- #211
cristo
Staff Emeritus
Science Advisor
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humanino said:Do you really think we are that stupid ?
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/center-of-mass_energy.html
:rofl:
humanino said:Do you really think we are that stupid ?
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/center-of-mass_energy.html
ZapperZ said:Why don't you ask him and see if he shares your opinion of his opinion of the LHC.
ZapperZ said:The article I cited came directly from him. I don't see him mentioning even ONCE any risk associated with the LHC, and as far as I've read from a number of his articles, he has no such issues.
ZapperZ said:And unless he has published clearly how he came up with such odds, there is no way to know how and what kind of assumptions he made to arrive at such numbers. Yet, this is taken as if it is a divine prophecy...
grahamolga said:I'm just writing as I have a query about the LHC. As I have been thinking about this, which is weird for me (I train people in management and customer service etc) no science back ground. I would love to hear your thoughts. So here goes...
If the streams are being smashed into each other could this then create a universe? I ask this as I'm thinking the collisions the cern guys are doing under controlled conditions to look for new particles etc must already happen out there in space or here on earth/both...but are the speeds important ? Do individual natural collisions happen at lower speeds an therefore not set off a "birth"
If the particles (sorry can't remember the name) are not seen on this experiment. Do we need to go bigger/faster? Will it prove/show anything we don't already know or understand. I can't wait to find out what happens! :-) One of my colleagues said to me today what a waste ...just like space it only gave us Teflon. my immediate response was actually Velcro as well. ha haaa I must look up all the medical stuff and other thousands of things that have been of benefit to us!
Look forward to reading your thoughts.
Take care
Graham
mal4mac said:I don't have an opinion on the LHC, I'm just quoting his opinion from his book.
He talks about the machine at CERN rather than the LHC in the book.
He's fairly clear, quotes Kent's work etc., Unless someone pays me I'm not interested enough to work through the figures. But I'll continue believing Newton's heir until he recants, properly. I'll not lose sleep, either. 1 in 50 million, chance, hey, why not, let's take the risk!
chinatruth said:just read through this thread and it will really help
my opinion.
The LHC won't creat a new universe. The " Big Bang" is just a metaphor.
Whether we find anything or not, we will still build a larger one---VLHC---very large hadrom collider( but maybe in 50 years)
So not only you were concerned about collisions, but you were concerned with merely circulating a beam !? This is utter non-sense.peter0302 said:Well, the first test happened, and we're all still here! Yay.
peter0302 said:Lighten up!
Also I don't believe I ever said I was concerned about collisions or actually thought something bad would happen. I have, ratherly, merely asked people in the know to explain why no cataclysmic event is possible. Forgive me if I don't accept subjective characterizations like "baloney" and "utter non-sense" as gospel just because they come out of the mouths of PhDs. Instead, I find comments like that, from you and others, rather condescending, as though the rest of us are not capable of understanding therefore we should not even ask the question. And, you all should remember the cataclysmic mistakes science has made in the past, and the countless lives that have been lost due to people's concerns being dismissed as "baloney." You can understand why someone would ask you to back up your words with answers.
Like I said, a little bit of humility is definitely in order for this community, especially when playing god.
malawi_glenn said:you are capable to understand, if you are not afraid of cosmic rays, then don't be afraid of LHC.
If the fundamental Planck scale is ≈ 1 TeV, LHC,
with the peak luminosity of 30 fb^−1/year will produce
over 10^7 black holes per year.
peter0302 said:Well, I do wear an aluminum foil helmet when I go outside...
This is your interpretation of what I mean when I say "utter non-sense". I shout "utter nonsense" at myself several times a day. So this is not condescending.peter0302 said:I find comments like that, from you and others, rather condescending, as though the rest of us are not capable of understanding therefore we should not even ask the question.
Hah, ok fair enough. But I think you can appreciate my basic point. I'm not trying to be alarmist, but I don't think it's ever unfair to question whether we know what we're doing when we start playing with big bangs.humanino said:This is your interpretation of what I mean when I say "utter non-sense". I shout "utter nonsense" at myself several times a day. So this is not condescending.
peter0302 said:Hah, ok fair enough. But I think you can appreciate my basic point. I'm not trying to be alarmist, but I don't think it's ever unfair to question whether we know what we're doing when we start playing with big bangs.
Anyway, I posted a very long report in non-physics forum about why LHC couldn't produce black holes, mainly relying on the argument that the Schwartzchild radius would be smaller than the Planck Length, or, if the radius didn't matter, the fact that Hawking Radiation would deplete the BH before it acquired any mass. So I'm on your side here with LHC. I just like to have all the facts possible.
And, I do fear that one day we'll have the capability to make something destructive. So, today it was 1 in 50,000,000. What if tomorrow it's 1 in 1,000,000? 10 Years from now - 1 in 100,000? How risky is too risky? And who decides? These are not frivolous questions.
malawi_glenn said:Why are people afraid of LHC but not cosmic radiation, which hits Earth million of million of times each second with higher energy that will be avaiable at LHC?
People who are afraid of LHC and knows about cosmic radiation are ignorant fools, according to me.
enmerkar said:Is there a possibility that your confidence is ill found? Arrogance and Science are a terrible mix. Your response is disturbing. It is the perfect illustration for concern.
Consider:
History has demonstrated time and again that out Scientists never make mistakes.
There are no cases in our past that can be presented that show we misunderstood.
Science has only benefited humanity.
We have thought out all possibilities... Everything will be just fine.
Only fools find fault with Science.
There are no good Ideas presented but those from people with PhD's
We live in a time where our dooms day clock is a few minutes to midnight...
We all wish we could put the "nuclear bomb" genie back in the bottle.
We are argueing over the possible catastrophe of climate change...
We are desparate to reduce pollution into our atmosphere.
We worry about thousands of Chemicals that are giving us Cancers...
We fight lawsuits over once suposed safe chemicals that are now banned
We live among the unfortunate with birth defects caused by chemical poisons.
We contminate our soils with poisons that were suposed to benefit us.
It is truly foolish to not be concerned.
Measure twice cut once.
Hi, everyone! I'm new to this science stuff, but I was wondering, you know, I heard about teh Large Sink Drainer, and I was thinking, is it possible that the swirly mini vortex that we see going down the drain could get bigger and become a tornado and destroy my neighborhood?
chippy! said:well i have read 2-3 pages but there is a lot to take in at once.
ok can i just ask, seeing as no-one wants to answer my questions.
OAQfirst said:-Is this an accurate analogy?
mal4mac said:I don't take this kind of Islamic science as being serious, and neither does anyone with a serious claim to gatekeeper status in Western science. I'm talking about the kind of science that Martin Rees [President of the RS, Newton's heir, highest post holder in UK science] holds serious.
Vanadium 50 said:Once you've decided that physicists are murderous liars, willing to slaughter everyone on the planet (including their friends and families) in pursuit of a Nobel prize, there's really nothing left to say. Just out of curiosity, do you have any evidence for your claim?
mal4mac said:Rees and Kent suggest that the LHC poses a risk, you can find full quotes from them in this thread and others. Here's a snippet from Kent:
"... I guess a probability of 1/5000 per year probability of destroying the earth..."
If you say Rees or Kent are not knowoedgeable enough to be taken seriously then I seriously doubt your knowledge!
Vanadium 50 said:Kent is being more than a little disingenuous here. The 5000 number is actually 10000, it was in an other-than-final version of the paper, and most seriously, it is not what he claims it is. It's an intermediate step, and Busza et al. use this to explain why they prefer to use the astrophysical limits of Dar et al. instead of the astrophysical limits set by the moon surviving five billion years.
student85 said:I sincerely think that physicists here should be more welcoming to non-physicists. I think some people here are too cocky and think that non-physicists are inferior. And whenever someone posts something like this, they come up with a "clever" response and they are aaalways right... but come one guys just be a little more kind to the people out there who didn't go through a scientific education like you did, and are simply curious about a field that has nothing to do with theirs. I think you guys should rather be happy that there's people who are interested in your field and find it amusing.
student85 said:I sincerely think that physicists here should be more welcoming to non-physicists. I think some people here are too cocky and think that non-physicists are inferior. And whenever someone posts something like this, they come up with a "clever" response and they are aaalways right... but come one guys just be a little more kind to the people out there who didn't go through a scientific education like you did, and are simply curious about a field that has nothing to do with theirs. I think you guys should rather be happy that there's people who are interested in your field and find it amusing.
peter0302 said:Well, I do wear an aluminum foil helmet when I go outside...
ZapperZ said:What about the arrogance of someone who seems to think that he/she can already decide on certain issues without knowing not only the subject matter, but all the facts? How come "arrogance" is only a characteristics inflicted on scientists but not on an ignorant public that have no problem in arriving at a faulty decision? What makes them so immune to such behavior?
Zz.
Because the people with the power are the people with the responsibility. The burden is on them to convince the powerless public that they are doing the right thing and are not putting them in danger. Because it is the scientists who are playing with the fundamental forces of nature, not the "ignorant publc." The public just go about living their lives remembering how many times they've been screwed over by everyone from doctors to politicians to corporate leaders, and yes, by the physicists who nearly brought about the end of the world with at least one technology, and are understandably afraid.ZapperZ said:What about the arrogance of someone who seems to think that he/she can already decide on certain issues without knowing not only the subject matter, but all the facts? How come "arrogance" is only a characteristics inflicted on scientists but not on an ignorant public that have no problem in arriving at a faulty decision? What makes them so immune to such behavior?
peter0302 said:... I cannot abide anyone dismissing the fears of the general public who cannot be expected to know any better ...
This is true. Nobody has argued the contrary, so it sounds defensive and is needless for you to bring it up.peter0302 said:Scientists are more educated than [the laymen], but scientists are not better than [them] ...
This is a place of science.peter0302 said:Genesis says the world was made in seven days.
Right. Importantly, fundamental physics research is NOT about making money OR winning politics.malawi_glenn said:... It's all politics and money.