The End Is Nigh!!

So, in a few days, CERN will start smashing particles into each other using the Large Hadron Collider.

SOme fear has been raised that black holes will be formed that will consume our planet...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...the-world.html

Now, I'm no physicist, I know very little about physics, and about just as much of black holes and the surrounding theory. But I don't perceive a threat...

What do the more scientific types on here think about all this? I do hope CERN isn't stopped from doing this experiment...

Matt

my ownly question is if it will produce temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun, how are they going to contain that heat?

Originally Posted by neio79

my ownly question is if it will produce temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun, how are they going to contain that heat?

Havn't a clue

The theory goes, that tiny black holes are created by "super massive" matter, and don't have enough gravity to pull more matter in (unless they occur very close to other matter - the tunnel lining for example), so collapse in milliseconds.

Apparently, the hadron collider has a 48% chance of creating a black hole of some size. No idea who worked that figure out, or how though.

Personally, I reckon the guys at CERN will turn it on, and they'll hear it power up, then nothing.

Then they'll say "Aha! Just as we predicted, a miniture black hole! Shame it didn't last long enough for us to capture on one of the 2 giant telescopes."

Originally Posted by neio79

my ownly question is if it will produce temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun, how are they going to contain that heat?

Large vents.

HTH.

Also, theyl observe soemthing else they don't quite understand, and suspect thre to be yet another elusive particle...

Originally Posted by neio79

my ownly question is if it will produce temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun, how are they going to contain that heat?

McDonalds Apple pie wrap things, they retain stupidly high temperatures

Originally Posted by Baph

Large vents.

HTH.

Originally Posted by cuffy

McDonalds Apple pie wrap things, they retain stupidly high temperatures

funny but seriously, i did not think there was a material created that could contain the suns heat, let alone 000's of times more intense, Or else we would have sent a probe to the center of the sun by now. surely rather than create a black hole they are just going to vapourise everything around them?

Originally Posted by neio79

funny but seriously, i did not think there was a material created that could contain the suns heat, let alone 000's of times more intense, Or else we would have sent a probe to the center of the sun by now. surely rather than create a black hole they are just going to vapourise everything around them?

Nah, it's just a guess that temperatures will reach that high. Mainly because that's what people have guessed they've observed happening out in space.

The theory goes that this test is safe, because these particles collide all the time in space - they haven't documented much that there's a freaking large explosion every time they do!!

I think with the tempurature, the high temps will be within the particle beam itself; the whole of the particle accelorator has superconducting magnets that have to be cooled by liquid helium (so we're talkin down to a temp of 2 K above absolute zero, or -271 deg.C) which will very quickly cool down any heat given out. Also, the particle accelerator will be a vacum, so heat wont readily transmit (except only by radiation....not really by the normal particles-flying-about-all-over-the-place) so outside of the particle beam itself it won't be as hot (relativly speaking)

Anyway, thats sort of what I gather from a quick google