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http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

But is this link current? The Earth could be destroyed already and the web master forgot to keep the page updated

M.

Phoenix wrote:[In either case, I think Grignard probably has a good handle on things here. I'm going to have to guess that he's spent a fair ammount of time in organic chemistry since his name comes from a chemical reaction and the chemist who discovered it. I'll go a bit further and guess that his avatar is Mr. Grignard himself.

Yes, on both statements. What is funny is that organic was never really my favorite subject. I believe it came about when I was playing Dark Age of Camelot and I had been studying organic that day. I needed a character name, and For some reason the name just stuck. I've seen other people use it in MMOs so I guess it is kind of catchy. I actually didnt even do well at all in the first semester of organic chemistry I took, though I did get an A in second semester, mostly because orgo was one of those "wake up call" classes, and I decided I would actually have to work at this. I was always more in to the physical chemistry side of things, like spectroscopy and gas phase stuff.

I think for many scientists there is sort of a playfulness about it. I had an analytical prof who always liked to say that science is kind of like playing, except we write down what happens when we play. Another thing with the names of some of these particles and forces is the lack of any familiar analogy for naming them. Even a familiar phenomenon, electromagnetism, has these conventions. There is nothing "positive" about a positive charge, or "negative" about a negative charge. What I was told the names had to do with older theories used to explain electricity involving "electrical fluid". The point is that these are just labels, sometimes descriptive, sometimes not.

I think I still have the bottle of magnesium that I swiped from the labs after we did the lab for the Grignard Reaction. Organic Chemistry (aka alchemy) was my first realization that I really didn't like chemistry after all and that I might be in the wrong field of study. Physical chemistry cemented my hatred for high level chem but fortunately my kinetics and reactor design class kept me interested in Chemical Engineering so I didn't end up switching majors. It worked out rather well for me in the end.

Regardless, scientists are quarky (or is that quirky) folk. Sometimes they hold onto old school conventions simply because it’s what they have and the marginal gains from improving it are not really worth the effort of trying to push through a new convention that everyone has to learn (and incorporate into existing things like electrical systems). Regardless, it always makes me smile when I get their jokes and see them cemented into science.

ok, still alive, so it didnt kill us all yet, but they think if anything will happen it will be on the 21st when they try it properly.

I think it is now timely to point out that the Gravitic Forces of a Blackhole is theorised to play merry Bollocks with time, dilating it in all sorts of funky ways.

Perhaps we are dead, but time is being stretched as a last, cruel joke?

Yeah. You think about that, Mr So-Called Scientist!

i think they should leave it alone, they have no idea of the effects it can cause, and look what bloody happened last time...... BOOM!
do they really want to kill us all?
allthough, its under france, so they go 1st

JD21290 wrote:i think they should leave it alone, they have no idea of the effects it can cause, and look what bloody happened last time...... BOOM!
do they really want to kill us all?
allthough, its under france, so they go 1st

Do you really mean that? Do you really believe that? Does this genuinely worry you? I know that it's easy to be scared by stuff you don't understand, but can you not just believe that the guys there know what they are doing and be happy enough to not worry a jot and let them get on with it?

I work in a nuclear power station, now, they have a scary mental image to the uninformed... You probably don't know how it works, I do, I can tell you that it is incredibly safe and that the chances of it ever going wrong and affecting you in any way are practically zero. Does that make you feel better or would you still worry about it?

Rather than destruction I was hoping for time dilation like the stargate SG1 episode when they opened the stargate to a wormhole and time slowed, but they couldn't shut the gate... drama unfolds at different rates of speed.

Essentially they are exploding atoms by running them at each other at almost speed of light. Flash of light results.
They should just split them, makes a bigger bang.

Nuclear Mekanik wrote:

JD21290 wrote:i think they should leave it alone, they have no idea of the effects it can cause, and look what bloody happened last time...... BOOM!
do they really want to kill us all?
allthough, its under france, so they go 1st

Do you really mean that? Do you really believe that? Does this genuinely worry you? I know that it's easy to be scared by stuff you don't understand, but can you not just believe that the guys there know what they are doing and be happy enough to not worry a jot and let them get on with it?

I work in a nuclear power station, now, they have a scary mental image to the uninformed... You probably don't know how it works, I do, I can tell you that it is incredibly safe and that the chances of it ever going wrong and affecting you in any way are practically zero. Does that make you feel better or would you still worry about it?

Yes, you know so much more than the rest of us. I agree with you, but that doesn't change the fact that that is one of the snottiest statements I've ever heard. Incidentally, I've always been a proponent of fission power, and one of the people who used to debate with me against that all the time had his PhD.

Is anyone else actually a little disapointed the world didn't end? It sort of brought home to me my utter insignificance, and I'm now in an existential crisis, reading too much Satre.

On the bright side, England won.