British Scientist to End World on Wednesday

Besides that Spiderman 2 is massively ridiculous, no they're not the same at all.

 

what exaggerationist crap (NOTE - if u have to exaggerate so much then your case is usually very weak)

the vast vast majority of those 'big' experiments had absolutely no chance of having severe consequents, unlike say nuclear + this, when the stacks are so high (extermination of all life) then it's a wise man who plays it cautious

next month I think will be the proper collisions, its only one way traffic today

it is similar to a book I read a few years ago, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonseed_(book)

 

We're popping champagne at work around 1:30 AM est and praying we don't recieve any more death threats.

Fermilab is throwing a pajama party.

Lord knows the shameless hedonism that will be taking place at CERN though =)

This is probably the most exciting thing i've ever taken part off both proffessionally and as a human being.

 

You're on the team? Holy moly. How serious have the threats been?

 

I worked on the ALICE-LHC experiment for almost 2 years (before getting into graphics..), good luck guys!!

 

Speaking of which...

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/09/terrible-news-gordon-freeman-spotted-near-large-hadron-collider/

 

LOL. That's not me though

 

Oh, the irony!

See above. We know 60 years later that nuclear fission isn't going to cause mass death and destruction. That doesn't mean we knew it then... We know 400 years later that sailing across the ocean doesn't lead to monsters and demons; that doesn't mean we knew it then either.

Getting the picture yet?

Things that are outside of your (or my) comprehension do not need either of our permission to be explored. That's really the crux of the situation, isn't it?

 

"You're on the team?"

I used to be. Now what I do is still related, since I do theory/phenomenology mostly related to dark matter models and astrophysics constraints on particle physics. But we worked in the LHC olympics and helped them tune some of their data analysis software for instance. Pretty much everyone in high energy physics has some stakes with the LHC, it really is the culmination of about thirty years work and the wait has been agonizing for many.

" Holy moly. How serious have the threats been?"

Pretty bad. Its mostly the big popular names that get the most flak (here and elsewhere), but for instance our server was hacked last week and we've had several really creepy emails and messages. Its assumed that most of that will go away though after its gone live.

Anyway, im actually getting dressed to go to a LHC party =)

 

I don't suppose I need to point out to you that this sounds eerily like the plot to Doom3.

 

The BBC are going off the wall over this whole event, a whole day on Radio 4 dedicated to physics-related stuff. Not quite sure what to make of it, given the general antipathy towards science in the British media. I think maybe I'd rather have more coverage as a routine, rather than one special day every ten years. But if the publicity gets the public and more importantly kids interested in physics then that's good I guess.

 

In the UK it's both antipathy and apathy towards sciemnce. It starts in the schools, which have been forced into abandoning the traditional physics/chemistry/biology subjects and teach this crap http://www.21stcenturyscience.org/

Our eldest was lucky enough to pass the exam for a local grammar school and has already had homework on Robert Hook. One of his mates who went to the local comprehensive had some homework as well - to go and buy ingredient for baking cakes

 

cakes are important...

 

umm so 200,000+ deaths directly responsible aint massive deaths?
but anyway as I said before I think the odds of the earth going kaput is extremely remote. In fact bet your savings on it not happening, a bet u cant lose

personally I think the most likely result is, the whole things gonna be a damp squib, ie nothing majorly created ($10 billion well spent , which I would of like seen put into space exploration, but thats another topic)
I suppose there is also a slight (~1:100) chance of something going wrong, eg explosion

 

If nothings going to happen why is Gordon Freeman there ?

 

The beauty of this is that even if nothing happens (i.e. the Higgs particle is not observed), its still a major discovery.

So unless the whole machine literally doesn't work, its a win/win

 

That would be a very interesting result.

Exploring a Universe which you've chosen not to try to understand the deepest workings of seems like a strange choice to me.

 

Am I TOO LATE?!

 

The coverage on the BBC this morning was amusing but pointless. A woman reporter in one of the control rooms at CERN was blathering away embarrassingly talking nonsense as the scientist in the background informed everyone the experiment had begun so the announcement was actually missed. They then immediately cut back to the studio where the presenters carried on with their usual inane "end of the world" jokes.

One thing I've noticed is that, when asked the practical or more immediate benefits of the LHR experiments, all the Physicists interviewed have put forward using particle accelerators for Thorium reactors. I wonder if they've been asked to say this because, as I understand it, Thorium fission can be achieved in various types of reactors and doesn't actually require a particle accelerator.

 

I think its difficult to determin the practical benefits of these experiments at this stage. Similar to asking what the practical benefits of the transitor were going to be back when it was first created.

A better understanind of the basic working of the universe could literally lead to pretty much anything in the long term.

An exagerated example, but say we learn things from this, or at least that spin off from this that allow us to come up with ways to break the light speed barrier? Or produce new and inexhaustable enegry supplies? Until we understand the universe better, we simply don;t know what potential it has to offer. Nuclear power for example would never have been possible without very similar experiments to this earlier this century around splitting the atom (and i'm sure that had many other improtant consequences for todays technology).