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Particle Accelerator and the GRID: Are We Pushing too Far?


  3. phillyphil
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The GRID and the largest and most expensive particle accelerator ever:

"The Times online reported recently that a data communications grid built to transfer data from the world's largest particle accelerator may be able to function as an alternate Internet, with speeds about 10,000 times faster than an average broadband connection. This network - referred to in the article simply as “the grid” - was built with modern fiber optic technology and currently has 55,000 servers connecting the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland with eleven locations internationally. The grid was built to house the data coming from CERN's newest project: the world's largest particle accelerator. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is designed to study the inner workings of matter and perhaps even discover the elusive Higgs Boson particle. Internet history buffs may recall that Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while researching at CERN."

...

Concerning adverse reactions:

"One of their concerns is that the mini-black holes generated by this machine could eventually coalesce into a larger black hole that would then begin absorbing matter. Another possibility is that new combinations of quarks could come into existence, creating a stable, negatively-charged strangelet which could turn everything it touches into strangelets as well – plunging us into a parallel universe of stable, negatively-charged strangelets. Yet another theory is that high-energy collisions in the LHC could result in massive particles that only have one magnetic pole, rather than the typical north-south pole magnetism with which we are familiar. Critics worry that such particles could start a huge chain reaction, converting atoms into different forms of matter."
phillyphil

15 responses // Particle Accelerator and the GRID: Are We Pushing too Far?

  • When are we gonna feel that we have reached our limits of looking smaller and larger? Is there a point when we need to stop spending astronomical amounts of money on dividing and expanding space? Every time we look smaller, we find more stuff. Every time we look bigger we see more super-cluster galaxies. Shouldn't we spending this time and energy on the NOW and changing our relation to the universe rather than ceaselessly looking for the next smallest in the line of quarks?
    phillyphil
  • Yes,
    Marilynn_Murray
  • Particle Accelerator, and who is afraid of this?

    What do they think is going to happen? Armageddon or something?

    Why is it that people are so afraid of technology here?

    It's not like we don't use it everyday...why do you think
    TV's work?

    Electron beams maybe?

    Sorry but it would take a heck of a lot to make a Black Hole and we don't have the technology to do that yet!
    PatrickEdwardMurray
  • Right on. Creating black holes is not a solution to people watching too much pseudo-porn on youtube.

    How about a Nobel Prize for the most efficient use of resources to benefit the most people in need?
    BlueDotProdux
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalization
    PatrickEdwardMurray,

    i love technology and feel that we shouldn't be afraid of it. its dangerous if we start fearing our creations.

    the issue is how far we need to push it. what benefit is going to come from finding more small stuff? like i stated above, we will always find more things, there is probably no ultimate fabric containing particle (why would there be?). are we looking for the GOD particle? this universe expands and contracts in infinities and physics people have long 'dealt' with these problems by "normalizing" equations (see link).

    we need to stop spending vast money and resources on looking for fundamental particles while switching to noticing dynamics and patterns. we will drive ourselves mad...
    phillyphil
  • got that right PhillyPhil!
    twodee
  • In 1905, Einstein wrote a paper on the "photoelectric effect." 16 years later he received the Nobel Prize in physics for this work. Years later, the photoelectric effect was central to the development of many practicle applications in the area of electronics and semiconductors that are at the heart of the computer, crt, digital camera and countless other ubiquitous devices.

    Certainly there were doubters in 1905 and even in 1921 that could not envision the eventual fruit of Einstein's discoveries.

    CERN's LHC is likely to be the incubator of discoveries that will carry us into the next century and solve some of today's most pressing problems. It should be noted that the USA walked away from the superconducting supercollider project that was started near Dallas. CERN now holds the high ground for future discoveries in particle physics.

    We simply cannot abandon the threshold of discovery, invention and innovation.
    seeker561
  • i agree with phillyphil AND with seeker561...it is simply not an either or proposition though, but rather one of degrees and emphasis, and the quandary exists in the persistent fact that we have so many unsolved issues that we do not adequately invest in solutions for already...and the Bush administration's funding emphasis has been on domination and warfare technologies, not discovery, invention and innovation...unless of course you consider their advances in weaponry and surveillance progress for the human race...i tend to think not.
    Incredulous
  • thanks incredulous.
    i think you are right. i mean, i am not suggesting abandoning technological innovation and ending striving to find new ways to do things, but more over to refocus on what are goals are in our innovation....
    phillyphil
  • Phillyphil,

    And where is this being built?

    NOT AMERICA...hmmm?

    It's a law...if we don't do our research and development ourselves....someone else will...

    At OUR EXPENSE?

    What?

    Oh, the usually things...

    Jobs, patents, technology stuff that matters..little things like that.

    Want to know why we are in such bad shape?

    Because WE DIDN'T do things like this!

    You see it really does matter...if you don't do it someone else will at your expense...usually your suffereing too!
    PatrickEdwardMurray
  • We had machines likes this before, but this is the biggest one ever built. I might make a blackhole but do to some theories it will only last for last then a second, but thats just a theory too. We dont know what will really happen. Some think it will blow up and take out some places. So. It will go or blow.
    novack
  • darkstar
    tealanchor
  • http://www.misunderstooduniverse.com/France_Builds_Doom...
    Aaaagh!
    Hawkmang
  • The concept of matter exponentially collapsing upon itself and making a void commonly known as a black hole scares the explosive burrito shit outta me. theres no blasting off into space to run, no bomb shelters to hide in, no re-expanding the particles to diffuse the process. this would be the mother of disasters, not only kill us, but erase all evidence of our development and existance. be emo and say bring it all you want, how bout this... we send your ass, and the particle accelerator of doom off to another solar system, and by the time it sucks up earth, ill be dead.
    jonny2times
  • It seems unlikely to me that there would be any danger from a black hole, but then radiation from the "bomb" was originally treated lightly. Most scientists in the US once (or still?) denied the exisetnce of global warming, even though most any idiot could see that things have been heating up. THey also still deny that mercury causes autism (among many other horrors). It all depends on who's signing the checks and ultimately who owns the guns. That's the real scarey part, because these are the same idiots telling us not to worry about any black holes from the LHC. Check me out and I'll wow you with the true Unified Field:
    http://www.mercuryxxpoisoned.com
    Cusanus

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