Can a judge save the universe?

[goldorak]

Frankly as a European I say who the hell cares what the Americans think about CERN ?
They don't participate, have no legal jurisdiction so they can sue to their hearts content for all I care. The only practical result is thet they will be ridiculed even more for their "war on science". Man what a country that negates evolution and now wants to sue CERN for "the impossibily remote possibity of destroying earth". :rotfl:

[kurtz]

The thing is collisions like these are occuring all the time at the edge of the earth's atmosphere and we haven't been destroyed yet. Besides as we're all figments of Skybird's imagination we won't have anything to worry about as long as he gets sucked into the black hole he's imagined first.

[kiwi_2005]

Far-out. Its like something out of a SF movie. What next, a time machine:hmm:

Originally Posted by DeepIron

Well in principal I would agree...

However, the last major breakthrough in this kind of physics got dropped twice on Japan and we've lived in fear of it ever since...

If I remember my history correctly, when they were about to test the Atomic bomb for the very first time, several scientists were taking bets on whether or not the blast would begin to fuse the Nitrogen and Oxygen in the atmosphere (think wildfire in the air) that would destroy all the breathable air on the planet.

As I recall, no one bothered any judge to stop the experiement.
I believe the Earth survived the experiment (and subsequent blasts as well).

Originally Posted by Blacklight

From Wikipedia:

So, uh, how do they determine if it's "safe" without running it at full power? This is all done on theory until they actually turn the thing on to "full", right?

Legal challenge
On 21 March 2008 a complaint requesting an injunction against the LHC's startup was filed before the US District Court of Hawaii[35][36] by a group of seven concerned individuals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, confused, or just plain stupid, but where is it written (in stone) that any judge in a US court in Hawaii has anything to say about, or has any control over, anything going on in Switzerland? I'm assuming this Federal judge will toss this out for lack of jurisdiction.

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by MothBalls

It would get elected as Prime Minister or President.

Well, Mr. Strengelet got my vote, Micro Black Hole is just too corrupt, sucking in all the power...

Zayphod, The collider is theoretically safe, but so are the claims that it could destroy the world, so it's even...

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by kurtz

The thing is collisions like these are occuring all the time at the edge of the earth's atmosphere and we haven't been destroyed yet. Besides as we're all figments of Skybird's imagination we won't have anything to worry about as long as he gets sucked into the black hole he's imagined first.

Lovely. You are really cute.

[kurtz]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Lovely. You are really cute.

Aw Shucks!

[GlobalExplorer]

Originally Posted by kurtz

The thing is collisions like these are occuring all the time at the edge of the earth's atmosphere and we haven't been destroyed yet.

I also think that we can rely on statistics here. If such collisions occur naturally the fact that we are still there and not swallowd by a black hole is a good indication that nothing will go wrong.

Same as with the a-bomb, before the first nuclear tests some people thought that the chain reaction would not stop. A certain Adolf Hitler was one of them.

But think about this. Today at lunch a collegue of mine came up with an interesting theory: the reason that we can find no extraterrestrial civilizations is that they all go poof when they build their first particle accelerator of considerable size.

I find this really an interesting theory.

[Tchocky]

Like Carl Sagan's answer to Fermi's paradox - All large civilisations destroy themselves before reaching the stars

[Steel_Tomb]

Guys the black holes metioned are MINI black holes, they only exist for a few seconds before simply "dissapearing". Its all nonsense.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Steel_Tomb

Guys the black holes metioned are MINI black holes, they only exist for a few seconds before simply "dissapearing". Its all nonsense.

[Rhodes]

Originally Posted by goldorak

Being reading Stephen Hawking "The Universe in a Nutshell", and I remeber that he said a similar thing. That black holes that are very small or if the mass of a black hole would decress to zero that BH would dissapear. But I am talking of memory, I'll read it again and post here!

PS: no luck, can't find the page to put here. Need to read it again!

[baggygreen]

So, if it goes ahead, what advances are we hjoping to make from it???

[Blacklight]

So, if it goes ahead, what advances are we hjoping to make from it???

By probing the stucture of mater and spacetime at these levels (The most powerful levels ever done with this collider), we'll learn a lot about the laws of physics. We can finally put to test some of the equasions that up till now have been untestable because we didn't have powerful enough colliders before this one. Advancements in physics have led to advances in everything from computer to space technology. There's almost limitless scientific advancements that can be made from these studies.
Heck.. just a short while ago, a quantum computer (A computer chip the size of a molecule that or even an atom) was a thing of science fiction, and now we have people building them. We now have spacecraft flying through the solar system with ion drives. All possible by probing and experimenting to prove/disprove our current laws of physics. The thing is.. to test a lot of the theories requires high energy collisions and observations of the aftermath of such collisions.