LHC Success! 1007
Tomahawk writes "It worked! The LHC was turned on this morning and has been shown to have worked. Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
(And we're all still alive, too!)" Here is a picture from the control room which I'm sure makes sense to someone that isn't me.
More than scientific learning (Score:4, Insightful)
I expected the "turned on" link to be linking to XKCD [xkcd.com].
My only question is, when the smoke clears and we're all fine, will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time? Probably not. I'm sure next time they'll say
"this time, its different, the world is really going to end this time".
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
It was a triumph, I'm making a note here, huge success!
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Pass the c-
What do you mean all the cake is gone?
Oblig. Eddie Izzard (Score:5, Funny)
Cake or death?
Cake please.
Sorry, we're all out of cake. We didn't expect to have such a run on it.
Ok, I'll have the chicken then.
Well... Ok. Good thing we're the Church of England.
Total Perspective Vortex (Score:4, Funny)
What do you mean all the cake is gone?
fairy cake.. yeah we had to use it for the LHC.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
For the good of all of us!
(Except the ones who are dead.)
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
And the ones who lost their bets with Stephen Hawking about whether they'd find the Higgs Boson.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Informative)
And the ones who lost their bets with Stephen Hawking about whether they'd find the Higgs Boson.
Isn't the real science not happening for like another 11 months?
LHC isn't running. (Score:5, Informative)
All this was was an initial test, the first attempt to circulate a beam through the collider. Nothing was actually collided.
Re:LHC isn't running. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LHC isn't running. (Score:4, Insightful)
To make a "car" analogy, they're turned the ignition key and listened to the engine start up and turn over, and are congratulating themselves that the thing that they've just finished building seems to be working.
They've revved the engine with the gears in neutral. They haven't actually driven anywhere yet. That comes later.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Informative)
Someone please mod up insightful or informative. My remaining mod points expired today.
The LHC was "turned on" but this does not mean it is operating anywhere near the energies that will distiguish it from past particle accelerators. Yet.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Kids, take note. This is what happens to your typing, grammar, and spelling when you sniff too much glue.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Then the science gets done and you make a neat supercollider for the people who are still alive!
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
That does it. I'm tagging this story 'stillalive'.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
In another news: Gordon Freeman has been spotted in CERN test chamber [shacknews.com].
Re:LHC Cannon (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why slashdot needs a -1 Time Cube moderation option.
Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to get those protons to near light speed? Think how much it'll take to get anything macroscopic moving at such speeds. Coupled with the fact a proton on its own is electrically charged while most atoms are electrically neutral - so using super conducting magnets won't work which is what the LHC makes a lot of use of.
Re:LHC Cannon (Score:4, Insightful)
It's completely and utterly impossible. There are so many things wrong with the concept, it's difficult to explain.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time?
Well, they still haven't made the black hole yet. Just wait. When you get sucked in don't come crying to me. I'll be many, many light years away.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be many, many light years away.
Infinitely many, in fact, if you haven't gotten sucked into the black hole yet.
Re:Sucked in.... (Score:4, Funny)
Thats the new secretary, it might be worth exploring what else she sucks in.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
I'm setting up a standing wager. I'm offering 20 to 1 that the world doesn't get sucked into a black hole. So any takers on the world being destroyed? Your chance to turn $100 into $2000.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, my take is this. If the LHC guys really do manage to destroy the universe in some science shattering stranglet experiment, well...
That would be rather impressive. It's just too bad no one would be around to bear witness to the fact. ;-)
Or to put it in the context of Stargate...
Carter: He destroyed a solar system.
Jeannie: MEREDITH!
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Funny)
But don't forget your towel... just in case.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Or: "Every time you masturbate, God destroys a planet" ...
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
If there were any survivors their life would be hell, people would expect them to destroy systems everywhere..
"You know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water." Samantha Carter
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
... will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time? Probably not. I'm sure next time they'll say "this time, its different, the world is really going to end this time".
Don't knock the doomsayers man! When they think the world is going to end, they start selling (never understood this? The world is gonna end! My couch for $20! Just in case I need to pay a toll on the way to the afterlife..) or giving away all their stuff! I need a new couch so I hope they get all spooked. If I'm lucky, one will have been a gadget nerd and I can get some computer parts too!
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:4, Funny)
We await the results of the test with couched enthusiasm!
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
>> ... will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time? Probably not. I'm sure next time they'll say "this time, its different, the world is really going to end this time".
The doomsayers only need to be right once... :)
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Insightful)
the doomsayers can by definition only be right once
I do not think we have to worry about several dooms in a row.
you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 hit Jupiter? There were people saying (and being interviewed on the BBC no less) that pieces of Jupiter would break off and collide with Earth...
The claims of some regarding LHC are no less crazy. What distresses me is the level of coverage these nutbars have had on the news channels. I don't know about you, but I've had several people with non scientific backgrounds who've been scared by this 'news' turn to me for some real world information/reassurance.
When you are dealing with the level of brain dead reasoning that produces such spurious and inaccurate statements about things like the LHC, you can't hope to succeed. Honestly, even if you come up with good reasons, it automatically becomes a cover up to those people, thus excusing even wilder claims.
Re:you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Interesting)
True true. I know there have been several instances like this before. And it seems like each time something like this comes up, there are people with "strong evidence". I'm just saying that it seems like we don't really learn from history like they say we do.
Re:you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Funny)
Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remember - when they tested the first atomic bomb, they didn't know if it would ignite the atmosphere or not.
Fortunately, it didn't.
We (as a species) haven't done anything on the scale of the LHC before - and since the whole point of the device is to learn more about stuff we don't (relatively) know much about, there's bound to be WILD speculation about the potential results.
The loons get airplay because the loony airplay gets the ratings - and TV/radio is about ad revenue first and actual content second. ;p
Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Interesting)
We haven't, but the universe causes such high-energy interactions to happen constantly without destroying itself.
The nuke-might-ignite-the-atmosphere thing is something of a special case because they ONLY had raw theory to base it on. They were virtually certain it wouldn't happen, but since humanity had never caused an energetic fission event before they had no definitive experimental evidence to back that up. The LHC by contrast is building on decades of advanced nuclear / particle physics work, to test the specifics of detailed theories. We have a very clear idea about what could happen, and the evidence that it will be completely safe is overwhelming. Due to the very low mass of the particles, the energy released in a 5 TeV collision will "only" be about that of 2 freight trains running into each other, which is certainly energetic but perfectly controllable. As one LHC scientist put it, the risk of you spontaneously evaporating due to random quantum events is much higher than the LHC somehow killing you.
Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remember - when they tested the first atomic bomb, they didn't know if it would ignite the atmosphere or not.
Fortunately it didn't.
No, no they didn't. Stop trying to frame scientists as these irresponsible idiots who could murder us all in one experiment. One person proposed that possibility, and it was thoroughly refuted before the test. From Wikipedia's Manhattan Project page [wikipedia.org]:
Teller also raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might "ignite" the atmosphere, because of a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei. Bethe calculated, according to Serber, that it could not happen. In his book The Road from Los Alamos, Bethe says a refutation was written by Konopinski, C. Marvin, and Teller as report LA-602, showing that ignition of the atmosphere was impossible, not just unlikely.[7] In Serber's account, Oppenheimer mentioned it to Arthur Compton, who "didn't have enough sense to shut up about it. It somehow got into a document that went to Washington" which led to the question being "never laid to rest".[8]
Similarly, there's no chance the LHC can kill us. As you said, "we (as a species) haven't done anything on the scale of the LHC before" but that doesn't change the fact that nature does it all the time. Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays of energy levels higher than the LHC can produce. If it could have destroyed us, it would have already.
The loons get airplay because the loony airplay gets the ratings - and TV/radio is about ad revenue first and actual content second. ;p
No argument with that.
Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Informative)
So, in conclusion, they didn't test the first atomic bomb before computations were performed and Edward Teller himself wrote a report to refute his own hypothesis.
Re:Ignorance vs. the Unknown (Score:5, Informative)
1 eV is approximately 10^(-20) K. For LHC to approach the caloric value of a soda (diet or regular, the difference is about one order of magnitude) it would need to generate particle beams with zetta-eV, i.e., 10^(21)
There are some very important points to note here about what's wrong with this statement.
It makes me angry that this was modded Informative.
Oh, the difference in calories between regular and diet sodas is closer to two orders of magnitude. That at least wasn't nonsensical, but just wrong.
Re:you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Insightful)
You could always try this:
Imagine you're walking down the street in a seedy part of town. You trip over your own feet and somehow, once you've landed, you're having sex with the most beautiful girl you've ever seen. Sure, it's possible, but you won't see anyone changing their jogging route on the off chance.
Re:you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:you can't stop the doomsayers (Score:4, Interesting)
Will you ever learn? (Score:5, Funny)
If disaster movies have taught us anything, it is that only when the party is over and everyone is a little tipsy, the problems will arise.
At that point, one lowly scientist (possible of Asian origin) will still be working in his office - despite regular calls of 'Hu! It's all fine, come out here and have some champagne'. He shouts out 'In a minute, I'm just checking something' Then to himself 'This is wrong. This is all wrong. Planck's constant shouldn't be varying like that.'
And then it all goes wrong.
Jeez, were you born yesterday!
Mark my words... come Friday, we'll all be eating black holes for breakfast with lashings of superheated strange milk.
Re:Will you ever learn? (Score:5, Funny)
It's probably not a problem, probably, but I'm showing some variations in...
No, it's well within acceptable limits. Sustaining sequence.
Shutting down... Attempting shutdown... it's not, it's not shutting AGGGGHHHHH! ...yeah.
Re:Will you ever learn? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
I thought they had already turned it on yesterday... Wait, today is September 10th... Again ?
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, it is September 10th again. You are caught in a time loop. The last time through, the world was destroyed by a black hole. This time, you have again failed to stop the activation, so the same thing will happen. At this point you will wake up 24 hours before the LHC is activated, and realize that you alone can save humanity. To do so you must get to the Swiss/French border and blow the thing to smithereens before it can be turned on.
The presence of this post is of course a major plot hole / deus ex machina, but is necessary to move the storyline along and keep you from going through the time loop fifty times before figuring it all out, as this would make your adventure far too long and repetitive for the people of my alternate universe to enjoy watching footage of.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:4, Interesting)
My only question is, when the smoke clears and we're all fine, will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time? Probably not. I'm sure next time they'll say
"this time, its different, the world is really going to end this time".
For a local astronomy club, I once did a little presentation, I think the title was "bad astronomy in popular culture". While the scope was mostly about stuff like sound-in-space, space planes ála Star Wars, and so on, one of the topics I covered was Niburu - the supposed planet that will kill us all. It actually had little visibility even in mainstream press so it sort of warranted coverage.
http://www.detailshere.com/niburu.htm [detailshere.com] is the "Doom!" page. Anyway, for my research, I just checked out webarchive.org...and looked at the snapshots from previous years. It was basically updated every year to say that "next year IT will come". As you can see, right now it's saying "2008-2011" :). Compare with the version from 2003 february [archive.org] or from 2005 [archive.org] as examples :)
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a picture from the control room which I'm sure makes sense to someone that isn't me.
The image is produced by an event display program, which provides a nice visual representation of the output of the whole detector (ATLAS in this case) for one event. One event here means one beam crossing, generally, which could include up to several proton-proton collisions, but generally only one interesting one.
Now, I'm not completely familiar with ATLAS (I'm a CDF guy), but I'm pretty sure the top left section is the muon chambers. These record, well, muons, which are the only thing which interacts poorly enough to consistently punch all the way through the detector and the layers of steel in front of the muon chambers, but strongly enough to be recorded all the way along its passage.
The top center shows a zoomed in view of the middle of the top left: the calorimeters. Calorimeters record the amount of energy that enters them, and are arranged radially, so that you can see just how much energy (in the form of both mass and kinetic energy) was carried away from the collision in a particular direction. This is accomplished by means of scintillator crystals, which tend to get ionized by the passage of high energy particles, thus absorbing some energy from the particles, and then they reemit that energy as photons, which are collected and measured in photomultiplier tubes. The calorimeters are used to look for most particles, particularly electrons and "jets" (which are a spray of particles resulting from the ejection of a quark from the collision), both of which leave clusters of energy over a significant area of the calorimeter.
The top right is again a zoomed in view of the middle of the top center: the tracking chambers. These act sort of like thousands and thousands of geiger counters; every time a charged particle passes through the vicinity of a wire in the tracking chamber, it records a hit. You can then piece all these hits together in a line to measure the track of a particle. The offcenter pink and blue line is almost certainly a cosmic ray, which will naturally leave a track in the chamber, but not appear to originate from the interaction point. In the lower left, you can see what is probably two different short track segments.
The first three images have been more or less slices out of the center of the detector, perpendicular to the beam line. The lower left is a side-on view, showing the somewhat less important parts of the detector that lie at small angles to the beam line, the so-called forward detectors.
The lower right is probably intended to be a flat plot of the calorimeter, as if you sliced it parallel to the beam line and unrolled it. The height of the bars would then indicate how much energy was deposited in each section. However, at the moment, that plot looks like it is having some sort of overflow problems.
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Insightful)
*By definition* the doomsayers are always wrong. If they had ever been correct in the past, we wouldn't be here to talk about it now.
By the same token, your claim that everything is going to be fine is a one-way bet. You can only be proved right.
(+5, Inevitable)
Re:More than scientific learning (Score:5, Funny)
Fanboism apart, they haven't crossed the proton streams yet. The event that can generate the strangelets and the black hole.
Yeah but they'll have to cross the streams if StayPuft attacks.
Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm correct, no collisions have taken place yet.
Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Informative)
If I'm correct, no collisions have taken place yet.
Correct. That will happen later this month.
Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Informative)
I would also like to point out they have to align the particle streams yet, AND this will take some time before they turn the energy levels up on the device to maximum, which as many have pointed out, is the "new territory" area.
Not until the device is at full power and doing collisions is there really any concern.
I suspect full power, "universe shattering" tests won't take place until sometime in December at the earliest.
-Hackus
Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know why, but you made me think of this:
Dr. Egon Spengler: There is something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Do not cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I am fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, bad?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That is bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
Re:Of course we're still alive... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, you'd think we'd be able to avoid the headline hysteria here at least.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Epic fail (Score:5, Funny)
It started with the scientists, so noone has noticed anything different yet.
Re:Epic fail (Score:5, Funny)
This place has been full of strange matter for a decade now ...
No risk yet. (Score:3, Insightful)
The only question is, when they start colliding and/or accelerating the beams up toward the speed of light will this be the end of the world? As the XKCD comic says, they haven't really done anything interesting/risky just yet.
Picture to prove it (Score:4, Funny)
Here's [hisupplier.com]proof.
BFD (Score:5, Informative)
I thought that the critics of this project were worried about the effects of COLLIDING the particles. Since that hasn't happened yet, this story is a whole lotta nuthin'.
Re:BFD (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean I'll have to build up another sigh of relief and let it out again at a later date?
Re:BFD (Score:4, Insightful)
By the way the story is 'the LHC is switched on'. It heralds the beginning of one of the most interesting science experiments of our age. The story is not really 'we are still alive' as that is no surprise to anyone who is not a retard.
Re:BFD (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought that the critics of this project were worried about the effects of COLLIDING the particles. Since that hasn't happened yet, this story is a whole lotta nuthin'.
Huh? You do realize that the purpose of building and turning on the LHC isn't to silence black-hole-apocalypse believers, right? The purpose of the LHC is to do new science. Successful containment and acceleration of the beams is an important milestone for this project. That's why this is news.
Presumably you will still think this story is "a whole lotta nuthin'" once collisions do happen, because those collisions will be at energies already probed by other accelerators. And even once LHC ramps up to full power, it will still be "a whole lotta nuthin'" because those energies already occur in nature (e.g. cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere).
I think it would be more accurate to say that the worries about black-hole-apocalypse are "a whole lotta nuthin'" whereas a successful activation of the LHC is amazing news for anyone interested in science.
Based on the images... (Score:4, Funny)
Damnit! (Score:5, Funny)
You're all still here.
Screenshot (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I'm breathing a sigh of relief to see they're running some sort of *NIX. I was worried a Windows BSOD would mean the end of the world :-).
Realtime LHC Data (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
research to application life cycle (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was an undergraduate studying mathematics one of the most intriguing comments made by a professor was
Cutting edge mathematics takes about 50 years to find its way into physics, from there it takes about 25 years to find its way into engineering.
With the advent of the LHC and other amazing advances, like easy access to substantial computing power, do you think that this still holds true? By this, I mean do you think that life cycle times will shorten, or will they remain the same because even though these advances are being made, they are at higher, or very specific level, and as such, they will not be able to be developed into applications as quickly?
Thoughts?
History Channel Special & Their "Comuiting Gri (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always known this project was enormous, but I really didn't get it until I watched this special. They'd spend 5 minutes or show showing this massive facility with 30 foot high equipment - and this would be just like a little instrumentation room - just one of many. Truly amazing.
Working in "technology" - all the same-'old same-'ol computers we see day-in and day-out look like stupid adding machines next to the scale and complexity of the stuff there.
Speaking of which - it also went over their "computing grid". Their data storage farm was enormous. They also had ten thousand nodes to crunch the data!
BTW - What kind of machines did they have you ask? Some slick IBM 1u rackmount chassis? No - just a bunch of cheap, off-white, off-brand tower PCs sitting on rows and rows of shelves.
I'm sure they (did the smart thing) and did what Google did. High-end machines? No. Support Contracts? No.
If it dies? Pitch it and get a new one.
Can we please talk about physics now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who's sick of every news story and every discussion about the LHC deteriorating into giving the "end of the world" bullshit even more time of day that it doesn't deserve?
This is one of the most important and ambitious scientific experiments that has been attempted in a long long time, but it seems that instead of taking the opportunity to get the general public inspired about science and discovery, the mainstream media has used it to spread unfounded doomsday rumours and anti-science propaganda. The fact that it's dominating even Slashdot discussions (albeit mostly in a joking way) is pretty tragic IMHO.
Prof Brian Cox said it best [telegraph.co.uk] - "anyone who believes the LHC will destroy the world is a twat".
I've taken a huge interest in all this lately and have been spending hours on Wikipedia reading about bosons and leptons and so on.. it would be great to get some quality posts in this thread from some real hardcore particle physicists (come on, I know you're out there...)
Re:Can we please talk about physics now? (Score:4, Insightful)
The big problem is the media reporting a tiny group of crackpots as if they represented mainstream views. They don't.
I think the LHC is the best thing to happen to science in a long time. Three cheers for CERN!
...laura
Re:Can we please talk about physics now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear, hear.
How long until some results are known? IIRC one of the saddest outcomes of this experiment would be to find nothing new, because new bigger colliders would not get funded.
The challenge in that case will be explaining to The Authorities that the very best science comes from somebody looking at experimental data, scratching their head and thinking "That's funny..."
If the LHC doesn't find the Higgs Boson (among other things) the challenge will be to revamp physics, up to and including the Standard Model, to explain why. It has guided physics for decades, but if it proves to be wrong, we'll need new physics.
This would be a spectacular result in its own right, though it might be hard to explain why to non-scientific people.
...laura
"particles known as protons?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone there? (Score:4, Funny)
Pretty picture, but not the one you want... (Score:5, Informative)
That picture is from smashing the beam into the collimator, not from passing the beam through ATLAS.
This is one of the final tests that you perform before passing the beam through - the result though is that millions of muons from the beam smash and deflect off the collimator, touching off all the different parts of the detectors. That's why you see so many energy deposits (green) throughout ATLAS.
When you're just circulating beams, the only thing you see are Cosmics and BeamHalo - any muons which collide with remaining gas particles upstream of the detector and basically circle right outside of the beam. Here's some pictures of CMS beam halo:
http://cmsdoc.cern.ch/cms/performance/FirstBeam/cms-e-commentary.htm [cmsdoc.cern.ch]
Coincidence? (Score:5, Funny)
Has anyone seen my cat?
Picture (Score:3, Funny)
> Here is a picture from the control room which I'm sure makes sense to someone that isn't
Looks like one of those freeware DOS screensavers from the 90s.
Still alive? (Score:5, Funny)
> And we're all still alive too!
I'm not, you insensitive clod!
...and the answer is...... (Score:5, Funny)
..... is .... 42!
Sure, were not dead - but (Score:4, Funny)
How about some LHC@Home? (Score:4, Insightful)
Something created the universe (Score:4, Interesting)
Something created the universe out of nothing. Which suggests space itself may be damaged by certain events, possibly creating another universe inflating at the speed of the Big Bang.
Now that'd be something.
A non-evaporating black hole would merely swallow the Earth over a matter of days or weeks. Then the moon would continue to orbit a black hole with the Earth's mass, but no more ocean tides sapping its orbital energy, and the rest of the solar system wouldn't notice all that much.
It would drastically reduce the probability of a collision with a planet-killer asteriod, though. So we got that going for us.
Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're making a huge assumption here...
From my understanding, energy cannot be created nor destroyed in a closed system (such as the universe.) While it's tempting to believe that everything has a beginning and an end, it's more realistic to see that matter and energy simply change forms. For example, a baby isn't created out of nothing... He or she is formed from food consumed by the mother. Likewise, he or she doesn't cease to exist when dead... The person simply changes form back into the kind of dirt that grew the food he or she was formed from.
So, saying that the universe created really is inconsistent with everything we've observed. It's more probable that the universe always has existed, and always will exist... Although perhaps not in it's present form.
My favorite theory is that the universe will eventually re-compress to form another big bang, and that it's destined to forever continue forming, spawning life, and collapsing.
I cite Atheist Universe by David Mills for a lot of this information.
Where did the memes go? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:16 bit colour? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because screens with colour used informatively, rather than making eye candy screens with flashy gradients and transparency, make the actual information easier to discern. This isn't some commercial app that has to sell to Mac enthusiasts, nor is it Photoshop.
Re:16 bit colour? (Score:4, Funny)
How can they spend £2.6 billion and have control screens that look like a ZX spectrum?
The control screens are high-res, 32-million colors. The 16-bit colors you see are a side effect of the LHC Process. The effect started there and has been spreading outwards... they said not to worry, that we won't know the difference once it hits.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The LHC should be destroyed (Score:4, Interesting)
It's pretty obvious you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about
In the first place, our current understanding is that black holes DO dissipate, through Hawking Radiation. Tiny black holes fade away almost instantaneously.
In the second place, tiny black holes are formed all the time. When interstellar dust hits the atmosphere, the resulting energy discharge can form tiny black holes, and fairly often. Most of them dissipate harmlessly.
Wait, there's more! Some black holes DO form when they hit the atmosphere and survive. Know what happens to them? Well, first consider how small a chunk of mass dense enough to be considered a black hole has to be when it's composed of the equivalent of a few protons. We are talking sub-electron size here. These black holes sink to the center of the Earth, but are so small they don't interact with any atoms on the way down. They sit at the center of the Earth, absorbing a new particle every few thousand years.
Events with the power of the LHC happen all the time at the edges of the atmosphere, and if they really had a reasonable capacity to cause a catastrophic event, it would have happened naturally many times over already.
That said, the night before collisions start, I'm having an End of the Universe party.
Re:Based on the control room shot... (Score:5, Funny)
It appears that turning on the LHC is transforming the world as we know it into the nightmare world of Linux on the Desktop...
If that were true they would of called it Hardy Hadron.
Re:Shuts down for the winter? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Beer joke? (Score:4, Informative)
From the BBC news website
"Full beam ahead
Engineers injected the first low-intensity proton beams into the LHC in August. But they did not go all the way around the ring.
Technicians had to be on the lookout for potential problems.
Steve Myers, head of the accelerator and beam department, said: "There are on the order of 2,000 magnetic circuits in the machine. This means there are 2,000 power supplies which generate the current which flows in the coils of the magnets."
If there was a fault with any of these, he said, it would have stopped the beams. They were also wary of obstacles in the beam pipe which could prevent the protons from completing their first circuit.
Mr Myers has experience of the latter problem. While working on the LHC's predecessor, a machine called the Large-Electron Positron Collider, engineers found two beer bottles wedged into the beam pipe - a deliberate, one-off act of sabotage.
The culprits - who were drinking a particular brand that advertising once claimed would "refresh the parts other beers cannot reach" - were never found. "
The "beer that refreshed the parts..." was an advertising slogan for Heiniken