Thread: The Large Hadron Collider

The CERN is only a few miles away from my place, and - besides tentacles - I look almost like you

People from the CERN made this video - I don't like rap but this is cool - because there is some sort of "controversy": a few people and scientists are saying that the CERN will create a black hole and that the earth will be destroyed... I haven't made that much physics but that sounds a little far too stretch.The CERN has been created in 1954 and didn't had one major incident - I can't even remember of a small one (that doesn't mean there could not be one, but the people working there are the cream of the professional...) btw the WWW was invented there by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau...

When the train was invented, they were people and scientists saying that this was impossible because our body would never survive such a speed (If I remember well they wanted to go as fast as 30km/h) or that we will die suffocating because the speed of the air would not let us breathe... hopefully, we didn't stop at those considerations...

I will not enter the usual debate about what fundamental physics can bring us that is good... I think that if you have entered an hospital today the answer will be obvious. But if you are interested in reading more about the CERN and the use of basic science, there is a nice paper there: CERN - The use of basic science

Originally Posted by Ockham

...a few people and scientists are saying that the CERN will create a black hole and that the earth will be destroyed... I haven't made that much physics but that sounds a little far too stretch.

There are actually a lot of smaller colilders in existence, one not horribly far from me in central california. most scientists say a black hole probably won't form, but even if it does I won't care the next day

Originally Posted by Nickelking

There are actually a lot of smaller colilders in existence, one not horribly far from me in central california. most scientists say a black hole probably won't form, but even if it does I won't care the next day

I lived near Fermilab for twenty years and I can honestly say that it didn't do me any harm except that, every now and then, I get this pain in my back...

I am a big fan of science for curiosity... or better: research for curiosity (I like to enlarge the vision to humanities for instance)... So I think that wanting to answer the questions a human mind can have (what make us what we really are is the fact that we can think and even ask question about our own thinking) is one of the better way to honor what we are - of course, when harm could be done, experimentation must be done with caution and ethic-.

I just wanted to add this to lighten my point:
The point (application of particle studies) was elegantly, if arrogantly, made by Bob Wilson (first Director of Fermilab, a large particle physics/accelerator laboratory near Chicago) who, when asked by a Congressional Committee "What will your lab contribute to the defence of the US?", replied "Nothing, but it will make it worth defending"