Last time I checked, black holes weren't a desirable side effect of doing science. We're not talking about Silly Putty here. And dark matter? Are you sure? Really? Let's not forget what happened last time we decided to screw around with particles we didn't understand.
This creates a big dilemma for me. My default setting is "Trust Science. Don't overreact. " I really don't want to be the kind of person who wrote "Here There Be Dragons" on maps and took comet pills. But I'm just not getting this and need someone to explain it to me. That's the problem with having an Art Brain. No matter how much you like science and study it, there's still a chunk of stuff you don't intuit on your own that have to do with details and HOW things work. So, someone with a Science Brain? I would like some answers:
1. Um...why is this a good idea?
2. I mean, if we have no idea what's going to happen when we bash these things together, maybe we should do a little research first?
3. Why is this useful? Don't get me wrong, I'm 1000% in favor of research for the sake of research. You never know what kind of stuff you'll learn. But the way I see it, the programs works like this:
*Spend a kabajagillion dollars on making a ...thing.
* Use kabajagillion dollar thing to do...something.
* You don't know what the something is, but there's a chance it could be really really bad.
What I want to hear is that this is not as stupid an idea as it seems prima fascia. Like I said, I haaaate questioning science. I always expect someone to come up and pat me on the head and tell me not to tax my poor lady brain, why I don't take some nerve tonic and paint a picture about how the scawwy scawwy science makes me feel and let the grown-ups take care of things. I don't even want to make the old "Isn't there a better way to spend (X) dollars?" argument. Because it's Sweden, and they totally have their shit together. They can spend their money on whatever because their people are well taken care of.
So, in short, I just want to understand this whole thing and I need a good scientist to do the 'splainin.
3 comments:
My man Stephen Hawking says there is a less than 1% chance of this experiment leading to a black hole. Even if it did, it would be nowhere near the magnitude of the black holes of collapsed stars.
So says the man: “If the collisions in the LHC produced a micro black hole, and this is unlikely, it would just evaporate away again, producing a characteristic pattern of particles. Collisions at these and greater energies occur millions of times a day in the Earth’s atmosphere, and nothing terrible happens.”
So if it DOES lead to a black hole, it would be a teeny one, and it would evaporate almost instantaneously but last just long enough to effectively earn Hawking the Nobel Prize. Of course, Hawking's theory states that this evaporation will result in bright flashes of gamma radiation, and we all know what happens to people in the immediate vicinity of this type of experiment. Amazing what you can learn on Wikipedia!
But once you watch this video, all your questions will be answered and you'll rest easier knowing the most brilliant minds in the world are overseeing this project.
Ok. I'm totally in favor of anything that might get Hawking a Nobel.
What could possiblie go wrong?
But seriously, as the man said, "Collisions at these and greater energies occur millions of times a day in the Earth’s atmosphere, and nothing terrible happens."
And what this makes me think is: You know what's really fucking unbelievable? That the earth exists at all. Surely *something* should have destroyed the planet by now, or some tiny calibration in the universe's characteristic laws and forces during the Big Bang should have made human life completely impossible.
We're a lucky little ball o' rock. And a very pretty one.
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