Man's attempt to divide by zero

**Whacker** · 06-25-2008, 04:20

Thought it might be cool to start a topic on the LHC, aka mankind's eventual doom. Supposedly this bad daddy will allow for observation of the Higgs Boson, which I don't remotely pretend to understand but is a calculated fundamental aspect of particle physics that we have not been able to create the conditions required to cause yet. That, or it manages to create a singularity which will rapidly engulf the earth and lead to our immediate extinction as a species... which some may argue is not a bad thing.

**Csargo** · 06-25-2008, 05:13

**GeneralHankerchief** · 06-25-2008, 05:21

I think there was already a topic on this in the Backroom a few months ago before they pushed the date back to further study the possibility of micro black holes being formed. General consensus was that Hawking Radiation would make the suckers evaporate almost instantly.

I hope.

**PBI** · 06-25-2008, 13:39

Yes, that's my understanding, that similar high-energy heavy ion collisions go on all the time due to cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere and the moon, so if they produced black holes capable of sucking up a planet, it would have happened by now. Same goes for strangelets, vacuum bubbles and all the other doomsday theories. LHC doesn't do anything extraordinary that isn't found in nature in terms of collision energy, what's special about it is that it makes lots of these collisions, and makes them somewhere where we can study their products without outside interference.

That said, us physicists are going to look mighty silly when the LHC opens up a dimensional portal and the Octosquids invade.

If the world is merely sucked into oblivion, however, I'm fairly confident there won't be an inquiry.

**Viking** · 06-25-2008, 16:28

Originally Posted by Poor Bloody Infantry

Yes, that's my understanding, that similar high-energy heavy ion collisions go on all the time due to cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere and the moon, so if they produced black holes capable of sucking up a planet, it would have happened by now.

That's what I've heard too; though it would be interesting to compare energy levels; and perhaps the different densities of collisions too if that could matter..