ITT man-made black holes [Archive] - Armageddon Games Forums

AtmaWeapon

09-20-2006, 11:13 AM

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=325&objectid=10400645

WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM!

Seriously on the one hand I think this experiment is really awesome and the scientist in me has a huge boner over the concept of creating miniature black holes and whatever else. However there are some quotes that I don't really think should be giving a "green light" on this:

There has never been such a jump in particle physics. It will go into an area that we don't really understand,
For the first time in many decades we have built a machine that exceeds our powers of prediction.
New processes are bound to be discovered. We are truly journeying into unknown territory.
The probability [of disaster] is at the level of 10 to the minus 40," he said

Ahahaha so that's 3 "We have no idea what this will do" followed by "The probability of inviting cyberdemons into our world is a number that basically means 0". Who else is stocking up on shotgun shells and medkits in preparation?

ZTC

09-20-2006, 11:46 AM

They estimate the possibility of accidentally destroying the planet as extremely low.

yeah....
that's realy comforting =/

moocow

09-20-2006, 11:49 AM

Uh.

Yikes.

Beldaran

09-20-2006, 12:10 PM

Fortunately, if the earth suddenly ceases to exist, we will not even realize it before we are dead. So take comfort in the fact that YOUR EXISTENCE MEANS NOTHING HAHAHAHA

ShadowTiger

09-20-2006, 01:01 PM

That actually does make me feel better. I know it shouldn't, but ... ... Man-made black holes. Oh my dear god sir.

Soon they'll come out with a toy version for like, $150 at Toys R Us. Then they'll remove all the parts that can cause a black hole because it'd be deemed unsafe for children. The box will have nothing but crayons and a giant black circle, but will still cost $100 and up.

Aegix Drakan

09-20-2006, 01:14 PM

ooooooohhhhhh booooyyy...
:scared:
this is it. this is what's gonna annahilate the human race. forget meteors, supervolcanoes or nukes. THIS thing is either gonna destroy the planet, or work successfully, and either get abused like crazy or bring other-dimensional fiends to our dimension. shit...this could turn out like Metroid Prime 2!

-_- sorry If I'm being pessimistic, but...as a general rule, you DO NOT build something unless you know how it'll work.

there are just sooo many things that could go wrong with this...

the risk is calculated at about 10 to the minus 40 - a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000 chance.

and it's ALWAYS in situations like these that the impossible 1 out of a billion chance hits you in the nuts.

I'm not so worried that demons or whatever will come through, I'm primarily worried about the fact that the black hole part of the experiment could possibly devour the planet. I'll worry about any interdimansional fiends if we somehow DON'T get annahilated.

OY! if you want to visit other dimensions, just learn to Astral-Project! It apparently works, and doesn't endanger the whole planet.

[EDIT] OH! and I just thought of something else too! they keep going on about "dark matter" and how they're curious about it. I have a VERY bad feeling about that. I think I'll take your advice atmaweapon!

/me goes to stock up on supplies, and learns how to use a sword and halberd, since he doesn't have a gun. :P

Jigglysaint

09-20-2006, 01:56 PM

I say go ahead. Super Jesus will save us if things go ary.

moocow

09-20-2006, 01:59 PM

and it's ALWAYS in situations like these that the impossible 1 out of a billion chance hits you in the nuts.

That makes me think of..

"God couldn't even sink this ship!" (I'm paraphrasing)
OH YEAH? YOUR SHIP IS LAYING ON THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN, SIR. Ocean - 1, Titantic - 0

Because whenever you say something isn't likely to happen, it always does.

Buh, we're all gonna disappear into the unknown :(

Kairyu

09-20-2006, 02:32 PM

I should start selling tinfoil hats. I'll make a fortune here.

Anyway, it's a news report. Of course they'll make it sound crazy, pointless, dangerous and stupid. If they wrote something like, "The odds of something serious going wrong are a billion to one," people would think the newspaper was paid off. How could they not reveal the horrible, horrible secrets of doom and interdimensional space alien zombie invasions which MUST, I repeat, MUST follow any advance in science?
On the other hand, if they write something like this:
The flippant scientists casually threw aside the grave concerns of many, many, many people in the audience, claiming "the odds of [TOTALLY UNIVERSAL ANNIHLATION] were [not really THAT bad]," and did not comment further on the subject.
They get front page! Headline: MAD SCIENTISTS AT IT AGAIN! SCHEMING TO DESTROY SPACE/TIME USING NEW BLACK HOLE MACHINE!

and it's ALWAYS in situations like these that the impossible 1 out of a billion chance hits you in the nuts.
You watch a biiiiiiiit too much TV. Seriously.

[EDIT] OH! and I just thought of something else too! they keep going on about "dark matter" and how they're curious about it. I have a VERY bad feeling about that. I think I'll take your advice atmaweapon!
"Dark matter" is not some kind of 'evil' matter or something. It's just matter that can't be directly observed. It can only be found by it's effects on other matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

MottZilla

09-20-2006, 02:58 PM

Mitsukara

09-20-2006, 03:43 PM

Scary, interesting... they should do this after developing a moon base though, so if they fuck up we lose the moon instead of the planet, or if it were an expanding-fuck up we might be able to evacuate a tiny and unfair portion of humanity prior to the destruction of the solar system.

I'm serious, the possibilities are wonderful but this is kind of scary. It makes me want to make sure I get certain things in my life done before the experiment is underway, just in case.

Supposedly nothing will or should maybe happen probably/hopefully. The same could be said of life right now. The difference is we're monkeywrenching with something in this case, which just means the possibilities more complex.

If it doesn't cause problems, awesome, and it'll be interesting to see what we learn from it. Hell, this could theoretically change our views and knowledge of the universe completely and maybe bring about huge advancements for life as we know it. Maybe.

I'm still going to try to do what I can of my most important things ahead of time.

Cloral

09-20-2006, 04:32 PM

I don't think there's any way they could destory the earth with this, because the experiment doesn't generate anywhere near enough energy.

MottZilla

09-20-2006, 04:33 PM

moocow

09-20-2006, 04:41 PM

If the earth is destroyed humanity goes with it.

And if that happens, no one will notice that we all died, so it really wouldn't matter anyway...

SUCCESSOR

09-20-2006, 05:15 PM

Cool. If the chances were one in two of this the going horribly fucking bad I'd still cheer them on. What kinda cool shit can this lead to? It's fucking thrilling.

MottZilla

09-20-2006, 06:16 PM

Cool. If the chances were one in two of this the going horribly fucking bad I'd still cheer them on. What kinda cool shit can this lead to? It's fucking thrilling.

I'd say there's a good chance we will discover new and interesting ways to kill people among other things.

AtmaWeapon

09-20-2006, 06:24 PM

Believe it or not, they do take precautions and such. And they probably are fairly sure that it's not going to destroy the earth, and the possibility of finding other lifeforms on the other side of some dimmensional rift are slim to none, and that doesn't even include the lifeforms being intelligent. And futhermore remember, Nuke > Space Creatures.

This is actually a neat thing, because they could discover/create new technologys from results found doing this experiment.Yeah I figure nothing really bad will happen I just found the combination of 3 "We aren't sure exactly what will happen/We can't predict the results" quotes combined with "It's perfectly safe" as pretty interesting.

I bet there's a 1 in 10^-40 chance that brushing my teeth will result in my doom but I still do it every morning.

I just got kind of freaked out by the whole "mini black hole" concept... I'm not certain how in the world we could contain a black hole but if we can pull this off I think it will be the kind of thing that 100 years from now people will still tout as a great achievement.

Also please to stop fagging up the thread. I'll go ahead and deconstruct it since obviously it was too complicated for you guys:

The article itself is positive and highlights the possibilities of this device. However, there is a good bit of uncertainty mixed in that they sugar-coat and cover up in my opinion. I thought it might be fun to overreact to this by both highlighting the risks and comparing them to the plot of DOOM, a popular video game in which man's experimentation with things he doesn't understand invites a horde of monsters who say "HAY GUYS WHAT'S UP IN THIS INSTALLATION? HOW'S THE HUBRIS GOING HUH?"

I'm sure that the words that scare me also scare the physicists and scientists who are behind this magnificent machine. Also like someone said death by singularity is probably not very painful so meh.

Mitsukara

09-20-2006, 08:04 PM

Good thing you aren't in charge. If we fuck up the moon, the Earth in turn would be fucked up. Shame on you for not realizing the effects the Moon has on the Earth. Also there is NO way to evacute the earth. Space crafts costs billions of dollars along with the costs of launch and the time to build them and maintain them. If the earth is destroyed humanity goes with it.
Oh, I'm quite aware that the moon's gravitational pull has strong effects on the earth, among probably other things. I don't know the details, but I figure it would possibly throw the Earth out of alignment (completely changing temperate zones to possible catastrophic effect) and probably alter the way all large bodies of water behave.

Additionally, space evacuation attempted today would probably save about 10 people for a few months. Note I mentioned a moon base; I meant, let's wait 30+ years until technology has advanced and we can do the experiment in a safer place or something.

My theory was that, though it could still have catastrophic effects were things to go wrong on the moon, better the moon be imploded (for example) than the Earth immediately being imploded, roughly put.

Now, all that said, I didn't really mean that portion of my thread all that seriously. It was just something that popped into mind and I said briefly, not something to be studied or considered nor something that I think they should neccesarily do. Though, I wouldn't be totally against seeing them put it off until such time as there is a better/safer environment to attempt to do it in, I do realize it would be a long time before such an opportunity would present itself, if it did at all.

Bah, science. This is another reason why I aspire to being an artist instead.

In my opinion, it's amazing and impressive and full of potential, but the risks, however supposedly low, are a bit broad. I can only hope that those in charge are extremely careful (which I'm sure they are) and that nothing will go catastrophically wrong. I'm still glad I'll be 18 before this happens though.

Dechipher

09-20-2006, 08:15 PM

Cool. If the chances were one in two of this the going horribly fucking bad I'd still cheer them on. What kinda cool shit can this lead to? It's fucking thrilling.

Seconded.

MottZilla

09-20-2006, 08:45 PM

Why is it better that doom has warning than no warning? That's retarded. I'd rather suddenly be killed by something before I have a clue anything is wrong than to know that death is coming. I imagine most people feel the same way. Also I don't give a shit about mankind. If I die then everyone can come with me. I don't give a shit if humanity survives or not. I'd be dead, I wouldn't care. Thats why if the world were ending and they were trying to save small groups of people I would join other groups of people in death and destruction for spite and because hey we're fucked anyway lets have some fun.

Anyways, really it's a fun big kid experiment. If it goes terribly wrong we could all die. What's the problem?

jessethe2nd

09-21-2006, 02:10 AM

In theory a black hole is a ton of matter compressed into a very small point which creates a large gravitational pull strong enough to pull in light thus making it impossible to see... this pull would pull in more matter thus expanding the black hole... Now going by this 10th grade text book crash course why the hell would we want to create this on earth? Would that not just pull in all the surronding matter untill we were no more?

But there are certain variables to consider such as how much matter they are working with here and indirectly how long it would take this matter to pull in enough matter to expand its pull to a point where the planet itself could be in jepordy... But hey this is just what I have been taught, I am positive it is way more complex...

MottZilla

09-21-2006, 02:40 AM

We don't possess technology powerful enough (i.e. not enough energy) to actually create a black hole that occurs when stars die and such I believe. Anything we do would likely be a small temporary thing that would collapse quickly and not pose any threat. And like it's been said, the worst that could happen is we all die. You should be more worried about chemical weapons that kill you slowly and painfully.

{DSG}DarkRaven

09-21-2006, 07:09 AM

I'm not sure where to start. Apart from my straightforward "This is a very bad idea", of course.

First off, building this thing on the moon wouldn't be safer at all. Apart from the fact that the pull of a black hole has a massive reach, the sudden absence of the moon could easily knock us out of orbit. This is much more catastrophic than some of you seem to think. Even a subtle orbit change would ruin the entire planet's climate and devastate Earth's ability to sustain life. More likely, without the moon (an object 1/4 the size of our planet), we'd be so far off our orbit that we'd eventually be flung into deep space, though probably long after everyone died from various causes (lost atmosphere, massive climate shift).

Evacuating any of the population into space is a joke. It's not a matter of money, it's a simple matter of manned space travel being very difficult over long distances. Sure, we can send robots to mars, but a manned mission anywhere is exponentially more difficult. Robots don't require food, living quarters, bathrooms, heat, seating, oxygen, windows, comfy reentry vehicles, etc. It's a logistical nightmare just to send a few people into space over a long distance, and when we're talking about the dangerous range of a black hole, mars really isn't that far. Not far at all. It's also important to remember that Mars is over a year away by conventional space travel. It could take a century or more for humans to get to a safe distance.

And lastly, I suppose, I'm concerned about the lovely negative number they give us. The probability of something going wrong is never expressed as a negative number. You can't predict the probability of something not happening. Negative numbers just don't jive with science like that. You predict the probability of something happening, at 10 to the 40th, perhaps, but negative numbers and exponents used like this are probably just big numbers thrown out to make people feel better. Did anyone else notice the part where they say that they're probably going to have this thing going non-stop for at least ten, if not twenty years? I don't know how many mini-black holes or particles you can collide in two decades, but I do know that those big odds of something going wrong get a lot less friendly when you factor the number of collisions in. Twenty years is a lot of opportunity to screw up.

Aegix Drakan

09-21-2006, 10:55 AM

-_- pleased ignore my first post. I was just exceedingly freaked out.

It's just that I don't see how they can give a number to guarantee our safety when they themsleves say that this project is "beyond our ability to predict"

-_- *sigh* ah well. even if it DOES mess up and destroy us all, there are far worse ways to go out. I mean, we don't necessarily know if it's fatal to be reduced to microscopic size by a black hole! after all, no one has ever been able to tell us about it.

Did anyone else notice the part where they say that they're probably going to have this thing going non-stop for at least ten, if not twenty years? I don't know how many mini-black holes or particles you can collide in two decades, but I do know that those big odds of something going wrong get a lot less friendly when you factor the number of collisions in. Twenty years is a lot of opportunity to screw up.

QFT! That is all I can say.

Cool. If the chances were one in two of this the going horribly fucking bad I'd still cheer them on. What kinda cool shit can this lead to? It's fucking thrilling.

:shakeno: I am so damn happy that you are not in a position of power.

Mitsukara

09-21-2006, 11:58 AM

The more I think about this the more I sincerely hope public awareness and opposition increases and it's illegal by next year.

Sorry, I just really have zero faith in this. The possibility of gaining understanding about the origin of matter, something we might not really be able to use even so, is not worth even a supposedly small possibility of annihilation. To say otherwise is either stupid, or suicidal. Some of us have "lives" that we "care" about believe it or not.

But that's just me.

Incidentally, it'd be pretty damn ironic if we outlawed cloning of human parts and stem cell research, both of which could've had huge medical reprecussions to protect, save, and enhance (read: make liveable) thousands or millions of lives- at the least- only to allow an experiment to proceed that destroyed the planet.

lord_jamitossi

09-21-2006, 12:37 PM

Heh, this thing is what Dan Brown's Angels and Demons is about. And anyone who's read that book knows not only that Dan Brown is a terrible author, but also that it will result in the pope somehow dieing and Robert Langdon not dieing despite plummeting out of a helicopter without a parachute.

More seriously, I think this is pretty cool. I mean, this really is a huge leap for science. Science is all about taking risks; so many things that we have done could easily have gone wrong and blown up the planet, but they didn't. This will be fine.
Moreover, how did they come to the conclusion that it would create little black holes? That seems like a pretty random thing for 2 incredibly small things smashing together to create. Even so, the black holes it would create would be microscopic, at best. Not really any overwhelming risk.

ctrl-alt-delete

09-21-2006, 12:59 PM

I think it is pretty badass, but at the same time, I think we have gone too far. :(

{DSG}DarkRaven

09-21-2006, 02:22 PM

I mean, we don't necessarily know if it's fatal to be reduced to microscopic size by a black hole!

A black hole does not reduce anything, so much that it crushes things with incalculable gravitational force. You do not get shrunk when you enter a black hole. You get ripped apart and sucked into a tiny object the size of a pinhead (or smaller), where your molecules will probably forever remain. I don't know how black holes operate when they appear and initially start consuming matter, but from a distance, as I understand it, they tend to turn things into long strangs of molecular spaghetti. I'm pretty sure that's fatal, and maybe even a bit painful.

And if you didn't notice my parenthetical up there, I'll point it out again: black holes are small. Very small. Tiny. They aren't called black galaxies, or black chasms, or black stars. Black holes. As in, a hole in your shirt. Small. If they weren't small, they would not function the way they do. They have their super-strong gravitational pull because they are dinky little things that are packed with matter, usually a star's worth. They become ultra dense and start pulling things with no remorse. Long story short, black holes don't have to be large to be dangerous. In fact, theoretically, black holes would take a tremendous amount of matter to grow even the smallest amount. Galaxies worth.

The way I see it, these mini-black holes aren't dangerous (supposedly) because they're so small, smaller than normal, and don't exist for very long. The same reason man-made super heavy elements (above 108 on the periodic table, I think) are safe (supposedly) to create. They are unstable, and only exist for an almost immeasurably short time, and in such a small window, they usually cannot cause much harm. The risk, however, lies within the snowball effect. If containment fails to work properly, if the mini-black hole exists long enough to gobble up some nearby matter, enough to potentially sustain itself, a chain reaction would start, and life would soon after end in our galaxy. Picture a snowball dropped at the peak of a mountain, only this mountain has no end. There is always a massive blanket of snow to feed the snowball, and the further it falls, the more snow it picks up. The more snow it picks up, the faster if falls, and the faster it picks up the snow.

In reality, the risk is probably about as small as they suggest, provided that the above assumptions are correct, which the are probably not. As I said in my previous post, if this thing is going to be running non-stop for twenty years, it will only take one person to make one mistake during that time to doom our planet.

Kairyu

09-21-2006, 02:32 PM

And lastly, I suppose, I'm concerned about the lovely negative number they give us. The probability of something going wrong is never expressed as a negative number. You can't predict the probability of something not happening. Negative numbers just don't jive with science like that. You predict the probability of something happening, at 10 to the 40th, perhaps, but negative numbers and exponents used like this are probably just big numbers thrown out to make people feel better.
Or, maybe they're just using standard scientific notation. Y'know, the kind you use in Physics class. Where small numbers (i.e. ones which are less than one, but more than zero, but still really small) are expressed by multiplying a number by ten to a negative power.

I thought Angels and Demons was about anti-matter? That's different. That's the stuff that makes large explosions when it physically contacts 'normal' matter.

From what I understand (which in this case is really not much), the biggest reasons against stem cell reasearch were religious. 'Don't play God' and stuff like that. I'd be suprised if this doesn't get some heavy religious opposition as well. "Stop trying to find out what the universe was like at the time of the Big Bang! My religion says the universe is only 10,000 years old! I can't live with that kind of refutation!!!"

{DSG}DarkRaven

09-21-2006, 02:42 PM

Or, maybe they're just using standard scientific notation. Y'know, the kind you use in Physics class. Where small numbers (i.e. ones which are less than one, but more than zero, but still really small) are expressed by multiplying a number by ten to a negative power.

Maybe. I never took physics class, to be honest. But I've still never seen the odds of anything happening expressed in scientific notation. It's always either been a percentage, or a "1 in X" possibility. I stand by my belief that any risk assessment that requires you to do math is trying to cover something up.

MottZilla

09-21-2006, 02:48 PM

Well if they destroy the galaxy, when we all go to hell we can kick the shit outta them. Does that make you feel any better?

{DSG}DarkRaven

09-21-2006, 02:52 PM

Well if they destroy the galaxy, when we all go to hell we can kick the shit outta them. Does that make you feel any better?

No.

Kairyu

09-21-2006, 02:57 PM

Maybe. I never took physics class, to be honest. But I've still never seen the odds of anything happening expressed in scientific notation. It's always either been a percentage, or a "1 in X" possibility. I stand by my belief that any risk assessment that requires you to do math is trying to cover something up.
Here it is without math:

the risk is calculated at about 10 to the minus 40 - a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000 chance.

It probably wasn't so much a matter of 'covering it up' as it was 'I really don't feel like looking up the proper prefix for a 1 followed by 40 zeros right now just to answer this guy.' That's a fairly substantial number there.

{DSG}DarkRaven

09-22-2006, 07:02 AM

Thanks, Kairyu. It doesn't necessarily make me feel better, but at least my question is answered now.

AtmaWeapon

09-22-2006, 03:01 PM

DarkRaven what do they teach you guys in Canada scientific notation is pretty much a junior high topic in Mississippi which probably means kids are born knowing it elsewhere.

Also the space evacuation route or moon route is pretty much as bad as doing it on earth, if the stars align towards our doom then opening a dimensional rift or some other unpredictable disaster is pretty much bad news wherever we do it.

Aegix Drakan

09-22-2006, 03:35 PM

A black hole does not reduce anything, so much that it crushes things with incalculable gravitational force. You do not get shrunk when you enter a black hole. You get ripped apart and sucked into a tiny object the size of a pinhead (or smaller), where your molecules will probably forever remain. I don't know how black holes operate when they appear and initially start consuming matter, but from a distance, as I understand it, they tend to turn things into long strangs of molecular spaghetti. I'm pretty sure that's fatal, and maybe even a bit painful.

:sweat: great. I feel SO much better now. Thanks a lot Dark Raven.[/sarcasm]

lord_jamitossi

09-22-2006, 05:22 PM

My question:
And then what? What are they going to do with these black holes that they make? Just look at them and say "Ooh?" I bet Cloral's right, we're going to find plenty of new ways to kill each other.

Kaiyru, A&D is about anti-matter, but the said anti-matter is made by the machine that they're talking about in this article. In the book, it uses energy to create matter and anti-matter. Which is going to be one of the last things this machine actually does.

{DSG}DarkRaven

09-22-2006, 09:47 PM

DarkRaven what do they teach you guys in Canada scientific notation is pretty much a junior high topic in Mississippi which probably means kids are born knowing it elsewhere.

Dude, I was born and raised in Michigan, and I still live here. Look carefully at the spot that says location next to every single post I make. It clearly says "not canada". I take the blame for having a confusing avatar/title joke (http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=4085), but you really ought to watch the Flash Tub (http://www.somethingawful.com/shmorky/) more often.

Aegix, I'm always happy to help.

Aegix Drakan

09-22-2006, 09:59 PM

Aegix, I'm always happy to help.

XD

I'll keep that in mind.

DarkDragon

09-23-2006, 12:48 AM

Uhm... what the fuck guys... you can't be serious? This kind of mass ignorance and knee-jerk panic with nobody bothering to research actual facts is a strong reason America has gone from being the leaders of science in the early 20th century to an utter laughingstock in recent years.

The one mitigating factor is that the scientist's quote

We are truly journeying into unknown territory. is a bit misleading. The following would have perhaps been more correct:
"For most of the history of physics experiment has sustained a substantial lead on theory. Apples were observed falling before Newton discovered his laws. The speed of light was measured before Maxwell derived it while formulating his famous equations. And physicists puzzled over the photoelectric effect long before it was explained by particle-wave duality. Recently, however, theory has gained the upper-hand: countless mutually-exclusive models compete to describe the phenomena of particle physics, but we haven't been able to test any of them because their difference only manifest themselves at hereto unattainably high energies."

The Large Hadron Collider will hopefully give us experimental evidence eliminating or confirming some of these competing theories. In particular, two theories have made predictions we hope to test:
1. The Standard Model with Supersymmetry. The theory known as the "standard model" allows us to make very comprehensive calculations about how various subatomic particles interact with each other. Its predictions match experiment with an astounding degree of accuracy, but it makes one last prediction we haven't been able to test: supersymmetry. Roughly summarized, supersymmetry asserts that for every subatomic particle, a corresponding second particle with certain predictable characteristics must also exist. The problem? We haven't been able to actual find these "twin" particles yet. That's not a fatal shortcoming however: the twin particles could have energies high enough as to be unproducable using our current particle accelerators. Hopefully the LHC will find evidence of these "twins."
2. String Theory. One of String Theory's most striking predictions is that of extra dimensions, and the LHC might allow physicists to prove the existence of these dimensions. I won't elaborate as this point was covered in the article.

Thus, it's true we don't know EXACTLY what will happen, but we know the ballpark, and the earth mysteriously exploding is NOT in that ballpark. Nor is a resonance cascade, or the creation of a wormhole to hell, or any other fanciful scenario from fiction.

Lastly, I want to point out that 10^(-40) is not a scientifically-derived number, as there's no way to calculate a probability for this kind of thing. The scientist being interviewed most likely chose an arbitrary number so small he hoped it would come across to readers as "not fucking likely." In truth, the amount of energy being played with is so small that any large-scale catastrophe would completely fly in the face of everything we know about physics: the probability of the earth exploding due to this accelerator is comparable to that of the sun mysteriously failing to rise tomorrow morning, or water deciding to run uphill, or a bar of lead spontaneously transmuting into gold.
In short, there is no reasonable concern that this accelerator might bring about large-scale disaster.

I will be happy to debunk any specific alleged mechanism contradicting the above bolded clause.

{DSG}DarkRaven

09-23-2006, 08:38 AM

Technically, a black hole would make the earth sort of implode, not explode. And although I see your point, I'm somehow not comforted when you compare this experiment with an apple falling onto Issac Newton's head. I'm no physicist, but as far as I know, there's a distinct impossibility that the apple might have swallowed the galaxy.

Of course, I am clearly biased towards the apple.

MottZilla

09-23-2006, 03:05 PM

DarkDragon, even with that whole big post, I have no idea if you are in favor or not of them doing their experiment.

lord_jamitossi, I was the one who said most likely we'd find new and interesting ways to kill people. ;p I'm not Cloral.

lord_jamitossi

09-23-2006, 03:45 PM

Hey, you're right! Weird. I even went back and double checked before posting that. I must have been really tired when I posted.

DarkDragon does have a very good point. Most of us are really too into fiction and video games. There is literally no risk of anything seriously bad happening as a direct and unforseen reaction to this.

Dechipher

09-23-2006, 04:06 PM

AtmaWeapon

09-24-2006, 07:52 PM

Dude, I was born and raised in Michigan, and I still live here. Look carefully at the spot that says location next to every single post I make. It clearly says "not canada". I take the blame for having a confusing avatar/title joke (http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=4085), but you really ought to watch the Flash Tub (http://www.somethingawful.com/shmorky/) more often.Until I observe you in either Canada or Michigan I propose a theory that you exist in both places at once until my observation forces you to assume one state or the other.

And honestly I quit watching the flash tub a while ago because it just doesn't seem as funny anymore and though I like Shmorky I'm not going to pat him on the back for his latest work. I recognized the apple in your avatar from one of the flash tubs but I have better things to do than memorize the scripts to flash animations so pardon me for forgetting to look at the "Location" field of your postbit.