CERN has finally activated the Large Hadron Collider. Celebrate here.
Asked by
dpworkin (
27090
)
November 21st, 2009
It will take a year or so to ramp up, but maybe we’ll get to confirm the Higgs Boson before we are consumed by an anomaly.
Are you thrilled? I know I am. Speculation is welcome.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
76 Answers
@RareDenver: 403 Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /smokeandmirrors/files/2009/03/exploding-earth11.jpg on this server.
@MrPeabody – What are you, a nerd?
Great! we’re all dead!
No such thing as the Higgs Boson, why? because theres no such thing as the Higgs field! it already has a name, the same one its had for a few thousand years, probably longer.
No one seems very excited. As for me, I can’t wait to see what they find.
@Pazza I don’t understand what you are talking about.
@oratio
The ether.
Tesla apparently argued about it with Einstein.
@oratio ; I don’t understand what ANY of you are talking about!!
@cartman
Dude I loved you in southpark!
@Pazza You can call it space too. It still isn’t the same thing.
I’m pretty sure god won’t let anything bad happen on earth. We might get some good science out of this.
@oratio
I’m gonna have to disagree with you on that one. My understanding of space is that of the one which I was taught in school which I beleive was the same as main stream science. That space is a vacuum.
@johnpowell
Interested to know what in your opinion ‘God’ is?
@Pazza Vacuum. Not quite. But you can call the Higgs Field Aether if you want to.
I can’t wait to see what they find! Or maybe we won’t find out anything because we will all be sucked into a man-made black hole.
@Pazza :: If I mention god sarcasm is involved.
@Judi You were never stupid. Ask questions. That’s what Fluther is for.
@pdworkin, Sometimes it’s fun to hang out in a room of really smart people and try to figure out what the heck they’re talking about..
@Judi ; I know, right? Like charades.
doomed! We are all doomed!
@johnpowell
I love sarcasm, I find it highly entertaining, but that doesn’t answer my question?
Not to be sexist but is this one of those guy/girl things?
What are the possibilities or should I read the links before asking?
@jJudi Read your link – now I understand it somewhat more. So now my question becomes: Is it only to find prove/disprove the Big Bang theory or are there other implications?
I’m pretty curious, but it’s seemed to have had issues before.. so I’m not expecting much.
It is a pure research product. We really don’t know what will be found. They will be attempting to generate unimaginably huge amounts of energy over very brief periods of time, and then examining the results to infer all kinds of information about what is happening on the subatomic level, where things are very, very strange indeed, and also to attempt to imitate what are thought to be some of the conditions that were in place at the time of the Big Bang so that we can learn more about the birth of the universe.
To my way of thinking, it is one of the grandest things that mankind can do – to investigate the unknown for the simple purpose of discovery. No one yet has applications in mind, no one is thinking about how to monetize this, it will simply increase the warehouse of human knowledge in ways that can barely be imagined.
The elusive Higgs Boson is just one example. I’m not a physicist, but it is thought that this particle, which has been predicted but never encountered, may carry the property (whatever it is) that we call gravity. If so, it is possible that this could lead to the holy grail of physics, a unified field theory that would account for events of a cosmic size and events on the subatomic level, which at the moment don’t appear to follow the same rules.
I hope someone who really knows what he or she is talking about will revise and extend my comments.
Well, I’m clearly not that ^ person but I really appreciate your explanation, Mr. Peabody. Makes it a lot clearer.
@pdworkin Where should I set the Wayback machine to today, Mr. Peabody?
That’s not really what happened. What really happened is that beings from the future are sabotaging it to protect humanity.
Somebody better be protecting us (but if they are, they’re doing a shitty job!)
@pdworkin
Silly man beings from the future coudn’t have come here coz theres no such thing as time!
Here’s a really great video from CERN describing the mechanincs of the LHC—if only they could get their streaming up-to-par: http://ow.ly/Ej0b (I had NO CLUE it was that big!)
CERN!!! WTG!!! It’s always great reading your posts! Congrats on 10K or 20K, whatever it is. I can’t actually find your score.
this is what we’re talking about, right?
I’m insufficiently limber to kiss my ass goodbye. Could someone do it for me, please?
@andrew ; they never even talked about what could go wrong!
Milo here: I have already discovered the Higgs Boson; my paper is, as we speak, being reviewed by the fact checkers at The Astrophysical Journal.
edit: Take that, Basil.
@laureth I love that vid, I’ve got the vocal file and have been trying to work on a remix for a while now but so far I haven’t managed to really get anything of use together, I’ve thought of ending a DJ set with the original but unless I’m DJing to a room full of internet geeks I think I’ll just get a confused reaction
@andrew thanks for the link the streaming is shit so I’m downloading the vid for later watching
Apparently, the LHC is built under the guise of scientific research but is actually a star gate built for the purpose of Satans return to Earth.
Satan, man! I had no idea. We are all gonna be crispy bacon. →#
@oratio Haha, what a nut. I lurve it.
@oratio Dan Brown is pouring over this material !
@virtualist Probably. I suspect we will see LHC in a couple of movies in the future. ;)
Actually DBrown’s 2000 book, “Angels and Demons” has a bit of physics in it , set at CERN; murdered physicist and ‘time bombs’.
@virtualist True. Myth and wild speculation surrounded LHC even before it’s completion, and it will continue to tease the imagination of paranoid conspiracy theorists. It is a bit entertaining, as long as people don’t take it too seriously; committing suicide or worse.
2000 y from now something digs up the ‘Dead LHC Scrolls’, buried deep under the Alps, in a 20m dia glassy sphere glowing with the most beautiful blueblack color you have ever seen.
@virtualist you know @oratio is correct, you pen a story send it to my guys, we’ll do lunch then get it to my contacts in Hollywood, we’ll be Millionaires by May Day
Oh so thats where my bread went.
@pdworkin
Re your coments about the greatest thing that mankind can do.
So your saying it will get rid of the fractional reserve banking system and allow every our of mans labour to be spend on the good of mankind as a whole riding the world of all famine, and securing the future prosperity of our children, whilst simultanously erasing the for profit commercial copyright system and giving everyman woman and child the oppertunity to better their own lives?
WOW switch it back on quick!
Money well spent…......
@Pazza You are living up to your name. I said that pure research is one of the noblest ways mankind uses its intelligence. I attribute no power of amelioration to the LHC.
@pdworkin
There goes my dyslexia again. I read grandest as greatest.
Even so, I think you’l find you said “To my way of thinking, it is one of the grandest things that mankind can do” pertaining to “it is a pure research product”
I see no nobility in creating billions of, well the only way to describe it is hours of debt that the serfs will never be able to fully repay.
I would have seen real nobility in creating that debt to reasearch clean energy sources, but to be blunt theres no need, they already have. The fact of the matter is as long as the IMF and WORLD BANK have a strangle hold on global commerce we will never see a free and prosperous world full of technology to the standard that the minds of the scientific community can offer us today. Instead we end up with a giant particle rail gun that needs to be chilled by Satan himself or it splutters and farts to a grinding halt. I’m pretty sure they would have been just as satified with some neodinium magnets and a green laser pen capable of popping balloons from twenty feet off ebay.
Oh also, like that “amelioration” word, more big words please.
Ps. I don’t have a name, names are for PERSONS an I’ll tell that to the de facto whores haha.
Pss. are people talking behind my back already, I’ve only been here five minutes!
Heres where I think money has been nobley spent:
http://www.ted.com/talks/marc_koska_the_devastating_toll_of_syringe_reuse.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/kary_mullis_next_gen_cure_for_killer_infections.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_filter.html
Imagination is the key to salvation through the door of inovation.
Oh an I appologise, but you’l have to expect a few rants from me from time to time
@Pazza
The government expenditures per year on earth are $14,000,000,000,000 American dollars per year; that’s $14.9 trillion.
The cost to build the LHC was a bit more than $6,000,000,000 or about 0.005% of the earths budget for 1 year.
This is being used to study YOUR origin and place on earth and in the universe.
Note, please, we still do not know what the universe is.
Most thinking humans are curious. Funny thing is , that fact makes some of us on earth actually study and beat ourselves up trying to learn new things to get rid of that curiosity_itchiness. Unfortunately the more you scratch at an itch , the worse it gets. Fortunately earth rewards us with a few dollars to get rid of the last itch. The really good people at this universe knowledge stuff come from many fields of study; physics, mathematics, art, music, literature, philosophy all come to mind quickly. They are a compassionate group and understand your concern , also, for everyday pain that exists on earth. They would not want to detract from your concerns.
@virtualist
Question, is $14,000,000,000,000 the total minus owings to central banks?
If not, any idea how much of that is owed to central banks?
@Pazza Good question. Look it up on Wolfram Alpha.
@virtualist
Will I get a knock from the feds for visiting such a site?
@Pazza You must be making some sort of sense, because I see people conversing with you, but I don’t understand a single thing you said.
@Pazza It is ok to ask questions and know things. We are well past Orwell’s 1984. Knock yourself out !
… ah shit!, no pun intended!
@virtualist
I don’t understand myself much these days, think thats why I come here. lol (can’t believe I just used lol on this site)
If you meant feds, I meant federal agents, though we don’t have them in England we accross the pond still like borrowing some American phrases.
@virtualist
Don’t know if I’m punching in the correct keywords, but Wolfram Alpha wasn’t havin any of it!
As for 1984, say that again when the dollar collapses.
Ps. Just got a text for Georgie, he said I should buy a fuckin big lock for the front door!....
Oooops! Just noticed previous message should have been aimed @pdworkin
I am just saying risking the future of this planet on something that was named to resemble Holden Caulfield is a bad idea.
@flimflam
Holy shit Dude!.....
Ich bin total begeistert. Werft endlich die Maschine an!! Na du kleines Higgs, jetzt kannst du dich nicht mehr verstecken. We gotcha.
This is totally meaningless and such a drain on humanity. the first thing to come of this will be new, more devastating weapons.
@Kelly_Obrien Oh yes because we could total turn Bosons, leptons and Tau neutrinos into weapons. Or we could discover the building blocks of this universe and develop FTL engines. Not to mention we got a decent book and an okay movie out of it.
@Bugabear
The decent book would make it cool.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
