44 replies to this topic

[Soul]

Am I the only one who can't wait for them to activate this thing? Cause I'm excited for it .

Edited by Soul, 10 September 2008 - 01:16 AM.

[Romanul]

We gonna find out where we REALLY come from.

Dunno,I'm excited too.At what hour should this happen?

[Ash]

It already happened.

I personally wonder why there's so much hype about this. They won't discover anything meaningful to the general public for at least another twenty years with atom-smasher tech.

Hurry up and discover safe, clean energy rather than throwing that energy at two beams of hydrogen atoms...honestly, do you know how much energy is being used to run this project?

And they dare to put energy-saving adverts on television?

[TX1138]

You mention the words 'Black Hole' and 'Hadron Collider' in the same sentence and people go into a panicked frenzy

[Vortigern]

It's great, isn't it?

I think I read that, if we're lucky, we'll have found out something possibly meaningful within 6-9 months, if we're not lucky we might find something meaningful in about fifteen years, and if we're even more unlucky then we'll eventually conclude that there's fuck all to find out there. They're looking for particles that are thus far entirely theoretical. This is the experiment that will find out whether or not they exist.

I'm with Ash. The world's greatest scientists should be working towards a better future for the rest of mankind, not experimenting at colossal public expense to find out something that won't actually reveal anything useful. Granted, it will appease the curiosity of everyone intelligent and educated enough to understand a word of it, but it won't actually achieve anything real. Go work on cold fusion.

[Soul]

We have nothing to worry about, Gordon Freemen has been spotted as one of the scientists .

[Puppeteer]

I'm all for it! Most at my school try and spread doom & gloom, saying "zomfg it will create a blackhole and destroy the UNIVERSE!!!!!1!". Which is impossible, of course.

[Soul]

I'm all for it! Most at my school try and spread doom & gloom, saying "zomfg it will create a blackhole and destroy the UNIVERSE!!!!!1!". Which is impossible, of course.

Yeah, it's just stupid and narrow minded people who don't know shit. Just ignore them or laugh at them, either is fine .

[Vortigern]

Well, it is technically possible, but the chance is so incredibly remote that it's barely even worth writing down. The LHC is a highly advanced and specialised piece of machinery and most people in the world cannot hope to understand what it does. I'm hovering around uncertainty myself, and, though I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, I'm pretty good at high-end physics.

[Black Temple Gaurdian]

It's magnets. When you can't explain it it's always magnets, and in this case it is

[Vortigern]

This is absolutely hilarious!

Essentially, British scientists in a bunker in the north of England have created better machines than the CERN Project, and they've done it for £2 million, which is a minuscule fraction of what the LHC cost: £3.5 billion. Work out the fraction yourself, I can't be bothered. Their modest predictions of success deem that they might achieve what the LHC is designed to do in about half the time too. It's based on collisions by wimps (weakly interacting masive particles, which may or may not, but probably is, dark matter) within a tank of inert liquid xenon. There's also a directional dark matter telescope thingy. Read and research.

[Spectre]

I had a conversation on a different forum about this, and jeez, once it started everyone shit their pants.

I just silently laughed at them, as I tried to get them out of the panic.

Edited by General Jenkins, 10 September 2008 - 11:38 PM.

[CIL]

I don't see the point in more particle accelerators, especially if taxpayers are flipping the bill. We need to spend our money in more important places... like stopping global warming.

Edited by Crazy Intellectual Liberal, 11 September 2008 - 02:21 AM.

[Vortigern]

CIL, that's complete rubbish. We can't stop global warming and we didn't start it. It's a natural process that occurs over time. Theoretically, we're due another ice age pretty soon. The amount of carbon dioxide and methane and whatever contributed to the environment by our 250-ish years of industrialism equates to a tiny fraction of a percent of what the natural processes of the Earth have created in the same time. Cows, volcanoes, people breathing, these all happen.

Attributing climate change, a perfectly natural process, to our own actions is the most unbelievably arrogant thing humanity has ever done.

[Ash]

We might not have started it, or stopped it, but surely it's better to err on the side of caution and try to reduce the damage we do to the planet. I mean, um, let's face it, we're the greatest threat life on this planet has ever faced. Arrogant or not, we have the ability to destroy this world's entire ecosystem. We have a responsibility to try to avert that. And regardless of whether we are or are not causing the planet's climate to change, we should at least try to make sure it isn't us, rather than just think 'oh fuck it, we can't go by 'what if's so we'll carry on as usual'.

For an example, Chernobyl. That was just a chip of an iceberg and look at the damage it caused. Damage caused by human hand. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, acid rain...

I don't consider it arrogant to note that we are the sole driving force of extinction at this time.

[OmegaBolt]

And that could well be the meaning of life. Humans are made to destroy and allow a rebirth, the same as what made the Dinos vanish. Except we're like a living meteor/supervolcano.

And your very naive Vortigern, if you dont accept that maybe we are the cause or cure.

[wthigon]

WTF, I read that as "Hardon" not Hadron.

[Puppeteer]

Oh fantastic find Vortigern! Wow, that finally makes me slightly happy being British hehe jk wow that's made my day

[Soul]

People are only afraid of it cause they don't anything about physics, these scientists do and I trust them with what they're doing .

[Vortigern]

OmegaBolt, I don't refuse to accept that we may be the cause or cure, just that there is powerful evidence to suggest that global warming and climate change are a natural part of life on Earth, and assuming we are the sole responsible party is extreme arrogance. But I agree that we have the capabilities to find a solution to what will undoubtedly become a problem at some point in our future.

Apparently the Arctic ice cap is now an island, no longer connected to the mainland world, with gaps large enough to allow freight shipping through. We have, beyond all reasonable doubt, sped up the process, but we are not the sole contributary.

I like your view on the meaning of life, though. We are here to destroy everything!