CERN - LHC doomsday machine
Our understanding of the Universe is about to change...
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.
Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe...
Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe...
LHC is really a magnificent machine . It is the largest in the world, most powerful computer system in the world, it is the hottest spot in the galaxy, but even colder than outer space...
"To think that LHC particle collisions at high energies can lead to dangerous black holes is rubbish. Such rumors were spread by unqualified people seeking sensation or publicity."
Academician Vitaly Ginzburg, Nobel Laureate in Physics, Lebedev Institute, Moscow, and Russian Academy of Sciences
Academician Vitaly Ginzburg, Nobel Laureate in Physics, Lebedev Institute, Moscow, and Russian Academy of Sciences
"The world will not come to an end when the LHC turns on. The LHC is absolutely safe. ... Collisions releasing greater energy occur millions of times a day in the earth's atmosphere and nothing terrible happens."
Prof. Steven Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge University
Nevertheless, the builders of the world's biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet. Some scientists find it difficult to state categorically that such-and-such a theoretical catastrophe has no chance of happening. In fact, no one really knows what could happen, that's why it is called the experiment.
Geneva, 16 October 2008. /LHC incident/Investigations at CERN following a large helium leak into sector 3-4 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel have confirmed that cause of the incident was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator’s magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel.
On Tuesday 3 November, a bird carrying a baguette bread caused a shortcircuit in an electrical outdoor installation that serves sectors 7-8 and8-1 of the LHC. The knock-on effects included an interruption to theoperation of the LHC cryogenics system. The bird escaped unharmed butlost its bread.
Runaway black holes: Some physicists say the LHC could create microscopic black holes that would hang around for just a tiny fraction of a second and then decay. They worry that millions of black holes might somehow persist and coalesce into a compact gravitational mass that would draw in other matter and grow bigger. That's pure science fiction, said Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York. "These black holes don't live very long, and they have microscopic energy, and so they are harmless,".
Strangelets: Smashing protons together at high enough energies could create new combinations of quarks, the particles that protons are made of. Physicists worry that a nasty combination known as a stable, negatively charged strangelet could theoretically turn everything it touches into strangelets as well. Kaku compared this to the ancient myth "We see no evidence of this bizarre theory," he said. "Once in a while, we trot it out to scare the pants off people. But it's not serious."
Magnetic monopoles: One theory suggests that high-energy particle collisions might give rise to massive particles that have only one magnetic pole - only north, or only south, but not the north-south magnetism that dominates nature. Physicists worry that such particles could be created in the LHC and start a runaway reaction that converts atoms into other forms of matter. But there has been no evidence of such reactions, which should have occurred already as the result of more energetic cosmic-ray collisions in Earth's upper atmosphere.
The doomsaying can continue as long as scientists hold out even a tiny sliver of uncertainty. The startup schedule for the LHC has been repeatedly delayed, which would give more time for further safety assessments. I don't know if LHC is a doomsday machine but let's give it a go and see what happens ;)


