Had Einstein lived today, he would have shut down the Large Hadron Collider

That's the idea coming out of BC Sci/Tech webpage
blogcritics.org...
which raises several arguments that refer to the way Albert Einstein related the speed of light to the energy that glues matter together.

The beginning of the article briefly describes the way the LHC operates and mentions a peculiar feature:

The Hadron Collider is a 17-mile long circular tunnel in Geneva, Switzerland, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to magnetically propel small gold particles to a speed approaching the speed of light, this in a vacuum environment at cold space temperatures — temperatures near absolute zero.

Gold is not a ferrous metal, so the magnetic propelling must be a very intriguing scientific process.

The closing argument that turns the LHC into a doomsday machine is this:

CERN, who have conceded that one of their lesser goals is to debunk some of Dr. Einstein's theories, say that the mass of the particles involved in the proposed collision is so small that the energy produced would be a mere sneeze in the wind. But Einstein said that a particle moving at 186,000 miles/second has "infinite mass." Infinite mass. What, then, does that do to our equation? Two particles with infinite mass, being smashed together, at the speed of light (maybe twice the speed of light!), should produce energy equaling infinite mass times the speed of light squared (at least).

True or false?

BTW, what does the LHC and Albert Einstein have in common?

A: They both worked in Switzerland.

Originally posted by stander
Two particles with infinite mass, being smashed together, at the speed of light (maybe twice the speed of light!), should produce energy equaling infinite mass times the speed of light squared (at least).

I'm not a physicist but I did sleep in a holiday inn express once, wouldn't this blow up the earth?

reply to post by stander


It is my understanding that CERN, or anywhere else known to date can not propel any particle with mass faster than c. Thus, the 'issue' is non-existent because the particles are not traveling at c, only very near it. Also remember gauge bosons do not have mass, like photons, which do travel at lightspeed, while everything else--to my knowledge, with mass travels just below lightspeed, unless it is in wave form. Feel free to correct me here, I have not taken any formal classes in college in this area yet.

Originally posted by stander


BTW, what does the LHC and Albert Einstein have in common?

A: They both worked in Switzerland.

Correction: Albert Einstein worked in Switzerland.
The LHC isn't working, not in Switzerland, not anywhere, for the time being.

Actually, what they're propelling are streams of protons.

As hard as they try, they can only get them up to a certain speed. What happens is, as they try to accelerate them further, they gain energy, and essentially end up weighing about 7,000 times what they did at rest by the time they collide.

Even though they'll be making about 11.000 revolutions a second, they can send them off into a "stop block" within 3 revolutions if something goes wrong, and that energy will be enough to melt about 2kgs of lead.

To give you an idea just how small the particles are though, it will take them about 5 years of non-stop operation to use even a teaspoon of protons.

99.99% of C (speed of light) is enormously different than 99.9999999% of C

Now stop worrying and go find us some real news from Mr. Goldman's trash can before they empty it again.

The LHC does not use "gold particles", it uses protons.

The protons do not reach the speed of light. They get close but nothing with mass can reach the speed of light. The protons do not obtain "infinite mass".

A total conversion of mass to energy (E=mc^2) is not obtained. Not even close. In fact, the opposite should happen, some of the energy of the colliding protons will be converted into mass. That's one of the things they'll be looking for.

Originally posted by Phage
The LHC does not use "gold particles", it uses protons.

The mystery of where that dude got the idea about gold particles racing throught the tunnels of the LHC gets solved here, I think:
ngm.nationalgeographic.com...

Either he is semiliterate, dumb or both. I read the article once again looking for signs of but couldn't see it.

Well, the price of gold shot above $1,000 this week, coz lots of it is needed at CERN, I guess. A sign of the doomsday machine becoming operational just arrived.

reply to post by stander

What a bonehead.
(not you...the blogger)

If you strip some electrons from Gold it will respond to electromagnetic fields.

But... protons are easier to accelerate, and doing it in packets of gold seems a bit counter productive.

A rather strange state of collision.

Color Glass Condensate

Originally posted by RoofMonkey
If you strip some electrons from Gold it will respond to electromagnetic fields.

If you strip L from GOLD, you get GOD . . .

I just can't imagine that the guy would read in National Geographic about God particle, as some of the phycisists dubbed Higgs boson, and his head would twist the info into Gold particle that gets accelerated at CERN. I think that the person didn't mean Aurum but some subatomic particle that he believes is called "Gold," like the quarks and stuff.

If you strip G from GOLD, you get OLD.
So it's better to keep stripping L, not to age too quickly.


[edit on 9/10/2009 by stander]

A particle with mass moving at the speed of light would indeed have infinite mass. It would also take infinite energy to accelerate that particle to the speed of light, which obviously isn't going to happen.

Also, the "m" in E=mc^2 refers to invariant mass, also called rest mass. It is not at all related to the velocity of a particle. A particle moving at near the speed of light that is converted into pure energy will produce the same amount of energy as a particle of the same mass that is at rest.

Originally posted by nataylor
A particle moving at near the speed of light that is converted into pure energy will produce the same amount of energy as a particle of the same mass that is at rest.

True... except that it's not undergoing some sort of movement. Maybe if you squirt it with a bit of it's antiparticle... That might make it transform and release it's energy...

reply to post by nataylor

The singularity responsible for the Big Bang expanded in the first nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. (The photons formed later.) The energy driving the proto-expansion was enormous, but finite.

Tachyon Particles are theoretical particles that exist in a state of movement/vibration that is faster than the speed of light. In fact, they cannot, theoretically, go slower than LS (lightspeed). The instant of the Big Bang would have released many forms of particles and matter that we have never even dreamed of - Tachyons included.

Quantum theory is dabbling in the moment of the Big Bang and what occurred before hand (pre-time if you will). Put as simply as I can, the theory goes that our Universe is merely one of an infinite number of universes co-existing and interacting. Think of the edge of the "universe'' as a membrane. At the moment of the Big Bang what was actually occurring is another Universe was momentarily connected to ours and in that brief moment an enormous amount of energy and matter was transferred to our universe. What makes this so interesting to hypothesize is the fact that never before in the history of science have we come up with a mathematical equation that can describe what occurred BEFORE the Big Bang.

Anyways, back on topic, the blogger hasn't got a clue what he/she is talking about and is simply regurgitating information he/she has heard or read and is screwing it up in the retelling. Quite simply, the photons aren't accelerated to the actual speed of light, just near it, and that is enough of a difference to avoid infinite mass and a cataclysmic explosion/black hole. Now if they DID accelerate it to the actual speed of light I would 1 - be terribly impressed that they could overcome accelerating a particle of infinite mass and 2 - a tad worried. But seeing as this is not, does not and cannot happen then there is nothing to worry about.

[edit on 11/9/2009 by Kryties]

The error that you are making is an error of scale. They may say 'near the speed of light', but they are still a fair distance from 186,000 miles per second. The reason being, acceleration to the speed of light is impossible in our universe. While a particle traveling at the speed of light would indeed have an infinite mass, it is not possible to propel a particle to that speed because it would also take an infinite amount of energy. The particles in the LHC are being fired at a tremendous rate of speed, but they are not firing at the speed of light. They are not obtaining infinite mass.

Personally, I think the most likely reason why the LHC will bring the end of the world is all the money, energy, manpower and theories that humans have invested in a search for some particles that do not exist. What will we do when we don't find them??? Well surely built a bigger collider, because God knows that them scientists don't like to admit the standard model is flawed!?!?!?
Just waiting for the VeryVeryLargeHadronCollider...

reply to post by townio


OK so do you have definitive proof that the God particle (otherwise known as the Higgs-Boson Particle) does not exist? If so could you please present your proof here - oh and you may want to send a copy to the people in charge of CERN cause I'm sure they will want to know that their team of physicists are wrong.

Originally posted by nataylor
A particle with mass moving at the speed of light would indeed have infinite mass. It would also take infinite energy to accelerate that particle to the speed of light, which obviously isn't going to happen.

QFT. But if someone could do that though, don't you think it could be used as doomsday device? For example, 'magically' remove the mass of a marble (kids used to play with), then instantly accelerate that marble to 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999% speed of light, finally, restore the marble's mass...

If that marble collided with anything, even something as massive as an aircraft carrier even make it 100x the size of aircraft carrier, it will be completely ruined even by just one marble.

Of course, someone with similar technology could counter the attack by also 'magically' removing the mass of the marble by a defensive beam if detected early enough.

[edit on 11-9-2009 by ahnggk]

If my head is screwed on right then.

The particles never reach the speed of light as this would be impossible! To

reach the speed of light you would need infinite energy! They obviously know

very little. The Higgs Boson has not yet been discovered, but there is some

strong evidence supporting it's existense.

Would the folks at CERN be able to identify the elusive particle called Higgs boson?

It's very unlikely. One of the reason is that the boson was dubbed "God particle." Why?

Well, the Standard model deals with the Big Bang. When things blew, all the particles that comprised the new baby universe didn't have mass. But later particles with mass appeared. How did the particles acquire their mass?

The question proved to be a very hard one; all the equation didn't equal when several ideas were theoretically tested. The only option left was the all-problem-solving proclamation: Let there be mass. That's how God handle things around -- let there be this and that.

(Let there be mass!
farm3.static.flickr.com...
Here you go . . .)

Then, Peter Higgs came up with an idea well outside the proverbial box. It was apparent, that there would be no other like it, so the Standard model (mainstream theory) proponents decided to test it by seeing is believing. Without Higgs boson, the Standard model is nothing but a sort of open-minded religion.

Higgs boson is something like a walnut seed. You suspect that there is something inside the walnut shell, but you can't see it. So you hit the shell hard with a sledge hammer . . . and things will remain inconclusive. Duh.

The proof that Higgs boson exists is elsewhere. If there is a seed inside the shell, there should be a new walnut tree. You need to look for the walnut tree, coz the walnut tree that the nut came from was cut down -- it transformed into an office desk. That means you need to look fast before a cabinet maker orders the new walnut tree to be cut down.

[edit on 9/11/2009 by stander]