# Are we worried about the Large Hadron Collider being turned on? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 7, 2008, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441 "2008-09-07T02:45:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/141 "2008-09-10T12:00:43Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I’ve read the linked papers and I don’t _understand_ them. Which makes sense because I’m not trained in physics - high school chemistry is the extent of my scientific knowledge, and I wasn’t even very good at that. But from what I have read of the data - it’s just so damn theoretical. It’s making me suspect that these scientists have basically just come up with a bunch of names and a bunch of classification systems for things, but they don’t really know what the things _are._ They’ve come up with a very elaborate taxonomy and language, but just what it’s referring to, they’re still not certain. And they’re hoping to just make their discoveries by accident. The thing is, though, while you might not understand, they do. Just because it all seems like jargon and made up shit to you, doesn’t mean it is. If you can’t tell the difference between a paper on General Relativity and TimeCube, doesn’t mean nobody can. Also, the ‘still here’-argument isn’t really that complex at all, and I’ve yet to see you even address it. [QUOTE=Argent Towers] Such is the case here. [/QUOTE] No, it’s absolutely not. We know that there is no chance that the LHC will destroy the world because it hasn’t happened yet. It’s as simple as that. A (slightly) better analogy would be to take a revolver, pull the trigger, I dunno, a couple of billions of times with nothing happening, and then give it to you to test it by shooting it at a target – your worries would be equivalent to worrying about a bullet being fired, ricocheting of the target and killing you. Plus, there is likely to be a tremendous pay-off from the LHC’s experiments, even though we might not yet know what it is. Take nuclear medicine for example – impossible without research into particle colliders. [QUOTE=Argent Towers] Nobody has really refuted my comment earlier about the nuclear explosions. The conditions occur in nature to produce nuclear explosions - but you don’t have Hiroshima and Nagasaki just randomly erupting wherever the fuck. It takes humankind to pull the switch to make that happen. [/QUOTE] No, in fact, those things and far worse ones happen all the time in nature – stellar fusion, novae, gamma ray bursts, all kinds of nasty shit. We just happen to inhabit a rather cushy corner, because life (as we know it) generally can’t develop in the midst of nuclear explosions. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/142 "2008-09-10T12:03:45Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > ETA - they turned it on, yeah, that’s not the point. They haven’t started the actual collisions yet, which gives me about two months of worrying about this shit and drinking whiskey to try to take my mind off of it. Sorry for the triple post, but that wasn’t there when I wrote my last one – as I’ve outlined above, even if there were a stable, microscopic black hole created, destruction wouldn’t be immediate (and neither would our knowledge of it, I gather), but, if it happened at all, could take anywhere up to a couple of hundreds of billions of years, so if you really want to continue worrying, chances are you’ll die of liver failure before you’d be sucked into a gravitational maelstrom. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/143 "2008-09-10T12:11:23Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I’ve read the linked papers and I don’t _understand_ them. Which makes sense because I’m not trained in physics - high school chemistry is the extent of my scientific knowledge, and I wasn’t even very good at that. But from what I have read of the data - it’s just so damn theoretical. It’s making me suspect that these scientists have basically just come up with a bunch of names and a bunch of classification systems for things, but they don’t really know what the things _are._ They’ve come up with a very elaborate taxonomy and language, but just what it’s referring to, they’re still not certain. And they’re hoping to just make their discoveries by accident. > > Would you go to a mechanic who said, “here, I’m just going to poke around inside your Porsche for a while with this nine-iron, and maybe something will get fixed.” Or a surgeon who said, “let’s see what happens if I stick my hand inside your stomach and wiggle it around…maybe it’ll make you feel better.” You’ve stated that you don’t understand what they are doing, so how can you make such an analogy? Your doctor says, “I’m going to use a big magnet to diagnose your stomach ache”. Sounds pretty ridiculous to use essentially a big magnet to diagnose a stomach ache, but isn’t that what an MRI does? Or, do you freak out because you think it could pull all the iron out of your blood? Maybe if you thought of the LHC as a large version of an MRI it might help. It looks similar and shoves protons around in order to detect their radiofrequency. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mri) ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/144 "2008-09-10T12:12:05Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Would you go to a mechanic who said, “here, I’m just going to poke around inside your Porsche for a while with this nine-iron, and maybe something will get fixed.” That’s not what they’re doing. What’s happening here is: The mechanic says “let’s inject a highly flammable mixture of hydrocarbons and air into the engine, light it with a 100,000 volt shock, and see what happens”. The uneducated Chicken Little says “Won’t that blow up the engine? I don’t know jack shit about engines, but explosions break things.” The mechanic says “It sure as hell shouldn’t, this has happened millions of times before in this engine, using a lot more fuel than we’re using, and it hasn’t broken yet.” Chicken Little wants him to explain WHY it won’t break the engine, in layman’s terms. So the mechanic goes into metallurgy and energy density, shockwave patterns, culminating in the statement that it is extremely unlikely that anything bad will happen, and CL says “I don’t get it, it’s too complicated, explosions break things”. ---
**Author:** ![sinical\_brit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/48db29/32.png) [@sinical\_brit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinical_brit)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/145 "2008-09-10T12:14:52Z")
Well it looks like it worked a treat so far ! A mag 6.1 earthquake in Iran and Kim Jong Ill has disapeared. Man, scientists can do some crazy shit these days … ---
**Author:** ![Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/46a35a/32.png) [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/146 "2008-09-10T12:18:54Z")
I for one am amazed that speculation about this is still going on. There was a moron on my local radio station this morning saying that there was a 1 in 50 million chance of the Universe being destroyed. Why don’t these people read a little bit more and use their brains? For the record I think the chances of us being destroyed by this are astronomically small. As has been said here many times, this type of collision occurs in nature regularly, if it was going to happen in less than the lifetime of the sun we would have noticed by now. What amazes me is that no-one seems to be singing the praises of the scientists, engineers and technicians who have managed to construct a ring 26km in diameter roughly 100m below the surface which can combine two beams of hadrons with sub-micron accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/147 "2008-09-10T12:38:39Z")
Fortunately, the [International Earth Destruction Advisory Board](http://qntm.org/?board) is on top of things. > [@](#): > > It is our duty to inform you that as of 7:35:05am UTC on September 10, 2008, the Earth has been destroyed. > > \< snip \> > > Evidence is still being collated, but preliminary results suggest that the Earth was destroyed pre-emptively by scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, before the commencement of their experiments to locate the Higgs Boson, as a precautionary measure to ensure that the experiment itself could not result in the destruction of the Earth. > > \< snip \> > > **The Earth hasn’t been destroyed! What are you talking about?** > > Some of you will find it tougher to let go than others. There will be counselling sessions running on Pluto starting in mid-April. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/148 "2008-09-10T12:42:24Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > That’s not what they’re doing. What’s happening here is: > > The mechanic says “let’s inject a highly flammable mixture of hydrocarbons and air into the engine, light it with a 100,000 volt shock, and see what happens”. > > The uneducated Chicken Little says “Won’t that blow up the engine? I don’t know jack shit about engines, but explosions break things.” > > The mechanic says “It sure as hell shouldn’t, this has happened millions of times before in this engine, using a lot more fuel than we’re using, and it hasn’t broken yet.” I call for a motion to elect this as the winning post of this thread. > [@Argent Towers](#): > > Would you go to a mechanic who said, “here, I’m just going to poke around inside your Porsche for a while with this nine-iron, and maybe something will get fixed.” Funny thing is, you occasionally DO convince things to happen in a car where a pinpoint application of kinetic energy is beneficial. A nine-iron might be such a tool to perform such an action. A poor one, but carefully applied, it could get the work done. Your problem is: You don’t understand it [in this case, the LHC] so obviously NOBODY understands it. What an ignorant thought. Doesn’t matter though, you won’t listen, it’s your lot in life. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/149 "2008-09-10T12:51:25Z")
> [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](#): > > I for one am amazed that speculation about this is still going on. There was a moron on my local radio station this morning saying that there was a 1 in 50 million chance of the Universe being destroyed. Well, I don’t know about the moron on your local radio station, but the original moron who came up with that figure was Sir Martin Rees, the UK Astronomer Royal. 😛 But! To pre-empt shrill cries of ‘see, even actual high profile scientists take the risks seriously/1 in 50 million is still way too high when it comes to the destruction of the world!’, let’s put that figure in its oft-eschewed context: based on a paper by Arnon Dar, Alvaro de Rújula and Ulrich Heinz that discusses an astronomical limit on the destruction of the earth through the creation of strangelets (i.e. takes the fact that we’re still here and uses that to put a constraint on the probability of our destruction), Rees concluded that if (I believe) the RHIC ran for 10 years, the probability for a catastrophic event would be less than 1 in 50 million, which is not the same as saying that there’s a 1 in 50 million chance of cataclysm (cf. [this article](http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/30679)). Again, this is a constraint that was derived using then current astronomical data, away from any theorizing – newer data has pushed this probability to one in approx. 10[sup]19[/sup], and there’s also the fact that there are currently no good theoretical reasons to assume that a catastrophe were even possible. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/150 "2008-09-10T14:40:49Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > It’s making me suspect that these scientists have basically just come up with a bunch of names and a bunch of classification systems for things, but they don’t really know what the things _are._ That’s because you’re a fucking idiot. I halfway hope the LHC _does_ destroy the world because that would bring an end to your ridiculous bleating. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/151 "2008-09-10T15:01:21Z")
I apologize for the previous post. I seriously thought this thread was in the Pit. My post was uncalled for in this context and I retract it and apologize without reservation. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/152 "2008-09-10T15:31:06Z")
Well, it’s been turned on and so far we are all still alive. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/153 "2008-09-10T15:45:30Z")
Bah! It’s a plot to lull you into a false sense of security! They’re only colling it down and aligning the MACHINE OF DOOM! Then, when the worry has abated, they’ll flip the switch and kill themselves in an orgy of fundamental particles. ---
**Author:** ![Interconnected\_Series\_of\_Tubes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/13edae/32.png) [@Interconnected\_Series\_of\_Tubes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interconnected_Series_of_Tubes)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/154 "2008-09-10T16:00:11Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > …orgy of fundamental particles. Woah, baby, slow down! You’re moving fast, I know…but I can’t find you! ---
**Author:** ![GomiBoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@GomiBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GomiBoy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/155 "2008-09-10T16:04:24Z")
The only difference between the days of yore with the weirdos screaming about the end of the earth is that teh intarweb gives them legs and voices; if not for that, the squealing fear-mongers would be the shouting freaks you used to be able to avoid on the street. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/156 "2008-09-10T16:11:44Z")
If they don’t get the Higgs ,then what. Do they rethink everything or built a bigger yet collider? ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/157 "2008-09-10T16:15:41Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > If they don’t get the Higgs ,then what. Do they rethink everything or built a bigger yet collider? There’s more money in “B”. ---
**Author:** ![GomiBoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@GomiBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GomiBoy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/158 "2008-09-10T16:45:29Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > There’s more money in “B”. Yep, those wild and crazy particle physicists started up CERN just to have one long party and milk the taxpayers for the expense… It’s quite the high-paying profession, particle physics. It’s right up there with investment banking in the pay-offs professionals can expect. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/159 "2008-09-10T17:17:28Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > If they don’t get the Higgs ,then what. Do they rethink everything or built a bigger yet collider? You know that “secret weapon” Woodward was talking about? Two words: Particle. Cannon. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441/160 "2008-09-10T17:18:45Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > I apologize for the previous post. I seriously thought this thread was in the Pit. My post was uncalled for in this context and I retract it and apologize without reservation. It’s okay, apology accepted. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-worried-about-the-large-hadron-collider-being-turned-on/462441.md?page=9)