watch out for the black hole tomorrow..

[mcvltd]

Tomorrow morning at about 8:30gmt they'll be switching on the LHC at Cern. Really interesting stuff (if you like that sort of thing).

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html
http://webcast.cern.ch/index.html

Even more interesting is that they don't deny that they may possibly create a black hole... get ready to run..
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html

[RErender]

They will make Swiss cheese of us all!

[^Lele^]

I REALLY don't like how they put the arguments for safety, in the excerpt there.
Since we are struck by cosmic rays all the time, and the earth is still here, nothing will change when we'll do our thing.
Makes sense, hey.
Like lighting a fire in a fireplace, or in a dry,windy wood: it burns safely in its intended place, but give it to mother nature to play with...
Whether the LHC is a fireplace or a dry wood, I can't quite gauge from what's in their safety guide.

[duke2]

But I mean really, who cares. It's not like they're saying it will cause the Earth to crack in half - they're saying it *may* cause a black hole, in which case it will be occur in a matter of mili-seconds. Who's going to know!

I'm surprised no-one has made a dramatised movie about it yet, they did about WHY TOO KAY. Similar things are mentioned in some sci-fi books i've read but the nay-sayers are usually described as not understanding the science/retarded, etc.

[RErender]

Actually, well I don't know really, but I read, that it could send thousands of mini-black holes flying around/through earth eating up matter as they go

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...lack-hole.html

[stilgarna]

I live 1 mile away from the CERN...

This morning maybe real Half Life begins

Best regards...

[Neilg]

I've got a friend who's working on this in the LHCb.

The only time a black hole becomes dangerous and grows of it's own accord will be when they reach a size around that of our sun.
These will be 0.001mm across.
They will exist for 0.00000000 (insert about 100 0's here) ...0001 of a second.


Good to see news reports about what it actually does now though, the fear mongering was getting beyond a joke.

[Preisler]

Anyone know if theese black holes get on sale? ....I would like to buy one for my mother in law

Preisler

[Morne]

for mother in laws they give it away for free - by the truck loads

[rmejia]

Awesome stuff; I just hope they don't open a gateway to hell and allow one or two demons to pass through and cause chaos and destruction over here on our earthly realm

[sea2stars]

Yeah.. but then they'll make a horrible movie version about it with the Rock in it.

[RErender]

We have a few more weeks, for now they are just warming the thing up, actual particle collisions are not planned till late fall, phwew, a few more weeks to live.

[Clifton Santiago]

Here is a quite amusing summary:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09...nuum_unripped/

[SteveC]

Been waiting for this for ages, I've been watching the CERN webcast since first thing this
morning and all things considered it went very well. They managed to get the clockwise
beam sorted very quickly, a few problems on the anticlockwise beam, something to do with
cooling I think. A very exciting day for science, whether they find Higgs in the future or
not, I think a lot of questions will be answered one way or another and a lot of new physics
created when she's eventually run at full power.

[Morbid Angel]

Awesome stuff; I just hope they don't open a gateway to hell and allow one or two demons to pass through and cause chaos and destruction over here on our earthly realm

Doom2 Hell on Earh!!!
Im running to buy BFG 9000