Artificial Black Holes, again

[ZapperZ]

Sorry to all you little minded book worms, i ment no affence I am sure your lifes work is very important.

What in the world are you ranting about, especially for your FIRST post here on PF that is rife with over-generalizations?!

First of all, stop with the over-speculation, especially when YOU haven't done the calculations yourself. Secondly, even the SUGGESTION that such particle collisions would generate black holes is itself highly speculative in the first place! So why are you attacking the uncertainty of what would happen if a black hole was created but totally ignoring that the creation of such black holes is also full of uncertainty in the first place?

I've seen a lot of silly hysteria regarding this because I was at Brookhaven when Wilczek wrote the initial article about the possible creation of black holes at RHIC. These people who can't work their way out of a simple QM text started writing petitions to stop RHIC's operation based on Wilczek's article, while totally ignoring his followup article that made a more careful calculations and predicted the extreneous circumstances for such a scenario to happen.

When you based something out of ignorance, then you will have demigods who will use scare tactics to stop something. This is the worst possible way of doing anything, not just physics. And if you think there is zero worth in the pursuit of basic knowledge, I'd like to see you live without your modern electronics when your identical clone stopped the research on quantum mechanics back in the early 1900's because he too didn't see anything worthwhile in it for mankind.

Zz.

 

[Cane_Toad]

Russian rulett is what we are playing.

If you think about it for a minute, we are so screwed three ways to Sunday by potential cataclysms that have real and fairly defined probabilities of wiping us all off the earth: global warming, atlantic conveyor shutdown, global ice-age, earthquakes, volcanos, super-volcanos, global magnetic field shutdown, asteroid collision, hemoragic viruses, small pox, super-tsunamis. This is not to mention small time threats like terrorists with dirty bombs, air dispersed viruses, and rampaging fembots after our mojo.

People will go after easy targets like a single institute or facility, because going after problems that have daunting political inertia like global warming, etc. has less chance of reward (i.e. getting their way). Better to spend your worry cycles on real threats, or better yet, just keep your eyes on the road, and tune into a good tune. :-)

 

[magnetar]

I am waiting for LHC!

 

[paw]

I am waiting for LHC!

Me too! Dispite the overwhelming risk.

 

[pervect]

We did that ages ago. The poster didn't listen to the answer.

 

[MountainSnake]

I for me think that we should give them a BIG BANG in the form of 100 tons of TNT right in the middle of the CMS detector and blow all this wasting money, pointless, risky nonsense.

 

[beeport]

Wisdom, or lack there of

This is an informative and highly academic thread. Let me say I'm quite impressed with the level of knowledge displayed here. I'm am not a physicist, I can only say I have studied basic physics in college. I guess I would be considered one the ignorant by some of you. I generally am supportive of scientific inquiry, but I would like to point out that most experiments do not conceivably involve the complete distruction of the only place we have to live. I understand there are those that don't believe there is a risk in the CERN experiments. What is troubling to us ignorant people is that there is disagreement among those who supposedly are not ignorant.
The question to me is wether the scientific community has the wisdom and fortitude to admit even to themselves that they are not infallable. If you doubt that there is any possiblity that those of you who support these experiments could be wrong and are in fact risking the future of an entire planet, take a look at this ...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1626728.ece

Let's not forget there is an enormous investment of time, money and reputation invested in the CERN project. History tells us very clearly that such an investment is sufficient to create many blind eyes. And what will happen if we discover in the future that a black is eating the Earth and its source could traced to CERN. What then, do you think an apology would cover it? There seems to be an intentional ignoring of the context of the conversation on the part of those who claim there is little risk. Wisdom would give you the ability to see that there are risks not worth taking.

 

[ZapperZ]

Do yourself a favor and read this:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/30679

Why are people ignoring the FACT that we already have tons of even higher energy collisions than the one that we will get with the LHC? Why is this evidence completely ignored? Do you see any black holes forming that are swallowing the Earth after all these million (billions?) of years?

Zz.