ATS, LHC and how we are on the verge of new Middle Ages

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

Hello ImaginaryReality1984

Thank you for your polite and very patient response to my post.

I am trying to not make a total idiot of myself here but to say you have a pretty good understanding of the sub atomic world when the illusive Higgs boson, the field that gives a particles mass, the only bit you don't understand is everything.

This field has the potential to also turn mass into particles if you look at it the other way. That is the tiny bit that concerns me.

I appreciate your explanation.

My other great concern, is that the virtue of science maybe a noble one but the reality is that before it will be used for the benefit of mankind, it will be adapted to make a bigger and better weapon of mass destruction.

If the experiment doesn't destroy the earth the knowledge gained probably will.

Not that their are any precedences for me to make that assumption.

Originally posted by buddhasystem
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.
[edit on 14-12-2009 by buddhasystem]

I am so glad you are here. My advanced degree didn't help much as I watched the sky in the area where I live yesterday be criss crossed all day long with symetrical, wide plumes from air craft. By 3pm, our sky, which used to be well-known to be bright blue on the majority of days, even Winter, was totally covered with the wavy fanning-out of these plumes, which eventually formed a wierd and complete thick covering of the skies not unlike Los Angeles. Now pls tell me your educated explanation as I have lived here 3.5 decades and my peanut mind isn't capable of conjecturing the simple truth of what is happening. Thank you.

Originally posted by kennyb72
I am trying to not make a total idiot of myself here but to say you have a pretty good understanding of the sub atomic world when the illusive Higgs boson, the field that gives a particles mass, the only bit you don't understand is everything.

It is important we find the higgs for our standard model to be complete. However the standard model predicts various particles which we have been able to identify in other colliders so we know they exist. The only question is where mass comes from and you are correct in saying that it is the Higgs field which is believed to enable this mass. Still the fact we could predict so many particles, and find them means we do have a pretty decent understanding in my opinion.

Originally posted by kennyb72
This field has the potential to also turn mass into particles if you look at it the other way. That is the tiny bit that concerns me.

I'm not quite sure what you meant here i'm afraid. You cannot turn mass into particles because particles are required for mass to exist. It is the particles moving through the higgs field that gives mass. Sorry maybe you'll have to explain what you meant a little more as i may very well be missing something.

Originally posted by kennyb72
My other great concern, is that the virtue of science maybe a noble one but the reality is that before it will be used for the benefit of mankind, it will be adapted to make a bigger and better weapon of mass destruction.

If the experiment doesn't destroy the earth the knowledge gained probably will.

Not that their are any precedences for me to make that assumption.

Well the problem with applying that kind of thought is that we would never have arrived where we are today using it. The atom bomb afterall lead to nuclear energy, a coordinated military communications system lead to the internet and battlefield trauma research lead to incredible medical advances. If we stop now then we will remain static, we may never develop intrastellar travel and our species will be doomed.

What i am trying to say is that of course people will use knowledge in different ways. Some will be bad and some will be good, that is not however a reason to stop the research. The great thing about science is that we have no clue what a discovery now will lead to tomorrow. What can be seen from history though is that generally the standard of living increases and life expectancy rises.

reply to post by kennyb72

I did not mention the unified theory, that was not proven and has been abandoned as far as I know. You obviously know more than me about it.

I mentioned the theory of relativity, which works very well except for when you get to the quantum scale. Without it partical accellerators would not work! And the observations therein would appear to prove it. edit: Or at least prove the major parts of it for the macro universe.

I have only a passing knowledge in this area so if you are using your degree in physics to debate me, I shall bown down to your superior knowlege.

edit again: Charge invariance refers to the fixed electrostatic potential of a particle, regardless of speed. For example, an electron has a specific rest charge. Accelerate that electron, and the charge remains the same (as opposed to the relativistic mass and energy increasing). The key word here is relativistic. Some particle characteristics are relativistically invariant (charge, spin, and magnetic moment). Others are relativistic (mass, energy, and de Broglie wavelength.

Source - Wikipedia

It would appear this and relitivity are not mutually exclusive, again from a laymans perspective.

[edit on 15-12-2009 by DJOldskool]

[edit on 15-12-2009 by DJOldskool]

Originally posted by Revolution-2012
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?

Look, it takes a large number of test launches to debug and ready any rocket propulsion system currently in use. Russians are one of the leading space-faring nations and even they can't get the Bulava ICBM right, out of 12 launches they had 5 failures. The most recent one happened a few days ago in Norway. If you claim this is the result of pan-dimensional crazy squirrels jumping out of wormholes to sabotage Russian facilities, it only adds to my argument regarding the imminent Middle Age period about to begin.

LHC is one of a kind machine... There'll never be a second copy... You can imagine how much more difficult it is to make it work right. We are talking about micron precision over 15 mile scale and temperatures around absolute zero. Try that in your backyard...

Originally posted by truthquest
Wasn't the atomic bomb a massive clandestine science pursued in unmatched secrecy?

I guess I need to define "unmatched". You see, career path in hard sciences always involves publications and interaction with colleagues. This is true now and this was true during Manhattan project. While the essence of the project remained secret, it was an extension of technology in public domain (fission of nuclei was not something classified). People doing that spent relatively short period of time in conditions of blackout secrecy.

What I meant was a complete parallel universe of scientists trained and employed in separate set of facilities, effectively missing persons... This BS I don't believe, of course.

I know people who were involved in safeguarding and stewardship of nukes. I'm not going to ask them any detail about their professional activity, but these people are real and so is the activity. A government-run black hole factory, however, is a different story.

Originally posted by B.Morrison
there are entities watching our timeline right now from another dimension that we don't access.

they are amused at these little scientist critters

Thanks for illustrating the "Medieval" part of my thread's title. I also think there are spiritual entities hiding under your bed, so watch out.

reply to post by TiM3LoRd


Very true mate, very true..sadly.

It's a far cry from the utopia i innocently imagined the world of 'grown ups' to be when i was a boy.

Roll on full ET contact...i intend to apply for asylum when they do!

Originally posted by randomname
reply to post by InertiaZero

 

if i throw two coconuts at each other im smashing the combined atoms that make up the 2 coconuts. if if can extract just 1 atom of each coconut, i can then put them into the collider, accelerate to the speed of light in opposite directions and smash them together and then see and analyze the results. but instead of coconut atoms they use exotic elements to see what happens. if i can somehow smash 2 whole coconuts together at 186,000 miles a second you'd have to be retarded to think that somehow you'd create a catastrophic event that would destroy the universe, so what would make anything think that 2 nanoscopic atoms of anything bouncing of each other at 186,000 miles a second could destroy the universe. splitting an atom and unleashing the energy stored inside it is a different story but the bonds that hold the atoms that make up everything are so strong that smashing them at the speed of light would not split them. the only thing they managed to split are the atoms found in uranium because the bonds holding them together are weak. if they can find a way to split the bonds that hold a coconut together we'd be f-cked.

I like the analogy but it needs to be cleaned up a bit.
"...instead of coconut atoms they use exotic elements to see what happens."

Nope, they are not using atoms at all. They are accelerating hadrons, whence the H in LHC, The hadron du jour at CERN is a lead proton.Lead is not really very exotic, and a proton is a proton, whether from the nucleus of Pb or your coconut. Each proton is comprised of two up quarks, each with a +2/3 charge, an d 1 down quark, with its -1/3 charge. Each proton has a rest mass of 1.67 X 10^-27 kg, or 938 Mec/cm^2. Accelerate these puppies to 99.9975 of the speed of light and their mass approachws infinity, This laptop won't do scientific notation . Otherwise I would give you the exact formula for the Lorentz transformation. That transformation is why I have to quibble with your statement that "if i can somehow smash 2 whole coconuts together at 186,000 miles a second you'd have to be retarded to think that somehow you'd create a catastrophic event that would destroy the universe." If you accelerated your coconuts to c, you would have expended an infinite amount of energy getting them there since at c, their mass would be infinite. You would have created objects with more mass than our galaxy. I'd say the galactic gravitational applecart would be upset, with dire consequences. You cannot accelerate atoms to the speed of light, just fairly close.
Oh, and, "...splitting an atom and unleashing the energy stored inside it is a different story but the bonds that hold the atoms that make up everything are so strong that smashing them at the speed of light would not split them. the only thing they managed to split are the atoms found in uranium because the bonds holding them together are weak. if they can find a way to split the bonds that hold a coconut together we'd be f-cked." is just plain wrong. There are a number of forces acting on the components of an atom. They picked uranium as the fissile material for the first A bomb, because of the instability of its nucleus when hit by a slow neutron, with an energy of a mere 1 eV. Your coconut is going to be made up primarily of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Let's look at the carbon atom. You can split off electrons in the 2s and 2p orbitals with less than20 eV. For the 1s it takes 319eV. The hadrons, being protons and neutrons, are bound by a strong nuclear force of about 8 MeV, opposing Coulomb repulsion for protons of about .5MeV. The strong force doesn't depend on the element. Modern accelerators, like the Tevatron at Fermi, or SLAC can hit these energies easily. Actually, we believe that a proton will decay on its own into a positron and neutral pion in about 10^32 years, which is like way longer than the life of the universe, so we're not waiting up.
And here is where, if I knew how, I would embed the Youtube videos of the "LHC Rap" and Harry Nilsson's 1971 vewrsion of Coconut.

I wanted to post this, for some reason it seemed fitting.

Tool : AEnema
www.youtube.com...

"Learn to swim."
Maynard James Keynan.

This is based on a comedy routine by Bill Hicks, who hated the city of Los Angeles. He thought the people were very superficial and represented America at its worst. In his routine, which is sampled in the song, Hicks talks about California falling into the ocean and creating Arizona Bay. Hicks died of cancer in 1994.

Lead singer Maynard Keenan was a big fan of Hicks, and drew inspiration from his comedy routines, which often contained lots of social commentary. The album artwork contains a painting of Hicks dressed like a doctor with the caption, "Another Dead Hero."

Maynard spend 6 months writing the lyrics. Though he does mention LA, he's not speaking specifically about the city. It's a conceptual song asking, "What if everything was destroyed and we had to start over again." LA in this case represents what's wrong with the world in Maynard's eyes, and he's trying to get the message across that we need something like the city falling into the ocean to happen before we can evolve as a race. (thanks, colin - chatham, Canada)

This song was inspired when Tool performed in some sort of L Ron Hubbard arena in Los Angeles. The band looked in dismay when they came across all these yuppie disciples of Hubbard and saw what they felt were the meaningless things they stood for.

"AEnema" is a combination of words. "Anima" is the female archetype hypothesized by philosopher/psychologist Carl Jung to exist within the male. "Enema" is the purification of one's rectum through flushing water. The combination would mean something along the lines of flushing out the superficial crap within us.

In the song, Maynard gives a list of people he can pretty much do without. The song is a reminder about what is important and what is not in the long run of life. The song has an intense anger focused logically on ideas of superficial people, yet has an inescapable creativity to it. (thanks, mike - oakhurst, NJ, for above 3)

Originally posted by kennyb72
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

It makes me smile how the pragmatic scientific mind seems to always label religion as a dogma without recognizing the dogma within its own ranks. The honest truth is that science has very little understanding regarding the subatomic world and this is self evident by virtue of the fact they have built a multibillion dollar machine so as to gain a better understanding.

First I would like to state that I am not a scientist and probably fall into the category of an average educated layman trying to apply a little logic. Please correct me if I am wrong, as I am trying to understand.

It would seem that the common argument validating the safety of smashing high energy particles together at the speed of light is, that this happens all the time in space.

Would I be correct in saying that the source of the most energetic particles in our solar system would be emanating from the sun and that these particles will be radiating in all directions away from the sun.

This being the case, even if particles from the sun collided, the collision would be very low impact because they are all traveling in the same speed and direction as each other.

Particles that could collide with those from the sun would have traveled at least 41.5 trillion klms away from Alpha Centauri.

From my understanding particles lose energy over time and distance. This being the case then the only place a collision can occur at these same energies as those traveling through the LHC would be in a binary star system or more dense area of our galaxy.

Now as we can't see, witness or measure in any great detail what happens when those particles collide at these great distances how can you be so sure that energies released would not be cataclysmic enough to at wipe out the planet?

[edit on 15-12-2009 by kennyb72]

Some of your assumptions re wrong. For example, your stated energies are way off. Thed LHC is going to try for energies in the 10^12 eV range. We fairly commonly see particles carrying energies in the 10^20 eV range.And an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) or extreme-energy cosmic ray (EECR) which are cosmic rays (subatomic particle) which appears to have extreme kinetic energy, far beyond both its rest mass and energies typical of other cosmic rays, do not lose energy over time or distance, except insofar as they may collide with "stuff." like the photons in the CMB radiation. Most high energy particles we see here on earth do originate in the sun, but the highest energy particles probably originate in emerging galactic cores or supermassive black holes.
One thing to remember is. The scientists didn't come up with the billions of euros for the KHC. Your and my political representatives who we elected, did.

Originally posted by kennyb72
reply to post by mbkennel

 

Could you please qualify what part of my first statement warranted NO or are you actually saying that there is a source of higher energy particles within our solar system from another source. I am very interested and would like to know where this energy comes from.

It's a little hard to say for sure but the best bets so fsr are active galactic ores and supermassive black holes. One such particle was measured in Utah at 3X10^20eV. It was probably a proton travelling at reletavistic speed. See, for example, The Pierre Auger Collaboration (2007). "Correlation of the Highest-Energy Cosmic Rays with Nearby Extragalactic Objects". Science 318 (5852): 938–943. doi:10.1126/science.1151124.
Sorry for jumping in but this is my particular little area of physics.

Originally posted by DJOldskool
reply to post by kennyb72

 

Oh and tons of particles eminate from the center of our galaxy at 99.9999999999999999% the speed of light. they will not lose energy unless it is coverted i.e to heat by coliding with another object.

I really wouldn't say "tons",since it takes 1000000000000000000000000000000 beta particles to weigh a kilogram.
The energy is not converted to heat but the collision of a high energy cosmic ray with a photon of the cosmic microwave background will cost the HECR some energy by producing a pion via the delta resonance. Zatsepin, G. T.; Kuz'min, V. A. (1966). "Upper Limit of the Spectrum of Cosmic Rays". Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters 4: 78–80. Bibcode: 1966JET

Originally posted by Critical_Mass
My opinion regarding the LHC is that we are messing with things NO ONE understands.

That's the "Medieval" part, thanks. Seriously, people have a few promising theories and none of these involves world destruction. Even in this thread, you'll find evidence that collisions already happen here on planet Earth, at much higher energies, to no detriment of my chips and beer.

And while I am not really buying all the interdimensional crap, I do agree that there is the possibility to create a particle that could get us killed.

Our ancestors, living in caves, were trying to develop a technology called "fire". They figured fires already exist in nature (such as when a lightning strikes), so why not try it... They had no way of knowing whether somehow trying to produce a light in the fireplace would cause a lightning to appear and cause the whole tribe to die. Thankfully, they had enough common sense and had a good steak after their research ended in success

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

Hello again ImaginaryReality1984

quote
"I'm not quite sure what you meant here i'm afraid. You cannot turn mass into particles because particles are required for mass to exist. It is the particles moving through the higgs field that gives mass. Sorry maybe you'll have to explain what you meant a little more as i may very well be missing something."

I am simply stating that the opposite of this must hold true, if the only thing that would give a fish its form was the fact that it is swimming in water it would simply cease to exist when removed from water. If Higgs field, or quite poignantly named the God particle where to be manipulated, destroyed or otherwise corrupted even within a very small space, could science say with absolute certainty that this would not set of a chain reaction that would cause everything in it's vicinity to not exist as mass.

quote
"Well the problem with applying that kind of thought is that we would never have arrived where we are today using it. The atom bomb afterall lead to nuclear energy, a coordinated military communications system lead to the internet and battlefield trauma research lead to incredible medical advances. If we stop now then we will remain static, we may never develop intrastellar travel and our species will be doomed."

The science that is being conducted now has more potential to destroy than at any other time in human history. The first Atomic explosions where conducted without certainty of the outcome. History confirms that risks have being taken in the name of science. A huge game of Russian roulette is being played where the existence of mankind is at stake.

Science has indeed made some remarkable discoveries and fortunately to date we are still around.

If we where to ask if we are spiritually mature enough to tamper with the fundamentals of our existence given the obvious lack of maturity we have witnessed in these early days of the 21st century I would say unequivocally NO.

reply to post by 4nsicphd


"The scientists didn't come up with the billions of euros for the KHC. Your and my political representatives who we elected, did.

Thank you 4nsicphd, That makes me feel a whole lot better to think that I have actually contributed to an instrument costing the price of the GDP of a small country on something that may or may not provide answers to these burning questions.

I just ponder what on earth all these great minds are going to be doing with their time IF it is discovered that the LHC provides us with no more understanding than that which has already been discovered from the smaller particle accelerators.

Great pad to hang out in I guess, Unique underground restaurant, convert it to an underground railway perhaps. I wouldn't want to be paying the lease on it though

reply to post by 4nsicphd


Well thanks for clearing that up 4nsicphd you obviously do fascinating work, I actually quite envy you, which spiritually is not a good thing.

The more I learn the less secure I feel standing on this rock. I really do appreciate the level that science has reached. Now if we could just raise the morality bar a little higher to match it, I am sure everything will be fine.

Just a supposition.

Suppose that science were to discover a technology that was so simple, yet potentially super destructive? Let's say that with this technology, an average Joe could walk down to Radio Shack and assemble the ultimate doomsday device. Now, science would be forced to conceal this technology or any inroads to the knowledge from the masses. As long as warmongers, psycho and sociopathic individuals are at large on the planet, we as a race can not allow any such technology as this to proceed. If everyone on the planet had the ability to self destruct the planet, how many would pull the trigger?

What if Nicola Tesla really was onto something. Why have we heard so much about Edison and the light bulb, when the man who invented the dynamo and alternating current has been stricken from virtually every textbook?

reply to post by zeddissad

All theories and speculation aside, I repeat again...

Read 2 Thessalonians ch.2 verse 8-12
then watch the movie "Solaris" with George Clooney

"Connect the dots" and you'll see the beauty & simplicity in the Truth

Best,
truthseeker007

Originally posted by kennyb72
I am simply stating that the opposite of this must hold true, if the only thing that would give a fish its form was the fact that it is swimming in water it would simply cease to exist when removed from water. If Higgs field, or quite poignantly named the God particle where to be manipulated, destroyed or otherwise corrupted even within a very small space, could science say with absolute certainty that this would not set of a chain reaction that would cause everything in it's vicinity to not exist as mass.

Ahh right ok got you. Well i am afraid i do not know the mathematics in detail that would make me certain of my ideas here so take them with a pinch of salt. I believe if we were able to manipulate the Higgs field we could actually remove mass from something. That thing however would not cease to exist or be damaged as the strong and weak nuclear forces an the electromatic force would still be in play so atoms for example would not simply fly apart. This may mean faster than light travel could be possible.

Please note that entire paragraph was speculation in regards to manipulating the Higgs field but the part about atoms not falling apart was true.

Originally posted by kennyb72
The science that is being conducted now has more potential to destroy than at any other time in human history. The first Atomic explosions where conducted without certainty of the outcome. History confirms that risks have being taken in the name of science. A huge game of Russian roulette is being played where the existence of mankind is at stake.

The mathematics backed the safety of the first atom bomb test. It was only a small group of scientists that were worried, but there will always be the chicken littles. Some feared that the explosion could ignite the atmosphere itself and cause an uncontrolled level of fusion, destroying the entire earth. The maths simply did not back this up though.

Originally posted by kennyb72
Science has indeed made some remarkable discoveries and fortunately to date we are still around.

If we where to ask if we are spiritually mature enough to tamper with the fundamentals of our existence given the obvious lack of maturity we have witnessed in these early days of the 21st century I would say unequivocally NO.

I am not sure about the spirituality part of the argument but i think we're mature enough as a species to do certain things. We have slowly advanced our technology and it stands to reason that our maturity has scaled with the technology. It may not seem like it at times but consider that for every harmful invention a life saving one has also been made.