Scientists to recreate the big bang today in Switzerland

[bouche]

best and worst case scenarios

[jaybone]

It's all so, like, meta, dude.

[mattm]

Read the comments on the bottom of that article bouche posted (good one there too, I liked it)

[jayr]

On the other hand, the U.K.'s Astronomer Royal put the odds of destroying the world at 1 in 50 million (which puts it in the realm of possibilities but still not as likely as hitting the lottery).

Comforting

[Booche]

Go camp out in yer basement/apartment. Freak.

Whatever, you keep hoping that toaster will take you back in the past once the shit hits the fan. I know I will be safe.

[jaybone]

Dude- That photo must have been taken so long ago...you were probably still in your thirties.

If I was as old as you I would be praying for a quick end in 2012 as well.

[phorbesie]

somebody looks stoned :grin:

[Booche]

At least some of us can still explode in our pants Nobone, I mean Jaybone.

[bouche]

The only way a blackhole will be created is if Chuck Norris round house kicks one of them particles.

[jaybone]

booche- yer supposed to at least get it out of your pants before you explode.

pre-matured. I bet you were hoping that would pass with age.

Poor Douglas.

[bouche]

Collider video

[Booche]

Get it together Jaynobone. They're my fucking pants man!

I can do whatever I want in them.

[jaybone]

That would explain the stains.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

Voice of Drug Film Narrator: Know your dope fiend. You will not be able to see his eyes because of tea shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can't find a rape victim.

[bouche]

How the collider works

[MattyC]

sweet webcam of the LHC

[bouche]

Hackers one step away from hacking collider Controlling computer

[jayr]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/080910/n_world_reuters/international_india_suicide_dc_1

BHOPAL, India (Reuters) - A teenage girl in central India killed herself on Wednesday after being traumatized by media reports that a "Big Bang" experiment in Europe could bring about the end of the world, her father said.

The 16-year old girl from the state of Madhya Pradesh drank pesticide and was rushed to the hospital but later died, police said.

Her father, identified on local television as Biharilal, said that his daughter, Chayya, killed herself after watching doomsday predictions made on Indian news programs.

"In the past two days, Chayya had asked me and other relatives about the world coming to an end on September 10," Biharilal was quoted as saying.

"We tried to divert her attention and told her she should not worry about such things, but to no avail," he said.

For the past two days, many Indian news channels held discussions airing doomsday predictions over a huge particle-smashing machine buried under the Swiss-French border.

The machine, called the Large Hadron Collider, was switched on on Wednesday, at the start of what experts say is the largest scientific experiment in human history.

The machine smashes particles together to achieve, on a small-scale, re-enactments of the "Big Bang" that created the universe.

Leading scientists and researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, said the experiment was safe. They dismissed as "pure fiction" doomsday predictions that the experiment could create anti-matter, or black holes.

But in deeply religious and superstitious India, fears about the experiment and the minor risks associated with it spread rapidly through the media.

In east India, thousands of people rushed to temples to pray and fast while others savored their favorite foods in anticipation of the world's end.

"There were a thousand more devotees yesterday as well as today compared to (any) other normal day," Benudhara Sahu, a temple official in Orissa state, told Reuters.

Many women and children rushed to temples and observed fasts as they prayed for deliverance, officials and witnesses said.

Assurances by scientists and the media that nothing would happen counted for nothing for housewife Rukmini Moharana.

"I visited temple, prayed to god," Moharana said. "I am observing the fast for safety because god can only save us."

[jayr]

$10 Billion? The cost of this experiment seems to double in every article that comes out.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080920/technology/technology_switzerland_particle_collider_1

GENEVA - The world's largest atom smasher - which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month - has been damaged twice and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, said Saturday that a large amount of helium had leaked into the 27-kilometre circular tunnel deep under the Swiss-French border that houses the Large Hadron Collider.

The massive collider began operating Sept. 10 to the delight of physicists around the world, flinging protons around the circle at nearly the speed of light. But it had to be shut down only 36 hours later due to a failure of an electrical transformer.

That was repaired, but a CERN statement said a second failure took place midday Friday in the last section of the tunnel to undergo testing at high current, causing the large helium leak.

CERN spokesman James Gillies said the latest incident was several kilometres from the earlier damage. It is considered much more time-consuming to repair than the first malfunction.

"Preliminary investigations indicate that the most likely cause of the (Friday) problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure," said the statement Saturday.

It said the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place, which will require a minimum of two months down time for the collider.

Such faults are common in colliders designed for use at room temperature, and the repair time would be a matter of days, Gillies said. What will slow it down for the LHC is the time it will take to warm up the section and then cool it down again.

The Large Hadron Collider operates at near absolute zero, colder than outer space, for maximum efficiency.

Gillies said it would take "several weeks minimum" to warm up the sector.

"Then we can fix it," Gillies said. "Then we cool it down again."

The $10 billion particle collider, in the design and construction stages for more than two decades, is the world's largest atom smasher. It fires beams of protons from the nuclei of atoms around the tunnels at nearly the speed of light.

It then causes the protons to collide, revealing how the tiniest particles were first created after the "big bang," which many theorize was the massive explosion that formed the stars, planets and everything.

CERN announced Thursday that it had shut down the collider a week ago after a successful startup that had beams of protons circling in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions in the collider.

That shutdown was caused by the failure of an electrical transformer which handles part of the cooling, CERN said. That transformer was replaced this week and the machine was lowered back to operating temperature to prepare for a resumption of operations.

The CERN experiments with the particle collider hope to reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. They could also find evidence of a hypothetical particle - the Higgs boson - which is sometimes called the "God particle" because it is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Scientists once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but experiments have shown that protons and neutrons are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles.

The LHC provides much greater power than earlier colliders.

Its start came over the objections of some who feared the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes - subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

CERN and leading physicists maintain the project is safe.