I thought so. You should know that they have flipped the switch on the Large Hadron Collider, and no disasters yet. Of course, all they've done so far is whirl around in circles at near the speed of light, with no big high-energy collisions yet … the gang at Cosmic Variance have been live-blogging the LHC tests, so watch that to see what's new.
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The big story in high-energy physics this week is the release of a report on the projected cost of the International (very nearly) Linear Collider (ILC), which comes out to $6.7 billion-with-a-b (not including labor). There's a story in the Times this morning, and an expert view on Cosmic Variance…
"Although important nuclear physics work was to go on in laboratories such as ours had become - and we had to cut down to a lower energy group - it was not fundamentally opening up new insights on the structure of matter. That required you to be in a higher league." -John Henry Carver
Okay, before…
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has suffered some setbacks in recent months, but they aren't letting that hold them back:
CERN has announced that the Large Hadron Collider will switch on in May 2008, with collisions at full energy starting in summer 2008.
"We'll be starting up for physics in May…
As you undoubtedly already know, the Large Hadron Collider suffered a setback this week:
The start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN could be delayed after three of the magnets used to focus and manipulate the accelerator's proton beams failed preliminary tests at CERN earlier this week…
Will the LHC prove the existence of God? Or will it answer the biggest mystery of all - is it really turtles all the way down?
It should be obvious that we only think the world hasn't ended.
In fact the LHC has transformed us all into strangelets - and this new, strangelet world is NOTHING LIKE the world we lived in less than 24 hours ago.
My Hadron is rising.
Ah crap, I thought we would be looking at the Universe from the edge of a black hole! I hate when some reports refer to finding the "god" particle. Freaking religion has to render everything to a state of dementia.
I got sent a lovely link for checking up on this:
http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Tabloid media has been especially irresponsible yesterday and today, with articles titled "The world is coming to an end" and so on, describing how "experts" have calculated that black holes of such immense mass will be created that the entire Earth will be engulfed. Of course, none of the scientists who know anything about this think this will happen. But, the evening press is what it is, at least in my country. Sad, really.
That said, I'm extremely excited about the results that may come from the LHC.
Obviously we have been saved by the power of intercessory prayer, faithful people on their knees having preserved us from destruction by scientists who refuse to acknowledge that there are some things man was not meant to know. [Link]
Yes, the Sun no longer rises, instead, the Earth is spheroid and spins along a central axis the solar system central core where an extremely large ball of fusing atoms is located providing light to one half of the planet....
There is a website monitoring the situation. It will keep you up to date as to whether the planet has been destroyed by the LHC.
http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/
Notacrook
that was good for a nice laugh this morning.
thanks
Surely god would prevent any real dramas happening to his finest creation?
Wouldnt he intervene if he realized that chimps-with-brains were about to get his masterpiece swallowed in some black hole?
And if the LHC brings on the Rapture,so what?Wouldnt that make a billion death cultists happy? Who are those people suing CERN i wonder,cant be Christians !
Oh,and Im so going to pinch the Bible in my hotel room lol,for future references !
Zeno @ 7
So the "god" particle was found, with or without prayer?
Media (at least Argentine media) are calling the LHC "God's machine". Ugh.
Swiftsure
Nope, but if you'd like to understand better what it might find, check:
http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/08/04/what-will-the-lhc-find/
The end of the world is nigh!
Relatively speaking of course. ;-)
I don't think the link is working. I'm using Google Chrome so that might be the problem... but I dunno.
Dang it! I was hoping it would bring on Teh Rapture and suck all the wingnuts and ID loonies into another dimension. They'd like that, and so would I.
But perhaps . . .perhaps . . . the Big Hadron had something to do with our local school board elections yesterday, when three stealth wingnuts whose candidacy was being supported by a troublemaker on the school board were soundly defeated. People came out in droves, as droves is defined in school board election terms, anyway. (At least one of the stealth bombers actually had his or her own kids enrolled in private school, which really tipped their hand and pissed people off.) Or perhaps it influenced Al Franken's victory! And now its otherworldly influence of peace and prosperity will send McSame/McWorse crashing down to defeat and ignominy come November!
/dream sequence
I wish. But I'll happily settle for all the interesting sciencey stuff to come. I've been fascinated by this from the start, although I'm certainly no scientist.
I've spent the last week trying to explain to others how it's safe. It's amazing that people who have no knowledge of physics are getting worked up because people who have a tiny bit of knowledge of physics are claiming to know better than the experts in physics.
Excited to see the results, but getting a beam around it is still a great achievement in itself. Go science!
#9 -- That made my morning!
Some may call it, (the Higg's Boson), the god particle, but I bet, if it shows up, it won't be anything to do with that fecker Jehovah.
Kel, this was the best layperson description I've found so far:
Now if only personal belief could be trumped by expert knowledge and opinion... Here's to hoping.
As usual, today's XKCD is relevant...
Turn-On
What really has the fundies upset about the LHC is that if a black hole swallows the earth and we all die then biblical prophesy did not come true and there is no god.
BBC Radio 4 has been doing exceptionally well on this. Programmes in the lead-up, special programmes all day today - sound science and a sense of celebration, live updates and, even, Prof Higgs himself on the lunchtime news.
Just google "bbc.co.uk/bigbang"
OK, so, the real threat of this donut-shaped thingy is that all that quantum uncertainty may lead to switching Barrack Obama's brain with that of Bristol Palin's unborn baby.
Which is as probable as the world ending because of a giant European underground donut.
Oh what a good day for science.
I'm ticked. There's only been one tiny beep of this on the news today.
I only have a tiny bit of knowledge of physics and I claim nothing but a bit of excitement and wonder at what they might learn.
http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
lol
lol
lol
This experiement - will it be easier now for us to vibrate to a higher level of consciousness? Or travel through alternate realities to other universes? Actually that's probably how homeopathy works. The molecules travel through alternate universes (on a string, through the quantum foam) and that's how they can remember themselves.
And if those scientists bring on the rapture, will our fillings and artificial knees still get left behind?
Or perhaps we might start ... teaching freakin critical thinking skills. You don't have to know much about physics to know that the world isn't going to end because of this experiment. Honestly. I don't know jack shit about physics but I can type and I've heard of google.
It pisses me off. There's no excuse for being this dumb. "Voodoo Science" ought to be required reading for every high school student in the US.
The Large Hadron Collider
Makes theoretical physics applieder.
It's a machine for doing proton-smashing experiments at near light speed on an unprecedented scale in,
And almost infinitely safer than handing control of the US nuclear arsenal to John McCain and Sarah Palin.
(Eat your heart out, Ogden Nash.)
I'll only be worried if they start showing footage of a crazy-looking scientist dude - wild, Einstein hair and shabby lab-coat - rubbing his hands together and shouting, 'Fools! I'll destroy them all!'
Yes. The old universe didn't have a running LHC in it.
And it is Tuesday.
Wowbagger, don't be silly. We only do that crazy hair and shouting thing when we get back uncomplimentary referees' reports.
Surely god would prevent any real dramas happening to his finest creation?
Wouldnt he intervene if he realized that chimps-with-brains were about to get his masterpiece swallowed in some black hole?
Nah, he's just got bored, and having the universe destroy itself from within is so much more artistic than just clicking "exit"!
According to the anti-LHC folks, it can take up to 4 years for the mBH's (micro Black Holes) to destroy the Earth. This is only the beginning.
#31
Are we absolutely, absolutely sure that the old universe didn't have a running LHC somewhere in it?
Not on earth, of course, but. . . .
However, some scientists did report sensing "a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced".
That website reminds me of the old "Ways to destroy the world" page. Thye had a little widget you could put on a website to show you the world's status. If it was green, the world still existed. Red, and the world had been destroyed. It was rather handy when dealing with bouts of existential angst.
Maria@#22: xkcd is not only relevant, it's sublime!!!!
The layering of geeky goodness just about blew me away.
"...charming stranger."
"Top or bottom."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarks#Properties
For those not familiar with particle physics, check the Name column...
#34:
And I've seen this tied in with the Mayan calendar world-ends-in-2012 woo. *Facepalm*
It couldn't be a new universe if there was, could there? Didn't think so....
#39
They are hedging their bets. The latest I heard was up to 500 years.
Hey! You're talking about scooping my thesis!!!1!
Right. And Germany's foremost anti-LHC loon (...who simply doesn't accept the existence of Hawking radiation, among many other things... he has his own physics) has said 50 years. In other words, he can keep saying he's right for the rest of his life.
And then he changed his mind and said 500 years.
Whatever. We get bombarded with even faster cosmic rays all the time.
@MissPrism (#29) Surely "Edmund Clerihew Bentley"?
Well, if McPain get elected (one way or another), it might. As an October Surprise.
Sercorer said:
What, again?
Oh, crap. I guess I shoulda been using "protection" after all last night.
Well, for some people the world has ended...
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/sep/10end.htm
I'm joking, of course. My girlfriend said that the LHC's powerful magnetic fields were giving her a headache. Damn, she's sensitive. :-\
Wednesday.
Bad news, people.
Sili #49
Loved it - thanks for sharing!
I'm looking forward to finding evidence for the Higgs boson and supersymmetry so physicists can stop just assuming they're both true. Then their field can finally be as objective and rigorous as biology!
Don't forget to view the html source on that page. Half the humor is in the comments, and the other half in the code.
Jim @ # 43
For rhyme that's woefully lacking in meter,
you find it hard to get somethin' that'd beat a
bit of good old McGonagall
(he of the Bridge o'er the Silvery Tay)
when the universe, life, & everything could become feck all,
when they smash those hadron beams any day.
Maybe the world did end, and the afterlife is *exactly* the same as the previous world.
Geez, that's a depressing thought. :-(
Actually, I think http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/
is the site with the funny html, not the one you posted.
Re the "God particle": I've heard it told that the physicist who theorised it originally called it "that goddamned particle!", but in the popular media it was shortened.
Maybe the world did end...
Well, I have to say, as apocalypses go, that was pretty underwhelming. Where were the rivers of blood, the magma blasting out of gaping chasms into the air and raining down, setting the city on fire? Where were the winged demons wheeling through the sky? And what about the panic in the streets? And the looting? I was told there'd be looting. Woulda been handy, too... I coulda used a new espresso maker.
It's pathetic, really. Poor craftsmanship, that's all this is. No one's got pride in their work anymore.
Maybe the world did end, and the afterlife is *exactly* the same as the previous world.
According to Laurie Anderson, "Heaven is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much, better." So, is everything much much better? Drat.
The switch was thown in Switzerland
And protons zoomed around a bend--
Across the world, we clasped our hands
And waited for the world to end.
The scientists at Fermilab
Were hoping there was much to learn--
But true believers everywhere
Were voicing their concern with CERN
The particles accelerate:
When protons smash--what happens then?
Did CERN just push the "reset" switch,
To start the cosmos up again?
The scientists themselves do not,
For certain, know what happens next--
But there are some who claim the truth,
As written in their Holy Text:
The Lord will come--the end is nigh
The saved will fly to Jesus' side
The sinners will be cast to Hell
So let the particles collide!
(Of course, predictions such as this
Have happened many times before,
And every time--oh, gee, they're wrong.
Congratulations; wrong once more.)
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/09/end-of-world-and-i-feel-f…
And it is Tuesday.
tsg,
Something must have happened to breach between potential worlds, because in my world September 10, 2008 is a Wednesday.
Ao, all that time, money, and effort, and all we get is minor glitch in the calendar?
What a let-down.
-jcr
Steve M @ #55: Both have similarly funny HTML codes.
"God particle" my foot. It's just another nail-like no-god particle in the coffin of various religious worldviews.
I take LHC over JHC any day.
Excellent catch John!
Something is screwy here. I changed keyboards thinking it was me. There's also typo's all over the threads.
There is a great disturbance in the farce, it's Holbach.
Ha, ha, ha!!!! Never to early to be giddy. ;o)
Screw the world. Who cares if the world ends or not. The real question is IS THERE A HIGGS BOSON OR ISN'T THERE? I'm kind of hoping it doesn't exist and the standard model is just wrong, wrong, wrong. But I've always been kind of grumpy about physics.
#55: They're both pretty funny, but you have to scroll down a bit to see the joke on the one.
#5, #9: You brightened up an otherwise awful morning. Thank you.
I have no clue about the actual science involved, but I can't wait to see what they find either.
I read in a blog yesterday where someone had misspelled "Hadron", and that this was the "Large Hardon Collider".
That really changes the direction of this experiment, I figure.
You mean this?
Damn! And I was hoping I wouldn't have to work today.
Why won't a black materialize when you really need one?
Cuttlefish, Ô Great Cuttlefish!
I am once again awed by your rhyme.
Every now and then, I despair about Humanity's future, and then I see/hear/read something that makes me believe that all is not lost.
PS: AJMilne@#57 was pretty good too.
#68 ...black HOLE materialize...
There it goes again!
to instead of too.
You may get to drop that KOT Chimpy. We might have a 'hant'.
The collisions haven't started yet.
There is still time to start selling "mini-black hole" insurance. It would be the perfect scam. If nothing happans we make tons of money. If the LHC produces stranglets and black holes, we can tie everything up in litigation until the end of the world.
Take a look at today's Google opening screen illustration of the LHC. http://www.google.com
Rev @67, I meant this:
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/09/the-world-will-not-end-this-wee…
(Sam Bandak's comment, pretty near the top, where he misses several orders of magnitude between 1,000 and 1 billion.)
Before you get too complacent, Nostradamus apparently phrophesied a CERN black hole. We're clearly doomed.
Hawkings hopes they don't find the Higgs.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/09/hawking-higgs-particle.html
Hawking, not Hawkings. DOH!
Hawkings hopes they don't find the Higgs.
I get the impression that he believes they will, but hopes they won't, because not finding it will be far more interesting. He tends to bet against himself, just to encourage discovery.
*listens too "black hole sun" by soundgarden*
maybe if we are lucky the LHC causes a black hole that sucks up god and all of his meathead followers.......
bahahha
That was the feeling I got. He bet a smallish amount of money.
The world will end not with a bang, but with a whimper.
I just thought of that myself. No need to google it, just trust me.
A friend of yours comments on the Great On-Turning, PZ.
In the New UniverseTM, all the clocks are wrong.
Has the BBC's absolutely vomit-inducing coverage been mentioned yet?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7607531.stm
I'm not sure why they did such a bizarre "analysis." It's so needlessly heavy on the religion-angle I don't know what to make of it. I might file a complaint.
Patricia @ 63 and 71
It's me! I'm hovering at the event horizon of the black hole and directing all sorts of cosmic phenomena at the earth, getting the creotards to believe it's their phony god coming with the crap Rapture! I wish I could have the black hole suck the whole demented shit pile of them down a worm hole and spit them out in another dimension! "god" particle: tell the black hole this bullshit and it will squeeze you down to a pinpoint to let you know what it "thinks" of that crap idea!
Ha, ha! I knew it was you stomping the farce somewhere.
My day is made. The record shop called to let me know two Leon Redbone CD's came in for me. The Dan Barker book is in too. Hopefully it'll be better than the last trash I bought.
First beam is a success! woohoo!
We converted our high school into a model of the LHC to mark the event.
http://www.laboutloud.com/blog/2008/09/why-i-converted-my-school-into-a…
This was a triumph
I'm making a note here, huge success
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction
Large Hadron Collider!
We do what we must because we can
For the good of all of us
Except for all the fundies
Will you all stop whining, there has been no mistake
Now the sun is shining, why don't you have some cake
And our science gets done by a really big gun
And you people are all still alive
Don't be fucking angry
We're being so sincere right now
Even though some of you said you'd kill us
Nearly sued us to pieces
And wanted to throw us in a fire
Your stupid burned, it hurt because
We're doing this for your good
Now these particle trails make a beautiful line
And all of the details show our results in due time
So we're glad we won't burn
Think of all the things we'll learn
And believe us, you'll still be alive
So stop all your bitching
If you prefer to, stay inside
Maybe you can go and drink some Kool-Aid
Buy some from the fundies
That wasn't a joke now, by the way
Anyway, this proton's great
It's so accelerated
Look at us still talking when there's science to do
When I look out there it makes us glad we're not you
We've experiments to run
There is research to be done
And you fundies'll still be alive
Though it sucks that you're all still alive
So are you glad that you're all still alive
So shut up because you're still alive
Still alive
Still alive
"When Prophecy Fails"....
ISBN-10: 0061311324
ISBN-13: 978-0061311321
Katherine @ 88
Has a mass of bosons bombarded your brain into insanity?
No, a mass of baryons might have in the form of caffeine.
And people wonder why scientists are so grumpy. The only way they can get people to notice them is to threaten to destroy the Earth.
"And it is Tuesday."
Oh fuck on a rope. The LHC sucked us all into a time vortex where it is eternally Tuesday. Somebody shoot me.
The anti-LHC forces confuse the most accepted model for black holes (with Hawking radiation and no expectation of formation at the LHC) with physically modeled 2 TeV black holes which have a natural expectation of Hawking radiation with a child's toy model of 2 TeV black holes which have a natural expectation of electric charge (in the absence of Hawking radiation) with the bugaboo of 2 TeV uncharged black holes (which did require a new paper to refute). Since the loss of charge mechanism is related to the Hawking radiation, the burden of proof was on the anti-LHC forces to present a physical model where the expectation of neutral, quiet, 2 TeV black holes are possible. A burden they never accepted because they aren't physicsists of any description but mere concern trolls.
They have not done this and the 2008 Giddings & Magano paper removed such bugaboos from the table.
http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/CERN-PH-TH_2008-025.pdf
This aphysical claptrap pushed on the popular media by concern trolls has already cost human life. End it now, Luddite crackpots.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26641652/
Do biologist get experiment envy? Physicists get the LHC, astronomers get the Hubble, roboticists get robots. Biologist get dead animals in jars. No respect I tell ya.
Darth Wader @ 94
All better than being a creotard and having a ghost in the head.
Woo-Hooo!
End it now, Luddite crackpots.
Yeah! That's tellin' em. I'm sooo stealing that for a t-shirt.
So ... if the Large Hadron Collider looks for the Higgs boson, does the Large Hardon Collider look for the Higgs Bosom?
And if it does, how does mrs Higgs feel about that?
Patricia @ 86
Good company with Leon Redbone! Sure hope the Dan Barker book doesn't sour into horse's apples also! Keep an eye on Katherine; she's getting a little too close to the Large Hadron Collider and is getting frisky with more garbage to throw at us.
Poke #84,
well, it's the BBC, so they have 2 versions with the same title, same date :
"'Big Bang' experiment starts well"
Version 1 for the reliotards, where they say nothing interesting (the one you've linked to)
Version 2 for those who would like to actually learn something
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7604293.stm
Holbach - Got Leon going right now. Bliss! The man simply cannot crack a note, from yodeling to whistling.
The two I picked up are 'Champagne Charlie' and 'On the Track'.
Being an FFRF member, at least if I think Barkers book stinks I can call in and tell him so. ;)
Patricia @ 100
What, no "Wild Bill is Sweet William Now"?
I've written a computer program that picks a song a piece of music completely at random from my hard drive (out of over 3,000 albums).
Just now after reading this thread, I clicked "play" on the PC.
So what does the computer decide to play?
Pop goes the World by Men Without Hats
I'm not making this up - honest! (and I didn't even know that song was on my hard drive either...)
Holbach - It's #6 on Champagne Charlie. Ain't misbehavin, and Polly Wolly Doodle are on On the Track. :)
Looks like that horrible troll poor Frog hooked last night is gone. Llurra got scriptured to death in two posts. Cripes, troll chow must not have any vitamins in it. Sure a puny lot here of late. Can't even bait em' with crackers.
Garbage, Holbach? I thought "Still Alive" was fitting to parody.
Katherine @ 104
One person's garbage is another person's trash? Wait, that did not come out the right way. Help me out here with another parody.
Patricia @ 103
Thanks for the tracks info on Leon.
Science is our forte here, and eviscerating religious trolls is an adjunct, but as you say, we haven't had some choice ones lately, and if we don't hone our cutting skills we will become dull and not up to par with them. Perhaps we should shut down for a while and give eveyone a breather and return in Autumn. Or, maybe Donahue and his demented catholic hordes will be enboldened and take a stab at us here and try to smear us with his catholic brand of pathetic blogging. Sure would love to see that moron try to crack the wall of solid rationalism. He'll be so frustrated with inability to soften us up, that he'll retreat behind a wall of crackers.
Holbach - Hop on over to the new thread Dinesh and Allah showed up. *pfffft* The Farce is with us again!
I followed the link to the charlesdarwin blog and to his source in a telegraph article, and was rewarded in the comment section by awesome Poe'y goodness:
See. It all fits.
Speaking of the LHC
heres a pole to crash
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26568553/
if it hasnt been posted before
A creotard felt the need to call into one of my local radio stations to whine that the LHC was just another futile attempt by science to prove evolution. She then proceeded to crap on about talking monkeys. Hmm, particle accelerators to talking monkeys...when will these morons stop conflating cosmology with evolution?
We've been warned before!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
Man.
That needs to be publicized. The anti-LHC loons are responsible for a death.
Fool!
Cuttlefish is not human.
No, this moron is completely serious. He's not even original except for adding the LHC.
Done.
Someone committed suicide over the chance they would die?!? This world has really gone insane, or at the very least insanity is more publicised than ever before.
What I want to know is, what do they do with the used protons when they are done with them?
my mom just asked me if i'd heard anything about "that big underground machine", and then asked if it might have had anything to do with that seaquake in indonesia.
after intuiting that she was referring to the supercollider, i told her that if she actually knew how the thing worked, she wouldn't be asking that question.
her reply: "no, i don't know how it works."
she obviously gets her news from the same reputable source as the fellow fixated on haarp. her science knowledge could fit in a thimble, but, bless her heart, she's never wrong — in her own mind. so her admission was actually a once-a-year event! looks like the supercollider's already paying off big dividends.
Patricia @ #96
You're welcome to use it.
I love my collider:
http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=A1L2xODZSI4
by the "Les Horribles Cernettes"
Patricia
I'd like to express my gratitude to you for pointing me to Leon Redbone on YouTube last week. Somehow I had never come across him before.
What a wonderful voice. Amazing whistling and guitar, too.
Thanks
England beat Croatia 4-1 last night, against all the predictions. (That's at "soccer", for you lot across the pond). The LHC has obviously bounced us through a black hole into a parallel universe where England are actually good at football.
I am old enough to remember times when you had to believe that anti-science crap (or at least had to pretend that you believed it) to be accepted as properly middle-class, or properly white. Nowadays, those people that think supercolliders, HAARP or cable tv are actually doomsday machines are generally considered kooks, even among the 'Stuff White People Like' community. Sometimes there IS progress.
Darth Wader @ 94
"Do biologist get experiment envy? Physicists get the LHC, astronomers get the Hubble, roboticists get robots. Biologist get dead animals in jars. No respect I tell ya."
Physicists, astronomers and roboticists have to beg harder for lots more money and share their toys with other physicists, et al. Biologists get their own animals in jars to work on by themselves and the animals are cheaper, so they get more results/$. Unless they are geneticists. Those sequence machines can be exy.
Based on the arguments given on September 2, Judge Gillmor has dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction.
http://sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2029021&postcount=35