Hi all. I myself have never been comfy with LHC's at all. There have been smaller experiments around them but now they seem to be doing more and more and it actually scares me. No joke and im not trying to scare monger others but many scientists seem to not be very comfy with the idea themselves either. here is one link though its a bit more for the layman. http://www.exitmundi.nl/vacuum.htm

here is another layman site http://www.exitmundi.nl/quantum.htm

http://www.exitmundi.nl/strange.htm

and http://www.exitmundi.nl/blackholes_lab.htm

these are more reader friendly sites aimed at the everyman

a little more scientific here http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/anon1.htm

let me know your thoughs. Does it worry you at all? It does me. Its an experiment. Experiments are what you do when you do not know what will happen. If you knew the outcome you wouldnt need to do them. It has been admitted there are very small chances that something as bad as the Earth being destroyed could happen but if a chance is actually thee and it is admitted there is a tiny chance then should we do it. In fact who the hell are these scientists to decide what happens to the rest of us?? Maybe Im mad but let me know your thoughts.

The black hole thing is a non-starter. Even if they acheive anything resembling singularity for a femtosecond, the singularity they create will be the result of the collision of a couple subatomic particles. Therefore, it will have no more mass than a pair of subatomic particles, and generate no more gravity than a pair of subatomic particles. Creating a two particle black hole isn't going to suck the paint off the walls any more than a hydrogen nucleus will. That's pure bunk science fiction nonsense.

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

You say that "many scientists" seem to be uncomfortable with LHCs.

But your evidence is four links to a single unscientific website (exitmundi), and a single discussion forum (risk-evaluation-forum) whose contact person, James Blodgett, does not appear to have any scientific credentials. A quick glance of the scientific papers he refers to suggests that none of the scientists so far involved are very uncomfortable with LHCs at all.

Do you have any stronger evidence for your claim?

Here is what CERN has to say about the safety of the LHC. Concerns were also voiced when the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider became operational in 2000, so far no ill effects

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Valerie Jamieson: "Black holes, but not as we know them". In: New Scientist, 22 January 2005

John G. Kramer: "CERN’s LHC: A black hole factory?"

are two of the links from one of the laymans pages. Not sure how to link them but go on the web pages and you will see them. I dont really claim that these things will happen. I am no scientist. I am very worried about these things though. It just doesnt seem wise to me at all.

Why doesn't it seem wise to you?

It is studying things which we have never done before. Potentially dangerous things. We dont know what will happen. We have had scientists put forward Theorys but it never has actually been done yet and the scale of the experiment and what has been done seems potentially dangerous.http://www.discover.com/issues/aug-05/cover/?page=2

this article which by no means goes against LHC work does highlight that the energy used is like trillions of that of TNT(makes me think of the next step up from an Atom Bomb and are we about to accidently detonate one?). That Electromagnets will create fields 100,000 times more pwerful than the earths. Surely this is not good?? Magnetic fields that strong around our earth? Could this not proove dangerous? Please tell me i am wrong and put my mind at rest!!

Actually particle collisions at energies orders of magnitude higher than the biggest particle accelerator anyone has even seriously thought about building have been going on since long before humanity was around. Cosmic rays^[1] with energies fantastically higher than anything that a particle accelerator can produce have been recorded (eg the Oh-My-God Particle) so any event that will take place in a collider is virtually certain to have taken place thousands of times naturally by now.

Also how is science supposed to advance if not by doing things that have never been done before? Even potentially dangerous things, if everything with a significant risk was disallowed then there wouldn't be much left for anyone to do.

[1] Which do include particles of every type known to man (and probably some that aren't yet), blame the same people who refer to everything with an atomic mass higher than helium as "metals" for the name (ie astronomers)

Well...scientists often put a calm face on things—scientists being creatures not prone to hysterics—but remember that the folks who developed the atom bomb believed there was a chance it could ignite the Earth's atmosphere.

Still, I believe the risk is small, but I think it would be foolish to say that there is no risk.

Why dont we study these natural events if they happen all the time?? We wouldnt need to recreate them?? They are going ro do things that have not happened before in these experiments. I dont care about science advancing if no humans are about to appreciate the findings if we die due to the experiments. I hope I'm wrong. I really do.

You're wrong.

Feel better?

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nope

Damn. All well, it appears scarcasm can't sure everything after-all...

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Oh well. Sarcasm is the last resort in most cases. I know I have used it many a times.

They goofed a little on that one. There is no "edge" of the universe. Even then, its a lot larger than 13Gly anyhow, that's just the edge of the visible universe. Its more like 76Gly, depending on who's expansion model you follow.

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

As a non-expert, I'll try to answer. I think we do, thus the link that Grashtel posted. A quick google found:
This
And this
And this
I think one of the problems with using cosmic rays as your source is you don't know when they will arrive, from what direction, and with what energy. I suspect it is much easier having a source you can turn on and off.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

John Nelson at Birmingham University stated of RHIC that "it is astonishingly unlikely that there is any risk - but I could not prove it." In academia there is some question of whether Hawking radiation is correct. Taken from the site http://www.answers.com/topic/large-hadron-collider

Nobody can prove it. Untested Theorys stop us knowing.

Im not usuing just the creation of black holes. There are multiple theorys givin the the links above about other things.

It is astonishingly unlikely that tomorrow my head will not spontaneously turn into a black hole and suck up the entire world. But I can't prove it.

Should I chop off my head today, just to be safe, or are you willing to risk a little "experiment"?

What is the stress about anyways? Not like if it consumes the world that you're going to be alive to care...

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I never knew a man made xperiment was going on inside your head?

Maybve I dont want to die?? Strange that. I dont want my future SOn or Daughter to die either. Oooh strange that too.

Plus it's real hard to get the proper detectors up to where all the action is.

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

We do study the natural events, how do you think we knew about the OMG Particle? Its just that properly studying particle collisions requires big expensive equipment that has to be very close to the event (a lot of the time the event needs to take place inside it), which as the natural events are relatively rare, unpredictable, and mostly take place in the upper atmosphere, all of which seriously limits what we can learn from them.

As to the risk Earth is still here after being exposed to far higher energy events than we are capable of producing for the past almost 5 billions years and is still around so I think the risk is sufficiently small to be acceptable. Particularly as any planet destroying event would be visible from thousands of light years away and we haven't observed any taking place elsewhere either.

Dirty_g, you really do remind me of bmpbmp, only with better spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Take a look at a few of the threads he started. Then take a few long, slow, deep breaths.

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

You realize that if mankind had taken this tack generations ago, you'd be eating your dinner raw, don't you?

There is a finite risk in everything we do. However, we need to consider not only the risk, but the likelihood that it will happen.

My guess is your chances of dying from a manmade black hole are considerably less than your chances of dying in an automobile accident. Do you plan to stop travelling by car?

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

In response to witnessing ppanet exploding events many light years away ..... Some gamma ray bursts cannot be explained. Most can though. Some cant. I was reading an article on it in the Astronomy now or sky at night magazine. I'll have to have a look. Obviously it doesnt think that these are caused by LHC's. Obviously most are caused by supermassive stars starting to collapse and shooting beams from their poles. Well at least thats the major consenus.

The world would be a much happier place if more people would accept that.

Too many ways in which this planet could be rendered lifeless tomorrow. Enjoy what you've got while you've got it.

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

Please read the links I provided. Man made micro black holes are not my only concern. Cooking a meal is by any standards considerably less dangerous than what will go on at the LHC this November.

That supports my argument, consider the rate at which GRBs are observed and how far we have to look to see them, if any are caused by high energy particle collisions the odds of a planet destroying event are very low. There are a large number of events with the capacity to wipe out humanity, while an oops with exotic physics is one of them its not a high probability one compared to more mundane things such as a super-plague, a megaflare, a nearby supernova, or a big asteroid impact.