I'm just curious about this particle collider.....

[paul253]

But does anyone know what the point of this particle collider is?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483477,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/space

 

I don't know much about black holes, but I do know that their gravity is so strong that light cant even get out, and it basically sucks up everything in its path. Why are we going to turn something on that might create a black hole, even if its just for a milisecond?

[theavrock]

I can't claim to be an expert about this sort of thing, but from what I read the Large Hadron Collider was created to test many of the previously untested theories in physics. The main theory they hope to prove is the existence of Higgs boson particles. Its existence has never been proved, only theorized. If proved correct it should be able to help answer many questions previously unanswered in physics. It has been coined the "god particle" by media sources because of the answers it could provide about our world.

[nate82]

But does anyone know what the point of this particle collider is?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483477,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/space

 

I don't know much about black holes, but I do know that their gravity is so strong that light cant even get out, and it basically sucks up everything in its path. Why are we going to turn something on that might create a black hole, even if its just for a milisecond?

Black holes do not suck up everything in its path. A black hole has the same gravitational pull that the collapsing star had it doesn't suck anything really. If you were 91 million miles away from the star before it became a black hole you would still be at 91 million miles away from the black hole and you wouldn't get any closer. The only way something would get sucked into a black hole would be if it got to close to its gravitational pull.

 

I doubt we have anything powerful enough to create a black hole. It takes a lot of energy to create a black hole.

[DuWayne Steurer]

The LHC can (currently) only collide a few atoms at a time. There simply isn't enough material to do much of anything.

 

The reason this thing gets as much pub as it does is because it's in Dan Brown's book.

[theavrock]

se. Specifically, it is hoped that the Higgs boson will be detected which will supposedly confirm some Standard Model of physics. I do not know much about it, but the ultimate goal is to create a unified model of physics that combines quantum mechanics with electromagnetism and gravity.

 

The Higgs boson is predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. It explains in theory how particles get their mass, why it is where it is etc. It theorizes that in space exists a field the Higgs field and this is what particles interact with to get their mass. Confirming the Higgs boson would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. I agree with you 100% about the article. I'm not even going to start with the discussion because it leads into politics but to me it is ridiculous that science is so often ignored and misrepresented as a tool in politics.

[DHonks]

As a scientist, I can't believe that article actually pretends to be "news".

That's pretty funny seeing as every major source was reporting this back in the Fall.

[RightFieldCoder]

They may be able to create a black hole. A black hole "sucks" everything that is inside it's event horizon. They would be creating a black hole whose event horizon around the size of an atom, and it would last miliseconds before becoming ... ?undense? ... enough to no longer be a black hole.

 

There was also fear when we first tested the atomic bomb that it would vaporize the atmosphere of the entire planet and kill all life.

[Mr QL]

 

this is how I came to understand it

[theavrock]

 

this is how I came to understand it

 

Am I a dork because I find this really funny? PS: I love science humor.

[PlayerHader]

That video reminds me of the "Zap Rap" that we watched in grade school at some point making us aware that electricity can kill you. I'll have to youtube that one, too. Me and a friend still refer to the "Zap Rap" occasionally.

 

I'm not even going to pretend to be able to contribute to the information of this thread outside of that, except for that every time I read about this thing I imagine suddenly being dead from being condensed into a black hole.