[Ghostavo]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/06/scitime106.xml

Prof Irina Aref'eva and Dr Igor Volovich, mathematical physicists at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow believe that the vast experiment at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, may turn out to be the world's first time machine, reports New Scientist.

 

[Kosh]

[BloodEagle]

Seconded.

[Admiral_Stones]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/06/scitime106.xml

Prof Irina Aref'eva and Dr Igor Volovich, mathematical physicists at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow believe that the vast experiment at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, may turn out to be the world's first time machine, reports New Scientist.

 

Let's just kill these Time-o-nauts and watch the time paradoxon fireworks afterwards.

[Bobboau]

"the fabric of the universe, which is a blend of space and time that scientists called spacetime."


I really want to bring harm to the writer of this article and his friends and family.

[Mika]

The actual article they wrote can be found from (written 2007):

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0710.2696v2

They simply show that theoretically, assuming certain conditions for the LHC, it is possible to obtain a closed time curve, which would imply that time travel is possible in the subatomic scale. There are several maybes and assumings, hence: could be possible. Good luck putting it up in the macroscale, though.

I reckon at this point some people are asking what have they been smoking. That's basic research in CERN for you, funded by your tax money. (Not that I would envy them, or anything)

Mika

[Retsof]

I don't get why everybody's so scared that the thing will make a black hole.  Even if it did make one and Hawking radiation didn't apply, we're talking about subatomic particles here.  *sarcasm* Oh I'm so scared of a black hole with the mass of a PROTON!

[Bobboau]

until it absorbs another proton, then it has the mass of two, the four then eight, the more it absorbs the bigger it gets and the faster it eats.

[G0atmaster]

While it has the SIZE of a proton, black holes are notorious for packing a HUGE mass into a very small SIZE.

Hence, a black hole the SIZE of a proton could have the MASS of a thousand suns.

[Fenrir]

Not if it only was created with the energy equivalent of a few protons or whatever. The LHC isn't smashing thousands of suns together (we'll have to wait a few centuries or millennium for one that big), so it can't make a black hole with that much mass.

[G0atmaster]

Black Holes tend to have a chain-reaction nature about them...

[Herra Tohtori]

Black Holes tend to have a chain-reaction nature about them...

Only if the event horizon exists long enough to be able to start accumulating mass. Of course the high velocity any potential black hole would gain from the momentum of the particles that formed the event horizon would mean that time dilatation would slightly lengthen the apparent lifetime of such a black hole, but even so any black hole with mass equivalent of energies released in LHC experiments would dissipate rather fast, or so the theory says.

Mind you, most of the energy in these experiments is kinetic energy. It causes interesting stuff to happen but it's still a relative form of energy and according to my understanding it wouldn't just "morph" into rest mass just like that. Any black hole would only have as much mass as the particles had; rest of the energy would be either released as radiation or become the black hole's (or other particles') kinetic energy. This velocity would be well over the escape velocity from solar system... or the galaxy even. Couple this with the fact that the diameter of the event horizon that would be borne would be really really tiny, so tiny in fact that the probability of the hole actually hitting a particle would be minuscule - even if it were to travel through the Earth.

So sayeth the wise Alaundo.

Repeating the best argument on why LHC will not cause end of world in any shape or form - it hasn't happened yet, and LHC is not going to be doing anything that wouldn't be happening all the time naturally anyways except making high energy particle collisions repeatable and thus a lot easier to research. Very high energy particles hit you all the time. Looking at an open, unprotected bubble chamber it keeps flashing all the time from all kinds of particles hitting it - you might want to check if there's one near you at an observatory or science center or whatever, it's kinda like traceroute...

Anyhows - LHC will instigate proton-proton-collisions of 7+7 TeV, which means 14 TeV total collision energy, or 14*10^12 electronvolts.

Cosmic rays can have energies of over 10^20 electronvolts. Or, if you will, 10 million TeV. The highest observed occurrence of a cosmic ray was a particle with energy of 50 joules which is about the same as the kinetic energy of a tennis ball flying at 42 m/s, which is pretty fast. If it was a proton, it was traveling so close to light speed that it would travel one light year minus 46 nanometers in a year...

Since these particles haven't caused the destruction of Earth, It's very safe to say that LHC will not do it either.


Here's something of interest by the way... a simulation about what happens when 1 TeV proton hits the atmosphere: http://astro.uchicago.edu/cosmus/projects/aires/

[TrashMan]

So sayeth the wise Alaundo.

And the Lord of Uninformed shall perish....
and in his death he shall spawn a host of mortal progeny
and chaos will be sown in their footsteps
for they will talk s*** about the LHC and other stuff.

[Colonol Dekker]

I want them to install some sort of chair/merry-go-round system so that joe public like me can have a nice ride while the particles are sleeping.

[Hellstryker]

Yes, using a black hole in the middle to rotate it... and.. eat it

[Mika]

 * Looks at page 2 *
Woo, that's the second thread derail I have achieved in my internet history so far!

I want them to install some sort of chair/merry-go-round system so that joe public like me can have a nice ride while the particles are sleeping.

This actually reminded me of a certain legend I heard when I was in a party in the University (party people being Physicists if someone wondered). I recall someone told me there was some buzz when no particles came through the accelerator (not the LHC, can't recall what accelerator it was). Lots of megawatts to start the system and nothing come out of it. Of course, situation being this, they immediately shut down the accelerator (yeah, it takes some time) and started troubleshooting. The end result was someone had forgot a beer bottle inside the tube... That bottle became pretty expensive when you think about it. I suppose the needed energy is several megawatthours to keep the system for some time + the pay for the people who had to check through everything in the accelerator tube.

Inspired by this, my imagination already draw a quick flash of a beer bottle travelling at relativistic speeds, smirking at the physicists and thinking something like:

[drunken red neck accent] 
"Hey guys, lookie 'ere, you never gonna guess who's gonna collide with that particle!"
[/drunken red neck accent]

And this ain't no ****. But don't quote me for that one.

Mika

[Admiral_Stones]

* Looks at page 2 *
Woo, that's the second thread derail I have achieved in my internet history so far!

I want them to install some sort of chair/merry-go-round system so that joe public like me can have a nice ride while the particles are sleeping.

This actually reminded me of a certain legend I heard when I was in a party in the University (party people being Physicists if someone wondered). I recall someone told me there was some buzz when no particles came through the accelerator (not the LHC, can't recall what accelerator it was). Lots of megawatts to start the system and nothing come out of it. Of course, situation being this, they immediately shut down the accelerator (yeah, it takes some time) and started troubleshooting. The end result was someone had forgot a beer bottle inside the tube... That bottle became pretty expensive when you think about it. I suppose the needed energy is several megawatthours to keep the system for some time + the pay for the people who had to check through everything in the accelerator tube.

Inspired by this, my imagination already draw a quick flash of a beer bottle travelling at relativistic speeds, smirking at the physicists and thinking something like:

[drunken red neck accent] 
"Hey guys, lookie 'ere, you never gonna guess who's gonna collide with that particle!"
[/drunken red neck accent]

And this ain't no ****. But don't quote me for that one.

Mika

Looky at my signature.

[karajorma]

Scientists at the LHC have been getting death threats and pleas to shut the machine down:

You know what? As long as no one actually gets hurt I say good. In fact I want more hysteria. I want all the worlds media running stories day and night about how it's the end of the world.

And then on Wednesday they turn it on....and nothing much happens.

For too long the media have scared the public about science. We need a big fake story we can point at and say "They were wrong about the LHC, They wrong about this too." The public won't distrust the media when it comes to science until they see the media getting the science spectacularly wrong in a way that even a Fox News viewer can understand. The LHC could very well be that mistake. You can't get a much bigger prophecy wrong than predicting the end of the world erroneously after all.

[WMCoolmon]

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find it had already been tested before it opens officially. Most Nuclear power plants were started that way, the official pulling the lever, cutting the rope or whatever was actually 'opening' something that had been started at least 24 hours beforehand.

[neo_hermes]

Now to fully Test the power of this fully armed and operational Battle Station.