BF2S Forums Big Bang Day - Wednesday 10/09/08 (Large Hadron Collider - LHC)

Why am i still ALIVE?!

Mek-Stizzle wrote:

Braddock wrote:

Mek-Stizzle wrote:

They haven't started colliding particles yet

That's in October.

You're only going to get your black holes when they start colliding shit. The real d-day is sometime in October, I think it's the 21st. Not sure.

The spokesperson on the news said they have, they just aren't firing at full intensity yet.

Dunno what they mean by full intensity. Maybe they mean the fact that firing a beam around without collision (as in, what they did today) = to around 7 TeV (unit of energy), whilst firing 2 beams around which results in a collision = 14 TeV (which would be full intensity)

I don't think collisions have actually started yet. They're just making sure that the thing works before actually starting the real deal.

Pubic wrote:

The balls touched, yet we aren't dead!

No they haven't touched yet!

This

The LHC wont be fully up and running untill the 21st of oct. The expermant takes 4 years in all then you gotta go though all the data they collected...

So really its the 21st of Oct we gotta look out for when they start smashing the first atoms together :S

Braddock wrote:

Mek-Stizzle wrote:

Braddock wrote:

The spokesperson on the news said they have, they just aren't firing at full intensity yet.

Dunno what they mean by full intensity. Maybe they mean the fact that firing a beam around without collision (as in, what they did today) = to around 7 TeV (unit of energy), whilst firing 2 beams around which results in a collision = 14 TeV (which would be full intensity)

I don't think collisions have actually started yet. They're just making sure that the thing works before actually starting the real deal.

The dude on the news (a CERN spokesman) said that 'packets' of protons were being fired but that the 'packets' currently were a fraction the size of what they will ultimately be firing at each other. He certainly seemed to imply that they were colliding these 'packets'.

EDIT: Just read the BBC website's coverage of events, seems that douche I saw on the news earlier was just trying to make it sound as though they were already colliding when in fact they were not.

Last edited by Braddock (2008-09-10 05:32:21)

xRBLx wrote:

The LHC wont be fully up and running untill the 21st of oct. The expermant takes 4 years in all then you gotta go though all the data they collected...

So really its the 21st of Oct we gotta look out for when they start smashing the first atoms together :S

2012 it will be over

cant believe it didn't happen. I sacrificed all those animals in prep for it too, and i had my crowbar ready!

But if its going to finish in 2012 doesn't that help the myan theory of dec 21st 2012 for the begining of the end? Even though its an extra couple of months after four years they'll probably be messing around for 3 years and going to party's n stuff, then they'll realize they had better get their assignment done cos they've only got a year left so they're bound to miss their deadline.

All clear

I wish he was in a better shape

Sydney wrote:

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

Whoever made that deserves one free awesome.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Anyone who claims to have calculated the probability of creating a black hole is talking out their ass.

Calculating the probability of being able to create a dangerous black hole isn't complex. Taking rough figures, anyway.

Remember the energy of the collision is all that is there to create the black hole. Therefore the energy must be at least 90000000000000000 x greater (in Joules) than the mass of the body created (in Kg). There isn't enough energy in the accelerator to create a black hole with enough mass to actually suck anything in (and, as Hawking said in the video above, they would just evaporate). Very simple calculations from E=mc².

The thing real scientists were concerned about (but not really) was a strange particle chain reaction leading to matter breaking down. That would've been bad.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Bertster7 wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Quite the opposite in fact.

I don't understand how the discovery of the graviton would help String theory against the various other theories. All theories that I know of require the existence of a gravitron, String theory is just one way of explaining why there is a gravitron.

It's to do with the extra dimensional predictions made in various string theories. These predict gravitons forming and then vanishing into other dimensions. Seeing a graviton and then seeing it being gone are what they hope for.

...or they will disappear quickly as all other exotic particles do through experiments at this level because of their fundamental unstable nature.

String theory (M theory, whatever) explains a lot through fantastic means, without managing to predict anything new or be able to prove its most fundamental assumptions. The discovery of the Graviton wouldn't help its case any more than the case for dark matter.

Other exotic particles do not disappear. They change form. They either combine to form bigger particles or break down into smaller particles. Either way the debris is still observable. What String theorists hope to observe is a graviton vanishing entirely, leaving no debris.

Last edited by Bertster7 (2008-09-11 16:20:00)

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Bertster7 wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Anyone who claims to have calculated the probability of creating a black hole is talking out their ass.

Calculating the probability of being able to create a dangerous black hole isn't complex. Taking rough figures, anyway.

Remember the energy of the collision is all that is there to create the black hole. Therefore the energy must be at least 90000000000000000 x greater (in Joules) than the mass of the body created (in Kg). There isn't enough energy in the accelerator to create a black hole with enough mass to actually suck anything in. Very simple calculations from E=mc².

The thing real scientists were concerned about (but not really) was a strange particle chain reaction leading to matter breaking down. That would've been bad.

We don't know enough about black holes to be able to make those calculations with any high degree of certainty. We suspect that you need x matter density to make a black hole, but that is really little more than speculation. They are such exotic formations that we have so few ways of studying that predicting one with any degree of certainty is a laughable matter.

Absolutely right. But it's not a case of needing to predict how much matter density you need for a black hole to be formed or anything like that. It's about how much matter something like that would need to exert any sort of gravitational force strong enough to attract enough matter for it to be dangerous. It's not that unlikely that black holes could be formed - it certainly can't be ruled out entirely because the whole point of these experiments is that any type of matter that has been formed in the universe should also be able to be formed in them, but they couldn't be formed with enough mass to gather enough more mass, so as to be of any sort of danger. A black hole weighing a couple of grams is no threat to anything. There are enough well established therories, backed up by predictable observations, that it is perfectly reasonable to predict that.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Berster7 wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

...or they will disappear quickly as all other exotic particles do through experiments at this level because of their fundamental unstable nature.

String theory (M theory, whatever) explains a lot through fantastic means, without managing to predict anything new or be able to prove its most fundamental assumptions. The discovery of the Graviton wouldn't help its case any more than the case for dark matter.

Other exotic particles do not disappear. They change form. They either combine to form bigger particles or break down into smaller particles. Either way the debris is still observable. What String theorists hope to observe is a graviton vanishing entirely, leaving no debris.

The vanishing of the graviton would also be observable, and could very easily be mistaken for transforming into something else.

Why would the vanishing be observable? Why would it easily be mistaken for transforming into something else?

The amount of matter is very precisely monitored. If matter transforms into something else, there is still the same amount of matter. Matter disappearing into extra-dimensional space is another prospect entirely.

It's not me you should be telling this stuff to anyway, it's the people conducting the experiments and looking for this sort of phenomena, who are far more qualified in this than either of us - and they seem to think this is something important to look for, in the manner I have described.

mtb0minime wrote:

Whoa shit, you guys better check this out!
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

I lol'd.

ATG wrote:

Holy fuck.

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