One gateway to HELL, coming up!

[Gurm]

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/03/time-machine-worlds-biggest-particle.html

Ok, is it just me, or should we all be investing in shotguns right about now? Isn't this how every Doom/Quake/Half-Life game for the past 15 years has started?

[MultimediaMan]

Remain calm: everything is under control.

[Dr Mordrid]

And they're already planning an upgrade ~2015 to the Super Large Hadron Collider;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Large_Hadron_Collider

The dangers;

The creation of a stable black hole

The creation of strange matter, which is a form of quark matter more stable than ordinary matter and converts the latter into more strange matter

The creation of magnetic monopoles that could catalyze proton decay

The transition of the universe into a different quantum mechanical state (false vacuum)

None of which bode well for the 2009 Superbowl being played on schedule

[Gurm]

Ugh. Y'know, if they're going to build this, couldn't they do so ... y'know ... on MARS? That way the only people who get eaten by demons are scientists and space marines. Well, and the occasional odd administrator, but they were evil to begin with!

[rylan]

I do kinda wonder what exactly benefit is supposed to come out of this thing... assuming, you know, that they don't TURN US ALL INSIDE OUT!

[Mehen]

Ugh. Y'know, if they're going to build this, couldn't they do so ... y'know ... on MARS? That way the only people who get eaten by demons are scientists and space marines. Well, and the occasional odd administrator, but they were evil to begin with!

Sounds even more like Doom - or was that one of Mars' moons?

[High_Jumbllama]

Remain calm: everything is under control.

Eat, drink, and reproduce.

[Brian Ellis]

Doomsayers have predicted the end of the earth when:
a) arrows were invented
b) paper was invented
c) gunpowder was invented
d) the integral cartridge/bullet was invented
e) the lighter-than-air balloon was invented
f) heavier-than-air aircraft were invented
g) the ICE was invented
h) phosgene was used as a weapon
i) marine mines were invented
j) nuclear weaponry was invented
k) the hydrogen bomb was invented
l) the laser was invented
m) the ozone hole was discovered
n) man-made climate change was discovered
etc.

Regarding j) above, I remember seeing a film about the Manhattan project c. 1946 when scientists actually questioned the possibility of a chain reaction which would destroy the earth before the first explosion in the desert. They calculated the probability (I forget the figure they arrived at but it was small but still finite) and decided to take the risk.

As far as the CERN is concerned, I'm not worried. This is not their first project: they already have run a number of large doughnuts under the ground: all they have done here is to scale up the experiments a small notch. Incidentally, my company supplied some materials to them a number of years ago for the detectors of the LEP collider project, which was the same size as the LHC (it uses the same tunnel) but was a little less powerful, only about 200 GeV and collided electrons and positrons at velocities barely <c. If I remember correctly, the last experiment with the LEP was 9 or 10 years ago. They then cleared the tunnel out to start the LHC, enlarging one or two parts of it. I was not able to visit LEP because of residual magnetic fields (risk of buggering my pacemaker).

[Claymonkey]

Ok we really need to put together a MURCer apprenticeship program. Brian, Doc M and others all talk about where they go, and what they work on, and I just think that would be an awesome job to get into whenever they do. The Murcer pool wouldn't be a terrible choice to pick from either. Maybe a Super Murcer bare minimum pre-req and proof of ability (stopped asking newb questions, contributions to the community, etc.).

Anyway, those tunnels must be amazing to walk through. Much like nature photography, you don’t REALLY get the scale, or the wonder, of a place like that from photos.

[Jessterw]

Doomsayers have predicted the end of the earth when...

Many of those weren't exactly harmless either in their usage either. I mean, was it not paper that brought us the plague of junk mail?

Seriously, I doubt we have much to worry about unless something goes wrong.

[Brian Ellis]

I think the biggest risk is that they blow the fuses, plunging the whole of Switzerland into Stygian darkness. The electricity consumption of these toys is vertiginous. CERN has its own 132 kV lines direct from both the Swiss and French grids! They have to warn the grid operators and power stations 48 h before each experiment to make sure there is enough capacity available. Even so, the 220 V voltage dropped about 10 V where I used to live, about 60 km from the CERN, as the crow flies.

[Fat Tone]

That's a record Brian. I had to look up two words in one of your posts

And I would imagine you would welcome Stygian darkness

[Gurm]

That's a record Brian. I had to look up two words in one of your posts

And I would imagine you would welcome Stygian darkness

What, you don't recognize the word Switzerland?

[Brian Ellis]

Well, it feels like a Stygian gloom just now. N. Africa is sending us a khamsin dust storm, hopefully the last one of the season. Current visibility is about 100 m with winds gusting to 13 m/s. Going outside is like being sandblasted. Because the dust intercepts the solar radiation (the sun is almost invisible in a cloudless sky), it heats up and passes the heat to the air, peaking at 32 degC wich is about 8 deg higher than average. Thursday promises 60% chance of rain which should lay it into a layer of sticky yellow mud, with the temp dropping to 10 deg on Thursday night.

[Fat Tone]

What, you don't recognize the word Switzerland?

Switzer-what now?