The energy can't be higher than what they put in, so those trillions of tons have to be a huge exaggeration. In fact, we're still talking about particle energies that are less than one millionth of a single joule. If you converted 100% of that energy to light, you probably wouldn't be able to see it.

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"We do not require reality to conform to the expectations of the ignorant"

Huh? Aside from an immediate case of hellacious frostbite, how would an ultra-low temperature experiment be dangerous? Those experiments are being done on a handful of atoms at a time, because its simply not possible to leach the heat out of any substantial amount of matter at any given moment. Heck, if something DID go wrong, the ambient temperature of the air around the experiment would transmit enough heat to warm those handful of atoms up well beyond cryonic levels in a godawful hurry.

You're at more risk from a tank of relatively hotter than hell liquid hydrogen than you are an insignificant speck of Bose-Einstein condensate...

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

That's really not saying much, considering how weak the Earth's magnetic field is. An MRI device can produce a magnetic field a million times more powerful than the Earth's.

The worry for me is that the danger is still there. Yes whilst there is a certain amount of risk in everything we do from taking a walk to going bungee jumping the scale of what will happen in the LHC raises alarm bells in my head.

The problem is that you need some perspective on the issue, otherwise you'll be susceptible to scary-sounding numbers waved around by alarmists:

As with a previous post with a link I attached I raised the points that the energy used here would be around trillions of TNT

No. That particular bit of the article was gibberish. They were talking about particles with energies up to 14 trillion electron-volts (TeV).

That amount of energy is equal to about one trillionth of the food energy in one can of soda pop. It's enough to lift a one-ounce weight straight up about 0.0003 inches.

and that the magnetic field produced by such an experiment would be thousands of times more powerful than the Earths.

MRI machines routinely create fields on the order of 20,000 stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. Thousands of people are scanned by such machines every day. Facilities such as the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory generate fields a million times stronger than the Earth's.

I got this information from a pro - LHC site not an anti - LHC site. Please look at the earlier post with link and let me know what you think.

I think (a) their wording was very sloppy, and (b) you need to calm down and put these things in context. Remember, Nature routinely inflicts far more violent events on the Earth than the LHC collisions, and Man routinely generates far stronger magnetic fields than does Earth.

(Minor grammatical edits.)

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

The ultra-low temperature stuff doesn't occur in nature, its quite possible that the first Bose-Einstein condensate and and other ultra-low temperature phenomena in the history of the universe were those created by humanity and IMO are therefor more likely to cause a major unanticipated effect (eg making the universe crash) than the various high energy events as those take place naturally on a regular basis. Of course the risk of it is almost certainly far to low to be worth worrying about, being crushed by a spontaneously materialized sperm whale dropping out of the sky is probably a bigger risk.

Unless dirty_g has a theory about the true danger of LHCs being covered up by a conspiracy of people who seek to benefit from the risk of creating world-eating black holes, maybe this thread should go in ATM?

Hi guys. Well I dont know much about it being a conspiracy and I certainly do not know enough science to argue against data (so I dont think it would be any good int the ATM thread) I dont know up to you. Anyway back to the the lecture at hand..... It does say on that site it will produce energy qual to trillions of Dynamite. I am reading it right now. Thanks to people who said that MRI machines produce those powerful magnetic fields. Its information like that which helps me understand so thankyou. I prefer answers like that. What about the production of matter more stable than what we have right now? Apparently this is a possibility and could cause some trouble.

The exact quote is:
I'm not sure what the article authors are on about here. Maybe they mean that the particles are more energetic per mass unit, but so what? The quantities involved are so small that you need sensitive equipment to even detect the results. Apples and oranges.

I don't know what you refer to in the second question. Please link and quote the relevant passage - it makes it easier for us to know what to respond to.

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"We do not require reality to conform to the expectations of the ignorant"

The energy released is trilllions of times more than dynamite. Well releasing that energy would be a bad thing. As millions would be like an atom bomb. The word "Releasing" energy puts an explosion type event in my head especially with the word dynamite with it.

But the quantity of dynamite is not specified. One molecule of dynamite? BTW the active ingredient is not TNT but nitroglycerine.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

No, it's not. A trillionth of a stick of dynamite is probably a better analogy.

Imaging the release of a trillion ton of TNT.
Where should this energy go?

By the way, most of the energy the LHC consumes goes into the superconducting magnets not into the acceleration.
They accelerate two LHC beams that will consist each of 2835 bunches of 1011 particles each.
Once the 7 TeV energy is reached, the beams will counter-rotate for several hours, and during this time the particles will make four hundred million revolutions around the machine, a truly astronomical number.

At each turn, the beams will be forced to collide in determined places, where the experiments are located.

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916
our animal welfare board and organisation

To put that into perspective, one ounce is approximately 28 grams, about as heavy as a stack of ten U.S. pennies. .0003 inches is about 7.6 microns (micrometers), or about 1/7 the thickness of a human hair.

In other words, the energy in such a collision would be able to lift a single penny about one hair's breadth.

Not exactly a calamity, I should think.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

The energy released is trilllions of times more than dynamite. Well releasing that energy would be a bad thing. As millions would be like an atom bomb.

14 TeV is equal to 5.4*10^-19 kilotons, or 5.4*10^-22 megatons. So each particle collision event is equal to about one-half of one-billionth of one-trillionth of a one-megaton atomic bomb.

Does a billionth of a trillionth of a bomb scare you?

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

Hmmm somehow I think I release more energy than that every time I flip a coin.........

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Careful, you might destory the world.

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WHAAAAAT? You mean I can't have a hobby?

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

No. Now go put on that Pink Tinfoil Bicycle helmet I bought you for Christmas.

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Spoilsport

[Goes and continues doing his hobby at the secret clubhouse]

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Sigma Orionis, you will NEVER get a job at NASA
cuz..
You cant keep a Secret

<Starts putting up his favorite posters on the walls of Sigma's "secret" clubhouse and then settles onto the couch>

I'm not following this end of the universe thing...

How in the blazes does a clump of hyperfrozen matter crash the universe? Even as stable as the stuff's reportedly gotten, they still haven't violated Uncertainty, and its not affecting anything outside of the magnetic jar containing it....

Heck, if the magnetic jar goes off line, the stuff goes PFFT! as the temperature shoots back to room temperature.

Remember, stuff doesn't like to be cold. Everything is conductive at some level or another, and its a mean feat getting it to stop doing that and chill out. Put the Demolition Man special effects and Vonnegut's Ice Nine out of your mind, the reality is pretty mundane. Really, they make the stuff, how do you think they dispose of it? Turn the power off and PFFT. Away it goes.

Its that kind of disconnected paranoid thinking that feeds into the fears of people like Dirty_g who might not worry about it if they'd just read the extract for themselves and put some effort into understanding it on their own, rather than reading some screamsheet in a magazine or website.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

ooh thanks for the insult there buddy. I love you too. Anyway I did put some reading into the experiment thats why I posted here. There is not too much information about it that I could find that I could understand. What I did understand from Laymans sites are that certain members of the scientific community have voiced concern at these experiments and that even people who are all for the LHC have said they cannot totally dismiss the likelyhood it will produce some rather bad results. That they have said it is not likely at all that anything bad will happen is very true. Like I said though I don't like them odds. Bottom line for me is. You can do something as an experiement to endanger yourself if you wish but if you wish to endanger everyone on Earth (Even though it isnt likely at all that the LHC will do this) then I do not beleive you should go ahead with the tests. If you want to create a slight risk of killing yourself from your own experiment then that is your own right. Dont drag everybody else into it though.

Every day, earth is in danger of spontaneously for no reason vanishing completely. So? The odds against it are so small as to be ridiculous. The same goes for the stuff you are proposing. The earth is in (basically) no danger, so stop worrying.

I looked at all your links you provided.
Even the last one, after reading it, showed to be written by laymen who have no clue what they are talking about. I followed numerous links from those documents and further from linked documents.
I found several times stated that certain members of the scientific community have voiced concern at these experiments. Not once a name or a paper was shown to back up this claim. So who are those members of the scientific community, that are of the opinion that the LHC will blow up earth?
Names please!

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916
our animal welfare board and organisation

[Turns off the Holodeck, watches Neverfly crash in the floor]

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Well, I think we can all agree that Large Hadron Colliders ARE a danger... to large hadrons.

What I did understand from Laymans sites are that certain members of the scientific community have voiced concern at these experiments and that even people who are all for the LHC have said they cannot totally dismiss the likelyhood it will produce some rather bad results. That they have said it is not likely at all that anything bad will happen is very true.

Which reputable scientists have said this? Name, area of expertise, affiliation...?

Like I said though I don't like them odds. Bottom line for me is. You can do something as an experiement to endanger yourself if you wish but if you wish to endanger everyone on Earth (Even though it isnt likely at all that the LHC will do this) then I do not beleive you should go ahead with the tests. If you want to create a slight risk of killing yourself from your own experiment then that is your own right. Dont drag everybody else into it though.

Exactly how is the LHC a danger? We've already pointed out that far more energetic events are periodically arranged by Nature around our planet. If that hasn't made the Earth go poof in all these billions of years, why should less energetic events at the LHC cause a problem?

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

Does anyone have any concerns about the Large Collider that is starting up at the end of this year.

I heard that it can be dangerous

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Don't Hate Me Cause I Am Dum

Start reading the thread from its beginning...

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916
our animal welfare board and organisation

From what I understand in the thread there is a risk but it is minimal

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Don't Hate Me Cause I Am Dum