Safe? I'm not so sure.........
Largest particle collider conducts successful test
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080910/ap_on_sc/big_bang
;o)
"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do,
'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away."
Will they find the Higgs? That is the question. I’m betting they won’t.
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
Safe? I'm not so sure.........
good
...and on a less serious note. What kind of superpowers would you get if you accidentally stepped in front of the beam when your clumsy lab assistant accidentally hit the on button? Hulk Powers? Spidy Powers?
OK, back to serious. I am not against gaining the knowledge they will obtain, but what are the applications? Is it too much to ask for to have some benefit from science that is publicly funded? This general ‘For the benefit of mankind’ crap doesn't fly.
Since this one is also internationally funded, I assume we chipped in for lunch at least. Yet unless that money leads to some tangible benefits to the taxpayer it is no different than money earmarked for the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska. No, wait, that isn't correct. The Bridge to Nowhere would have benefited the fifty people on the island. So this is less moral than that canceled bridge.
If we didn't chip in, well, then, whatever. Hope they have fun.
How about some scientific rap on the subject (ok, I find the female doing the rapping kind of attractive, something about a smart girl in a lab coat).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
I was listening the radio this AM and on the top of the hour news (from CBS I think) I could swear that the newsreader said “beam of PROTEINs.” LOL
I've heard that the actual collision isn't scheduled until 2112. j/k
Unless they find the Higgs boson, does this “matter?” (Little particle physics humor..)
History Channel is running documentary on this that helps bring particle physics down to something everyone can understand. Fascinating stuff.
"Where's the KA-BOOM? There was supposed to be an Earth-Shattering KA-BOOM!"
More on the Hadron Collider. I imagine there will be lots of these articles today.
More on the Hadron Collider. I imagine there will be lots of these articles today.
in 1969, when (Robert R.)Wilson was in the hot seat testifying before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Sen. John Pastore demanded to know how a multimillion-dollar particle accelerator improved the security of the country. Wilson said the experimental physics machine had “nothing at all” to do with security, and the senator persisted.
“It has only to do,” Wilson told the lawmakers, “with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.”
the Superconducting Super Collider was an international project, which many hoped would have sufficient power to generate elusive particles like the Higgs bosons/b "detect" rather than "generate".
What’s the worst that could happen? The creation of a new Big Bang event that will rip a hole in space-time that will pulverize our solar system to quarks and suck it into a newly warped space-time continuum, making it part of the creation of a new and separate universe?
The vast majority of our present universe will probably remain intact.
Ya gotta look at the big picture. :)
I read another article that said they changed the date to next Tuesday........something to do with having to run payroll on Monday.