Its the end of the world as we know it...

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**Frazzled**

On then positive I won't have to worry about either hurricanes or bills.
"Sure, I'll talk to the tax guy...on thursday..."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,418204,00.html

Meet Evans the Atom, who will end the world on Wednesday

By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 2:03 AM on 07th September 2008

Comments (21)
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The man behind the world’s biggest scientific experiment, which critics claim could cause the end of the world, is a Welsh miner’s son who has admitted blowing things up as a child.

Dr Lyn Evans, who has been dubbed Evans the Atom, will this week switch on a giant particle accelerator designed to unlock the secrets of the Big Bang.

But the 63-year-old physicist revealed yesterday that his passion for science was fuelled by the relatively small bangs he had created with his chemistry set at his council house in Aberdare in the Welsh valleys.

Inspired: 'Evans the Atom' at school in Wales in 1962

‘I was more interested in chemistry than physics when I was young,’ he said.

‘I had a number of chemistry sets. Like everybody, I used to make explosives. I even blew the fuses of the whole house a few times.’

His interest in physics grew at his boys-only grammar school, where lessons had an added attraction because they were attended by girls bussed in from a nearby school that lacked a physics teacher.

On Wednesday, Dr Evans will fire up the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile-long doughnut-shaped tunnel that will smash sub-atomic particles together at nearly the speed of light.

Built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the collider lies beneath the French-Swiss border, near the institution’s headquarters in Geneva, at depths ranging from 170ft to 600ft.

The aim of the £4.4billion experiment is to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang – the birth of the universe – and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life.

It will track the spray of particles thrown out by collisions in a search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical entity that supposedly lends weight, or mass, to the elementary particles. So important is this mysterious substance that it has been called the ‘God Particle’.

Scientists also hope to shed some light on the invisible material that exists between particles – dubbed ‘dark matter’ as no one knows what it really is – which makes up most of the universe.

Relaxed: Dr Evans - in his shorts at the CERN control centre in Geneva - dismisses the fears of doom-mongers

But a handful of scientists believe that the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could ‘eat’ the planet from within, and they are launching last-ditch efforts to halt it in the courts.

One of them, Professor Otto Rossler, a retired German chemist, said he feared the experiment may create a devastating quasar – a mass of energy fuelled by black holes – inside the Earth.

‘Nothing will happen for at least four years,’ he said. ‘Then someone will spot a light ray coming out of the Indian Ocean during the night and no one will be able to explain it.

‘A few weeks later, we will see a similar beam of particles coming out of the soil on the other side of the planet. Then we will know there is a little quasar inside the planet.’

Prof Rossler said that as the spinning-top-like quasar devoured the world from within, the two jets emanating from it would grow and catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis would occur at the points they emerged from the Earth.

‘The weather will change completely, wiping out life, and very soon the whole planet will be eaten in a magnificent scenario – if you could watch it from the moon. A Biblical Armageddon. Even cloud and fire will form, as it says in the Bible.’

He said that attempts were still being made in the European Court of Human Rights to halt the experiment on the grounds that it violated the right to life. The court has, however, already rejected calls for a temporary delay in the project, and it is unlikely to come to a speedy decision about whether the CERN experiment should be halted for good.

Meanwhile Dr Walter Wagner, an American scientist who has been warning about the dangers of particle accelerators for 20 years, is awaiting a ruling on a lawsuit he filed a fortnight ago in his home state of Hawaii.

He fears the experiments might unwittingly create something he calls a ‘strangelet’ that could result in a fusion reaction that might ultimately turn the Earth into a supernova, or an exploding star.

But Dr Evans, the leader of the project, who has devoted 14 years of his life to building the vast particle accelerator, is dismissive of the doom-mongers.

In fact, he is so relaxed about the project, he even wears shorts to work.

He said that Prof Rossler was a ‘crazy’ retired professor who had invented his own theory of relativity.

‘We have shown him where his elementary errors are, but of course people like that just will not listen,’ said Dr Evans.

Meanwhile, Dr Wagner’s fears were ‘totally and completely’ unfounded. ‘There are thousands of scientists around the world who have been preparing this machine and they know what they are talking about, unlike these guys,’ he added.

Dr Evans says his real nightmare is not that he will destroy the world but that, with the cameras rolling, the machine will break down. ‘This is not the first accelerator I have commissioned, but the first under the glare of the whole world,’ he said.

‘My main worry is that we’ve got a huge amount of equipment and it is new. If something trips off, we are down for hours and we have all these Press people sitting around.

‘We are not used to that. We are used to setting things up quietly and announcing it afterwards.’

Experiment produces lab rap hit
The Large Hadron Collider may be causing fears for the future of the world, but it has become the bizarre setting for an unlikely music hit.

Written and performed by 23-year-old Kate McAlpine, who works in the Press office at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, the video features Kate and two background dancers bopping about in lab coats.

A long way from rap’s usual subjects of violence and crime, the rap focuses on the science of high-energy particle physics. One section goes: ‘Two beams of protons/ swing ’round./ Through the ring they ride/’til in the hearts of the detectors/ they’re made to collide!/ And all that energy packed/ in that tiny room/ becomes mass,/ particles created from the vacuum.’

Kate, who wrote her first physics rap while studying at Michigan State University, says: ‘Rap and physics are culturally miles apart and I find it amusing to throw them together.’

A CERN spokesman said: ‘We love the rap and the science is spot on.’

**Greebynog**

Those guys are haters, and just loons. There's been collisions 100,000,000 times more energetic than the LHC's top range hitting the earth's atmosphere for billions of years. The universe conducts 10 trillion lifetime runs of the LHC every second. The people who are whipping up fear about this are just crackpots with nothing better to do. It's not as if the people at CERN just went "Shall we build a particle collider? Yeah. Might it destroy the uiverse? Only one way to find out..." The advancements that could potentialy come as a result of this are just too exciting to worry about deluded maniacs.

**Frazzled**

I'd believe you Greebynog, but then again I heard last night that conservatives might win control in Canada. Thats like the Seventh sign of the Apocalypse. Coincidence? I think not!

**MagickalMemories**

I just can NOT agree with this being an intelligent decision to make.

When are we, as a race of creatures, going to wake up and realize that we are NOT God, or God-like.
I have no problem with the lab. I have a problem with the location.
Put it somewhere else... like a Space Station, or the moon.

Blow one of them up and we can deal with the results. Yes. Losing the Moon WOULD suck and affect things on Earth... but it wouldn't destroy the Earth if the collider DID create the problems that it is speculated by some to cause.

If it causes those problems here...

Well, then the thread title is fairly appropriate. Huh?

Yes. I know that it would be immensely more expensive (and near impossible) to do this in space or on the moon. So? Better that we take a lot longer to do it up there than discover, too late, that we shouldn't have done it here.

Eric

**Grignard**

Greebynog wrote:Those guys are haters, and just loons. There's been collisions 100,000,000 times more energetic than the LHC's top range hitting the earth's atmosphere for billions of years. The universe conducts 10 trillion lifetime runs of the LHC every second. The people who are whipping up fear about this are just crackpots with nothing better to do. It's not as if the people at CERN just went "Shall we build a particle collider? Yeah. Might it destroy the uiverse? Only one way to find out..." The advancements that could potentialy come as a result of this are just too exciting to worry about deluded maniacs.

Yah, I tend to agree. My training is in chemistry, not physics, but just looking at this as a layperson I'm not clear that whoever is reporting this story is any clearer than I am about the science going on. What is amply clear from this though is that you don't allow senior scientists to occupy PR type roles, and for the love of God, don't allow them to talk to reporters.

What makes this poor science reporting is the fact that there is a lot of descriptive language describing ( inconsistently ), but very, very, little explanation of what CERN is trying to achieve with this. This article doesn't make clear how this hypothetical catastrophe is supposed to occur.

Prof Rossler said that as the spinning-top-like quasar devoured the world from within, the two jets emanating from it would grow and catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis would occur at the points they emerged from the Earth.

‘The weather will change completely, wiping out life, and very soon the whole planet will be eaten in a magnificent scenario – if you could watch it from the moon. A Biblical Armageddon. Even cloud and fire will form, as it says in the Bible.’

That statement is long on eschatology, but very short on describing how this is going to occur. From what I've read, a quasar is a "quasi stellar object", something seen on a radio telescope and described by how it appears, not from what it is. Now this was many years ago and for all I know they know all about these now, but if not, it would be interesting to know how he knows something that we don't understand the exact nature of is going to form and destroy the earth.

Meanwhile Dr Walter Wagner, an American scientist who has been warning about the dangers of particle accelerators for 20 years, is awaiting a ruling on a lawsuit he filed a fortnight ago in his home state of Hawaii.

He fears the experiments might unwittingly create something he calls a ‘strangelet’ that could result in a fusion reaction that might ultimately turn the Earth into a supernova, or an exploding star.

Huh? Wouldn't that require an enormous amount of mass ( many times that of the Sun ) to come from somewhere? Of course, they are apparently tinkering with the very things that define mass, so what do I know. For that much energy to come from nowhere though, that sounds like you're going to have some difficulty getting that to work with what we know about the principles of thermodynamics ( And that I have had a course or two on ).

I don't know much about exotic particle physics, but I do know a great deal about anxiety, from personal experience. This sort of sounds what this is ACTUALLY about. I could walk outside right now, and a plane could crash on me and that would be it. What happens if I'm just sitting here and my heart stops beating? What if I have a wreck going to work tommorrow ( much more likely). Ultimately any number of unlikely or slightly more likely calamities could occur at any moment, and if you try to eliminate all of them, you'll never do anything worthwhile. What a lot of people who read this probably don't realize is that there is stuff like this out there that exists due to no activity of mankind that could, however unlikely, end life on earth. Apparently there are objects that radiate intense sprays of particles along their axis of rotation, in outer space, a great distance from earth ( much like what one of our fear-mongers described, except they know these exist). Apparently there is a chance, although highly unlikely, that one of these could end up facing us and subjecting the entire planet to a great deal of ionizing radiation.

Here's one to keep you up at night: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum - Specifically the part about a vacuum metastability event

In fact, if there are any physicists here, I would like this concept explained. The closest thing I see to being analogous to this is when they described the concept of a harmonic oscillator when I learned about IR spectroscopy. IIRC, the gist of it is that your ground state isn't your lowest energy state, because of the way the math works out, and uncertainty. So is this the same concept, with the entire universe acting as a particle?

Anyhow, what all of that has in common is that you have absolutely no control over it. In fact, you wouldn't see either of those coming. No point in worrying about it.

I'm a half-assed scientist, but I still have enough of it left in me to be really irritated by the fact that the universe *should* have more mass than what is visible to us. This is the kind of research that might scratch that itch. Its unlikely that anything practical would immediately come from this, but it is very possible, I think, for something to come out of it down the road. We're talking antigravity and reactionless engines and other science fiction standbys.

Ultimately I'm not as enthused about stuff like this as I used to be for much more mundane reasons. With the exception of those rare sorts of people that are capable of thinking on these kind of scales of size and energy and being comfortable with it, I think this sort of knowledge is more likely than not to cause existential anxiety. I don't understand how these people are able to stay sane, I believe that if I studied this stuff on a regular basis at some point I would just simply lock up with despair and fear, which would have nothing to do with some half-baked theory of the earth being destroyed. I may be wrong, I *hope* I'm wrong, but if I were to put money on it, I would bet against finding anything in studying the fundamental nature of existence and the universe that would allow you to sleep at night, let alone be remotely comforting. If you're in love with learning enough, then great for you. I'm not.

**sebster**

MagickalMemories wrote:I just can NOT agree with this being an intelligent decision to make.

When are we, as a race of creatures, going to wake up and realize that we are NOT God, or God-like.
I have no problem with the lab. I have a problem with the location.
Put it somewhere else... like a Space Station, or the moon.

The point you're missing is that this isn't a minor risk, it is zero risk. The event being simulated happens constantly, the only difference with this event is that we know where it's going to take place so we can put sensors around it.

**Chimera_Calvin**

@Grignard - I was originally trained as a physicist (been out of the game for a long time though, so don't expect any math!)

Basically, these interactions happen constantly at a subatomic level.
Although every particle tries to settle into the lowest possible energy state, sometimes they get trapped in higher (but still stable) states. Normally, they would remain there until given enough energy to get 'over' the energy barrier, at which point they would lose all the energy and drop to the lowest energy state:

i.e. if there is a difference x between the two stable energy states and a photon of energy y contacts the particle, it will drop to the lower state and emit a new photon of energy x+y

However, quantum theory allows for 'tunneling' whereby the particle 'borrows' energy from the surrounding vacuum in order to get out of the higher energy state. It then loses an equal amount of energy back to the vacuum and THEN emits a photon of energy x as it drops to the lower energy state.

This happens all the time, but the vast majority of these vacuum-interactions have no effect (the energy that is 'borrowed' is too small to effect any change in the state of the particle), so a tunneling effect is comparitively rare.

The vacuum fields described in the wiki article are a a variation on this theme. Essentially, these bubbles are in effect independent universes with very little energy. For a negative energy bubble, energy will tunnel in from our universe to cancel it out (and vise-versa for positive energy bubbles).
The key, though, is that the larger these bubbles get, the easier the tunneling becomes and the quicker they disappear.

The net result of all this is that while this stuff happens, the cumulative effect (as with all quantum physics) is virtually indistinguishable from a classical model of the same group of particles or area of space.

i.e. bugger all happens

(don't you just love particle physics

)

**Arctik_Firangi**

It sounds like religious propaganda to me.

Grignard's post is on the ball, especially regarding the strangelet theory. Not that the theory is necessarily wrong, it's just that the 'doomsday' side of it doesn't have anything to do with this experiment. How is it that people can look at the universe and think that scale doesn't make a difference?

The actual scientists in question only want to observe what happens when certain particles influence certain other particles in certain ways. It's been done for a long time - long enough for crazies to take a branch and make it into a pseudoscientific scare theory.

What's more, if someone was been warning about the dangers of particle accelerators for TWENTY YEARS, then you know he's just a man-Orc on a determined campaign to upset people.

Putting this device on the moon wouldn't save us from a localised supernova, but then they're just getting that confused with the German dude's black hole = quasar cock-up.

Here's a hint for ya - conspiracy nuts love wikipedia. Study science from a textbook.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

I still stand by my opinion that Scientists, 99% of the time, are simply mucking around in search of a good laugh.

These are the guys who have made Mice glow in the Dark, grown an Ear on the back of a Mouse, and created a Rat Brained Robot (no, really. They have. Looks a bit like a Doomwheel too, if you squint a lot).

I honestly DO think they decided to get this thing built for a giggle. Do we know what will happen? No, of course not. If we know what will happen, why spend so much? Personally, I think it would be particularly hilarious in the following situations.....

1) The Scientists switch it on, there is a minor explosion, and they all stumble out looking like Daffy Duck when he's been blown up (hair shocked back, Bill round the back of the head)

2) Nothing at all happens.

3) It becomes a really, really big Electro Magnet, and pulls all the metal in the world towards it.

**Miguelsan**

You know that they were using it to check the vintage of some french wines? Talk about having fun.

M.

**malfred**

Hopefully, if the world ends, it'll be quick. It's when people don't bother to take the time
to do a complete job of things that makes things miserable for everybody.

**Frazzled**

Exactly. We need closers here.

**reds8n**

Miguelsan wrote:You know that they were using it to check the vintage of some french wines? Talk about having fun.

M.

Which proves they're insane.

French wine is rubbish.

**syr8766**

MagickalMemories wrote:

When are we, as a race of creatures, going to wake up and realize that we are NOT God, or God-like.

Eric

Probably Friday morning.

**JD21290**

i say leave it alone.
if you dont know what your doing dont try it.

i learned this lesson from trying to re-wire my xbox while still plugged in.
but in this carse, its a little worse whe they screw it up.

**Mannahnin**

Exactly. If man were meant to fly we'd have wings. Ban all airplanes, I say.

**Grignard**

Mannahnin wrote:Exactly. If man were meant to fly we'd have wings. Ban all airplanes, I say.

Lets take your comment at face value for a moment. ( I realize that it was meant to prove a point ). Without aircraft, there would be no crashes. There would be less pollution, and no contrails contributing to global warming. Some people, though not me, would make the point that the above statment should not be tounge in cheek, but a rational proposal.

**JD21290**

if we were ment to have a natural source of flying aka; wings, then we would have hollow bones and much larger chests so that we would be able to fly.
i hate planes anyway, more of a boat person, but i think sometimes people push it a little too far, or in this case they have serious psychological problems.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

The only thing preventing us from labelling ourselves Godlike, is our inherent infallibility.

We can create something from nothing, and in terms of the World, are heading towards ominpotence. Omnipresence is very nearly there as well, in terms of communication and observance utilising Satellites.

**Greebynog**

JD21290 wrote:i say leave it alone.
if you dont know what your doing dont try it.

i learned this lesson from trying to re-wire my xbox while still plugged in.
but in this carse, its a little worse whe they screw it up.

The point is, these people do know what they're doing, they're particle physicists!

**Grignard**

Greebynog wrote:
JD21290 wrote:i say leave it alone.
if you dont know what your doing dont try it.

i learned this lesson from trying to re-wire my xbox while still plugged in.
but in this carse, its a little worse whe they screw it up.

The point is, these people do know what they're doing, they're particle physicists!

That argument in and of itself isn't good enough. Physicians know what they're doing as well, but they still make mistakes, sometimes fatal ones.

**Mannahnin**

But as already noted, these collisions happen all the time in nature, and we’re not dead or sitting in a black hole yet. Some fears arise purely out of ignorance.

**Lord Bingo**

they say that it could create a black hole, now i'm not a scientist, hell i haven't even got my gcse yet. but even i know a black hole is the result of a massive star collasping in on its selve (or something along that lines). a massive stars is at least 100 times the size of the sun. so how are they supposed to make one in a tube 18 miles long?

**Greebynog**

Well, it's perfectly possible it could create tiny black holes, but at this sort of scale they would just cause a small pop. Check out this for more info:

**sphynx**

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum... um...
...
what?

Anyway,

Im not letting a black hole stop me from buying Crysis : Warhead. the world wouldent have the nerve to end before my processer suffers the agonsing strain of this expansion pack!

**Phoenix**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I still stand by my opinion that Scientists, 99% of the time, are simply mucking around in search of a good laugh.

These are the guys who have made Mice glow in the Dark, grown an Ear on the back of a Mouse, and created a Rat Brained Robot (no, really. They have. Looks a bit like a Doomwheel too, if you squint a lot).

So I had a talk with the guy who discovered Plutonium (before he died) and, yes the element was given the abreviation Pu as a joke. They kind of though the work stinked.

Along with that, all you have to do is look at the names of things to realize that lots of scientist (who do really boaring work) insert jokes to keep things interesting. Think the name Quark was chosen for purely scientific reasons? How about the different kinds...like Charm Quarks? There is a species of bird lice named after the cartoonist Gary Larson, who did "The Far Side" because he would often mention entimologists in his comics.

What all this should show you is that scientists like to romaticize and humorize the things they do because stairing at spread sheets and crunching data is really boaring. Sure they call it "The God Particle" but they could just as eaisly called it "Bob" or anything else. No one is trying to blow up the world MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *gasp* HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAH *cough* *choak* *wheeze*. However scientist types always like to talk about theoritical dangers of things like that because it makes their jobs seem more interesting. All of them realize that the chances of it happening are so slim as to be non-existant. The chances of all your atoms tunneling though a wall are higher, so really, go try walking though that wall over there. When you're done, come back and let me know how it went.

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.

**Phoenix**

Greebynog wrote:The point is, these people do know what they're doing, they're particle physicists!

And besides, it's particle physics, not rocket science!

**Miguelsan**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:We can create something from nothing.`[ ] Omnipresence is very nearly there as well, in terms of communication and observance utilising Satellites.

Yeah it´s called Economics but from time to time we have a reality check and it comes crashing down. Stupid humans always having to poke things!

And Omnipresence at least in the UK comes with lots of cameras and a tendence to lose the laptops they use to store the data.

M.

**Miguelsan**

Still here guys? I guess the end was not so near ·$%& I knew I shouldn´t trust FoxNews and sell the house for a Sayonara dear Universe orgy!

M.

**Arctik_Firangi**

Yeah. Looks like Asia is alright.
I heard a big bang the other night though... Oh, that was lightning.