Scientists recreating end of the world!?

[Louie]

Reading the news today, I saw this article...

Physicists May Bring About the End Of the Universe — But Probably Not (http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/082399/rhic.sml)

Should I be worried about these scientists trying to recreate the Big Bang?

[mr john]

Maybe you should worry-but probably not.

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"Pardon me while I have a strange interlude."-Marx

[Nickrz]

Should I worry about why I'm probably not going to worry?

[mr john]

Wait a minute. RE create the end? They done it before? wait another minute. CREATE the END? I can't even begin the beguin. "Here we are at the end of the start of this exciting race ,folks." Now I AM worried.

[Undead Dude]

I think this quote from that article says it all:
"This is the way good scientists
think," he said. "In all probability nothing bad will happen, and in a practical sense
it won't happen. But it's not a
zero probability."

Scientists are used to aknowlegding astromomically tiny probabilities, like the probability of the barrier tunnelling phenomenon allowing for a bullet to pass through your head without causing harm.

There are times in which something that doesn't have a zero probability can still be treated as if it does. Sounds like this is one of those cases.

And this quote is also telling:
The biggest evidence against the possibility of a matter-eating strangelet forming is the fact that heavy ion collisions happen all the time in the universe. "There have been constant cosmic ray
collisions in space over the whole 10-billion-year history of the
universe," Ludlam said, "and we're still here."
So the scientists are just doing something in the lab that is already happening all of the time in nature.

[mr john]

It IS typical of how the popular press treats science. The papers think they have to make it interesting, give it a 'hook',plus they don't understand what they are talking about. It is still a 'well known fact' that the scientists who TESTED the Hydrogen bomb seriously worried they were going to start a chain reaction and destroy the earth ,if not the universe. Any way ,I sure am glad they cancelled that super conducting super colider they were gonna build down the road.They might have tried it there instead of england. Even if we did find out about the cancelation two days after my wife was hired to be the high school level educational liason there.There's way too much of this scientists messin around with things man was not meant to know.... I am worried about one thing when I tried to read the article it kept flashing off and on repeatedly, trying to load but not completing. it was amost as if there was something they didn't want ME to know.

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"Pardon me while I have a strange interlude."-Marx

[Louie]

:( Well, looks like I'm another victim of cheap media hype. Sorry.

[Lumpy]

The proposed ion-collision experiments have astronomically less energy then what would be needed to create a mini-Big Bang. And as was pointed out, natural cosmic ray collisions with much more energy happen all the time.

A somewhat more plausible possibility is whether the collisions would create "strange matter". Ordinary matter consists of atoms with nuclei composed of protons and neutrons, which in turn are composed of two kinds of quarks- "up" and "down". Other kinds of quarks exist, but all the particles that include them are unstable. But scientists have theorized some some special configuration of up, down, and strange quarks might be stable. It would require special conditions, mainly high energy, to create.

The catch is that the theory that predicts this also predicts that strange matter might actually have a lower energy than ordinary nucleonic matter. If so, there's a possibility that a nugget of strange matter could catalize the conversion of any ordinary matter around it into strange matter. This has led to nightmare scenerios where a speck of strange matter ends up turning the earth into a mini-neutron star. Probability low, but still scary to think about.

[eggo]

yeah sure strange matter exists in nutron stars, but what if the only thing keeping the stuff from distroying the universe was the emense gravity of the star? (actualy who couldn't use more stability in their life?) but i think it is wrong to do anything that has a chance of ending *everything*. i was going to say it should be against the law but what would be the punnishment?

eggo

[Undead Dude]

eggo

Perhaps you don't know what cosmic rays are. These reactions are already happening in our atmosphere and undoubtedly in countless other places throughout the universe. It is not limited to neutrons stars.

Does that make you feel any better?