Baby Bang experiment could open door to new dimension

Not sure if this is the right forum for this subject, but this is pretty amazing.

Deep underground on the Franco-Swiss border, someone will throw a switch next year to start one of the most ambitious experiments in history, probing the secrets of the universe and possibly finding new dimensions.

The Large Hadron Collider - a 27km-long circular particle accelerator at the CERN experimental facility near Geneva, will smash protons into one another at unimaginable speeds trying to replicate in miniature the events of the Big Bang.

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I'm sorry if this has been posted before.

I just love this part of the article you posted.

"For the first time in many decades we have built a machine that exceeds our powers of prediction.

"New processes are bound to be discovered. We are truly journeying into unknown territory."

Dr Cox dismissed worries that by adventuring into the unknown and creating tiny black holes, the machine could even destroy the planet.

"The probability is at the level of 10 to the minus 40," he said.

They estimate the possibility of accidentally destroying the planet as extremely low.

Well as long as the chance of our total existence being wiped out is low, hey, go for it.

I read about this in FHM. Pretty impressive eh? Its bound to go wrong and kill somebody or do nothing at all... gutting afte the amount of money they have spent on it!

It just proves how far science is willing to go, even at the risk of total destruction, even though the knowledge they gained couldnt be used then anyway.

"The probability is at the level of 10 to the minus 40," he said.

Well as long as the chance of our total existence being wiped out is low, hey, go for it.

ROFL! Ya exactly the probability of destroying the whole planet but what about half or a quarter, maybe a country or a couple of states not to mention a city or two. What the hell it's in the name of science.

Just to note... if a stable black hole could be generated, it would destroy the earth - not just a place or two... it's kinda an all or nothing on destructability scale.

Speaking of which, remember just how low that probability is:

10^-40 =
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

Or about the chance that you'll fall through (and I do mean through, not break) the floor because all your electrons were aligned in just the precise way at the just the precise moments to allow such a macroscopic thing as yourself to experience quantum tunnelling.

Originally posted by Yarium
Just to note... if a stable black hole could be generated, it would destroy the earth - not just a place or two... it's kinda an all or nothing on destructability scale.

I was thinking about it and it's not necessarily the case. Conservation of momentum still works. Therefore, if during the initial accretion phase there is release of EM radiation of some sort (which may well be asymmetric), and surrounding matter is vaporized or otherwise gets blown up, there is a chance that the black hole can be catapulted out of the Earth's gravitational well and into space.

The risk is calculated at about 10 to the minus 40 - a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance.

www.nzherald.co.nz...

I am reminded of Murphy's Law. However, I think that this is exciting news. So what if the planet or even if the solar system is annihilated? Who would care?

[edit on 2006/9/18 by GradyPhilpott]

If a civilization collapses, and there's no one there to see it, does it make a sound?

These "end of the World" predictions are typical of people who have no understanding of physics or what's involved (read journalists and joe public). The black holes that would form are only going to be about the size of a proton, far too small to do any damage to the planet. It'd take longer than the age of the universe for it just to suck up a piece of Earth the size of a grapefruit!!!. If they evaporated instead, which may or may not happen depending on their mass, the blast of gamma radiation would be equivalent to a large nuclear weapon. They could contain pretty much all of that within the accelerator using its magnetic fields.


[edit on 18-9-2006 by GhostITM]

I'm glad you're confident. No will know what will happen, however, until they do it, just like no one was sure that the first atomic bomb wouldn't destroy the universe.

I'm all for it, though. What have we got to lose?

does anyone know what date they are actually going to be trying the experiment?
I think its a cool idea tho, it seems so ambitious and expensive, how could it not do something amzing, I mean 27 km's of collider. wow. I saw some of this being built on discover channel

Hmm......if it were to massacre us all...how long do you think it would take? Would we notice it?

My guess is that if it did happen, it would be fast enough that no one would know it and therefore, no one would care. It'd sure put an end to the global warming problem. We can call it Global Compression and we could start a movement and maybe get grants and stuff.

[edit on 2006/9/18 by GradyPhilpott]

Please people...... I post something because I know enough about the physics to inform you what is the likely outcome, and yet some of you still persist in this "doomsday" scenario!!!. I suggest you take the time out to learn about the physics of what they're trying to do.

Even if they did crack open a few extra dimensions, the fact that they're occuring at such small dimensions guarantees that quantum fluctuations will close any tear that forms. In actual fact, the budding "bang" will bud off of our universe and expand within its own space..... so they may form a new baby universe which will expand just like ours did 13-14 billion years ago. It can't replace our universe because it can't occupy the same space....... it's the good old Exclusion Principle at work. Once it buds off, we'll have no way of looking at it or even communicating with it because it won't exist within our universe at all. It will be just another growing universe within superspace.


[edit on 18-9-2006 by GhostITM]

Originally posted by GhostITM
...yet some of you still persist in this "doomsday" scenario!!!.

No one is persisting in the "doomsday" scenario.

I suggest you take the time out to learn about the physics of what they're trying to do.

Not many of us have eight or more years to devote to the study of quantum physics.

The risk is calculated at about 10 to the minus 40 - a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance.

www.nzherald.co.nz...

According to those who will do the test, there is a chance that the planet will be obliterated, regardless of how small that chance is.

However, as I said before, let's do it. We really have nothing to lose and who's going to care if it does destroy the planet? If it doesn't, we will know a lot more about the world or worlds we live in.

[edit on 2006/9/18 by GradyPhilpott]

Fact catches up with fiction again:
www.infinityplus.co.uk...

Cosm by Gregory Benford
(Orbit, 372 pages, hardback. ISBN 185723 627 0. Published 2 April 1998.)

In Benford's book... the "mini bang" creates a small universe.

Not many of us have eight or more years to devote to the study of quantum physics.

You don't need 8 years to study it. That's only if you want to work in the field. You should be able to pickup on many of the general details of the theory after spending sometime reading up on it. It does help to have done some formal work in the theory, but you don't necessarily need to have done any.

As so far as a calculation of possible obliteration goes, they've done that for every stage of advancement in science that they've made. It was once believed that travelling faster than 25 miles and hour would cause you to disintegrate. Then they said the atom bomb would cause a runaway reaction in the atmosphere.... they said the same for the H-bomb too. They've done it every time they cracked a milestone in particle physics. They've done it now....... I'm not particularly worried about mini black holes. Natural ones are more than likely passing through you and everything else already. What you may need to think about is if they create an uncontrollable tear in spacetime......essentially a self propagating wormhole. But the chances are so slim it's not even worth worrying about.

no one answered me! when are they planning on doing this test??

by the way, all of this talk about blackholes and new dimensions, since we dont have any idea were a blackhole exactly goes, could it be a possibility that it creates a hole that dosent obliterate the earth, but merely transports it to a new dimension?

I mean all of this we are talking about anyway is so crazy, say all of the known black holes are just from planets that have advanced far enough to create a particle accelerator big enough to create one.. it could always be one of those possibilities? couldent it?

and it could even go as far as the black holes go to the same place? I havent studied it but it is fundamentally unknown is it not? all we know are educated hypothises no real proof of any of it, just what we apply to our own knowledge of our own planet, which I can belive applies to everything that we think it does.

It's safe to say a blackhole would rip us apart into molecules there's no passing through it into another dimension even if it led to one.

This whole thing reminds me of an episode of lexx I watched once (strange sci fi show) where the earth was destroyed by scientists testing something and in that show it was common ending for Alien civilizations theyd reach a certain point then try the experiment and all then wipe themselves out the same way

You never know they might have been on to something.