't big or powerful enough to uncover anything new - that to probe the deepest secrets of the cosmos they will have to ask for yet more cash to build something on an even greater scale.

Either that, or their equations are simply wrong and a whole new approach is needed, despite the billions they have spent.

Not a doomsday for Earth, perhaps, but a catastrophe for physics.

As for the rest of us, we have to hope that the scientists have done their sums right - and keep our fingers crossed next Wednesday.


[spoiler][quote="SteamDRM"]i've bought mohw :derp: / FPS of the year! [/quote]
[quote="SteamDRM"][quote="b0se"]BLACK OPS GOTY[/quote]
No.[/quote][/spoiler]
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FireMaster




Posts: 13393
Location: I do not belong
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 15:57    Post subject:
We're fucked because of those fucking uber nerds' curiousity
I say GET SOME GUNS and go there fuck their shit up I ain't going down because of those fuckers Mad
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kalato




Posts: 1492
Location: Finland and UK
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 16:09    Post subject:
Get your guns ready if we survive, those pesky head crabs will appear!


I like bum.
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XxGenkxX




Posts: 58
Location: England
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 16:10    Post subject:
"there is nothing that technology can do." if technology found it it can avoid it IF THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN IN REALITY and not just in a daft calculation


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madmax17




Posts: 18718
Location: Croatia
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 16:42    Post subject:
Sounds to me like somebody is having delusions of grandeur, no way that this machine can destroy the planet the energys needed to re-create a black hole are enormous, if there was any real danger of course they would stop it they live in the same universe you know. Well maybe they are aliens disguised as humans from another galaxy and they came here to finish college and destroy planet earth Laughing but what are the odds of that.
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b0se
Banned



Posts: 5901
Location: Rapture
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 16:49    Post subject:
i don't wanna die Sad( , i want to play crysis warhead before Sad


[spoiler][quote="SteamDRM"]i've bought mohw :derp: / FPS of the year! [/quote]
[quote="SteamDRM"][quote="b0se"]BLACK OPS GOTY[/quote]
No.[/quote][/spoiler]
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swingman




Posts: 3602

PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 16:51    Post subject:
Lol! Just search the topic of this post on googles and all will become clear. Very Happy Clearly some people have too much time on their hands.
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SpykeZ




Posts: 23710

PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 17:17    Post subject:
Well, if i can't play my video games anymore due to my hands turning into tenticals or something...I'm going to be pissed


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inz




Posts: 11914

PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 17:23    Post subject:
SpykeZ wrote:
Well, if i can't play my video games anymore due to my hands turning into tenticals or something...I'm going to be pissed


Yeah but think of the benefits of having tentacles for hands... If nothing else, I bet japanese chicks all like 'em.
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SpykeZ




Posts: 23710

PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 17:24    Post subject:
icky


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FireMaster




Posts: 13393
Location: I do not belong
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 17:33    Post subject:
inz wrote:
SpykeZ wrote:
Well, if i can't play my video games anymore due to my hands turning into tenticals or something...I'm going to be pissed


Yeah but think of the benefits of having tentacles for hands... If nothing else, I bet japanese chicks all like 'em.


yeah they're always up for some tentacle rape
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b0se
Banned



Posts: 5901
Location: Rapture
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 18:41    Post subject:
and headcrabs too


[spoiler][quote="SteamDRM"]i've bought mohw :derp: / FPS of the year! [/quote]
[quote="SteamDRM"][quote="b0se"]BLACK OPS GOTY[/quote]
No.[/quote][/spoiler]
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Cohen




Posts: 7155
Location: Rapture
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 19:00    Post subject:
your all wrong.

The hadron collider will start up and then wham.. a huge flash of light.. and from the center.. out comes Duke.

*I told y'all motherfuckers, forever is coming.*


troll detected by SiN
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b0se
Banned



Posts: 5901
Location: Rapture
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 19:02    Post subject:
i still think those experiments are kind'a stupid


[spoiler][quote="SteamDRM"]i've bought mohw :derp: / FPS of the year! [/quote]
[quote="SteamDRM"][quote="b0se"]BLACK OPS GOTY[/quote]
No.[/quote][/spoiler]
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GeordieRacer




Posts: 4008
Location: Leeds, UK
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 19:41    Post subject:
I hope something crazy does happen, but not the annihilation of earth. That would make me sad.
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SycoShaman
VIP Master Jedi



Posts: 24468
Location: Toronto, Canada
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 19:43    Post subject:
Nothings going to happen....who knows tho, they make a stargate in the process. now that would be cool


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fraich3




Posts: 2907
Location: Not from my mouth!
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 19:44    Post subject:
SycoShaman wrote:
Nothings going to happen....who knows tho, they make a stargate in the process. now that would be cool

If that happens Kurt Russell better be on the spot making sure things go right Smile


"Zipfero is the biggest fucking golddigger ever" - Mutantius
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FireMaster




Posts: 13393
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PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 19:46    Post subject:
there you go motherfuckers here's the experiment :

 Spoiler:
 
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SycoShaman
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Posts: 24468
Location: Toronto, Canada
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 19:53    Post subject:
fraich3 wrote:
SycoShaman wrote:
Nothings going to happen....who knows tho, they make a stargate in the process. now that would be cool

If that happens Kurt Russell better be on the spot making sure things go right Smile


Laughing

or Richard Dean Anderson


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swingman




Posts: 3602

PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 19:55    Post subject:
GeForce8 wrote:
i still think those experiments are kind'a stupid


So you think that there is nothing wrong with the current situation and we will be burning 'dead animal juice' three or four hundred years in the future as well for our energy needs? Make no mistake, there is absolutely nothing available at the moment or on the horizon that will satisfy our ever-growing energy needs.

If the human race is to have a future without reverting to a non-technological culture, we will have to figure out new sources of energy. And by new I mean methods of generating energy that we haven't even dreamed of apart from in science-fiction. In order to do that we will have to be able to understand the nature of matter much better than we currently do and the only way to do that is to try these kinds of experiments.
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pistolshrimp
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Posts: 11007

PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 20:18    Post subject:
swingman wrote:
GeForce8 wrote:
i still think those experiments are kind'a stupid


So you think that there is nothing wrong with the current situation and we will be burning 'dead animal juice' three or four hundred years in the future as well for our energy needs? Make no mistake, there is absolutely nothing available at the moment or on the horizon that will satisfy our ever-growing energy needs.

If the human race is to have a future without reverting to a non-technological culture, we will have to figure out new sources of energy. And by new I mean methods of generating energy that we haven't even dreamed of apart from in science-fiction. In order to do that we will have to be able to understand the nature of matter much better than we currently do and the only way to do that is to try these kinds of experiments.


Quote:


methods of generating energy that we haven't even dreamed of apart from in science-fiction.


I found that kinda funny. Science fiction and future tech. have always gone hand in hand I thought.
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swingman




Posts: 3602

PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 21:02    Post subject:
pistolshrimp wrote:
swingman wrote:
methods of generating energy that we haven't even dreamed of apart from in science-fiction.


I found that kinda funny. Science fiction and future tech. have always gone hand in hand I thought.


That's true but only partially because the hyphen in science-fiction serves more than just a grammatical purpose. It serves as a reminder that there is always a very real boundary between what science can achieve and what fiction can imagine. Maybe one day all the things that we see in sci-fi will be possible but at the moment we can accomplish only a fraction of that. And even that is achieved with energy sources that are quite primitive by those standards. Even the one advance in the field of energy, i.e. electricity continues to be generated by means that are no different in principle (exothermic reaction) than the one used by cavemen.

And I have yet to see sci-fi where somebody says 'damn I forgot to recharge my phaser' or 'the space-ship has run out of power'. Very Happy Those things do happen but they are usually plot-related. Most sci-fi writers imagine a world where we have solved most of our problems rather than the problems having gotten worse like they do in reality. I agree that that's a very dystopian view but imo that is the the one which best mirrors the real future.
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CaptainCox
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Posts: 6823
Location: A Swede in Germany (FaM)
PostPosted: Sat, 6th Sep 2008 21:08    Post subject:
They/we are looking for something so small...well just smaller the you could imagine, in fact it might not even exist, and it's called the "Higgs Boson" read more about it here
Quote:
I can warmly recommend this program from BBC Radio4 (free to stream)

As to why?, well the Higgs Boson is the "missing link" and that's one of the main things the Colider was built to find. Check out this show...you will be much wiser in the end, believe me!.
Quote:
One weekend in 1964 the Scottish scientist Peter Higgs was walking in the Cairngorm Mountains. On his return to his laboratory in Edinburgh the following Monday, he declared to his colleagues that he had just experienced his 'one big idea' and now had an answer to the mystery of how matter in the universe got its mass. That big idea took many years of refining, but it has now generated so much international interest and has such an important place in physics that well over one billion pounds is being spent in the hope that he was right. It's the biggest science project on Earth; the quest to find the 'Higgs Boson', a fundamental constituent of nature that - if it does exist - has such a central role in defining the universe that it's also known as the God Particle.

What is the Higgs Boson? Why is it so important to scientists and how are they planning to find it?

HIGGS BOSON

If you like History, Science, Religion or Culture this is your show.
every show have 3-4 WORLD LEADING specialists on the topic, and it's never boring!.
IN OUR TIME

I have posted links to this before, but i am doing it again as it's a KICK ASS SHOW!!!!


LINK
No worries guys, knowledge is power Wink.

To make a long story short...the Higgs Boson might give proof to what gives particles it's mass, that's all, nothing else and nothing more then that. Read up on it guys, you might be wiser afterwords.


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Razacka2




Posts: 2832
Location: Sweden
PostPosted: Sun, 7th Sep 2008 00:08    Post subject:
CaptainCox wrote:
They/we are looking for something so small...well just smaller the you could imagine, in fact it might not even exist, and it's called the "Higgs Boson" read more about it here
Quote:
I can warmly recommend this program from BBC Radio4 (free to stream)

As to why?, well the Higgs Boson is the "missing link" and that's one of the main things the Colider was built to find. Check out this show...you will be much wiser in the end, believe me!.
Quote:
One weekend in 1964 the Scottish scientist Peter Higgs was walking in the Cairngorm Mountains. On his return to his laboratory in Edinburgh the following Monday, he declared to his colleagues that he had just experienced his 'one big idea' and now had an answer to the mystery of how matter in the universe got its mass. That big idea took many years of refining, but it has now generated so much international interest and has such an important place in physics that well over one billion pounds is being spent in the hope that he was right. It's the biggest science project on Earth; the quest to find the 'Higgs Boson', a fundamental constituent of nature that - if it does exist - has such a central role in defining the universe that it's also known as the God Particle.

What is the Higgs Boson? Why is it so important to scientists and how are they planning to find it?

HIGGS BOSON

If you like History, Science, Religion or Culture this is your show.
every show have 3-4 WORLD LEADING specialists on the topic, and it's never boring!.
IN OUR TIME

I have posted links to this before, but i am doing it again as it's a KICK ASS SHOW!!!!


LINK
No worries guys, knowledge is power Wink.

To make a long story short...the Higgs Boson might give proof to what gives particles it's mass, that's all, nothing else and nothing more then that. Read up on it guys, you might be wiser afterwords.


Well I might be out on the limb here but if they hypothetical is wrong the standard model of particle physics fall apart as well since the higgs boson is needed.
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Phluxed
VIP Member



Posts: 4911
Location: Oakville, Ontario, Canada
PostPosted: Sun, 7th Sep 2008 10:42    Post subject:
Brian Cox wrote:
Anyone Who Thinks the LHC Will Destroy the World is a Twat.


That guy is about 20x more intelligent and 1000x cooler than you could ever hope to be.


http://www.astroengine.com/?p=1240

Quote:
So when I hear news that some Large Hadron Collider (LHC) physicists are receiving threats, I lose my faith in humanity…




That link above is actually in response to
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1052354/Are-going-die-Wednesday.html



ALSO - The higgs boson is the holy grail of physics and is a theoretical variable in the "everything" equation. If they ever find the h... lol, they can scientifically explain everything - just " how matter gets its mass" is completely oversimplifying it.


Last edited by Phluxed on Sun, 7th Sep 2008 10:47; edited 1 time in total
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Acer




Posts: 3156

PostPosted: Sun, 7th Sep 2008 10:46    Post subject:
A giant monster will suddenly pop up in new york killing half the population and making the rest go insane.


Dont mess with God, he can impregnate your girlfriend/wife without taking his pants off!
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PistolWhip




Posts: 447
Location: AUS
PostPosted: Sun, 7th Sep 2008 12:32    Post subject:
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skidrow
Moderator



Posts: 8691

PostPosted: Sun, 7th Sep 2008 14:20    Post subject:
i hope not, its my birthday this end of this month so.


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Retraction
Banned



Posts: 72

PostPosted: Sun, 7th Sep 2008 15:34    Post subject:
well, I always wonder what happen to something that get swallow
by black hole,
at least I will know the answer.....Razz
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dingo_d
VIP Member



Posts: 14555

PostPosted: Sun, 7th Sep 2008 15:42    Post subject:
If the higgs bozon won't be find by this experiment the whole physics won't fall apart, that would mean that we would have to find new theories to explain the particle world... If you think about it, all we do is give theories that gives reasonable explanation to the surrounding world around us untill we find those that explaine the world in a better, precise way. The world won't end now, it will end only if we or something else (aliens etc.) destroy it, other than that we have good 5 billion years untill our Sun explodes...


"Quantum mechanics is actually, contrary to it's reputation, unbeliveably simple, once you take the physics out."
Scott Aaronson
chiv wrote:
thats true you know. newton didnt discover gravity. the apple told him about it, and then he killed it. the core was never found.

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