The Hedron Particle Collider - For or Against?

[Retrasado]

bardicverse said:

In case you aren't aware of this behemoth, read up:

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/03/time-machine-worlds-biggest-particle.html

To sum it up, this is the largest particle collider ever made, and it fires up in August 2008. The theory is that it will allow scientists to study space better, and help study how black holes work and what they're made of. Fairly useless stuff for our day to day lives, but ok,

There are 3 negative results that can happen from this device being used:

1 - Uncontrolled black hole - A black hole is created here on earth, that sucks in a pen, then maybe a book, then a table, then a room, then a state, a country, the entire world... pretty much bigtime suxxors for us all.

2 - Strangelets - Remember the story of King Midas? Everything he touched turned to gold. Strangelets have the Midas touch, but they turn everything they touch into lifeless grey goo. Not so bad, just avoid it, right? No. See, whatever touches a strangelet turns INTO a strangelet. So, if a strangelet is formed, it'd touch a desk, and the desk would become a strangelet too, then the floor, the room, the state, the country, etc. You get the point. The entire planet becomes grey playdough.

3 - Antimatter - For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Matter + antimatter + earth = PWNED Lets just say, you'll wish you were shot by a BFG instead.

Me, being the not so pro-science, see a lot more BAD in this than good. I don't think that the need to study black holes is as important as say, curing cancer or finding ways to clone food to prevent famine.

So my vote on the Hedrom Particle Collider is an emphatic NO.

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

1) If they did form a black hole, it would necessarily be very small (low in mass) and would effect the surounding enviroment the same as any other low-mass object. (you don't see people getting ripped aprat by holding a golf ball, even though the ball does have mass.) Also, the kind of energy required to create a black hole large enough to make a gravitational filed that could rip molecular bonds appart is far FAR beyond the capabilities of our civilization. I don;t even think the fictional Star Trek civilization would be able to do that.

2) Stranglets have not been proven to exist and even if they did, it would take an incredibly long tiome for them to cause harm because they are so small and we would be stop it long before it became a problem. (if it ever even did become a problem: we don;t know that much about them yet.) Also, did you know that when they first started working on the atom bomb, they calculated there was a ~5% chance of the nuclear reaction spreading to the atmosphere? Before they tested it, they had reuled out this possibility, but you get the idea about new concepts like this. It's entirely possible that stragelet, if they do in fact exist, have this kind of a "limitation".

3) You fail to understand how this works. Any antimatter reaction would only eliminate an amount of normal material equal to the mass of antimatter created. It can't do a chain-reaction as the supply of antimatter would quickly be exhausted and the reaction would stop. Also, even this particle accelorator will only be able to create at most a few micrograms of antimatter at any one time and that would be prevented from touching any normal matter by suspeding it in the accelarator's magnetic fields.

Bottom line: You fear what you do not understand. While their is a very VERY miniscule chance that case two could happen, even that is extremely unlikely and for all practicle purposes is impossible. The other two scenarios could not possibly happen any more than the atmosphere could be set on fire with a nuclear explosion.

My vote goes for this as a good thing, though imo it would be smarter to divert funds to fusion research, but that's another issue entirely.