In the past few months, there have been numerous posts here on ATS, on topics related to LHC. I'm different than most participants of this forum in that I have a decent understanding of the LHC and experiments hosted there. I worked on a prototype of a detector some 20+ years ago that's now a part of Atlas. For that reason, I can't help but be in the camp of "debunkers" when it comes to outlandish and outrageous threads that are cropping up like mushrooms every time a fuse blows out there in Geneva.

What we've seen are -- Quark Bombs, Pan-Dimensional beings, Black holes, sabotage by secret agents from the future or Mother Nature itself. Or any permutation thereof! I know that ATS intends to be a combination of entertainment and popular science, but if so, both aspects suffer greatly by speculation that doesn't pass one tenth of an inch of Occam's razor. It vaguely reminds of lunacy (pun intended) of John Lear's claims about atmosphere on the Moon etc.

I believe that as a society, we are at a critical juncture where important points in advanced sciences are no longer accessible to public at large. There is only so much that can be done in "popularizing" science. It's a two-way street -- science must be presented in a way it can be understood, with some effort, by an average educated person - but said person should be willing to make that effort. Unfortunately, in the culture of instant gratification, this doesn't happen too often. It's a lot easier to take a shortcut of declaring that the government is hiding some "secret knowledge" and scientists are complicit in that since they are on the govt payroll etc. This way anybody can explain that it is possible to extract energy out of a bucket of water, or open a portal to a parallel universe, or that there is thriving life on Venus etc etc. One of my favorites is the claim that the recent atmospheric phenomenon in Norway is evidence of a secret plot to fake global warming. Just charming...

In my view, this is a dangerous trend which will continue unless we achieve much higher levels of education compared to what we have now. There is tremendous progress being made in life sciences, for example, which will bring about important challenges and choices we'll have to face as a society. Same applies to energy sector etc. I just don't see how we can have rational public policies going forward, if there is such a chasm between those who know and those who don't.


[edit on 14-12-2009 by buddhasystem]

Science must be so bizarre behind teh scenes in the real black world.

But the world moves in cycles, so who knows what the down period will look like. But just be sure it does work in cycles.

They are seriously dumbing us all down, as i think the people they pick for scienc eetc in future, will have techs used on them to bring that stuff out. The rest of us will just be dumbed down.

they are at a point where they do not really need that many to do the science work, as the real science must be along way in front of what we all see.

For instance missile and rocket tech was 40's and 50's tech. Just what do we have today?

Originally posted by andy1033
they are at a point where they do not really need that many to do the science work, as the real science must be along way in front of what we all see.

It's not. I also don't know what makes you think so.

And yes, it does take manpower to move science forward...

Originally posted by JayinAR
The Government DOES hide information from people.
They do it all the time.

But Sir, this is plain obvious.

However, this doesn't mean that there is massive clandestine science being pursued in unmatched secrecy.

I do have to agree that what you say is true. Unfortunately (or perhaps not) this is the product of increasing specialization in our society. Just as you know science tell me what you know of say, hand engraving or animal tracking. Are you scratching your head yet?
We can only learn so much as individuals and what knowledge we do absorb is usually job or hobby related. As knowledge increases we shall end up with more experts in increasingly diverse fields. You could call it compartmentalization of sorts. We just don;t have time to learn everything and as you know knowledge grows exponentially.
I too am one who does not trust the government to be keeping my best interests at heart and I believe there is a history of them using science and secrecy to develop a myriad of weapons technology. What happened to our peace dividend when the soviet union collapsed? We never got it because they have no intention of war ever ending. As long as science is controlled by government, and MOST of it is as even you will admit, we all have reasons to be suspicious and make speculations about what they might be up to. Anything less would be stupidity on OUR (the publics') part.

I believe that certain blogs and media publications tend to over sensationalize scientific advancements as well as follies. These news articles originate in one place and then are re-published elsewhere with new comments added, as every blogger feels the need to add their two cents to each article. Of course, this creates a game of telephone in which the information that hits the general public is a vastly warped Frankenstein monster of imagination. This is why the little bird that dropped some bread was so overblown and fantastic. By the time the article hits wired.com, the story of the bird resembles star wars, where luke skywalker managed to fire a pinpoint missle into the only vulnerability of the deathstar thanks to other worldly abilities.

Can we all promise to read (and re-read) the sources, and the sources sources, prior to posting responses to these kinds of allegations. I understand that many people want to be the first person to post an article, so there is a mad scramble to get it from the source site and into this forum, however that shouldn't come at a cost of journalism.

1) Occams Razor is flawed, take a brief glance at my signature

2) If your understanding of this LHC is so decent, then explain it to me why it is when many scientists review the stability of this machine and all come to the conclusion it's ready to operate, it isnt? Or the power goes out?

Now I'm definitely not ruling out natural cause, but I am saying it's a bit fishy.

=)

"If two hypothesises both explain something equally well, choose the simpler of the two."

Yes, this is certainly flawed reasoning.
However, it still holds as being a pretty good method of approach.

[edit on 14-12-2009 by grantbeed]

I don't understand why occam's razor is considered to be this amazing concept in logical thinking. In my opinion it is an overly complicated explanation of a simple concept. And of course, the simplest explanation always seems simple in hindsight.

Have you ever considered the fact that hawking radiation is still a theory? Have you ever considered the fact, that maybe the LHC will create a new particle with undetermined properties? Properties, that could for example, lead to loss of human life in the form of an explosion? Have you ever considered that maybe we still haven't discovered 1/1000 of 1% of the universe's secrets?

People have a right to be worried about this thing. We are colliding particles at energies many many times higher than ever before. This is uncharted territory, and I'm putting that lightly... This machine is a shining example of human ignorance. No wonder ATS is scared of this thing!



edit: ATS cut my image off... It says "people!!!" at the end... Thought I'd point out the obvious

[edit on 14-12-2009 by sliceNodice]

There already is a new age upon us... the internet age. There has been no other time where you can send information and read the information in literally nanoseconds. Internet is probably the most important invention of mankind thus far. Not to mention the internet is still at a young age.

I believe that as a society, we are at a critical juncture where important points in advanced sciences are no longer accessible to public at large.

Internet ^^.


And I most definitely agree with you when you say mainstream media, culture, etc is being dumbed down by the second! Nothing angers me more when a person says that the LHC is dangerous!

I scanned through a book I totally forgot the name... it talks about how the media is dumbing down life WAY TOO MUCH.

I have been wanting to view some mathematics or science related on the television these past few MONTHS, but guess what? Out of 120++ channels, none can provide me with the informative entertainment I seek? Can someone explain to me why they do not show documentaries on some subject of science in detail? I stopped watching TV for the most part because most of it is just garbage!

A program I sometimes like to tune on to is the Universe series on the History channel. But even then they sort of dumb down some of the stuff. I want to see mathematical figures, I want to see where the numbers they are displaying are coming from! But again they are catering to the masses. No (dumb) person cares about a whole bunch of numbers on the screen.


Anyone agree with me on this?


[edit on 14-12-2009 by fordrew]

There is always going to be a huge chasm of understanding in regards to technology. Primarily because 99.99% of people are so stupid, if it were not for the other .01% inventing and developing stuff they would be dead. And the 99.99% are too stupid to even understand that fact.

Hell most people still do not know how their TV set works.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by JayinAR
The Government DOES hide information from people.
They do it all the time.

But Sir, this is plain obvious.

However, this doesn't mean that there is massive clandestine science being pursued in unmatched secrecy.

Wasn't the atomic bomb a massive clandestine science pursued in unmatched secrecy? Has government lost its lust for secret doomsday weapons all of a sudden? The atom bomb has a serious fallout issue, so no doubt it was back to the drawing board after atomic weapons were ruled illegal. There are probably 100 or 200 projects just as large as HAARP that we simply don't know about because of them being in the black budget. What is the black ops budget any way? $200 billion?

I'd agree the LHC is only somewhat different version of many other similar projects that have been done. But when it comes to the black ops budgets of the world there must be plenty of doom to go around in this world.